The Scotland Yard Exchange Series

by Stephanie Queen

  “And how could they have forgotten the Harvard Professor label?” Valerie said.

  “Thankfully they didn’t mention that you were a beauty queen,” Sarah reminded her again. She was serious. They all looked at her.

  “True, true. You better watch out or they’ll start tagging you too,” Madeline said.

  “And quit it with the rhyming shit, will you. Next thing you know St. Cyr’s tag line—Mad Madeline—just might stick,” Sarah scolded.

  “Don’t worry, Sarah, this is just the warm-ups, like you said. People take me plenty seriously. After all, no one’s made a dumb blonde joke about me yet.” Mad realized this odd factoid, as she watched the numbers of the floors light in succession. The others laughed while Sarah rolled her eyes and half-scowled.

  “Are you disappointed? Because we could arrange to have some jokes circulated,” Jonathan offered.

  “Yes, I’d love to have people think I’m actually a closet bimbo.”

  “Hiding behind the façade of intelligence then?” Jon asked.

  “Jonathan Lake—are you accusing me of being inscrutable?” Madeline mocked.

  “Just do me a favor and don’t come out of your closet until after the election, will you?” Sarah said. They all looked at her. The elevator doors opened and they emerged as a pack with Madeline the lead blocker.

  “Sarah, you said something funny.” Valerie sounded more incredulous than sarcastic.

  “Leave Sarah alone.” Madeline looked over her shoulder as she led them to the adjoining suites, which had become their unofficial headquarters. “She is quite often funny.” Not necessarily on purpose. She left that thought unspoken, but it was understood.

  Valerie and Jonathan let out obnoxious gut-clenching laughs at the sarcasm.

  “Thanks for the support, boss.” Sarah glared.

  “Don’t complain, Sarah. I got St. Cyr comparing me to Dr. Seuss, I lost to the high-and-mighty PJD and meanwhile another Saturday night goes by and the hottest thing that’s happened to me in months is a close encounter with a five-year-old boy.”

  “Not that again. Quit your whining. You can have a love life after the election.” Sarah’s scowl deepened. Sarah was right of course. Not that she was really whining, but this was no time for being wistful about her personal life—or lack thereof. Sliding the key card and opening the door in one deft move, Madeline reminded herself to concentrate on what was important. She was poised to make an impact on “politics as usual.” She’d been destined to make an impact on the world since she was a child, after all.

  The faint but unmistakable smell of chocolate immediately registered as she stepped into the room. Madeline’s anxiety level dropped several notches. The troops marched in after her. Heading to the windows, she kicked off her shoes. Then she began pacing back and forth along the view of Boston harbor framed by the open draperies. Putting on a brave front for the media had been a strain. In spite of the inevitableness of the loss at the convention, she couldn’t help feeling the disappointment. Her ambitious competitive streak ran too deep not to feel the snap. Especially because she lost to him. She sighed heartily but decided that had to be her last self-indulgent sigh for a while. She wasn’t about to let his win stop her. She had her Plan B.

  Sarah sat opposite her on the mute-colored couch and watched her pace as usual. She walked by the two beige chairs, a beige-tone couch, a table and a desk and turned when she reached the fake potted plants, letting her mind buzz back to life. She grabbed a chocolate from the half-filled dish on the table when her path took her by it. Not bothering to stop or even slow down, she glanced around at the dozen or so people who streamed into the room. They didn’t know what to do with themselves now. No one knew what she was going to do next, and they were waiting for her to tell them.

  “Hey, Beacon Hill, let’s gather the troops.” Madeline tossed the order at Jonathan, her chief of staff. Considering he was a Boston Brahmin, the closest thing to an aristocrat in the new world, he was down to earth enough not to be offended by her label.

