The Governor's Lady (10 page)

Roger shuffled from one foot to the other. “It was … The snow and …”

“The snow didn’t send them home.”

Roger hesitated, then said, “Me. I sent ’em home.” A flash of stubborn defiance. “Do you want me to call ’em back?”

Cooper met his eyes. “I think it’s an excellent idea, sending them home.”

“I thought you would.”

“But I heard about it on the radio.” She placed her purse on the desk, opened it, and pulled out her cell phone. “Have you seen my new smartphone? Got it yesterday, right after the inauguration. Latest model, all the bells and whistles. Maybe you don’t have the number. Yet.”

Color rose around his shirt collar. “No, I have the number. I didn’t—”

“Did you think it was too minor a detail to bother me with?”

“You were at the hospital. With Mickey.”

“That’s true, I was. Maybe this new phone doesn’t work at the hospital. Thick walls, all those beeping machines. Signal just can’t get through.”

Roger stood there, his gaze fixed somewhere above her head. She realized he was looking at Pickett’s portrait. Looking at Pickett looking over her shoulder.

“How many state employees are there, Roger? Here in the capital?”

“About fifteen thousand.”

She pointed out the window at the traffic on the boulevard. “Fifteen thousand. How long have you known the snow was getting here faster than we thought?”

“Couple of hours.”

“Well, my goodness,” she said. “If I were one of those fifteen thousand state employees, I’d want to be sent home, too. About two hours ago. And it might have been smart to stagger the dismissals so they wouldn’t all be clogging the streets at the same time. Now, Roger, if I’d gotten a call on my cell phone two hours ago, I might have dithered. Or I might have sent ’em on home. But”—she dropped the phone back into her purse—“no call.” She stared at him, then sighed, weary of it. “What else are we doing, Roger? Besides sending state employees home.”

“We’ve got a command center at Colonel Doster’s place.” Doster was head of the Public Safety Department, the state trooper boss. “We’ll stay on top of the situation.”

“And?”

“See what needs to be done. We’ve got resources on alert.”

Roger’s cheeks were flushed now.
He’s excited
, Cooper thought.
This is real stuff, not busywork. The big guys are off running a presidential campaign, and ever-faithful Roger has a real sure-enough job here
.

“So you’ll monitor the situation, stay on top of things, be prepared to dispatch those … what did you say, resources?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll …” She waited.

“Keep you informed, of course.” He started inching toward the door. “Make sure you’re constantly and completely briefed on the situation.”

“Should I be at the command center, Roger?”

“That’s not necessary, Governor.”

When he was gone, she sat for a few minutes, remembering the snow of her thirteenth year, the command post on the second floor of the mansion where Cleve, in sagging sweater and bedroom slippers, listened to reports coming in from around the state, mobilized the National Guard, dispatched help, explained everything to her as she sat next to a table where the then-head of the highway patrol manned a tangle of phones and radios. Her father a ship’s captain with an easy hand on the tiller.

She wished for him now, right here—his smile, his calm self-assurance. His safety. She didn’t feel the least bit safe. Twenty-four hours in office, and her hand hadn’t come near the tiller.

Ezra had commandeered a National Guard Humvee—two, in fact, including one for the security detail. They rumbled next to the elevator in the basement garage, hulking things in shades of tan and green camouflage paint.

“Isn’t this a little overkill?” she asked as Ezra helped her and Grace
into a rear seat and saw that they were buckled in securely. “It looks like we’re going to war. In the desert.”

“Most folks out driving right now don’t have any business on the road. Don’t know what the devil they’re doing,” Ezra said as he climbed behind the wheel. “If they’re gonna run into something, I’d rather it be one of these things than a Ford sedan.”

As it turned out, a fair number of people were running into things. A couple of inches of snow had already accumulated on the streets, more was falling rapidly, and the cars and trucks that were still moving were slipping, sliding, and colliding. Law-enforcement vehicles weren’t doing much better. A police car was slewed up on a sidewalk a block from the Capitol, an officer standing next to it staring glumly at a crumpled fender. At an intersection a bit farther, Ezra eased the Humvee to a stop as a pickup careened through, a wild-eyed man helplessly gripping the steering wheel as his truck spun in a complete circle and shuddered to a stop on the far side.

“I see what you mean,” Cooper said.

Ezra waited a moment to make sure the intersection was clear before he eased the Humvee forward again.

She turned to Grace, who was staring out at the snow and clutching her purse tightly, looking spooked. “Grace, are you all right?”

“Just fine,” she said thinly. Then: “I feel a little sick. I really do hate snow.”

Cooper pried one of Grace’s hands from the purse and held it in both of hers. “Let’s take Grace home first, make sure she’s okay. Then to the mansion. Grace, we’re in the best of hands with Mr. Barclay.”

“I’ll get you where you need to go,” he said, smiling into the rearview mirror. “I was a long time in the National Guard. Retired last year. A transportation company. We drove these things all the time. Big eighteen-wheelers and tanker trucks, too.”

“Do you think we need the National Guard now?” Cooper asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said firmly. “And the governor is the only one who can mobilize ’em.”

She remembered that now, from Pickett’s days in office. Maybe it was somewhere in the briefing book. She hadn’t gotten to the part about the National Guard.

“Should the governor do it right now?”

“Well, you could wait and see how much of the stuff we get, but if you guess wrong, the state’ll shut down. The upstate will be where they’re needed most. Local folks—police, fire, rescue—get overwhelmed. Enough of it and Guard people get stranded at home, too.”

