Michael Prescott - Mortal Faults

Reynolds glanced at Stenzel. “Take her to my office. I’ll be inside in a minute.”

Stenzel ushered her away. “Hold on a sec,” Abby said. She grabbed a plate and loaded it with chicken and potato salad, then found some plastic cutlery and paper napkins. What the hell, the food was free and she was hungry. Plate in hand, she followed Stenzel past a garden of hydrangeas, sea grasses, and bird-of-paradise, and back inside the house. Down a short hallway was a small office with oak shelving and paneled walls. It occurred to Abby that being out of public view was perhaps not the best idea, under the circumstances.

“By the way, your rent-a-cops will remember me,” she told Stenzel. “If for some reason I don’t leave this party, there’ll be an investigation, and you’ll be the first one questioned.”

“Are you always so dramatic?”

“Most of the time.”

“If you’re worried about your safety, I’d advise you to walk away from this situation right now.”

“Sorry, Kip. No can do.”

“I’ve given you fair warning.”

“You’ve been more than fair,” Abby agreed.

“Then I won’t consider myself responsible when they zip you up in a body bag.”

There had to be a great comeback to that, but offhand Abby couldn’t think of one.

Fortunately she didn’t have to. Reynolds stepped through the doorway, shutting the door behind him.

Abby took a seat and started on a chicken wing. “Nice little get-together,” she said. “Few hundred of your closest friends?”

“My biggest contributors. Which amounts to the same thing.”

“Somehow I find that sad.”

“You know what Harry Truman said. If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog.”

“That’s the second Truman anecdote I’ve heard from you. Are you just wild about Harry?”

“All politicians admire Truman,” Reynolds said as he rounded his desk and sat in a plush leather chair. “You know why?”

“Enlighten me.”

“We like him because he was always underestimated. The party bosses thought they could control him. The pollsters thought he couldn’t win in ’48. He was dismissed as a mediocrity. And now he’s an icon.”

“So he gives hope to all the other mediocrities in politics?”

“That’s a cheap shot, Sinclair. I’m starting to lose my respect for you.”

“You had never mine to begin with.”

“What is it you wanted to say?”

Abby looked up from her lunch and focused her stare on Stenzel. “Privacy, please?”

He started to protest, but Reynolds cut him off. “Wait outside, Kip. Tell the folks I’ll rejoin them in a minute.”

Stenzel opened the door, then turned back. “She’s not wearing a wire. I had security check her twice.” So that was the reason for the do-over.

Reynolds nodded, and Stenzel was gone, the door closing after him. With his campaign manager out of the way, Reynolds seemed more relaxed. He rose and moved to a liquor cabinet. “Drink?” he asked, sounding almost cordial.

“If you can make a New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, I won’t turn it down.”

“What the hell is that?”

“My own invention. Splash of rum, splash of gin, splash of vodka, splash of tequila, splash of rye, and a soupcon of carrot juice.”

“Sounds god-awful.”

“It really is.”

Reynolds poured himself a Scotch, fixing nothing for her. She contented herself with the chicken. It was a little overcooked, but you couldn’t beat the price.

“Tell me what this is all about,” Reynolds said as he resumed his seat.

“First of all, there was an attempt on Andrea Lowry’s life yesterday afternoon.”

He gave her his best poker face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about or how it could possibly have anything to do with me.”

“Right. Then let me make it clearer.” She dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “Andrea used to be known as Bethany Willett. You and she had an affair. It didn’t end well.”

“I’ve never known anyone by that name.”

“Give it a rest, Jack. Andrea and I have become pals. She opened up to me, told me the whole story. All the sordid details, like your floating love nest, The Mariner. She told me how you would have your intimate moments below deck, then share a nightcap under the stars.”

“This is all bullshit. If the woman said any of this, she’s delusional.”

“She’s not delusional, and you know it. This has been your nightmare for the last twenty years. Your past coming back to hurt you. A couple of months ago, it finally happened. The woman you knew as Bethany started showing up at your campaign events. You didn’t know what she was up to. Maybe she was planning to go public. Maybe she was thinking of blackmailing you. Maybe she wanted to assassinate you. You were terrified, but you couldn’t raise your concerns with the police, not without risking the exposure of your relationship. And exposure would kill your career, which means almost as much to you as life itself. Hell, maybe more.”

Reynolds was doing his best to look bored. “Let’s not get carried away. The electorate isn’t so squeamish about infidelity anymore. We’ve come a long way from Gary Hart and Donna Rice noodling each other on the good ship Monkey Business. These days, in some circles a little extramarital activity may even be seen as a plus.”

“How about two dead babies? Are they a plus? Especially when they’re your flesh and blood, and your mistress shot them to death before shooting herself? And then there’s the part about how you kindly arranged to put Bethany in the nuthouse so she couldn’t talk about it. This is not the sort of thing that looks good on the resume of an Orange County family man and former crusading D.A.”

“You’re making a lot of wild allegations-”

“Cut the crap. You were scared out of your gourd, so you tried to find Bethany. I’m guessing you put Stenzel on the job. He called the hospital where Bethany had been treated, but he couldn’t get any info. At least I assume it was Stenzel who called. I don’t think you’d be ballsy enough to call them yourself.”

“Get to the point.”

“Point is, you had no luck tracking her down. How could you? She was living under a new name. You got desperate, so you brought me in. You figured I might succeed where your flunky had, well, flunked. And I did. But I wouldn’t give you her new name or her whereabouts. Somehow you found her, anyway.”

“Who says I found her?”

“The jacketed hollowpoints that were dug out of her wall. I’m really not wearing a wire, Jack. This conversation will go a whole lot faster if you decide to be straight with me.”

Reynolds stood up, Scotch in hand. He hadn’t touched it before, but now he took a good swallow.

“You told me she had a schedule of my events,” he said as he started pacing behind the desk.

“So?”

“We mail those out.”

Abby got it. “Mailing list. Shit.” She cursed herself for being dumb. Dumbness was the one unforgivable crime in her line of work, the original sin.

Having polished off the chicken, she assuaged her guilt with a forkful of potato salad.

“Okay,” she said, her mouth full, “so you knew where she was, and you sent in the stormtroopers. You didn’t know what she had in mind, and the only way to be sure she wouldn’t do something crazy was to have her killed.”

Reynolds gulped more Scotch. “The woman is crazy. Unpredictable. I had to be proactive.”

“Well, the best laid plans of mice and men, et cetera. Andrea, nee Bethany, is very much alive. And the police have taken an interest in her.”

She used the word police advisedly. She had decided not to mention the involvement of the FBI. As a Washington insider, Reynolds might have contacts in the Bureau. It was best to let him think that only the local authorities were on the case.