The Scotland Yard Exchange Series

by Stephanie Queen

  “Jesus, Peter. I liked it better when you were flipping-out mad,” Rick muttered as they sat him down on the cliché nail head-studded burgundy leather couch. No one ever sat here. It was uncomfortable.

  “You want another drink? Might as well get good and sloshed if you’re going to cry in your beer over this thing. But I think you’re making a mistake, Rock Man,” Sam said. He still stood across the room by the television, and they all looked up at him. Peter heard him and decided he wasn’t ready to sit and cry in his beer all night.

  “What the fuck do you mean I’m making a mistake?” His voice sounded more hoarse than angry.

  “She didn’t have an abortion. You can’t possibly believe that shit. Think about it. I know your mind isn’t exactly working up to speed at this point, but you’re going to have to think about this rationally. The sooner the better.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, man?” Acer interrupted. Peter noticed Rick listened and could see the man’s mind at work. He was the ultimate skeptic—he knew too much about half-truths not to be. And Peter could see his mind rolling the story over and coming up short.

  “All right, I’m biting. None of it’s true?” Peter felt the churning emotions subsiding under the iron weight of his self-control. The strength of his rational mind reasserted itself in spite of the influence of alcohol. The relief in him was like a cannon shot full of adrenaline. The realization that he’d not lost it completely forced him to acknowledge how far he’d gone, especially as he looked at the faces of the men around him. Rick frowned. Acer scowled and Sam looked his inscrutable self, except for the slight pleading in his eyes. Peter pushed himself up from the couch.

  “Let’s go in the kitchen and discuss this. I’m actually starved.” When Acer and Rick simultaneously sighed with their own unmistakable relief, he flashed a half grin at them. “You boys forgot to give me the ten-count. You figured I was down and out the minute I hit the mat.” Peter shook his head at them in mock disgust, and they all laughed, albeit in a tense sort of unsure way, and followed him to the state-of-the-art, never-used kitchen.

  Chapter 17

  Peter took out a couple of pans as if he knew what he was doing. But since all he really knew how to cook was bacon and eggs, that’s what they were having. Breakfast was the only meal he ever ate at home ever since he could remember, and the housekeeper kept the kitchen stocked accordingly. Sam poked in the refrigerator and lifted out the ingredients.

  “Let me guess—we’re having an early breakfast?”

  “Don’t wave those eggs around. That’s probably all the food he’s got in the house.” Rick headed straight for the small television mounted under the cherry wood cabinets. He always had been a troublemaker, Peter thought.

  “You’re going to turn that on.” It was half-statement, half-question, but Peter supposed it sounded menacing enough to stop Rick’s hand mid-air. Rick turned and stared. So did they all. Peter had to deal with it.

  “Brace yourself.” Rick tossed off the comment in a merciless way as he turned in dismissal and reached for the on button. He punched it with authority. That made Peter laugh—at himself mostly. But he heeded the advice all the same and mentally clamped down on his emotions as he turned back to the pan on the stove to watch the melting butter.

  “Geez, you’re fucking touchy about this thing. It’s been a long time since you were engaged to Mad—what the fuck, Rock Man? What gives?” Acer prodded.

  “What do you think, genius? He’s still caught up hook, line and sinker.” Sam flashed a knowing look as both Peter and Acer looked at him in dismay. Peter glanced in Rick’s direction. He was studiously ignoring them, staring at the TV with the volume set at a discreet level. What a nice guy he turned out to be after all.

  It was past midnight, so when the phone rang, the jangle of the sound made everyone turn at once to the wall where it hung. The press didn’t have his home number, and his office phone had been turned off by Rick automatically, even while he was in the midst of recovering from the trauma of Peter’s fist.

  The ring set Rick in motion. He grabbed the old-fashioned, corded receiver off the hook and turned to Peter when he said hello.

  “Judge. You saw the news. He’s right here.” Rick held the phone out to Peter. Peter did not want to hear whatever the judge had to say. He automatically assumed it would not be good. He didn’t want his father’s sympathy and he didn’t want to talk cleanup strategy. Not now.

