The Senator's Wife
Page 2
He might be climbing out of the loser pit by his fingernails, but he was climbing.
“Hey, I know the way it happens. So do you. If Honneker drops much farther in the polls, he’d let you get his wife pregnant. Beg you to on bended knee, in fact. Whatever works.”
Tom laughed shortly. “Whatever works. Maybe we should have that put on our business cards: Quinlan, Goodman and Associates, Political Consultants: Whatever works.”
“Not a bad slogan.” Kenny straightened away from the desk, reaching for a doughnut. He’d brought a dozen in with him that morning, and now, at ten-thirty, five were missing from the box on the desk. Tom had eaten exactly none.
“Thought you were watching your diet,” Tom said. “Wasn’t that a heart attack you had last year?”
“A mild heart attack,” Kenny said defensively. “More of a warning, really. And it wasn’t brought on by doughnuts. It was stress.”
“Yeah, right.” If stress alone brought on heart attacks, he’d be dead by now, Tom thought. Instead he was hale and hearty at thirty-seven, despite the events of the last four years. Kenny was only a few years older, but he was pale and pudgy, and sweated easily. Tom didn’t have that many good friends, and he worried about Kenny. Especially since he’d been responsible for the stress that Kenny mentioned. Not that Kenny had ever blamed him for his heart attack. But Tom blamed himself. He’d screwed up, and it had cost them both nearly everything they had.
“When do we get to meet the lady?” Kenny asked, reaching for another doughnut.
Tom swatted his hand away and grabbed the box, which he sheltered protectively on his lap. Kenny scowled at him.
“At lunch. She’s speaking to a group at the Neshoba County Fair. I want to see her in action in real life before we start in on her.”
“The voters hate her, don’t they?”
“She’s his biggest negative. Like him, hate her, is what the polls said. Voters loved Eleanor, the first wife. Women were outraged when His Honor married the GSW here.”
“GSW?” Kenny’s brows lifted.
“Gorgeous second wife. A hated breed among women, apparently.”
“I can see why,” Kenny said, glancing at the monitor where the tape still played. “That lady’s got homewrecker written all over her.”
“It’s up to us to change her into a mom.” Tom deftly fended off a snatch at the doughnut box. “If not literally, then figuratively. By the time Election Day rolls around, the good voters of Mississippi are going to perceive Mrs. Honneker to be a sweet southern lady who’s one of them. They’ll want to vote for him because of her.”
“What do you think you are, a genie? I think we should just settle for them not hating her.”
“Not good enough,” Tom said, stuffing the box of doughnuts into the trash and squashing it with his foot. He grinned as Kenny howled, and punched the TV’s power button. The screen went dark. “We’re on the comeback trail, remember? We need to razzle-dazzle ’em. So we bust our fannies, and we make the voters love her. She’s the key to this election. Come on, Kenny, time to go meet the boss.”
“Happy, happy, joy, joy,” Kenny said, but allowed Tom to drag him from the apartment with no more than a single longing look in the direction of the squashed doughnuts.
Chapter
3
MISSISSIPPI IN JULY had to be the hottest place on earth, Veronica Honneker thought despairingly. The temperature had already reached 94, and was still climbing. If the atmosphere got any more stifling, she wouldn’t be able to breathe. The big white canvas tent she stood beneath sheltered her from the sun, but that was about all that could be said for it. Though her purple linen shift was short and sleeveless, it was still too much to be wearing on so hot a day. Her pantyhose could have been made of lead for all the air they let reach her legs. Her bra pinched. She could feel her antiperspirant giving up the ghost even as she swung into the closing lines of her luncheon speech. Moisture trickled down her back; her armpits felt wet. The small electric fan whirring on the floor of the platform beside her, ostensibly provided for her comfort, barely stirred the air.
