A message thread labeled Ham at the top of the screen, three or four recent back-and-forths about the weather or a flower show followed by one marked 6:34 a.m.: She’s dead. Right on Jefferson’s desk, and I wasn’t even in there. I don’t know what happened. What am I going to do?
She’d answered him right away, as any sane person would: What?
She didn’t get a reply to her question.
I handed the phone back. “Mrs. Powers, how did you know who Hamilton was talking about?”
Darcy put her front two paws on Mrs. Powers’s knee. Reaching to pet the dog, the older woman shook her head at me.
“I told him she was trouble, that one. A beauty—Lord, yes—but trouble. From the second I laid eyes on her, I knew, but he wouldn’t listen. His first big love, I think. He stayed right up underneath her, didn’t like to be away from her almost from the beginning. Even when we found out she was a whore, he said there were reasons I didn’t understand.” She fed Darcy another cookie and sat up straight. “I understand plenty. She was after power, she finally got to Thomas, and something went wrong—that’s what I think. But I’m afraid Ham will do something he’ll live to regret if he finds out who killed her before the police do. He’s a smart boy. Big heart. But a little awkward and very introverted.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, leaning my elbow on the tabletop.
“I’m sorry, dear. You’ve probably had a long day, and here I am mucking it up with my family problems. Can I get you something to nibble on? I made scones with the lemons from my tree yesterday.”
Family problems. Boy, there was a story behind those two loaded little words. Idle political dirt or helpful information, I didn’t know.
Only one way to find out.
“A scone sounds wonderful, Mrs. Powers,” I said, sitting back in the chair. “Forgive me. It has been a long day, and I’m trying to make sense of all this.” I wasn’t telling her I knew Lakshmi—we didn’t need yet another layer of complication. Time to start at the beginning.
“So, your husband passed away . . .” I let it trail, trying to remember how long it had been.
“Nineteen months and six days,” she said softly, pulling the lid off a glass cake stand on her island. The scones inside looked like bakery showpieces—apparently the garden wasn’t the only place she had a gift. She put one on a plate for each of us, brushing frosting and sugar crystals off her fingers before she brought them to the table and returned to her seat.
Darcy stood up and nosed at her hand. I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth and shook my head when she looked at me. “No more treats. You won’t eat your food.” The vet had her on a special diet for aging small dogs, as much as I hated to think about it. Darcy wasn’t aging. She was fine.
Mrs. Powers scratched her ears. “I’m out, anyway, sweetness. I’ll have to drop by the goodie shop this weekend.”
I broke off a corner of the scone and almost sighed when the tangy sweetness melted across my tongue. “You are a heck of a baker yourself.”
“I like to piddle in the kitchen.” She smiled. “You have an excellent poker face, young lady.”
I raised an eyebrow and she laughed.
“I know you must be dying to know about Ham and why he talks to me, why I talk to him, why Harry and I stayed married . . . But you’re doing a very good job of keeping that to yourself.”
I laughed. “You’re a smart woman, Mrs. P. It is the nature of most reporters to be nosy, I’m afraid, and I’m sure you have a story to tell.”
She picked up her scone and bit off a third of it, staring out the window as she chewed. Swallowing, she refocused on me. “How to explain such a thing to a young woman who’s never been married? Who grew up in a time when women could be and do and have anything?” She shook her head. “In my day, a woman as the president of the United States was so far-fetched I’d have gladly laid money we’d put men on Mars first. Men who could breed flying Martian pigs. I never thought the day would come, let alone that I’d live to see it.”
“I know things were different not so long ago.”
Her lips tipped up the barest hint, her long, thin fingers going to the diamond band that still circled the third finger of her left hand. “Harry was a good man. We met the spring of my first year at William & Mary. He was a senior, getting ready to go on to law school and then take on the world. Change it. I was head over heels by the time he dropped me outside my dorm that first night.”
