First Lady (19 page)

It was certainly true that Ward Trasker was stonewalling me: his wife had said he was at his office, his office had returned none of my messages, and when I'd showed up there an hour ago had told me Ward was home with his wife. I said, “It'll be hard for them to ignore a warrant for arrest.”

The press secretary snorted. “They'll call Mangum's bluff. He backs off or he's out of there. Where's a police chief that's been booted going to get a warrant from? Besides, Mangum loves that job too much. He lives for that job. He'll do what he has to to keep it.”

All of a sudden the contents of an entire pitcher of beer flew at Bubba's face. Spluttering and flailing he leapt up, knocking his own beer into his lap. “What the fuck!”

“You shithead!”
It was Shelly Bloom, the
Sun
reporter, in a rage so intense her whole slender body trembled, even the short black wings of her hair, as she shook the last drops of the overturned pitcher onto Bubba's head.

There were hoots, cheers, and applause from our end of the dining room where the blond waitress shouted at her, “You go, girl!”

“Sit down, Shelly!” I stood and slid her ahead of me into my side of the booth. Bubba was frantically wiping beer out of his eyes and hair with his pink Versace shirt.

“You got me fired!” she hissed at him. “I kept Brookside's name out of it and you still got me fired!”

“Lower your goddamn voice. Who told you that?” He grabbed a wad of paper napkins from the dispenser and wiped himself down.

She snorted. “Which? That I was fired or that you arranged it?”

“Well, both,” he said as he shook beer from his comb and used it on his hair. “Listen, Shelly, you're sniffing the wrong luggage on the carousel here.”

“What?” She turned to me. “What kind of lame metaphor is that? Sniffing the luggage on the carousel? I can't believe this man was ever the editor of the
Hillston Star
!”

“Mrs. Edwina Sunderland owned it and she was in love with him,” I threw in. “According to him.”

The waitress tossed Bubba a large towel. “Don't bother to tip me again,” she told him. “Your dollar's still good.”

“Thanks, honey. Listen, bring this young lady another beer. Just a glass.” Bubba patted himself down. “Listen, Shelly, I was sorry to hear you got the boot, but I figured it was because you fucked up and went front page on a bad lead.”

I had to hold her back from lunging across the booth to shake him. “You bastard, you're the one gave me the bad lead! You told me Mavis Mahar shot herself!”

He shrugged. “You told me you'd hold the story for twenty-four hours.” They glowered at each other.

I interrupted the staring match to ask Shelly if she'd seen anyone lurking in the vicinity of Bungalow Eight last night while she was out there lurking herself. She said no, she hadn't, and don't bother to ask. Mangum had already had her hauled into a police cruiser this morning, dragged to HPD, and questioned for over an hour. The city would be lucky if she didn't sue them as soon as she finished suing the governor's staff for forcing her out of her job because she knew too much.

Bubba tried humor. “If you're out of work, you probably shouldn't have spent fourteen bucks on that pitcher of beer.”

“You think I'm kidding, Percy?” she seethed. “I'll work twenty-four hours a day 'til I blow your reelection back to the Stone Age.”

He shook his head with a paternal smile. “Shelly, you've got the wrong idea about modern journalism. It's not about investigation, it's not about truth, it's not about
work
. It's about looking good when you carry the press releases of the powerful to an ignorant public with the attention span of a gnat. You're a good-looking spin toady, sweetheart.”

“Maybe you are.”

He grinned. “Hey, thanks. You noticed.”

I stood, wiping beer from my jacket's sleeve. “Excuse me. I have a meeting with the governor under discussion.”

Shelly laughed bitterly. “Be sure you have it before November or it'll be with the ex-governor.”

Leaving the booth, I could hear Bubba telling Shelly that if she'd treat him to dinner at Pogo's, he'd slip her a hot lead about the gubernatorial race that would get her her job back at the
Sun
for sure.

“You're fucking amazing,” I heard her say.

“I think so,” he replied.

