“It is Jack’s money after all.”
“Not campaign funds.”
“Certainly not. And it isn’t as though Wakely had no money of his own. He had a disability—uh—uh—thing. And his family owned a farm. It came to him when they passed on.”
“Now money going out for Wakely’s care and expenses can be diverted to other things.”
“Oh yes, but if you’re saying that’s a good thing, this is going to upset Jack so much it will throw him off stride. Maybe too much to continue. If Wakely’s death costs Jack the nomination, the savings won’t be worth it.”
Susan asked questions: When had Mrs. Garrett seen Wakely last, what was his mood, where had she been during the evening.
* * *
“Nobody seemed very broken up by the death of one of their own,” Susan said to Parkhurst after a patrolman had escorted them to his Bronco. “Except maybe the governor.” She told him what Garrett said.
“Wakely wasn’t one of them,” Parkhurst said. “He was like a pet, sometimes a nuisance, foisted on them by their star.”
“True,” she said. “Poor man. No wonder he was depressed.”
She told Parkhurst what all her questioning had reaped. Nil. “Not a one of them has an alibi. They all said they were together from about five o’clock on, but not solidly. They were all in and out. Any one of them could have slipped away, gone out, snuffed Wakely and slipped back.”
“I like to know why things happen,” Parkhurst said. “If Wakely killed himself now, there was a reason. I want to know what it was. Did he have a personal life? Any friends besides His High Mucketymuck the governor? What did the poor peckerwood do all the time? What did he think about? If I know all that shit then I can get the whole picture.”
“You think it wasn’t suicide.” No inflection in her voice. She didn’t think so either.
“People die all the time and some of it’s senseless. Dope dealers kill each other over territory. Addicts kill to get money for dope. Husbands kill wives because dinner is late, wives kill husbands because they’re tired of the slobs sacked out in front of the TV all the time. There’s always a reason. Even if it’s senseless, there’s a reason. What was his reason?”
“You don’t buy that he could just get tired of the whole thing? Tired of being the governor’s friend, tired of being taken care of, tired of being in the wheelchair, tired of being dragged around all over the country with this campaign.”
“I like to know the truth. Whatever it is.”
“Oh, truth,” Susan said. “Have you ever noticed truth is a very slippery thing?” She looked at him. “Especially if we’re telling it to ourselves.”
“You talking of the Governor’s little speech about Wakely doing whatever he decided and nothing could stop him?”
“Yeah. Did that feel like the truth to you?”
“It felt like somebody trying to deal with guilt.”
“Yeah, that’s what it felt like to me, too,” she said. “We lie to ourselves, we lie to each other, we lie about each other.” She looked out the window. In the pale silver starlight, the wind rolled across the grasses like the waves of ocean surf. A white-tailed buck, with a swift graceful arc, leaped into the tunnel of their headlights and left an imprint on her retinas. It seemed a thing of rare beauty after the bloody scene at Wakely’s house.
Parkhurst slammed on the brakes. She tensed for the impact and then let her shoulders slump in relief when she saw the buck bound across the road, down the ditch, up the other side and sail over the fence.
“You know what struck me?” she said. “No disbelief. From any of these people. No ‘He couldn’t be dead. I just saw him an hour ago, he was fine. He couldn’t possibly be dead, he was just here.’ Governor Garrett didn’t even ask to see his old buddy’s body.”
“Yeah.”
Most people did. Relatives and loved ones couldn’t believe in a sudden death until they saw the body. “He’d know reporters were swarming in even as we breathed.”
“Yeah,” Parkhurst said. “Like your cousin.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I wonder how objective you can be.”
“Sean had nothing to do with Fromm’s death, suicide or homicide.”
“Right.”
“Nothing,” she repeated through clenched teeth. “I’ve known him all my life. He had nothing to do with it.”
“Ah, all your life. ‘He was such a nice quiet boy. I just can’t believe it. Why, I’ve known him all my life.’”