  “Valerie, call room service and have them send up drinks and food, whatever anyone wants. Get comfortable, everyone.” Madeline knew Valerie Pellegrini wouldn’t mind the food assignment in spite of her lofty status as a professor of romance languages at Harvard. Valerie was also an old world matron at heart and as meticulously well organized as a marine. She was robust and young with the natural beauty of a country peasant, only polished to a sheen that would match the sophistication of a diplomat’s wife. After all, Valerie was a diplomat’s daughter. Madeline turned to Sarah.

  “Time to talk about Plan B?” Sarah asked. Madeline nodded. Morty—Mortimer Duvall really, but he refused to answer to that—walked over to her and stood alongside Jon and Sarah. She smiled at her campaign treasurer. Although he was fresh out of Harvard Business School, he was the oldest person in the room because he started late. No one held that against him, though, because it turned out he had a plethora of wealthy corporate friends from his years on the job. Plus, he had lots of money—he was doing the campaign as a lark and spending lots of said money. He said he’d probably write a book about it someday, but Madeline decided to bite her tongue and not hold that against him either.

  “Plan B goes like this.” Madeline paused until the group of her most experienced campaign organizers settled in.

  “Because we got more than fifteen percent of the delegate votes, we have some options.” She spoke with determination. “Option one: we stay in the race for the primaries and try to steal the party’s nomination away with the popular vote. We can hope the voters have a different opinion than the convention delegates. The advantage of this option is that we’ll be in the primary race and visible on the media radar screen.” She nodded to Sarah.

  Sarah spoke. “The down side is that PJD is too popular and plugged in with the party machinery. The probability of winning the party slot on the election ballot will be slim. Managing a good showing doesn’t count at this stage.” Sarah said this with her serious scowl in place, presumably to reinforce her message. Now it was Madeline’s turn.

  “Option number two: we ditch the party nomination bid and run independent.” Madeline stopped and looked around at the nodding heads and felt the excitement growing. She couldn’t be sure if it was hers or theirs.

  “As you also know, we have gathered in excess of the minimum signatures required to get on the ballot for the primary. If we continue gathering signatures, we should be able to gather the necessary 5,000 or so we’ll need to run independent.

  “This is Plan B: to run for governor as an independent candidate.”

  Madeline spread her hands and checked the room again, letting the implications of Plan B sink in. No one had known. It was a crazy plan. No, not crazy, Madeline thought. Bold. Walking the line between legitimate and nutcase was next to impossible in the business of politics. But that was exactly what she planned to do. People wanted to have confidence in their leaders, even if they wanted a bold change of direction. She was the exact person to give them both. And what she was determined to do.

  Madeline looked at Sarah’s face now, as intense as ever. Sarah began the applause with a nod of approval, looking absolutely convinced of the moral imperative of their mission. A split second later everyone in the small crowd joined in. This was turning into a real celebration, Madeline thought.

  At least for the moment, until they discussed their chief opponent.

  “What about the other option—the obvious one, the one you left out?” Jonathan asked.

  She looked directly at him when she spoke and tried to send him the signal to leave this alone. “Since when do I do the obvious?” She heard some laughs.

  “Quit stalling.”

  This time a few people gasped. He continued, “What about joining our opponent’s camp as lieutenant governor?”

  She stifled a sigh. “I’m not considering that an option for many reasons.” She looked at everyone and held her breath for a moment. “Peter John Dou
glas, aka PJD, is the epitome of politics as usual. I am the antithesis.” She started pacing again, but only small steps along a short path.

  “Our entire platform is about politics not as usual. I’d quit and save myself to campaign another day before I’d join his camp,” she said. She made sure they all knew she did not want to pursue that discussion. Sarah glanced at her with a nod of approval, but no smile.

  She took a deep breath. “Our number one goal is to be a legitimate option outside the very limited box of the two-party system. My Plan B is to run independent, not to be lieutenant governor.”

  Applause broke out spontaneously this time. The food arrived. She dismissed the group and dismissed the notion that she should run as lieutenant governor with Peter John Douglas.

  “You should sit and relax,” Valerie said.

  “Not yet. I’m all revved up now.” Madeline was no old lady. She was only thirty-six, after all. She made a mental note to help Valerie channel that mother hen tendency.