On my way out of the New Deal, I saw Margy Turbot, the woman Cuddy called the best-looking judge in the state, in a tête à tête with Ken Moize, the former attorney general whose decision to quit to run a human rights organization had made it possible for the assistant A.G. Ward Trasker to ascend to the post. I'd always liked Ken Moize. I couldn't decide if he was advising Margy to run for A.G. on Brookside's ticket or to avoid his mistake by saying no. Or maybe the two of them were just having lunch.

I approached them. “Hey, Margy. So the problem wasn't media interference, after all? You really adjourned the Norris trial so you could come over here and drink Cosmopolitans with Ken.”

Moize, recently divorced, laughed. “I wish. All she talks about is Cuddy Mangum.”

Margy patted his arm. “What can I say, I'm a sucker for a Raleigh Medal winner.” At any rate, she cared enough about him to ask me to pass along a message. “Tell Cuddy to watch his back, okay? Ken's hearing things.” Ken nodded at me. “And so am I.”

I asked her what things, but the judge shook her head. “Just tell him, watch his back. And after this trial, maybe we could all have dinner.”

“Sure. You figure the Norris jury'll be out fast?”

She shrugged with non-committal discretion. “You never know with a jury. That's why I love the system.” But we both knew it was likely that Tyler Norris and his jury both would be home tomorrow in time for dinner.

By the door, three members of the General Assembly stopped me to ask about Alice, who'd served two terms with them. I said she was still spending time with her family in the mountains. Her grandmother was getting old and…. I let the inference fade away. The young congressmen immediately began speculating that Alice might actually be up there canvassing votes, she might be thinking of switching districts, maybe even running for state senate. For politicians there are no innocent acts. I smiled secretively and let them think what they would. “You never can tell.” I didn't know what else to say.

• • •

The scheduled interview that Cuddy had instructed me to have with Andrew Brookside had been postponed twice by the governor's office. Now once more I waited in his anteroom until finally a polite secretary floated in and whispered to another polite secretary who then told me that someone would see me in the Havana Room. A third secretary led me through the Mansion to an attractive waiting room with a bay window where a large table was covered with magazines to read while you waited. It was called the Havana Room because another Dollard governor had brought back from the Spanish-American War the two Toledo swords and the huge Spanish map of Havana that hung on the wall across from me. I studied the map, thinking about the strangeness of its being here on a wall in North Carolina, this relic of the death of Spain's empire in the New World, this birth of our American imperialism. The map was dated January 1898. I pointed at it and said to the young secretary, “Only a month before the
Maine
.”

“The main what?” she asked, and when I just shook my head, politely left me alone.

No one came for me, so I made another phone call to Ward Trasker. This time I told his secretary to say I was in the governor's office. This time he took my call. When I told him he had conspired to obstruct justice by disguising a murder as a suicide, he accused me of having lost my mind. He denied categorically that he had wiped prints or altered a crime scene by moving the body he'd thought was Mavis Mahar's. He denied vehemently that he had shot some poor girl in the face. He hadn't covered up a damn thing except the corpse. It was true, he had put a coat over the corpse. It seemed the decent thing to do. If it was a crime, he'd like to know which one.

I asked, “Did you instruct anyone in the room with you to move the body or remove anything from the body? Like a hat with candles in it?”

The A.G. expressed amazement that I wasn't in a mental institution and hung up the phone.

I looked out the large window at the Mansion grounds where old trees heavy with lank summer leaves shaded grass that no one walked on but its caretakers. Finally the two lawyers who'd seemed so brisk and crisp in Andy's office at four in the morning suddenly appeared through a side door, now even crisper. One of them handed me three neatly typed pages. The other one said that the pages were the governor's fully cooperative effort to assist the Hillston police in our investigation of the Lucy Griggs homicide. If I had any further questions, I should telephone their office and someone would be glad to help me. I glanced down at the typescript and read at random:

I called upon Miss Mahar to discuss the importance of her timely appearance at the second Haver Field concert. She arrived in her hotel bungalow accompanied by a young woman who somewhat resembled her. I was not introduced to nor did I speak with this person. The two women went inside the bungalow together. I remained on the terrace and don't know what was said or done inside the suite. When I did enter the bungalow, Miss Mahar was there alone; she said the young woman had already returned to town in a taxi. I expressed concern about Miss Mahar's inebriated condition….