“Oh, shut up.”
“If there’s one thing you don’t ever get over, it’s your childhood,” Parkhurst said.
She didn’t know what he was thinking, but she was thinking she didn’t need this. It would get sticky. You don’t just poke a stick in the middle of the governor’s campaign and stir it around. And in a homicide investigation, you didn’t just stir, you roiled that sucker around until it bubbled up in a cauldron like Shakespeare’s. Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Susan.”
“It couldn’t just be indigestion, could it? What did you eat for supper?”
Wakely’s death made headlines in the Hampstead Herald. It made the front page in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
FRIEND OF GARRETT TAKES LIFE
28
Cass didn’t like this at all. Even while she showered and pulled on tailored black pants and a beige sweater, she was trying to think how she could get out of it. Bernie was probably on his way to pick her up and she had no way to stop him. If she didn’t answer the door, he’d keep pounding until she did. If she told him she was sick, he’d haul her to a doctor. If she ran out the back door, he’d probably call the cops and report her missing. Of course, that would give her—what? Three days before they’d do anything? This is not going to work.
Carmen went into her defending-the-home bark and a few seconds later the doorbell rang. So much for running. She let Bernie in.
“Still haven’t gotten rid of them, I see.” He nodded at the boxes stacked in the dining room.
“All in good time.” She had other things on her mind. Today was Tuesday, Halloween was Friday. The anniversary of Ted and Laura’s deaths. Three more days. Now that the decision had been made, she felt calm, relaxed, more unburdened and free than she’d been since she’d come back to Hampstead.
“Need some help?”
“Thanks, I can manage.” She slipped on her coat and they went out to the car. “The news last night reported Wakely’s death.” She’d been shocked and saddened. Friends all those years ago, when they’d been young, she and Jack and Wakely. Sometimes Wakely had a date and the four of them would go out. Sometimes it was just the three of them. A big strong man, fearless when jumping out of airplanes and fighting fires, he was shy around people but he had a quiet sense of humor that surfaced when he felt comfortable. “What happened? He shot himself?”
“Apparently.”
“Poor Wakely,” she said as she got in the car.
“Fasten your seatbelt.” He handed her a newspaper.
She took it, clicked in the seatbelt and read headlines suggestively wondering about the friendship between Jack Garrett and Wakely Fromm.
Cass tossed the paper in the back. “How could anybody think Jack was gay?” She well and truly knew he wasn’t, but giving interviews that twenty years ago the two of them made love at every opportunity probably wasn’t what the campaign committee wanted in the news.
“I can’t believe it would make a difference.”
“Where you from, lady?”
“Aren’t we stooping to the same level by sneaking in something about Halderbreck?”
“That’s how the game is played.”
“Well, it’s not very honorable.”
“Politics isn’t about honor,” he said. “It’s about winning. If the truth has to be sacrificed, so be it. If one reputation has to be rolled in the mud to save another, then okay. It
isn’t a Queensbury rules let’s-all-play-fair sport, it’s a give-no-quarter war. Facts get twisted to fit the needs of the person running, rumors get created for the same reason. The needs of the voters get overrun by the more immediate needs of the candidate.”
Bernie hunched his shoulders. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get carried away.”
“What happened? A few days ago, you were a dedicated player.”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“I’m with you there. It’s stupid. Nobody’s going to pay any attention to anything I say.”
He drove out to the Garrett farm and eased through the media crowd clustered at the gate throwing questions and jabbing mikes at the car. It was all rather horrifying.
Nora, Molly’s personal assistant, was carrying on a monologue, as usual, and as usual, she was pissing everybody off. Cass could tell Todd was on the point of losing his temper. Everybody but Molly disliked Nora, Todd more than the rest.