  “Not now. Tell him I’ll call him tomorrow,” Peter said, not wanting to hurt the man’s feelings, but too protective of his own to relent. Rick consulted on the phone for a minute and a smile passed his face. They all stood in silence waiting for the interruption to pass so they could get on with their own discussion. Rick turned back, the phone still in his hand.

  “I think you ought to talk to him now. He seems to have an inside line on this situation.” Rick’s cryptic comment did the trick, and Peter grabbed the phone from his hand as he walked by to sit on the stool next to the phone. He motioned for the group to carry on without him, and they turned back to the task of assembling their late night snack.

  “Well, Judge, what do you think?” Peter’s voice sounded grim, but then he figured it should.

  “You don’t believe all that horse manure, do you? You know Madeline is better than that. Nothing is as it seems right now, son, you should give her the benefit of the doubt and call her. She will explain it. I know the truth of the matter—or as much as another person besides her can know—and I know she didn’t abort your baby. For the rest you have to talk to her.” His father’s voice sounded more earnest than he’d ever heard, almost worried. That was normally his mother’s realm.

  “I’ll call her. Not now.”

  “Don’t wait, son. Don’t put yourself through any more unnecessary anxiety.”

  “Look, I believe you. I actually figured she didn’t have any abortion—but she was…”

  “Yes. With your child. That’s all I’ll say.” His father knew the questions on his mind, but Peter was far from reassured. Madeline never bothered to tell him about his own baby. The fresh anguish brought a rush of searing heat through him, and he felt himself about to be overwhelmed once again by the emotions rising up and crowding out rational thought.

  “Son, are you there?” Peter found himself hunched over on the stool with his head in his hand once again. He heard his father’s words and didn’t know what they meant. They were dead, meaningless sounds in his ear and he turned and hung up the phone.

  The sound of the clattering plates and the smell of burning bacon finally penetrated his otherwise nonfunctioning mind. Once the jumpstart of the sounds and smells got his brain going, he wondered how long they had let him sit there. Sam looked over at him.

  “Are you with us?” He tossed a knife at him, as a test Peter supposed, and he caught it by the handle before it bounced off his chest.

  “You haven’t lost your touch, even with a butter knife.” Peter tried a smile at his friend, who’d always had deadly aim.

  “And I see your survival instincts haven’t left the planet along with your brains,” Sam said, clearly disgusted with him. Why not? He was disgusted with himself for allowing what amounted to wallowing in self-pity. He had definitely gone soft. That’s what a woman could do to a man, he reminded himself.

  No more.

  “Rick.” It was a command, and they all snapped to as he stood straight, finally leaving his corner. “Let’s compose a statement for the press. Tomorrow we will announce our endorsement for lieutenant governor and it will be Marcus Thompson. Get on the phone to him now.” Peter composed his face, took his seat at the table in front of a full plate of food and dug in. Rick’s face lit up. He jumped up without touching his food and was on the phone. Acer slapped him on the back with a grin.

  But Sam didn’t look at him. He ate his food in silence.

  “What’s the problem, Sam?”

  “You’re going to blow her off. I thought we were
going to find out who was behind the sabotage?”

  “This isn’t a third-world country and we aren’t in special ops anymore. This is dirty politics as usual, and we are in the game to win. We’ll spin it to my favor. From here on in run on the highest security alert and make sure we’re untouchable. She can do what she has to do.” Peter looked down at his plate, away from Sam’s penetrating and unconvinced stare. “She’ll probably drop out of the race and go back to her books where she belongs—if she’s smart. And we all know how brilliant she is,” Peter finished. He looked up to make sure Sam understood the sarcastic remark. He was leaving her on her own. She could damn well take care of herself like she always insisted she could. He was not going to play the knight in shining armor to an unwilling and ungrateful damsel in distress.

  “She could use the kind of help we could give her,” Sam persisted.

