Corruption of Power

by Brenda English

  What I couldn’t put out of my mind as I walked up to the front entrance was my brainstorm about Hub Taylor. The implications were mind-boggling. I didn’t know how I ever would get to sleep with them going through my head.

  Saturday

  Seventeen

  Go to sleep was exactly what I did, however, almost as soon as I lay down. I was exhausted, and my body outvoted my brain, sending me so far into the depths that I don’t think I even turned over until my alarm clock went off at six the next morning.

  When I came back into the bedroom from my shower, finally able to think, I noticed that my answering machine said I had three messages. I ticked off the likely suspects: Rob, Bill Russell, Noah Lansing, other reporters wanting me to comment on Morris’s death. No, I didn’t think I wanted to hear what any of them had to say. I ignored the phone, went about dressing in tan slacks and a navy blouse, and walked into the kitchen for a quick breakfast. I took a look at Will’s story in the morning’s paper. He had done a good job, considering I wasn’t talking. He had included a quote from me, obviously dictated to him by Rob, saying that Morris was an acquaintance, that I had gone over at his request, found the body, and had no idea why he would want to kill himself. A couple of Sara Lee frozen croissants later I headed out to Great Falls, to the big white house where Janet Taylor had died. I was hoping that if I got there by eight, I could catch Hub Taylor at home.

  * * * *

  A middle-aged man in green work khakis was on his knees in one of Hub Taylor’s flower beds when I came up the drive and parked in the paved circle outside the front door. The groundsman nodded a good morning as I walked up the steps. I smiled an acknowledgment and rang the doorbell. Within thirty seconds the door was opened by a maid who said, in heavily accented English that I guessed meant she was from someplace in Central or South America, “Yes? May I help you?”

  I took a business card out of my pocket and gave it to her, explaining that it was very important that I speak with Mr. Taylor about his wife. I was counting on him to know, as an experienced politician, that he couldn’t avoid reporters forever and that he might as well let me in and get it over with.

  The maid stepped back and said, “Come in, please.” I went inside the marble-floored foyer and unashamedly goggled at the elegance around me. The house said Janet Taylor—graceful, tasteful, expensive. To my left was a large, formal living room, done in whites, beiges, and accents of lavender. On the walls was a series of Impressionists that I wouldn’t know from Adam but that I was sure were originals. To my right was a partially opened door through which I could see a sliver of a room lined with books and furnished in darker woods, an office or library, I assumed. Through the door I could see a full-length oil portrait of Mrs. Taylor in informal riding clothes, apparently in her prewheelchair days. Directly ahead of me was a wide staircase going to the second floor. Behind it, on either side, I could see an expanse of floor-to-ceiling glass that looked out on a very green backyard that I guessed dropped off toward the Potomac.

  “Wait here, please,” the maid said, and turned to wander off toward the back of the house. I sat down on one of a matching pair of beige upholstered benches that stood along the walls on either side of the foyer, between tall, basketed palms. I wondered how Taylor was handling the reminders of his wife everywhere he turned.

  A couple of minutes went by before the maid returned.

  “Mr. Taylor will see you for five minutes,” she said. “Please follow.” I stood up and walked behind her through the house. The glass wall I had seen extended all the way across the back of a family room and looked out over a flagstone patio that ran between the house and an in-ground pool. The pool was perpendicular to the house and heated, judging by the steam rising from it in the early-morning chill.

  In the L created by the pool and the south-facing house, Hub Taylor sat at a black wrought-iron table, the remains of breakfast in front of him. He looked up as the maid opened the exterior door and let me out onto the patio, and I was struck once again by how blasted his face looked in the wake of his wife’s death.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” I said, walking over to the table and offering my hand to shake. He made no move to return the gesture or to offer me a seat. Too many questions from reporters already, I figured. I dropped my hand, pulled out a chair opposite him, and sat down anyway, while Taylor just looked at me.

  “I’m sorry about your wife,” I told him. “She was an exceptional person.”

  “What is it you want?” Taylor asked bluntly.

  “Mr. Taylor, do you know of any reason why someone would want to kill your wife?”

  “No, none.”

  “The police say she wasn’t sexually assaulted and that apparently nothing was taken from the house.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that it sounds as if someone came in specifically to kill her.”

  “I don’t know.” Taylor looked away from me and out across the yard. His attention seemed to drift away as well. I decided I needed to get it back.

  “Was your wife involved in something that would have been enough to kill her for?” I asked.

  Taylor jerked back around, his faraway look replaced with a glare.

  “What are you implying?” he asked angrily.

  “Maybe she knew something, or saw something, that was threatening to someone, threatening enough that they felt they needed to silence her,” I said, working through the possibilities in my own mind even as I asked the question.

  “She never told me if she did.”

  I decided to put my finger a little deeper into the wound.

  “Mr. Taylor, the police say your wife was attacked sometime before she actually died, perhaps even as early as twelve-thirty. You told the police you left the house about then and that she was fine when you left. But they also say you have no alibi for the next hour or more, until you showed back up at the county building a few minutes before the meeting started at two o’clock. Where were you?”

