Love Inspired Suspense June 2015 #1

by Margaret Daley

  “On my way. Where will you two be?”

  “The Senate dining room. Do you know where it is? I know it’s hard to find. I could ask my uncle to wait for—”

  “Yes, I know its location. My grandfather was a senator. Chitchat until I get there.”

  “Yes, sir. I see my uncle. Talk to you later.” She punched the End button and returned her cell to her jacket pocket while the tall, distinguished-looking man with silver hair walked toward her. Imposing. A neutral expression in place. At least her uncle wasn’t frowning.

  When a colleague intercepted him, Uncle Preston grinned and his face became lively. She sighed, wishing he would respond to her like that. But every time he saw her he saw her mother. She looked so much like her that she was a constant reminder to Uncle Preston of his sister who had blackened the Eagleton name.

  “Hi, Selena. Waiting for Senator Eagleton?” Carly Jones, her uncle’s chief of staff, asked.

  “Yes, we’re supposed to have lunch. Do you need to talk to him?”

  “Just for a moment about a bill coming up for a vote.” Dressed impeccably, with short brown hair, Carly stepped closer and lowered her voice. “I heard there was some trouble at the Easter Egg Roll. I didn’t stay long. Too much that needed to be done. What happened?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say, but everything has been taken care of.” She wasn’t going to tell Carly about the breakin and Miss Chick. Her uncle’s chief of staff hardly ever talked to her unless she wanted something. Carly was what she called an information gatherer, going from one person to the next to see what she could glean. That might be helpful to her uncle, but Erin had learned to keep her distance and so had Selena.

  “I’m glad. I see the senator is free. I won’t keep him long.” Carly quickly left to catch Uncle Preston before he reached Selena.

  She tried not to stare at Carly and her uncle talking, but something his chief of staff told him didn’t make him happy. He was still frowning when he approached Selena.

  “Our lunch will be short. I need to talk to another senator before the vote on a bill this afternoon.”

  “I understand. Do you need to reschedule?” Suddenly she didn’t want to talk to her uncle. Growing up listening to her mother talk about him, Selena had become wary of the man by the time she was a teenager. According to her mom, he could be ruthless and cold, and so far, not much she’d witnessed had changed her mind. She hadn’t let the thugs in her neighborhood scare her, but Uncle Preston did.

  He checked his cell phone then shook his head. “No, I’m tied up for a while, and you said this was important concerning Erin. Let’s go in, and I’ll ask for a table in a quiet corner. You haven’t heard from Erin, have you?” He started down the hallway that led to the dining room.

  She understood his desire to find out anything concerning his daughter, but there was a small part of her that wished he’d want to spend time with her because she was his only niece, not because of information she might give him concerning Erin. “No, I wish I had. Nicholas Cole will be joining us in a few minutes. He’s a member of the Capitol K-9 Unit, and we’ve discovered information that might help Erin.”

  Her uncle slowed his step. “I’m not a patient man nor do I like surprises.”

  “I promised Nicholas we would talk to you together.”

  Silence fell between them until they were seated at a table in front of a large window. He’d informed the staff he was expecting one more person to join him at his table.

  “I knew Nicholas Cole’s parents and had heard he was working at the White House. I saw him once there. He looks a lot like his father. Are you friends with him?”

  Heat seared her cheeks. She rarely blushed, but her uncle got her to. She didn’t know her father, and there were times as a child she used to think of Uncle Preston as her father. She even found a photo her mother had and took it to keep. Her mom never missed it. “Yes,” she finally answered, realizing she did consider Nicholas a friend. She could talk to him a lot easier than to most people.

  “Ah, I see him coming this way.”

  Selena glanced at Nicholas, strolling under the huge chandelier, its light reflecting off the golden walls. He paused a moment at a table with two senators, shaking their hands and saying a few words before bridging the distance to the table. She knew he came from wealth, but not until she’d seen him in this environment, as though he belonged, did she realize how different their backgrounds were.