Her green eyes took on a faraway sheen, cheeks flushing at the memory of long-ago first love. I smiled, Kyle’s foot-shuffling lead-up to my first kiss filtering through my thoughts.
“He finished law school the year I finished my teaching degree, but I didn’t really figure on ever needing to use it. I was a young attorney’s wife. Harry wanted a big career, maybe politics. My job was to run a household and raise a family that would support that.”
Her face changed, and I saw the next words coming before they hit my ears. They didn’t have any kids.
“I couldn’t give him children.” Her voice thickened the barest bit, her eyelids fluttering blue white over tears she refused to let pass. “He said he didn’t care. We looked into adoption, but the costs to find a suitable infant were too much for even Harry’s salary. He focused on his career, and I opened the school so I could help raise as many babies as I liked.”
I blinked hard at the pricking in the backs of my own eyes, breaking off another bit of scone.
“Thomas and Leslie were so sweet. So stuck on each other. They made Harry and me remember what it was like to be young and in love. I think that’s part of the reason we were so close with them so easily.”
“And you and Gov . . . er . . . Mr. Baine were spending all that time together talking about education,” I prodded when she got quiet. She nodded.
“Harry and I never knew whether it was me or him, you know. I suggested asking a doctor when we kept trying and it didn’t work, and he said he didn’t want to know because it didn’t matter. We were an us, he said, and if we couldn’t have a baby then we just couldn’t, it wasn’t in the Lord’s plan for us, and he didn’t want to know why.”
Her thin shoulders lifted with a deep breath. “So, it was me, as I learned when my husband spent one night, just the one, with another woman while I was busy running my mouth about access to education for kids whose parents couldn’t afford it. Hamilton looks much more like his mother now, but when he was first born . . . well. Black couples don’t often have babies with ghost-white skin and green eyes. Thomas was furious, but he kept it together. Leslie told him everything, and he threatened to sue any of the medical personnel in the delivery room who might talk.
“We all sat down together and agreed that nobody ever needed to know. Thomas’s name is on Ham’s birth certificate. But we all raised him. Together. He called us Auntie Sue and Uncle Harry. And when he was old enough to understand, we told him the truth. He and I have been close ever since—he wrote me a long letter once about how much he admired me being strong enough to stay with Harry. I never really thought about leaving. I have always believed things happen for a reason: we got Ham out of it, and I love that child more than I love breathing and coffee and good southern cooking. I prayed for a baby for ten years, and the Lord gave me one the only way nature would allow. How could I leave my husband over something I’d prayed for?”
I scarfed the rest of my scone, blinking harder when tears welled despite my best efforts. In nine years in the newsroom and five in and out of courtrooms, I knew better than most people twice my age that life can throw all kinds of impossible decisions at you straight out of the blue.
What you choose, which consequences you can accept, are deeply personal, defined by your psyche and life experience. I’d watched from the front row as impossible decisions saved lives, and ended them. I’d seen people go to prison for choosing poorly, and been personally hailed as a hero for choosing well. The thing I’d learned was there’s often not a right or wrong—the
re’s only what you can live with. Mrs. Powers sounded like she’d lived fine with the decision she’d made. She didn’t need to justify a damned thing to me.
Back to today. “You didn’t hear from Hamilton after this?” I pointed to her phone.
She shook her head. “I’ve been a nervous wreck all day. Can’t stop thinking about it.” She picked up my plate. “So. Is Tom screwing his son’s girlfriend? Or was he?”
I tilted my chin up, locking eyes with her. Her hands still trembled enough to rattle the plates, her voice shaking the barest bit.
“I honestly don’t know.” Every word true. It seemed there were all kinds of skeletons in the Baine family’s closets, and I had no idea which ones Lakshmi might’ve been part of. Yet.
What I did know: nine hours on, this was shaping up to be the biggest story I’d seen in a while. Maybe even ever. I liked Governor Baine. But I couldn’t let that cloud my judgment. The truth—objective, good, bad, indifferent—that’s what I was after. And I would get there before Charlie did. I had to.