  “You could always go join her camp—if she still has one. I bet her high-priced DC adviser is already gone.” Peter let the full measure of his antipathy toward the man—including the not totally unwarranted jealousy—show through with his derisive words.

  “Turns out you’re no better.” Sam said the words quietly with a serious look on his face as he got up and left his plate half full of food. He turned and walked toward the back door.

  “Hey, you can’t go out there—there’s reporters everywhere, and they’ll descend on you and—” Rick didn’t even bother to cover the phone in his panic. It was like he’d been watching the exits.

  “Don’t worry, Rick, they’ll never see him. Where are you going, Sam? Or should I ask: are you coming back?” Peter knew his friend wouldn’t desert him, but he was very disturbed by the accusation Sam made. Sam turned and looked at him, not bothering to answer the ridiculous question. “For Christ’s sake, Sam, we’re enemies in this campaign. I don’t owe her anything.”

  “You are enemies? That why you wanted her for a lieutenant governor in the worst way, less than—” Sam paused and looked at his watch “—six hours ago?” Sam turned again to glance through the window at an angle, careful not to stand directly in front of it where he could be seen. Peter frowned watching him. He wanted to dismiss Sam’s words—he should dismiss Sam’s words. He was in this campaign to win.

  “I’ll be back after you’ve had a chance to mull it over, Rock Man.” Sam’s last words were spoken in a gentle voice. “After we’ve all had a chance to think.” He disappeared through a slit of an opening in the door. Peter looked back at Rick, who was busy having an animated discussion with Marcus on the phone. Rick had been wise to jump before Peter changed his mind. He was not one to make such precipitous decisions, and Rick knew it. Damn that slimy bastard he called a friend. There was a resigned half-frown on his face as Peter watched Rick do what he loved best—talk political strategy with a very like-minded political war-horse.

  His brain felt like a tire suddenly deflated of all its air in spite of the fuel he’d just eaten. His brain cells were out of energy.

  “Wrap it up, Rick. Acer, let’s all call it a night.” Peter knew he was going to have to untangle his emotions from this mess before he could make some real decisions—in the morning.

  Mad Madeline’s Campaign HQ

  Madeline paced while she half watched and half listened to the morning news and sipped her coffee. Her troops bustled around her. The news story was the exact over-sensationalized nightmare that she had imagined. The light of day hadn’t changed a thing. The ridiculous media coverage was only one of the things she had cried about. But her crying was over. The judge had called. Peter would call her. She would talk to him. Tell him everything. He would listen when he was ready. Clearly not now.

  In the meantime, she had to somehow expose this story for the fraud it was and all would be well. Good would then triumph. She stopped and laughed at herself. The others looked at her. Maybe they should be worried, but she just waved her hand at them to resume whatever it was they were doing.

  She really was a mad woman thinking thoughts like “good will triumph.” But that was her trademark. It was part of what people admired her for, wanted from her. What would they all think and feel if she couldn’t deliver? She hoped never to find that out. She would have to deliver—something. Even some small measure of what she promised.

  Valerie burst in the room with her face red and waving the morning paper, which she held half crumpled in a vice-like grip as if she were trying to strangle it.

  “Have you seen this? Look at this disgusting, outrageous mockery of a newspaper. I…I…can’t think of enough bad things to say about it,” she sputtered, still gripping the offensive paper with a white-knuckled hand. Jonathan pried it from her fingers, simultaneously patting her on the back.

  “Never fear, Valerie, I’m sure I could assist you in finding a few more choice words.” Sarah didn’t move from her spot next to Madeline. They all watched Jonathan as he blanched after a brief look at the front page. He said nothing, but turned the tabloid-size page around, smoothing out the crumples, for them all to see. Madeline read aloud.

  “Bad Bad Mad Falls from Grace. Leaves Ex-Lover Sad Sad Sad.” For a fleeting second she felt dizzy. That must have been the blood draining from her head to her toes yet again. Her eyes refocused on the pictures underneath. There were side-by-side pictures of each of them. One of PJD looking hurt and one of her looking shocked. She pulled her eyes away before she turned herself to stone.

