Taylor Smith - Guilt By Silence

Jerry Siddon nodded to the other passenger in the aircraft, and McCord Industries’ private photographer followed close behind the security chief. The photographer, Pflanz was certain, would get plenty of shots of McCord’s arrival and the opening ceremonies at the hospital. Gus McCord was being actively courted by both major parties as a possible presidential contender when the current administration’s mandate ran out. While he professed impatience with Washington, both bureaucrats and the squabblers in Congress, McCord had never firmly shut the door on a political career, dangling teasing hints from time to time that would send the parties’ politicos into a mad frenzy of courtship. It had been Jerry Siddon’s idea to keep a personal photographic record of McCord’s civic contributions.

The security chief and the photographer were the first to step out the door of the plane. Pflanz slipped on dark glasses, despite the gray overcast, while the photographer took readings on his light meter, adjusted the aperture setting on his camera and snapped a few quick shots of the waiting dignitaries.

As Pflanz descended the steps, his eyes swept over the scene, taking in the roof of a gray terminal building nearly invisible against the big, prairie winter sky. His gaze dropped to the faces pressed against the glass of the terminal’s observation lounge. Satisfied that there was no obvious danger lurking in those quarters, he took up a position near the bottom of the aircraft steps and turned his attention to the crowd on the tarmac—a dozen or so people, those in front smiling bravely while the lesser lights in the rear ranks stamped their feet against the bitter cold and blew on their hands.

The knot of dignitaries near the limo included a man Pflanz recognized as Fred Hansen, the mayor of Fargo, his wife and two hospital administrators who had visited the McCord head office in California several times. The other men and women in business dress appeared to be local bigwigs. A couple of more casually dressed men detached themselves from the crowd—press, Pflanz decided, watching them warily nevertheless. The one carrying a canvas sack focused his camera on the door of the Lear. A cameraman from the city TV station also stood peering through the lens of a video camera perched on his shoulder.

McCord’s own photographer had taken up position next to the local press when Gus and Nancy emerged from the aircraft. They waved from the top step and then descended, hand in hand, like the President and First Lady that Pflanz suspected they might someday be. Jerry Siddon followed a discreet few steps behind.

The mayor and his wife moved forward to meet the McCords, the rest of the ground party streaming after. Gus McCord dropped his wife’s hand and took the mayor’s outstretched one, slapping the politician’s shoulder with his other hand.

“There you are, Fred, you old son of a gun,” McCord said heartily. He cocked his thumb toward the limo. “You expecting the queen of England?”

The mayor chuckled. “No, Gus, we laid it on special for you. It’s a loaner from Vigan-Carlson.”

McCord threw back his head and roared. Vigan-Carlson was a local funeral parlor. “I’m not dead yet—no thanks to you,” he said, rubbing a prominent bump on the bridge of his nose.

The break had happened forty-five years earlier during a high school baseball game. It was the bottom of the ninth. Fred Hansen had flung the bat after a base hit and it had caught McCord, playing catcher, square in the face. Masks and other protective equipment were unheard of in the poor farm community just outside Fargo where the two men had grown up. They’d been lucky to have a ball and bat.

“Yeah, you always were a hardheaded old cuss,” Hansen said, grinning. He nodded in the direction of Dieter Pflanz. “You bring that guy along to make sure I don’t take another crack at it?”

“Nah! He carries Nance’s suitcases. She always was a lousy packer!” McCord grinned affectionately at his wife, who slapped his arm and then stepped forward to greet the mayor and his wife.

“Isn’t he awful? How are you, Fred?” She kissed his cheek before turning to embrace his wife. “And Stella. How good to see you. What a beautiful coat!”

Stella Hansen’s lined face, heavily caked with makeup, lit up as she stepped back from Nancy’s hug and stroked the dun-colored fox fur she was wearing. “Gorgeous, isn’t it? It’s an early Christmas present from Fred. He wanted me to have it for the opening.”

“You look lovely, and so cozy.”

“But Gus has given you a fur coat, surely,” Stella said, checking out Nancy’s cloth number.

“Nothing like yours,” Nancy said truthfully.

Stella Hansen smiled triumphantly at her husband, then turned to McCord. “Well, Gus, now you know what Nancy wants for Christmas. Aren’t you just awful not to have thought of it before?”

“You got me there, Stel,” McCord said, shrugging sheepishly. “But what do you want—I’m just a farm boy. This fancy stuff is beyond me, I swear.”

Stella’s eyes danced over him and her face folded into the layers of her most winning smile. A flake of black mascara separated from her lashes, settling on the soft pink down of her cheek. Gus McCord had been friends with Stella’s older brother when they were kids. Gus had asked her out to a school dance once but, to her everlasting regret, she had turned down the scrawny little guy in favor of the captain of the football team. Then John Lindquist—he of the boozy breath and groping hands—had gone off and gotten himself killed in Korea after his senior year, leaving Stella obliged to spend six months discreetly visiting an aunt in Minneapolis.

Watching Gus McCord now as he moved down the line of the welcoming committee, shaking hands and slapping backs, Stella marveled again at her inability back then to recognize his potential. But who could have known the hyper little guy had had it in him, for crying out loud? Of course, Gus had been smart, marrying a rich girl. Stella watched Nancy McCord as she followed close to Gus, smiling warmly at the people he introduced. It was a good thing her old man had had money, Stella thought, because Nancy had always been kind of a plain thing—always wore her hair simple, just a blunt cut curled behind her ears. She’d gone gray real early on, too, and then white, although it looked kind of nice now, Stella had to admit, kind of striking, especially with those bright blue eyes. And she was still trim—she must go to one of those fat farms that the magazines said rich people like Liz Taylor hid out in when they’d blimped out.

Stella smoothed her fox fur, grateful for the way it camouflaged her own ample body. Still, when she was younger, she’d had a body to kill for—that’s what John Lindquist had always said, and Fred had thought so, as well. He’d panted after her all through high school and had just about choked when she’d returned from Minneapolis and said she’d think about marrying him, after all. And now Fred was mayor and Stella got to ride in the back of an open convertible in the Fourth of July parade, and she got to meet some big shots, and she had a fur coat that even Nancy McCord envied. So things had turned out all right, really, even if she and Fred didn’t fly all over the world in their own private plane.

They climbed into the limousine, Gus wedged between Stella and Nancy, while Fred took up one of the jump seats facing them. Jerry Siddon slipped into the other jump seat after arranging for the photographer to ride with the TV camera crew, which was racing ahead to set up at the hospital before McCord arrived. The limo dipped when Dieter Pflanz climbed into the front passenger seat. The driver gave him a nervous smile, to which Pflanz replied with a curt nod.