  Nicholas took the chair near the window, so he faced the diners in the large room. “It’s good to see you again, Senator Eagleton.”

  “I was just telling my niece I knew your parents. And I was a congressman when your grandfather served in the Senate from Maryland. Any interest in going into politics?”

  Nicholas picked up a white napkin and placed it in his lap. “I’m enjoying my job and don’t see a reason to change.”

  After the waiter took their orders, her uncle sipped his water then said, “Selena asked me to wait until you arrived to find out why she needed to talk with me. You’re here, so why the urgency?”

  “We’re investigating a lead in Saul Rather’s murder.”

  Uncle Preston’s eyebrows hiked up. “Greg Littleton was found guilty. Case closed.”

  “We’re not so sure he’s the one who murdered your intern,” Selena interjected.

  Both men looked at Selena, and she tensed her shoulders. Surprise filled her uncle’s face while Nicholas’s mouth tightened into a hard line.

  Nicholas cleared his throat. “Greg was convicted on circumstantial evidence and some of it has come into question of late. We were at the prison to interview Greg yesterday, and when we left there, someone followed us. We confronted the private detective and discovered you or someone from your office hired him to keep an eye on any people who visit Littleton.”

  Uncle Preston’s forehead furrowed, but he didn’t say anything until the waiter set their orders in front of them and left. He stared for a long moment at his poached halibut with saffron nage, then looked Nicholas in the eye. “Who was the private investigator?”

  “Benny Goodwin.” Nicholas picked up his braised short-rib sandwich and took a bite, watching for any kind of reaction from her uncle.

  Popping a sweet-potato fry into her mouth, Selena saw her uncle’s jawline harden and his eyes glint. The scent from her crab-cake sandwich churned her stomach.

  “First of all, I don’t know what this has to do with my daughter. Second, I don’t know a Benny Goodwin. I’ve never used him for any kind of work. If he told you I hired him, he’s lying.”

  “Could someone on your staff have hired Goodwin without your knowledge? When he’s paid, it’s cash and the private detective has never seen a person associated with the request.” Nicholas returned her uncle’s intense regard.

  “I guess it’s possible. I certainly know I don’t hire anyone and pay in cash, for accounting reasons. But why would someone from my staff do that?”

  “To keep track of what’s going on with Littleton because they have something to lose if evidence is uncovered to prove his innocence.” Nicholas reached under the white tablecloth and clasped Selena’s hand.

  She was sure her distress was evident on her face. Her uncle had that effect on her. She wasn’t like her mother and had for years wished he would acknowledge that. Her family was small, and she wanted some connection with the few she had. It was lonely being a loner all of her life.

  “What does this have to do with Erin? Not that I don’t want an innocent man, if he is, exonerated.” Uncle Preston shifted his attention from Nicholas to her.

  Nicholas squeezed her hand, as if to say she should take this question.

  “When Erin went missing, I was determined to find a way to clear her name. I looked into Michael Jeffries’s personal life and couldn’t find anything that would be a motive for murder. That’s when I decided to investigate his professional life. I knew Michael had a couple of current cases he was working on, and I decided to see if a
nyone connected to those would have a reason to kill him. Erin didn’t.”

  “Of course, my daughter wouldn’t,” her uncle said in a raised voice, then snapped his mouth closed as a few people glanced their way.

  Selena’s grip on Nicholas’s hand tightened. “Michael and she were good friends, and she never indicated any problems between them to me. If nothing jumped out with the current cases, I was going to work back from there. Littleton’s case was badly handled by his court-appointed attorney. The more I dug into the evidence, the more I’d come to believe, like Michael, that he was innocent.”

  Uncle Preston’s stern expression relaxed, and slowly his features transformed into a pleasant look. “You never said anything to me about that or sought my help,” he said to Selena, as though surprised by that fact.