Nora sat next to Jack on one side of the dining room table, Todd and Leon sat on the other. Todd made a come-on-over gesture indicating that Cass and Bernie should join them. Nora smiled at Bernie and glared at Cass and went on talking. When she seized a subject she’d go on and on until she set everybody’s teeth on edge. The politicals put up with her because of Molly, ignored her as much as possible and made jokes about her behind her back.
“He’s going to do something awful,” Nora was saying. “I know it.”
“Halderbreck,” Todd muttered to Bernie. “Nora had a hot flash or something.”
Nora shot him a look of pure hatred. Todd produced a smile very close to angelic.
“I’ve been talking with Willa Hughes,” Nora said.
Jack looked blank.
“One of the press,” Nora said shortly. “You need to pay attention to them.”
“Right.” No hint of impatience in Jack’s voice and he had a look of close listening, but Cass knew his mind was working on something far away from whatever Nora was talking about. “What about Halderbreck?”
“How well do you know him?” Nora asked.
“We’re colleagues, not friends. The media likes to paint him as an oddball eccentric but he’s a God and family kind of guy.”
“Well, I ran into him the other day in Washington and when I told him you were going to be the party’s candidate and become this country’s next president, he laughed.”
“That’s what I’d do if somebody told me Halderbreck would get the nomination and win the election.”
“It wasn’t a funny laugh, Jack.” Nora leaned closer to him. “There was no humor in his eyes. And he started rambling about how you can never tell and things aren’t always what they seem and it was a horse race.”
Jack nodded agreement. “Halderbreck does tend to ramble.”
“When I asked him what he meant, he said the convention would be the telling.”
“Nora, that’s way in the future. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We have long miles to go before then. He’s probably warning me if I get that far, his people can snag enough delegates to prevent a first ballot nomination.”
“What would happen then?”
“We storm the place and hope we can get more votes than they can.”
“What if it goes several ballots?”
Jack looked directly in her eyes and spoke clearly. “Nora, we haven’t even won a primary yet.”
“He kept talking about the day of reckoning, the day of reckoning, and saying he’d be in the winner’s circle because he stood up with right and good.”
Todd shifted in his chair and looked about to make some squashing comment.
“Does he know anything bad about you?” Nora looked pointedly at Cass.
Cass felt a little prick of irritation. She was the something bad that could be used against Jack? How? Maybe it was the excuse that would be used to get rid of her. Molly didn’t like her, and what Molly didn’t like, Nora didn’t like. Little did they know they didn’t need an excuse. She wouldn’t be around long anyway.
“You mean besides being a homo-sex-u-al?” Jack said.
“You can laugh, but I’m worried. He’s going to toss in a grenade and blow us sky high.”
“Nora, come on. Don’t worry. I can weather anything he throws at us.”
“We gotta roll.” Todd stood up and everybody else began to scramble.
“Molly!” Jack yelled. “Let’s go!”
Jack and Molly got in the waiting limo. Cass, Bernie, Todd, and Leon piled into the one behind it. They were headed thirty-five miles to a luncheon in Lawrence where Jack would speak to a group of University of Kansas alumni.
“Don’t wait,” Todd told the driver. “We have a schedule.”
The driver put the limo in gear, but before he could pull away, Nora came running up. Todd grimaced and opened the door for her.
“… Sorry, just had to pick up something at the last minute. I couldn’t go off without…”
Todd folded his arms and closed his eyes. He didn’t suffer fools politely and he made no secret of the fact that he thought Nora a fool.
Thirty-five miles. With Nora talking all the way, it was going to be a long trip.
“Just look at all these empty fields.” Nora bustled around settling in her seat. “Why doesn’t somebody do something with them?”
Since everybody else ignored her, Cass felt pressured to respond. “It’s farm land. Crops will get planted in the spring.”
“Well, I know that. What is it they grow here?”
“Wheat, corn, soy beans—”
“That’s interesting, thank you, dear. Do people really live in these old houses way out in the middle of nowhere?”
“They’re farm houses. People have lived in the same house, many of them, for generations.”