“Will you let me know what you find out?” Mrs. Powers asked, her eyes filming over with tears.
“Of course, ma’am.” The thought of this sweet lady fretting over a massive scandal she couldn’t control any more than the weather made my heart feel too big for my chest. I stood, clipping Darcy’s leash back to her collar. “Try not to worry, Mrs. P. I’m sure it will all work out just fine. These things look bigger than they are right at first.”
I wasn’t sure I believed the words as I said them, but they seemed to do the trick. She smiled, setting the plates in the sink before she spun back and enveloped me in a rib-crushing hug. “Thank you, darling.”
I patted her back until she stepped away. “Of course, ma’am. You try not to worry and have yourself a relaxing weekend.”
“I will try.” She walked beside us to the polished walnut and leaded-glass front door and opened it. “I hope you get some time with your young man this weekend.”
I led Darcy down the steps, checking my watch. I had about an hour to see what Google had to say about Mr. Powers. This particular curve, I was staying ahead of. Secrets are funny things: they have a way of slipping out of the shadows whether folks want them to or not, and often at exactly the wrong time.
8
Harry Powers was practically a choir boy.
Practically.
Google had thirteen hits, ten of them articles from our archives about charity work he’d spearheaded. Plus one profile on LinkedIn no one had taken down after his death, and two data site listings. Nothing shady. No hints of questionable business deals, cases gone wrong. He should’ve run for office; he’d have been the perfect politician. Except for the son he’d fathered through the affair nobody knew about.
His wife said he’d started his career with big ambitions. They must’ve evaporated the second Hamilton Baine took his first breath. No way a skeleton that juicy stays in a closet through a political campaign. I got it. There were days I read Trudy’s stories and thanked my lucky stars for the crime desk: Politics had gone from a cerebral pursuit of the greater good to a no-holds-barred cage match of scandal and secrets. The farther below the belt the hits came, the better. Murderers and thieves are an easier bunch to read than most politicians, and a generally more sympathetic group, too.
When I thought too hard about the implications of that, it made me sad, so I let it go.
Setting my laptop on the quilt, I picked up my boots and plopped them into their spot on my shoe rack, shaking my head. For half my life, I’d wanted to write about politics because great speeches and big ideas inspired me. Sharing those messages, dissecting and explaining them to readers, helping compile the first draft of history from right on the front lines—I couldn’t think of a more noble pursuit for a writer. Thomas Baine had given me hope for that again, watching him on the campaign trail as he listened to Virginians from all walks of life, and hosted upwards of a hundred events, from VFW breakfasts to packed-out town halls, in all corners of the state. He held himself above the cage match, looking at people instead of any given area’s historic voting demographics. Patience, class, and nonpartisan handshaking and baby-kissing won the Virginia governor’s mansion by a double-digit margin the Associated Press analysts called less than an hour after the polls closed. A bona fide landslide.
And here he was a year later, up to his Brooks Brothers Windsor knot in the kind of scandal most politicians don’t come back from.
I closed my computer and picked up my phone to see if the message from earlier was from Joey. Strike one. Trudy, telling me to expect a call from an Agent Chaudry of the Secret Service. Holy Manolos. I couldn’t help a tiny smile at that, even as frustrated as I felt. But my missed call was from a Cleveland number, not a DC one, with no associated voicemail. Do-not-call list, my scuffed patent leather boot.
I padded to the bathroom in bare feet and turned the spigots, watching water fill the massive claw-footed tub. I shook in a couple of drops of oil and some lavender bubble bath and went to the kitchen in search of a glass of wine.
Setting my red Moscato on the pink-tiled bathroom counter after one sip, I shut off the water and pulled in a deep breath, the sweet smell from the lavender letting my shoulders drop away from my ears a bit.
I was three more sips into the wine and up to my chin in the bubbles before the question prodding the back of my brain surfaced.
The wineglass shattered across the tile floor, shards flying, red wine flowing over the powder-pink ceramic diamonds.