  “It’s like I told the police,” Taylor said angrily. “I was just out driving around. I had a lot on my mind and I didn’t want to go back to the county building any sooner than necessary.”

  “But you have no one who can vouch for that, no one who saw you at a gas station or someplace else where you might have stopped?”

  “I didn’t stop. I drove around the whole time.”

  “I also was told that you came home at lunch that day because your wife called your office and was very angry. Did you have an argument with her when you got here? What was she so angry about?”

  “That is absolutely none of your business!”

  “Mr. Taylor, did you kill your wife?”

  Taylor stood up abruptly, bumping the table and turning over cups and glasses. I stood up, too, to avoid the resulting spills and to take flight, if necessary.

  “Get out,” he shouted, his face reddening. He held both hands, clenched into fists, at his sides. “Get out and don’t come back.”

  “I’ll go, but I need to ask you one more thing,” I said, standing my ground for a moment. “Were you with Ed Lloyd when Ann Kane died?” It was a question that I hadn’t even been planning to ask a moment before. Now it just popped out of my mouth.

  “Maria!” Taylor shouted, looking into the house. Maria appeared instantly at the door, this time accompanied by John Aldritch, the attorney. Taylor saw him and started shouting.

  “John, get this bitch out of here, right now! I want her out!”

  Without waiting for them to throw me out, I walked quickly up to the door. The maid opened it and Aldritch stepped out onto the patio.

  “Who are you?” he asked, his eyes hostile.

  “I’m out of here,” I replied, and stepped around him and through the door. Maria already was walking ahead of me to get the front door. I paused for a second to look back and saw that Aldritch and Taylor were now arguing with each other. I went on, past Maria and out the front door. My VW was dwarfed by the looming silver Mercedes t
hat had pulled up in the drive behind it, owned by John Aldritch, I was sure.

  I climbed in and started the car. Once again an interesting response to a question about Ann Kane—no confusion about who she was, no denial, just anger. Now that I had stirred up that anthill, it was time to go into the District to see if Maggie Padgett was in her office.

  Eighteen

  This time I knew my way to Senator Black’s office. I walked in, not knowing how many staffers might be in. As it turned out, it was just Maggie. The receptionist’s desk was empty, as were the two offices into which I could see from the reception area.

  “Hello,” I called out. “Ms. Padgett?”

  I heard a muffled response from somewhere in the back of the office, and a moment later a young woman with luxurious black hair down to her shoulders, porcelain skin, and incredibly violet eyes came around the corner.

  “Yes?” she said, smiling vaguely. “May I help you?”

  All my bells were going off.

  “Are you Maggie Padgett?”

  “Yes, I am.” She was also lovely. I could see how Peter Morris had been struck by her beauty, even in the circumstances under which he had met her. I also could see why a predator like Ed Lloyd would want her, perhaps enough to do something incredibly stupid in an effort to have her.

  “Ms. Padgett, my name is Sutton McPhee. I’m a reporter with the Washington News. Susan Barrett told me I should talk to you about a story I’m working on. Did she mention that I would be coming by today?”

  “No, she didn’t. What was it you wanted to speak with me about?”

  “Could we sit down?” I asked, motioning to the sofa across from the receptionist’s desk, hoping that getting her seated would make her less likely to bolt when I told her why I was there.

  “Oh, yes, certainly,” she said, her face coloring as she became flustered. “I’m so sorry. Please forgive my manners. I’ve been out for a week, and I’m rather distracted by all the work that has piled up.”

  We moved over to the sofa and sat down facing each other. She laid her long-fingered hands in her lap and looked at me again. Her eyes were a truly arresting color. Combined with the guileless expression in them and with all the rest of her, I expected she probably turned men’s heads regularly without any effort on her part. If this was the woman Dr. Morris had treated, her experience with Ed Lloyd must have been a nightmare for her. God, I thought, another innocent. One more face to add to the line that paraded in front of my sleepless eyes on bad nights, and I was going to have to cause this one some more pain myself. I could bait slimebags like Ed Lloyd without batting an eye. But hurting someone like Maggie Padgett was not a part of my job I particularly enjoyed. Still, she was alive after her encounter with Lloyd. Ann Kane—and possibly Peter Morris—weren’t so lucky. If some pain on her part could pin their deaths on Lloyd, then I would find a way to live with my conscience.

  “Susan told me you knew Ann Kane,” I said.

  “Yes, I did,” she replied, looking a little puzzled. “I used to work for Senator Wills when she was a state official in Florida. I know everyone in her office.”

  “How well did you know Ann?”

  “Somewhat. I was already in Washington, working for the Democratic National Committee, when Rita ran for the Senate. She brought Ann and a couple of other people on her Florida staff with her. I got this job with Senator Black two years ago. The two staffs work closely together on several projects. I also see most of them from time to time at various committee hearings or receptions. And Ann and I have gone out to lunch a couple of times. But I don’t think you could have called us close friends. We really didn’t move in the same circles outside work at all.”

  “Would you know enough about her social life to have any ideas about who might have been with her when she died?”

  Something happened in her eyes at that. Not a flinch, but something in her look changed slightly. I had touched a nerve. She looked away from me toward the outer door.