“Remember, a vote for my husband is a vote for education. And education is the bridge that will take the state of Mississippi into the twenty-first century,” Ronnie concluded her standard speech, trying to ignore a fly that had buzzed around her head for at least the last three minutes. Swatting at flies looked ridiculous, as she had learned from watching other speakers do it on videotapes provided by one of Lewis’s many flunkies. Don’t swat flies, do smile, hang on to the sides of the podium if you can’t think of anything else to do with your hands.… She’d had so much advice drummed into her head since marrying Lewis that she was sick of it.
Her smile was genuinely warm with relief as she finished talking. Ronnie unfolded her cramped fingers from the edge of the podium and acknowledged the polite applause with a wave. Almost before she had left the dais, her audience had turned its attention to their desserts. If not forgotten, she was certainly dismissed.
They didn’t like her, she knew. She had never been, and never would be, one of them. She was a northerner, a carpetbagger as the locals called her behind her back, a young, beautiful woman of no particular pedigree married to a rich, distinguished older native son whose roots went deeper than those of the state icon, the five-hundred-year-old Friendship Oak.
The hostess—Mary something, Ronnie hadn’t quite caught the last name—touched her elbow, steering her to the table closest to the speaker’s platform. As always, this was where the biggest contributors would sit. And she always, always had to make nice to big contributors.
“Mrs. Honneker, this is Elizabeth Chauncey.…”
Ronnie smiled and offered her hand to the elderly woman just introduced.
“I know your mother-in-law,” the woman informed her, and proceeded to tell her in excruciating detail just exactly how that was. Ronnie listened, smiled, and responded as intelligently as she could before being drawn on. It took over an hour to greet everyone in the tent. By the time she had clasped hands and exchanged a few words with the last potential donor/voter, Ronnie’s head ached, her hand throbbed, and she felt limp from the inside out.
This was another thing about being married to a senator that she hated. Meet and greet, be nice to the voters. Always on. Smile, no matter how she felt. Well, today she felt lousy. All she wanted was to go home, take a shower and a couple of Tylenol, and lie down.
Fat chance of that.
“That went well,” Thea, her press secretary, said cheerfully as fair officials hustled them toward the back of the tent, where a state trooper was holding open a canvas flap for their exit. Thea Cambridge was thirty, only a year older than Ronnie herself. She was attractive, with short dark hair, a slim figure, and a nice sense of style. She had worked for Ronnie for two years now, and Ronnie considered her a friend.
Passing through the triangular opening, Ronnie walked into a wall of blazing heat, blinding light, swirling dust, and nauseating smells: hot dogs, cotton candy, livestock droppings, vehicle exhaust. For a moment, as her eyes adjusted, she could see nothing. She paused, blinking, her retinue milling around her as they all took a minute to get their bearings.
Mississippi in July was her idea of hell on earth. If it was not for the thrice-damned polls, she would be summering in Lewis’s cottage in Maine, as she had since they’d been married. Just the thought of that cool green shoreline made her feel hotter now. Lewis’s summer house was almost the best thing about being married to him.
Mississippi in July was, arguably, the worst.
“Miz Honneker?” The voice was male, deep, and thick as honey with a down-home southern drawl. Though Ronnie still could not see clearly, she suspected a reporter, simply because they always came after her when she least felt like dealing with them. She stretched her mouth into one more smile.
“Yes?” she said into the glare.
“I’m Tom Quinlan. This is Kenny Goodman. Quinlan, Goodman, Associates.”
“How nice to meet you,” she said, offering first the blond man and then his companion her hand while Thea and the state troopers looked on with varying degrees of caution. It was necessary for the Senator’s wife to be accessible to attract votes, of course, but there was also a slight degree of risk anytime a stranger approached her. Nuts were everywhere these days—and she was a favorite target.
However, these men seemed harmless enough, even if they did appear to expect her to know their names. Were they perhaps contributors? Big contributors? Should she know their names? Lewis’s office sent a list, periodically updated, of people for her to memorize.