The lawyers waited with affable impatience while I glanced through the rest of the document. Then I ruffled the pages at them. “A, not an interview,” I told them pleasantly. “B, not signed. Captain Mangum set up an in-person interview.” A quick flick of the eyes at each other, superior, amused, before they solemnly gazed back at me. The first lawyer said Governor Brookside sent his apologies for missing a chance to say a personal hello and sent his thanks to the Hillston police for their efforts to resolve this unfortunate matter. The second lawyer said he'd show me out.

As I was hurried along the hall, I passed an open door and, noticing Dina Yarborough, I broke away from my escort to talk to her. She was seated by herself on a silk couch whose pillows she was idly rearranging. Dina's green eyes were always startling in her cinnamon-colored face, now the more so because she wore a suit the same green. She said, “Good lord, are you okay, Justin? You look awful.”

“Sleep will fix it,” I said. “I guess you heard we've got another murder. Carl must be as flipped out about it as Cuddy. And just a year ago they called us, ‘Hillston, A Bright Star in the Flag of the New South.'” I was quoting a bumper sticker. She glanced past me anxiously, then she stared silently down at her long slender feet in their beautiful shoes. I tried again. “You look elegant, Dina. First Ladies Lunch?”

“Thank you. No.”

“Something wrong?”

She appeared to make an abrupt decision; reaching up for my hand she said, “They're going to announce in an hour so I guess it's okay if I tell you. Carl and I just had a meeting with Andy. They're still up there talking.”

I knew exactly what she meant and nodded. “Ahhh…”

She stood and smiled. “Carl's on the ticket. Lieutenant Governor.”

I reached out a hand, then instead quickly embraced her. “Congratulations, Dina. Alice'll be thrilled. Andy's made a great call. But what's Hillston going to do without the mayor?”

She wryly raised her exquisitely manicured hands. “If I can do without Carl, Hillston can. Cuddy saw more of him than I ever did, and I swear if I couldn't play bridge, I'd have never seen either one of them.”

“Carl and Cuddy did great things for Hillston,” I said, noticing that the remark made her take an angry breath.

She nodded solemnly. “They certainly did. They did great things.”

“Let's celebrate. Pick a night, we'll go to Pogo's. Nicer. Pine Hills Inn.”

Now she glanced evasively at the fireplace mantel. There was a plaque there saying a freed African-American named Thomas Day had designed the mantelpiece in 1832. Dina said, “Great. Let me check with Carl.”

“I don't want you to move to Raleigh.”

“You'll miss me.”

“I sure will. It doesn't mean you have to quit the Hillston Players, does it?” Dina was an enthusiastic member of our amateur theatrical society. She was one of the best actresses we had and was scheduled to play the lead this fall in
Measure for Measure.

She touched her pale Afro. “They better not ask me to give up the Players. My hair's bad enough.” I asked what she meant, give up her hair. With the quiet acerbic smile that confused people, she said, “Andy thought this was a dye job and wondered why I didn't let it go natural. When I said it
was
natural,” Dina laughed, “he wondered if maybe I should dye it black!”

We both knew the ancestral reason for Dina's hair color, an ancestry that she and I shared but had never discussed and probably never would.

Her husband Carl hurried into the room to find her. Chunky, bald, pleasant-faced, the mayor was normally so effusively friendly that his aloof behavior now was startling. My presence seemed to embarrass him and he looked stiff and awkward. When Dina said she'd told me about the reelection ticket and when he thanked me for congratulating him, he didn't once look in my eyes. Nor did he ask about the murder at The Fifth Season despite all the confusion and press coverage of the last twenty-four hours. Nor did he mention Cuddy, with whom he'd spent every day of their shared professional lives for the past eight years. Instead, reaching for Dina's arm, he led her so quickly out of the room that she had to twist awkwardly backwards to say good-bye to me. My first thought was that Carl was just annoyed with his wife for telling me he was on the ticket before the announcement.