  “No, I don’t. I don’t know the people she spent her time with after work.”

  “People at church and at charities like soup kitchens, apparently. And yet, somehow, she ended up in a situation where she took or was given a prescription drug that was dangerous for her. And had sex with two men. It doesn’t sound like the Ann Kane people keep describing to me.”

  Maggie looked down at her hands, then back up.

  “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help,” she said, thinking—or hoping—I was done.

  “Actually, I think you still can. If I could just have a few more minutes…?” My voice trailed off in a question.

  “Yes?” she asked, and her expression changed again, this time to a wary one. She knew, on some level, that something bad was coming. She knew there was going to be no way around it.

  “I was wondering if you, by any chance, know a doctor out in Vienna named Peter Morris, an internist.”

  “No…” She paused, doing her best impression of someone searching their mind for information they didn’t have. “No, I don’t think so.” She shook her head from side to side.

  “So you didn’t know that he was found dead last night under some rather suspicious circumstances?”

  Then she did flinch.

  “No,” she said. “I haven’t read this morning’s papers yet.”

  “What about Ed Lloyd? Do you know him very well?”

  “The senator?” she asked. I could see the panic beginning to build in her eyes and in the tension of her body. I knew I was on the right track, that she was Dr. Morris’s mystery woman, and Ed Lloyd’s earlier, luckier victim. “Of course I know him to see him. I probably know all the members of the Senate by sight, and he’s a very important senator.” Her eyes were asking me to stop, to leave it, but I had no choice.

  “But you didn’t socialize with him? Go out with him?”

  “No,” she said, an undertone of anger appearing in her voice. “I didn’t.”

  “Did he ever ask you out, or make a pass at you?”

  “Excuse me,” she said, standing up suddenly, “but you’ll have to go now. I don’t think I want to answer any more of these questions, and I have a lot of work I need to do.”

  But I wasn’t letting her go so easily. This might be my last chance to make the connection.

  “I don’t mean to offend you,” I said, standing, too. “I really don’t. But this is important. At least two people have died, and I think you can tell me who killed them.”

  “What?” she exclaimed, backing away from me.

  I knew I had to push. “Maggie, I think you know what happened to Ann Kane. The same thing that almost happened to you. It was Ed Lloyd, wasn’t it? He’s a lecher and a rapist. If he decides he wants something, he’s going to have it, one way or the other. But you weren’t interested, were you? And neither was Ann Kane. So he got each of you alone, and he drugged your drinks. You were lucky. It only made you sick, maybe before anything else happened. Lloyd took you to Dr. Morris to clean up his mess. But even then he didn’t learn his lesson. He’s apparently too far gone for that. Instead he did the same thing to Ann Kane, this time with a second guy there. Only something went far more wrong in her case, and she died. And now Dr. Morris is dead, too, probably because he told me about you. You know it’s what happened. I know it’s what happened. So why won’t you tell me about it and help me nail this bastard before he kills someone else?”

  By the time I finished, I realized just how angry the things Ed Lloyd had done made me, and that anger had suddenly focused on Maggie Padgett and all the women like her, who silently suffer the abuses some man heaps on them. Because she had kept quiet, cowed by the threat of Ed Lloyd’s power, two other people were dead.

  As I talked she had moved to put the receptionist’s desk between us, and I had to quash the urge to walk back there and shake some sense into her. It was clear I had frightened her, but when she spoke again, I knew she was far more frightened of Ed Lloyd than of me.

  “You’l
l really have to leave now, please,” she said, breathing rapidly, her voice almost gaspy. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. None of that is true. So please, just go. Please. If you don’t, I’ll have to call security.”

  It was no use, I knew. There was no way past the fear of Ed Lloyd. At least not here and now. The anger went out of me, leaving me tired. I reached into my pocket for one of my business cards. I put it on the desk in front of her.

  “All right,” I said, quietly now. “I’ll go. But everything I said is the truth. I know you were the woman Lloyd brought to Dr. Morris’s office that night. So, if you think about it and decide you want to tell someone, would you please call me? You’ll be helping me, but I can help you, too. At least I can still help you. All I can do for Ann Kane and Dr. Morris at this point is to find out the truth of what happened to them.”

  I turned and walked out of the office, leaving her standing there, her eyes wide and frightened, her body rigid, a woman who had been a victim, probably through no fault of her own, and whom I had just victimized again. Riding the elevator down to the lobby, I felt about as low as dirt. I hated what I had just done up there, but I hadn’t seen any alternative. Nor would I let it end here; I would have to make another run at Maggie Padgett. Someone had to stop Lloyd, and she probably was the only one who could, now that Morris was dead.

  And the only one who can nail down your story, said my voice.

  I gave it a mental punch in the nose, and the elevator opened to deposit me in the lobby.

  Nineteen

  The drive back out to my apartment was shitty. I didn’t know where to go from here. Maggie Padgett wouldn’t talk to me. Peter Morris was dead, taking his knowledge with him. I didn’t know what results, if any, my questions to Lloyd and Taylor had wrought. They were both politicians. They knew denial was nine-tenths of the law, unless I had solid evidence to raise against them.