  She released Nicholas’s grasp and straightened in her chair, her gaze fixed on her uncle. “You’d made it clear you didn’t really consider me a member of your family, but Erin accepted me from the beginning.”

  His eyes, so like Erin’s, flared. “I deserved that.” He blew out a long breath. “Not knowing if my daughter is alive or not has made me take a good hard look at myself. I’ve been pushing the police to discover the truth, even hired my investigators, but you went out and did something yourself. I haven’t been the father I should have been…or the uncle to you.”

  Selena dug her teeth into her lower lip to keep her jaw from dropping.

  “I’ve been reconsidering how I treated you the last couple of months, so when you called me to ask for a meeting, I rearranged my schedule to see you right away. I could have asked you for any news you had about Erin over the phone. I knew I couldn’t put off telling you how I felt, and I wasn’t going to do that by phone. My stubbornness has kept me from forgiving your mother, and she is dead. I could never condone her lifestyle, but she was my only sibling. I should have been better than what I was.”

  Selena blinked the tears away. She wouldn’t cry in front of her uncle or Nicholas. She’d learned when she was young to hide her real emotions. “I didn’t condone my mother’s lifestyle, either. I left home as soon as I could. I couldn’t help her if she wouldn’t help herself.” She stared at her uneaten sandwich. This conversation had thrown her past front and center. Foremost, she regretted that there was nothing she could have done to help her mother and now it was too late.

  “I’m sorry. You should have felt you could come to me. I cut you off as though you were your mother, and now I have a daughter running away from the authorities when all your mother did was make a social spectacle of herself.”

  Nicholas cleared his throat, drawing their attention to him. “Should I leave?”

  She said, “No,” immediately, with Uncle Preston’s two seconds behind hers.

  Her uncle checked his watch, flashing her a smile. “Let’s eat. They serve good food here.” He cut into his halibut. “And if I can help either one of you in this Littleton case or anything else that can prove my daughter innocent, I will.”

  As Selena took her first bite of her crab-cake sandwich, she couldn’t believe how well this conversation had gone. She’d prayed to the Lord to help her concerning her uncle, and she’d finally received an answer. Maybe You are listening to me. Thank You, God.

  *

  Nicholas escorted Selena back to the White House after their luncheon with Senator Eagleton. “Do you think he’s telling the truth? Do you think he’s had contact with Erin in any way?”

  Selena tossed her purse on the desk in her office then swung around toward Nicholas. “We don’t, as you heard, have a close relationship, but I think he is telling the truth. Erin wouldn’t put her father at risk. She was always conscious of his political career. Before all this happened, there had been talk of him running for president. Now I doubt he will.” She propped herself against her desk and grasped its edge. “What did Tabitha Miller have to say when you interviewed her?”

  “She couldn’t remember much about the day Littleton and Rather argued by the pool or which congressional aides were on her balcony with her. In other words, she was a dead end.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  “I don’t know.” He kneaded the side of his neck. “Not so much about not remembering specifics about the day or people, but when I asked her how well she’d known Saul Rather, she said hardly at all. Yet there was something in her body language that made me doubt her. For just a second she touched her nose and averted her gaze.”

  “I don’t remember any gossip about her from two years ago, but I do know she flits from one man to the next. Anyone who can better her standing in Washington. I think I even heard some chatter about her going after Michael. But you know how reliable rumors can be.”

  “There could be truth in that one. I’ll do some checking.” Nicholas closed the distance between them.

  “More likely she saw Michael as a way to elevate her position on the congressman’s staff. That doesn’t mean Michael went along with that.”

  “I’m glad the senator gave us permission to investigate his staff members to see if we can find anyone who would have hired Goodwin. What I wish I could really do is access their financial records, but we don’t have enough for a warrant at this time. Maybe later.”

  “Follow the money trail?”

  “It often pays off.” He locked gazes with her, being drawn even nearer by the glittering blue of her eyes. Listening earlier to the senator talking to Selena about their nonexistent relationship, he’d caught regret and vulnerability in her eyes. He’d been in the same situation with his parents, wanting a relationship that never materialized. He prayed Selena and her uncle could repair their familial bond. “What are you doing this afternoon?”