“What would the National Guard do?”

“Keep the roads clear, as much as possible. Likely to be lots of folks like that fellow in the pickup truck back there. It doesn’t take but a couple of wrecks to tie up a highway. Cars stranded, people spending the night in ’em, small kids, things like that. No way to stay warm but keep the motor running, at least until the gas gives out, and that can be dangerous. Carbon monoxide kills people. So does cold.”

Kids, cold, carbon monoxide
.

“So, what do we need?”

“Every big vehicle you can get your hands on. If it gets really bad, power’s out all over, vehicles to evacuate folks.”

“Such as?”

“Nursing homes, that kind of thing.”

She thought about that for a moment. “Do you think the people in Colonel Doster’s command center are on top of things?”

“Well, I sure hope so.”

“Do you?” she insisted.

He hesitated. “None of those folks know much about handling snow, Governor.”

They were past the downtown now, into a residential area of old homes. Snow piling up on lawns, cars left haphazardly street-side.
What if things went badly wrong? It wouldn’t be the people at the command center who got the blame. She would—that, or look totally irrelevant. Felicia Withers would make sure of it.

“So maybe I need to light a fire.” She fished her cell phone out of her purse.

An ambulance was in the mansion driveway, red lights dancing off the house and the snow thickening on the lawn. A gray SUV was parked behind it. Every light in the house was ablaze. It glistened, like something out of Disney.

Ezra reached for the Humvee’s radio.

“Don’t bother,” she said. “I know what it is.”

She took the stairs in a rush, brushing past Mrs. Dinkins, who stood at the bottom wearing a look of baffled disapproval.

Voices from one of the spare bedrooms. Laughter. Mickey. The door was blocked by two paramedics, who emerged wheeling a gurney, laughing at something that had been said inside—until they saw the look on Cooper’s face. They mumbled an apology as they hurried past.

Mickey had a ribbon in her hair. She was sitting up in bed, hands folded primly in her lap, color high in her cheeks. She gave Cooper a Cheshire cat smile. Estelle Dubose, the nurse from the hospital, bustled about, giggling at something Mickey had just said. Nolan Cutter was leaning over a nightstand, scribbling on a prescription pad. Machines—heart monitor, oxygen, an IV drip of some kind.

“Well,” Mickey said brightly, “here’s the governor! Good evening, Governor.”

Nolan looked up from his pad.

She motioned with her head as she turned from the doorway. After a moment, Nolan followed her into the hall.

She turned on him. “Nolan, what in the hell is going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“My mother. Here. Why?”

He squinted at her. “You didn’t know?”

She stared at him.

He waved an arm toward the bedroom. “They said bring her here.”

“They? Who?”

“I don’t really know. Mickey called somebody at the Capitol, and they told the hospital to send her over here.”

“You should have checked with me, Nolan. God
damn
!”

“Whoa, Cooper. When somebody from the Governor’s Office issues orders …”

“Well, they weren’t mine.”

“Then you might want to figure out who’s issuing orders over there.”

“And what am I going to do with her?”

His eyes narrowed. “There’s nothing you need to do. She’s okay. Her condition is stable, so she doesn’t need to be in the hospital. She’ll have nurses around the clock. All the monitors are tied in to the hospital’s system.” He paused, took a step toward her, reached out. She flinched, and he drew back, stood studying her a moment, then glanced at his watch. “I’ve got evening rounds.” He pulled a card out of a jacket pocket, jotted a number on the back, handed it to her. “My cell phone. Anything. I’ll be here.” He poked his head back in the bedroom doorway. “Everything okay in here?”

“Send scotch,” Mickey said. “And a carton of Marlboros.”

Cooper followed Nolan downstairs.

At the front door, he said, “Look, I’m sorry about this. If you want to move her tomorrow—wherever—I’ll make the arrangements.”

She shrugged.

“Cooper,” he said, “Mickey is hanging on. I don’t know how or why. Do you?”

“I don’t have any idea, Nolan.”

“All I know is, she was determined to be right here. And she is.”

She heard a throat-clearing behind her and turned to see Mrs. Dinkins standing at the far end of the entrance hall. “Mr. Lanier is on the phone.”

She made Pickett wait while she went to the kitchen, poured a glass of red wine, and stood for a moment at the doors to the patio, watching the snow. She finally answered, holding the cordless in one hand and the wine in the other.

“Cooper, what’s going on?”

“It’s snowing. Where are you?”

“Manchester.”

“What are you doing in Manchester?”

“We’re at the airport, waiting for the weather to lift so we can get out of here.”

“To where?”

“South Carolina,” he said, his voice impatient. “Cooper—”

“Is Carter with you?”

“He already left. Speaking to a youth group in Greenville tonight.”

“And you just sent him off on his own.”

“Of course. Carter can take care of himself. He’s fine. Not to worry.”

Behind her, the microwave dinged. She turned to see Mrs. Dinkins taking out a plate, recognized the smell of crabmeat étouffée.

“Hold on a minute, Pickett. Mrs. Dinkins, why on earth are you still here? Is the rest of the staff here?”

Mrs. Dinkins held herself erect, fingers intertwined at her waist. “Mrs. Dinkins and the staff want to be helpful.”

Cooper couldn’t help smiling. “Mrs. Dinkins, you are a dear person, and I appreciate you immensely. Now, the best way you can be helpful is to go home. Well, I mean …”

“Mrs. Dinkins understands.”