  “So what now?” Jon, the lanky gentleman and leader of the troops, joined her where she stood, replacing Valerie at her side. “What are you going to say when PJD asks you to join him as lieutenant governor?” he asked without blinking, as the master of the tough questions she’d come to count on.

  She laughed. “Of course my line is ‘what makes you think he will?’”

  “Of course he will. He has every reason to. You’ve shown well, he has no one else, and—he likes you.”

  “He needs me, you mean.” She laughed, but was uneasy at the thought. Reluctant to go into it, but knowing Jon deserved an answer, Madeline looked at him. “Don’t worry, I’ll stand up to him.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t stand up to him. Could be you’re dismissing him too easily. He’s a good man. You’d be a good influence on him.” Jonathan didn’t understand. His eyes were confused and his voice quiet with his innate gentlemanliness.

  She had to give him some kind of explanation, even if it wasn’t a complete one.

  “He’s a big part of the political machinery that needs some disassembling. You’ve only seen his good side.” She told herself she had a right to hold back. She wasn’t ready to share all the personal details about why partnering with Peter was a bad idea. “It’s been a fairly clean fight so far, but it’s bound to get tougher. Our admirable and justifiably confident opponent, Peter John Douglas, could well afford to wage a fair campaign at this stage and win handily in the process.” Later in the game, the fighting fair part might very well change. Or maybe she was too worried about it. She hoped Jonathan was satisfied with her explanation, because she wasn’t about to tell him that joining up with Peter John Douglas would be like giving up her ambition, her very identity. In more ways than one.

  “Enough of this shop talk. This is Dom Perignon and it’s delicious.” Valerie raised her glass. Madeline smiled at her and silently blessed her heart.

  In no time the party pulled into full swing with a complete release of tension, if the volume was any indicator. Nothing like the renewal of a mission with good old Plan B to revive their energy. She watched Valerie glide around the room, bringing Madeline a second glass of champagne. She gladly took it—and stopped pacing for the moment.

  “So what’s the rest of Plan B after you pick up your papers?” Valerie asked. “That will create a stir, but we’ll lose the party support—not to mention funding. I doubt even you can support the campaign all the way to governor on free publicity alone.” Valerie plopped down onto the couch. She sat looking from Sarah to Jonathan to the campaign treasurer, Morty. Then she looked at Madeline and waited.

  Sarah piped up. “I’m sure you’ll find that we’ve fleshed out enough of the details to get us going. Then it will be up to the talent and hard work of people like you to keep it going,” Sarah told Valerie in her imperious tone. Madeline gave Val a wink. Jonathan rose from his chair and stretched out a hand to Valerie.

  “I’ll give you a lift home and fill you in along the way,” he told her. He shook Madeline’s hand as he always did before leaving and walked toward the door with Valerie.

  “Don’t forget, Sarah,” Valerie called over her shoulder. “You have a conference call tomorrow morning with the man from DC about the press secretary job.” She waved.

  A scowl was Sarah’s response. Jon and Val drifted through the group of people on their way out.

  “I would have expected Jonathan to stay and discuss this.”

  Madeline didn’t like the tone of the older woman’s voice. She was normally more patient with Sarah’s disposition. It could be that her friend was getting worse, or it could be her imagination.

  “It’s late. I think we should start fresh in the morning.” Madeline arched her brow and nodded good-bye to Val and Jon, then looked back at Sarah. Jonathan was perfect for the key campaign spot of chief of staff. Sarah was smart enough not to find further fault with him, at least not for the moment, Madeline observed. Sarah stood and started to help clear out the room while Valerie and Jonathan said their good-byes.

  They were all startled by the knock on the door. Sarah opened it.

  Peter John Douglas walked in.

  Heads turned.

  People froze.

  Silence fell.

  Madeline stopped dead in her tracks when she saw him. Sarah turned pink. Before Jonathan dragged Valerie out the door, he gave Madeline a wink.