She was almost sure that the names she had just heard were not on it.
Her smile widened, just in case. Money was the life-blood of politics, as Lewis had drummed into her head from the time of their marriage. For Lewis, as well as all the other politicians she knew, show me the money was not just a popular catchphrase. It was a way of life. A way of staying alive. For she was convinced that politicians only lived while they held office. Lewis’s senate seat and all that went with it were as necessary to him as the air he breathed, Ronnie thought. He needed the attention, the limelight, the power, the way other men needed food and drink.
If only she had understood that before she married him.
“We’re political strategists, Miz Honneker. We’re working for you now,” the blond man said dryly as she shook the other man’s hand. His tone made it clear that she had been unsuccessful at concealing her ignorance of their identities. Not that it mattered. Consultants’ opinions were more important than their votes. And since their marriage, Lewis had inflicted so many of them on her that by now they were about as welcome as a pair of buzzing flies.
“Oh.” Ronnie’s hand dropped to her side, and she stopped smiling. Her cheeks ached so from her marathon effort in the tent that it was a relief to let them relax, if only for a few minutes. Her headache, forgotten for a moment, returned in full force. Flexing her sore fingers, she glanced at Thea.
“We got a fax from the Washington office this morning,” Thea said apologetically in response to that glance. “I was going to show it to you later today. I—didn’t realize that they would be joining us this soon.”
Thea knew how Ronnie felt about consultants. After the last one advised her to gain twenty pounds—“Look how much more popular Oprah was when she was heavy!” he had said—she had vowed not to listen to any more.
“Mrs. Honneker, you’re supposed to judge the Little Miss Neshoba County Pageant in five minutes,” a plump woman in a gaudy floral dress called as she hurried up to them. The dress struck a chord in Ronnie’s memory: Rose. The woman’s name was Rose, and her dress was bedecked with enormous cabbage roses.
It was the kind of memory exercise that she usually did rather well. One of her few assets as a political wife was her ability to remember names, she thought.
“Thank you, Rose,” Ronnie said with a smile. Rose beamed. It was clear that she was flattered to have the Senator’s wife remember her when they had only met for a moment several hours earlier. Things like that, Ronnie had learned, made people feel important. And making people feel important was a way to win votes. And winning votes was the name of the game.
“Mind if we tag along?” the blond man asked. Quinlan—that was his name, she would remember it by associating the name with a quiver full of arrows, and he seemed to be tightly strung, like a bow.
Ronnie shrugged her assent. Nodding politely as Rose chattered away, she was escorted toward the tent where the pageant would be held. Thea, a fair official, a state trooper, and the two newcomers to her retinue followed close behind as they navigated through the eddy and swirl of activity that made up the fair. Young couples walking hand in hand, women in casual clothes pushing babies in strollers, teenagers in baggy shorts calling to each other, groups of older women in floral dresses: Ronnie smiled at all impartially as they wove through the crowd. A few smiled back.
A very few.
Sometimes she felt like the most hated woman in Mississippi.
They were almost at their destination when it happened. Ronnie had just spotted the white canvas peaks of the large tent on the other side of the busy cotton-candy machine. A steady stream of people were filing in through the front of the tent, past a large, balloon-bedecked placard that said Little Miss Neshoba County Pageant, 2 P.M. As usual, Ronnie was being led toward the back. A trio of officials already awaited her at the tent flap, which was being held open. They were looking her way, their expressions expectant.
The woman exploded out of nowhere. She came running in from the left, from somewhere beyond the cotton-candy machine, screaming words that seemed to make no sense. She was a big woman, tall and heavy, dressed in too-tight green shorts and a striped blouse, her hair dyed blond and her face florid and sweaty from the heat.
“Whore!” she screamed, darting toward Ronnie.
Ronnie stepped back, alarmed, and instinctively threw up her hand as something that glinted silver in the sunlight came hurtling through the air at her. A smell, sharp and distinctive. A blow, as something hard struck her upraised arm and bounced off. The sensation of liquid splashing everywhere, pouring over her, thick and heavy and cool.