Darcy came running and I scrambled to a sitting position, water and bubbles sloshing up the sides of the tub. “No!” She stopped in the doorway, tipping her head to one side with an Excuse me? look on her face.
“You’ll cut your feet,” I said, like she could understand. She backed up two steps and sat down on the scarred hardwood in the hallway. Hell, maybe she did.
“Good girl. Stay.” I sank back into the bubbles, my mind still whirring through Baine’s gubernatorial campaign.
Twenty-first century politics is outlandish Fashion Week spike-covered Louboutins ugly.
If Hamilton was enough to keep Harry Powers from politics, how in the blue hell did Thomas Baine make it all the way to the governor’s mansion with that skeleton still tucked safely in his cedar-lined closet?
I still didn’t have a good answer for that when I heard the deadbolt on the front door squeal out of its home, Darcy’s claws clicking on the wood floor as she scurried to the foyer.
“Hey there, sweetheart.” My stomach still did the slow flip thing when I heard Joey’s voice, even when he was talking to Darcy.
“Nicey?” He sounded about two steps short of the bathroom door when he called for me.
“In here.” I sank farther into the bubbles and smiled when he poked his face around the doorframe, his eyebrows already up. They inched up higher, a smile stretching his full lips over teeth that flashed bright white against his olive skin. Eight o’clock shadow peppered his jaw and chin, his tie loose, the top button of his starched blue cotton shirt undone.
Damn, but he was beautiful.
“Well hello there.” His voice got deeper, his dark eyes widening. “Care for some company?”
“Watch your step,” I said, raising one hand through the bubbles to point at the floor.
He shucked his jacket before he disappeared with a quick grin and a raised finger, returning with my broom and dustpan in his left hand and an old towel draped over his shoulder. “Can’t risk bare feet coming out of the tub onto that.”
He stepped into the room and I gasped when his right arm came around the side of the door. It sported a thick plaster splint and what looked like several layers of bandages. All I could see were his fingertips and three feet of taupe elastic wrap. That’s why he’d sounded weird on the phone. He was hurt.
“That looks unpleasant,” I said.
He shook his head. “ER overkill. I took a bad meeting out on my knuckles. They patched it up like my
hand was in danger of falling off.”
Um. What?
I sat up, wrapping my arms around my knees and fixing him with my best You’re not getting off that easy stare. “Bad meeting?”
“Just some jackass hiding behind red tape. I needed some information, he said he couldn’t get it, I know he could if he wanted to.” He flashed the grin that still made my stomach do a slow rollover. “I’m sure you’re familiar with the frustration. And the outlet.” He made a punching motion with his hand.
Ah-ha. For all that we seemed so different on the surface, we had a lot in common: the abnormal level of life-and-death situations in our days required safe ways to blow off steam, so I had my body combat classes, and Joey had the boxing gym.
“Bag or actual human?” I sank back into the water.
“In my defense, he had a mouth on him like nothing I’ve ever heard, and that’s saying something.”
I shook my head, my eyes scanning his face. A tiny purplish spot under his right eye corroborated his story. Thank God for headgear—sparring was all good, healthy stress relief until someone’s temper slipped away from him. But it could’ve been way worse.
“Is it broken?”
“Five X-rays and an MRI later, it’s a bone bruise. I’ll be good as new in a couple of weeks.” He kept his eyes on the broom, moving the wet glass into a careful pile. “Something startle you, baby?”
“I had an epiphany about this mess at the capitol and dropped my glass.” I sighed. “One of these days, I’m going to learn to stop saying it out loud when I’ve had an easy week.”
He pushed a pile of glass shards into the dustpan and set about wiping up the Moscato. “You were so excited this morning, you were texting me in all caps. That wasn’t about this corpse at the capitol?”
“Hold on. Do I actually have a story you don’t already know the behind the scenes of before I even see you? I’m going to come back to the whole ‘I know something you don’t know’ feeling in a moment, because no, it was not.”
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