  Peter walked up to Madeline, all the way across the room, before she emerged from her shock. He stopped in front of her and looked at her without smiling. It was his signature unreadable face. She looked around and saw that he was unaccompanied by any of his staff. Neither was there any media riffraff.

  “I liked your speech,” he said. He continued to stare at her. The room was still.

  Now what? She could feel the pinpricks of stares from everyone in the room. There was only one thing to do at a time like this. Lower the boom.

  “Everyone. You know Peter John Douglas, my opponent?” Madeline looked around at their faces. She took a deep breath.

  “He and I are old friends. Six years ago we were engaged to be married.”

  Chapter 2

  There wasn’t a jaw in the room that didn’t drop. They looked too shocked to gasp. The shade of Sarah’s face turned to fuchsia. Madeline returned her glance to his, and was met with the unmistakable twinkle of amusement in his eyes. He shook his head. It was his fault for showing up this way. Again, she looked around the room at her staff.

  “We’ll meet first thing in the morning for a full briefing. Have a good night.” She was so anxious, her smile probably looked fake. They always said she was full of surprises. They hadn’t realized how right they were.

  Instead of standing there waiting for everyone to leave, Peter stepped forward and enveloped her in a hug, kissing her hair. That did nothing to calm her.

  The rest of the crowd, assisted and accompanied by Sarah, made their leave. Peter stepped back from her, looking around with his wry smile. Hard to tell if it was real or planned. “I didn’t mean to end your party.”

  Likely story. Waving her hand in dismissal, she stifled the jangle she felt at the thought of explaining it all tomorrow. He went to the mini-bar and made himself a drink—bourbon straight up. The door thudded closed. They were alone. Deep breath, then plunge in, she told herself.

  “So what made you come over here—and without the entourage?” She already knew. She felt herself falling off the ledge. Her heart was pumping like there was no tomorrow—and she was sincerely concerned that there might not be if she didn’t slow it down somehow.

  “Not everything is for show,” he said.

  “Then what?”

  “Can’t we forget about the past? Forget everything?” His tone made it a rhetorical question, but she ignored that.

  “Then we’d be strangers with nothing to talk about.”

  He laughed his full-bodied laugh, with his head thrown back. It had been a very long time since she’d heard it, she realized wit
h a pang. But humor was good. Her tension ebbed.

  “Could be fun. But we have quite a history—most of it good,” he said. One side of his mouth twitched upwards. She knew that smile.

  “Don’t worry, I didn’t intend to forget a thing,” she said.

  “Still holding a grudge?”

  “Only to the extent dictated by good sense. No, I don’t trust you much.”

  “Yeah. I’m a regular devil. But at least I’m better than the other party.”

  “That’s never been much of a consolation to me, as you well know, and it’s the exact reason I ran—for governor I mean.” They both smiled at the double meaning. She continued before he pounced on the question of why she ran from him six years ago.

  “I’m a minority opinion anyway. There are more than enough people who see you as the second coming. You have a true, honest-to-goodness following. People are supporting you not because you’re not as bad as the other guy, but because they really think you’re good. Congratulations,” she said and meant it. She always meant what she said and he knew it. She turned to the windows, resisting her urge to pace. What she had not meant was to sound bitter, but she had. So there must really be some bitterness in there—at least to some tiny extent. Sometimes she hated being a psychologist. She turned back to face her fear, to face him.

  “I really mean it. Congratulations, Peter. Now it’s time for me to get to bed for the night.” She stood before him and looked up at him. She smiled again, this time with kindness instead of self-mockery.

  “I’d love to stay and join you…”

  “If I’m not going to vote for you, I’m certainly not going to sleep with you.”

  “That requirement explains why you don’t have much of a love life these days,” he said.

  It was her turn to laugh. Of course he would know. He would be briefed on everything about her as his political opponent. She tried not to be too disconcerted by that. Or too disappointed.

  “You’ve got a point there.” She missed flirting with him. And she really missed sleeping with him. Dangerous thoughts. She could not afford to go down that road.