  She looked around the room. No one spoke of course. The rank and file members of the small crowd who didn’t know her as well slowly closed their gaping mouths and mostly looked down. Her close friends and advisors were still and almost in unison turning from pink to red, to match Valerie’s shade. It was as if they had instantly been infected with a contagious disease.

  Sarah stood suddenly, and like a general commanding her troops shouted with her deep-throated, commanding voice, bringing Madeline out of her stupefied musing. “What are we all waiting for? Let’s get to Goddamn work on this! Are we going to let them get away with this Goddamn sabotage? This is a crime punishable by law—or better yet—punishable by revenge.” Sarah punched her fist for emphasis, bringing a smile to Madeline’s lips. Her predominant feeling at that moment was tenderness toward Sarah.

  What really mattered was that the troops listened. The room roared to life as if they had all been a pile of kindling doused with gasoline, and Sarah had thrown the lit match on them.

  “There are privacy laws for medical records,” Sarah said.

  Now we’re cooking, Madeline thought. She needed this. She needed them.

  “Let’s make that our battle plan, then. Make them pay for breaking HIPPA laws and for stealing and lying and faking documents.” Sarah stopped and turned to Madeline. “How the heck are we going to get to the bottom of this?”

  “I’ll call the Berkshire County DA about prosecuting St. Cyr for exposing the medical records. I think they should be looking into exactly how he got those records. It had to be illegally,” Jon said.

  Behind him, Madeline saw Val squinting at the almost mute TV. She looked and saw a woman surrounded by reporters standing in front of the Berkshire County Women’s Clinic. Madeline grabbed the remote from the end table and turned up the volume.

  Everyone’s head turned to watch as they heard the Channel 22 reporter speaking to the woman.

  “How can you be so sure after all these years, especially considering that Ms. Grace has denied that she had an abortion?” the reporter said and shoved the microphone close to the woman’s mouth for the response.

  “It’s true we’ve had many customers over the years, and this was six years ago, but I remember because I was there and she was memorable. I remember her saying that she hoped that the abortion wouldn’t compromise her someday, and I thought it was an odd thing for a woman to say. Usually women say they hope they don’t regret their abortion, but she was worried about being compromised.”

  There was more, but Jonathan stepped in front of the television and
pressed the power off.

  Madeline thought she had been inoculated to the shock of the subterfuge, because the outrageous lie didn’t move her—not even the fact that the media was exposing it all in the most sensational way possible.

  “I wonder who that nurse is?” she said. “I’m sure I would have found her memorable too, if I’d ever met her. Puts me in mind of Nurse Ratched.” Madeline looked around with her calm and cool look to reassure them all that this would be a minor setback, although she admitted to herself that it appeared bigger than that. She felt a tremor along the line of her jaw.

  They all looked at her and Jon smiled. That loosened her jaw enough to smile back.

  He said, “Since the nurse is backing up St. Cyr and she knows it’s a lie, my money is on her as the inside source.”

  “She must have gotten plenty of money for doing it,” said Mad, “and it’s unlikely that she got it from St. Cyr. Morty, any ideas? Can we trace some kind of money trail or something?” The moneyman was somewhat disheveled at this hour when he was usually sound asleep.

  “I suppose—I could definitely do something like that—with some computer hacking. But I’d need a place to start.” He spread his hands, looking around.

  “I’ll give you a place to start: the mayor,” Madeline said. She stopped and they all looked at her. She didn’t know where Peter’s paranoia about the mayor had come from, but she knew that if he was concerned about the man, then there was probably a very good reason for it. She didn’t have any solid explanation to give her troops, and the only one not nonplussed at the notion was Sarah. Mad noticed she looked grim.

  Morty was the first to speak after lowering his eyebrows out of his hairline. “Okaaay. I can probably start there and get some financial background on him,” he said.