Ohmigod, she thought.
Chapter
4
THE LIQUID SPLASHED onto Ronnie’s head, covered her face, rained down the front of her dress. She heard screams, felt people rushing past, sensed a struggle. Eyes closed, gasping, dashing the substance from her face with frantic hands, she staggered backward, stumbled, lost her balance. Her worst nightmare was coming true.
She was caught from behind before she could hit the ground and steadied against a man’s hard body. Seconds later an arm went around her shoulders, another slid beneath her knees, and she was lifted clean off her feet. Blinded, dazed, she felt as incapable as an infant of doing anything to save herself. If she was being abducted, she was helpless to ward it off.
Still, she tried, fighting frantically to be free.
“It’s all right, I’ve got you safe,” a man said into her ear. Reassured by something in his voice, she quit struggling. Then, much louder, he barked, “Where’s a rest room?”
There must have been a reply, because as she clawed, terror-stricken, at the ooze coating her eyes she felt herself being borne away in strong arms through the heat that meant sunlight. Moments later he turned sideways, shouldering them both through a door into a darker, cooler environment.
“Can you stand up?” Even as the question was asked Ronnie found herself on her feet. Afraid to open her eyes lest more of the liquid should get into them, she stood swaying unsteadily in her self-imposed darkness, unsure of anything, even the identity of her rescuer. She felt dizzy, sick, terrified. Something hard pressed into her stomach, and she grasped it instinctively. It was cold and slick and rounded, and the accompanying sound of running water helped to identify it: a sink. Her rescuer’s arm was around her waist. She let it support her, leaning back gratefully against the warm, solid strength of the man behind her. If he had not been there, she would have collapsed.
“I’m going to put your head under the faucet. Rinse out your eyes.”
Ronnie felt a hand on her head gently pushing it down, and she obediently bent, leaning forward under his direction, supporting herself with her arms on either side of the sink. Her hair was pulled back and held from her fa
ce by one of his hands. Tepid water rushed over her forehead, over her eyes, over her cheeks and nose. It felt good against her eyelids, good against her skin.
Oh, God, was the liquid acid? Would she be blinded, or scarred for life?
Fresh terror curled in the pit of her stomach at the thought.
“Open your eyes. You want to let the water run into them.”
Ronnie opened her eyes, cringing at first, but the water felt good in them, too, and after a moment she could actually see, a blur of shapes and light. Good. She was not blind.
“Here.” The roughness of a wet paper towel moved dawn her face from forehead to chin. He wiped her face twice, three times. “Okay, stand up. Let’s check the damage.”
Ronnie straightened. Her knees felt weak, and she was glad of the sink’s support behind her as she half sat on it, clutching it with both hands for balance. She blinked furiously; her vision was still blurry. Her chin was lifted by fingers beneath it, and another paper towel passed over her streaming eyes and across her cheeks and chin. He pushed her hair back behind her ears, and tilted her face first one way, then another, wiping judiciously. Throwing one paper towel away, he wet another, and ran it down her right arm.
“Oh, God, was it acid?” Ronnie asked in a croaky voice even as her vision cleared. Her rescuer, she saw now, was the blond man she had just met, the political consultant, Quinlan. He stood in front of her, frowning as he scrubbed at her arms.
“No, not acid. Paint. How do your eyes feel?”
Red paint. Ronnie saw it on his suit, smeared all down the arms and front of his jacket. His clothes had been ruined, too, as he’d carried her into the rest room.
For she was in a rest room—a gray-tiled one with three stalls and a urinal, a pair of dingy white sinks, one of which she was partly sitting on, and a large chipped mirror affixed to the wall. A men’s room. With an overflowing waste can near the door and a faint unpleasant smell.
When she didn’t answer right away, he repeated the question patiently.