“Well, some of them are falling down. Look at that old thing. It’s nothing but rotting wood.”
“It’s The Hanging Barn,” Cass said. That even got a rise out of Todd who opened his eyes for a moment, then closed them again. “People who want to commit suicide come out here and hang themselves.”
“Why would anybody want to come out here to hang himself?” Nora said.
Bernie thought, shouldn’t the question rather be, why would anybody want to hang himself?
“It’s where I’d come,” Cass said. If I didn’t have the gun.
Bernie shot her a look, but only asked mildly, “Why is it called that?”
“Quantrill,” Cass said. “In eighteen fifty-six, filled with a fervor of rightness, Quantrill and his Raiders slaughtered an antislavery farmer and his two sons. The farmer’s wife, overwhelmed by grief, hanged herself in the barn. Since then, a number of people have hanged themselves there.”
For the rest of the trip, Nora talked about the senseless act of suicide and how she, herself, didn’t understand it at all. Fortunately, they arrived at Lawrence and Nora got out, or Cass might have found herself yelling at the woman.
The room where the luncheon was held was all very nautical with framed pictures of boats on the wall, ropes dangling here and there, anchors and nets propped in the corners. Pretty funny, Kansas being nowhere near a seafaring spot. Molly and Jack sat at the speaker’s table with important looking people about whom Cass hadn’t a clue, except they had money. She sat next to Bernie at a banquet table with Nora and Todd seated on the other side and wondered how long this would take and when she might be expected to get home. She had no idea what had happened to Leon. Off somewhere making media consultant decisions probably. Lunch was an unexpected surprise, the baked chicken was actually quite good. When the mousse and coffee came, she excused herself and went to the ladies room.
Just as she slid down her trousers and underwear and was about to sit, her cell phone rang.
A women washing her hands called out, “I think your phone is ringing.”
“Oh, thank you.” Cass unzipped her bag and fumbled for the phone. “Hello?”
“This is
your old friend Marsha.”
She did have an old friend Marsha, but this wasn’t her voice. This was the voice of Todd Haviland, campaign manager, sitting back there in the dining room. “Uh—this isn’t really a good time, uh—”
“Call me Marsha. Tell me how you like working for Garrett For President?”
“Well, I don’t work for him yet. I’m only thinking about it. I’m not sure I will.” Her voice echoed with a tinny edge. “It might be interesting. You know, finding out how our democracy works.”
“Stop a minute. Listen … listen … okay. Call me Marsha.”
Irritated at being put in this ridiculous position, Cass threw in a sweet snag. “Marsha, these people are not above putting on a charade.”
“Don’t ruin this opportunity. We can’t try more than once,” Todd said sharply.
“Yeah, all the juicy stuff, you know? The stuff that never gets on the news.”
“Good. Keep going.”
Cass lowered her voice. “Oh, like just yesterday he said Senator Halderbreck was so stupid he needed both hands and a map to find his ass.” She felt silly and self-conscious and had no idea if anyone was listening. If no one heard her, the great performance in the ladies room was wasted.
“That’s great! Don’t forget to flush.”
Cass flushed, washed her hands and went back to the table. Todd ignored her. Molly gazed with adoring admiration at Jack as he spoke. After the speech and the handshaking and the back slapping, they all trooped out. Herds of press surged toward her, microphones bristling. Head down, she kept going. Obviously, her little staged bit had been heard.
When they got back to Hampstead they stopped at the Garrett For President local headquarters where Jack shook hands with the volunteers.
* * *
Em hadn’t been there when the governor came. She felt both anger at a possibly missed opportunity and relief that she hadn’t been forced to use the opportunity. She worked steadily throughout the afternoon, following the script and dialing the numbers on her list. She kept her head bent and didn’t make eye contact with any of the other volunteers. What would they think if she suddenly told them they might as well stop making these silly calls? None of it mattered. Jackson Garrett would be dead before the first primary.
Up in Smoke Page 18