  “I have several meetings. One of those with the president. How about you?”

  Her spicy scent surrounded him, roping him to her. He inched forward. “Interviewing a suspect concerning the breakin of General Meyer’s office.”

  “I’d ask who but I know you. Mum’s the word.”

  “We have a few leads from going through the security videos, nothing solid, but that doesn’t mean we won’t narrow the suspect list down to a few.”

  “And then keep an eye on them,” she said with a grin.

  His heartbeat began tapping faster against his rib cage. She had a great smile. “I’ll make a law-enforcement officer out of you before this is over.” He couldn’t resist plunging his fingers into the thick waves of her hair.

  Her eyelids slid partially closed, and she shivered. “Not me. You can have the job. Look what has happened with my one attempt at investigating.”

  Holding her head framed between his hands, he leaned toward her until he was a breath away. “True. You’d better leave that to me.” Then he brushed his lips across hers, lightly, teasingly.

  Now his heartbeat hammered maddeningly within his chest. The urge to sweep her against him and deepen the kiss overwhelmed him. He started to, when a rap at the door echoed through his hazy thoughts.

  Selena reacted by pushing away from the desk, stepping to the side and breaking their contact, her hair mussed where he’d held her. She started for the door.

  “Wait.”

  She turned toward him, and he ran his fingers through her strands to neaten them.

  “There. I wouldn’t want any tongues wagging around here about us. I’ll let the person in on my way out.” He winked and sauntered toward the door. “See you later today.”

  He peered over his shoulder as she greeted one of the president’s staff. He wanted to kiss her properly. He’d choose a better place next time.

  Earlier today, he’d found out when Vincent Geary would be in his office this afternoon. He intended to have a talk with him about the gold cufflink he’d found in General Meyer’s office the day of the Easter Egg Roll. He’d discovered they had been purchased at a Washington, DC, jeweler last Christmas by the congressman as a gift to each of his male staff members. Jeffries’s aide had been dodging his calls and attempt
s to interview him. He was determined Geary wouldn’t today.

  Twenty minutes later, he sat across from the congressman’s aide in his office. “I’m glad you could meet with me on short notice.” He intentionally hadn’t set up an appointment with Geary after the two times he’d tried and been given the runaround.

  The tall, slender, dark-haired aide with equally dark brown eyes lounged back in his chair, his elbows resting on the arms while his fingers formed a steeple. “What can I do for you? Is this something to do with Congressman Jeffries’s son’s murder? I’d love to tell him that you are close to arresting someone. Erin Eagleton, perhaps.”

  “This concerns something different. General Meyer discovered someone had rifled through her files the morning of the Easter Egg Roll.”

  His eyebrows beetled together. “How can I help you?”

  “After the breakin, one of your cufflinks was found under the general’s console behind her desk.” He’d taken a photo of the piece of evidence and gave his cell phone to Geary. “Is that yours?”

  “It looks like it.”

  “You hadn’t been on her calendar that day or the day before. How did your cufflink get there?” Nicholas scrutinized him for any small indication he wasn’t speaking the truth—not that his gut feeling would ever hold up in court.

  “I have no idea unless it’s been there since the last time I met with the general in her office, which was last week. Later that day, I noticed I’d lost it.”

  “And you didn’t backtrack and check to see if someone found it? I understand it was a special gift from the congressman.”

  “No. I’d been quite a few places that day.”

  Although Geary’s expression seemed relaxed, when Nicholas had first mentioned the cufflink, his left eye had twitched twice and his mouth had tensed slightly before Geary maintained control over his reactions. Smooth. “Did you say anything to anyone about losing it?”

  “I had a dinner meeting with the congressman. I might have said something to him. If it was under a console, the cleaning staff could easily have overlooked it. Will I be able to get it back?”