Fatal Conceit (13 page)

“So what are you going to do about that?”

“What I should have done years ago, ask Martha for a divorce, and then see if I can talk Jenna into marrying me.”

Stupenagel smiled. “I keep feeling these little fits of jealousy, but I'm happy for you. I've actually met a really great guy and we're getting married next spring.”

Allen pointed to the diamond ring on her left hand. “I saw the rock, congratulations.”

“So putting on my journalist hat, can I get a little head start on the rest of the buzzards if you decide to lay it all out there at the hearings? I work for a weekly now, and we go to press Monday night and we're on the streets Tuesday morning.”

“How about I let you know Monday? If I tell the committee everything, I think these people may follow through on their threat, but I'll beat them to the punch by talking to Martha and Jenna
Monday night. Then I'll give you a call and fill you in on what little I know. Deal?”

“Deal.”

They spent another half hour talking about old times and then Allen said he had to leave. “Jenna and I are going to spend the weekend at the cabin. You remember the cabin?”

Nodding, Stupenagel laughed. He was referring to a rustic cabin in a lake community called Orvin, located in upstate New York, that had been in his family for generations. They'd spent several long weekends there when they were young, swimming in the lake, drinking wine and whiskey, and making the floorboards beneath the bed creak like a million crickets. “You mean you're taking another woman to our special place?”

Allen laughed, too. “It will always be our special place, just in another time. You remember how to get there?”

“I believe I could find my way,” Stupenagel said, then wiggled an eyebrow. “Surely you're not suggesting that I join you and Jenna for a little debauchery? My, haven't you gotten kinky in your old age!”

Allen laughed aloud. “I don't think I could survive that,” he said. “I'd stand a better chance against a hundred angry Taliban insurgents, not that it wouldn't be a great way to go. But no, I just wanted to see if you remembered where it is.” He paused and this time he grabbed her hands. “If something were to happen to me, I'd want someone to look in on Jenna for me. Make sure she's all right. Would you do that?”

Stupenagel frowned. “Something like what? Do you think you're in danger?”

“No, I don't think so,” Allen said. “These are pretty nasty people, but they're counting on their scheme to keep me quiet. They'll try to ruin me if I say something they don't like at the hearing and count on the witch hunt they can drum up among your brethren in the media to slander me and bury what I tell the committee. I'll be done with the CIA and going through hell with
Martha and the kids, but I don't think they'll do more than that. But who knows, maybe I'll get run over by a bus on my way to the Capitol. I'd just like to know that someone will look in on Jenna if something does happen.”

“I don't like it, Sam, anybody willing to blackmail the acting director of the CIA would probably stoop to just about anything,” Stupenagel said. “But okay, you got an address and a phone number?”

Allen pulled out his wallet and handed her a business card. “Yeah, it's all here on the back.” He stood up and she joined him, giving in to an impulse to kiss him quickly.

“Be careful, Sam, I want to see you and your bride-to-be at my wedding,” she said, choking back tears.

Wiping the tears from her face, Allen stepped back. “Hey, I've dealt with tougher hombres than these people—the Taliban were no pushovers, you know. I'll see you on the flip-flop, Ari, and give you a call Monday night.”

When Allen left through the back door, Stupenagel sat down and finished her glass of wine, thinking about the past and what her old flame had just told her. With a sigh, she got up and sauntered up to the bar to pay her bill. A big, younger man, the sort you'd see in an aftershave commercial, sat at the bar. He hadn't been there when she came in but smiled at her in the mirror. She looked down and noted the tattoo of a bulldog with USMC stenciled below it.

“Jarhead, eh?” she said.

The man glanced down at his arm and smiled. “Yeah, in another life,” he said. “So what's a good-looking woman doing out all alone on a Friday afternoon?”

“Just met up with an old friend,” she said. “He left.”

“Got time for a new friend?”

Smiling, Stupenagel patted his cheek. “I'm old enough to be your slightly older twin sister,” she said. “But I'm going home to my fiancé.”

“Lucky guy,” the man said. “Maybe some other time.”

“I doubt it, handsome, but it's a mixed-up world we live in and stranger things have happened.”

“Damn straight about it being a mixed-up world. Good luck with the boyfriend. If you change your mind, I'll be here for a while longer.”

Stupenagel sighed. She paid her bill and glanced one last time at the mirror. The young man was watching her with a slight smile on his face. He winked. She laughed and shook her head as she turned and left the White Horse and temptation behind.

J
ENNA
B
LAIR HEARD THE MUSICAL
notes coming from her computer that meant someone was trying to contact her and hurried over to her desk. There were only two people in the world she talked with via webcam, her mother in Colorado and her lover.

As she sat down, she moved the mouse on its pad to bring the screen to life. She smiled when she saw the lean, tanned, handsome face of Lt. Gen. Sam Allen smiling back at her. “Hi, baby,” she purred. “I was just thinking about our weekend at the cabin. That was sooooooo nice. I love you so much.”

The little lie hung there in the air like a soap balloon. Actually, the weekend at the cabin
had
been nice, as it always was when they were together, but both of them had been preoccupied. He'd spent a lot of time in his office, and she'd gone for walks around the lake to think. She didn't know what was troubling him—it could have been any number of things, from divorcing his wife to the upcoming congressional hearing. He said he needed to talk to her about what was on his mind, but that it had to wait until Monday. In the meantime, she knew what was troubling her—her conscience.

“I love you, too, sweetheart. I'm glad we had that time together, even if I was tied up with work,” Allen replied.

“That's okay, my love. I wasn't all there either. I'm not complaining, and you were there when it counted, if you know what I mean.”

Laughing as his girlfriend wiggled her eyebrows suggestively, Allen shook his head. “You're incorrigible.”

“Are you saying I'm too much?”

“No, not at all. I'm flattered and grateful that you find me attractive, and happily satiated every time we see each other. Forgive me, honey, I didn't mean that.”

“That's better. I'm in love, Sam. I can't get enough of you.” She pouted. “I can't believe we're in the same city and we're not going to sleep together.”

“Is what you do called ‘sleep'?” he said with a chuckle, then yawned himself. “Excuse me, don't know where that came from, I guess I am tired.”

“You're not getting old on me, are you?”

“Never. I just ordered room service—lasagna—and my old buddy, Pete, sent a bottle of Macallan twenty-five-year-old scotch to keep me company. Should be just the thing to put me to sleep, as soon as I wrap up my little speech,” he said, and took another sip.

“Well, in the meantime, you just be your sexy self for me, and I'm going to record you while you type. Then if you're a good boy, I'll give you a show when I get out of the shower,” Jenna said, reaching for the mouse to turn on her webcam's recorder. She was putting together a montage of photos and videos—at least the PG-rated stuff—to show her parents when she went home to Colorado for Thanksgiving, which was when she planned to tell them that their daughter was dating the director of the CIA. She was going to give him a copy, too, as a surprise.

He frowned. “I don't know why you'd want to record this.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Because I'm going to blackmail you with it someday.”

Allen yawned again. “You want to talk now about what you said at the cabin?”

Jenna shook her head. “No. I'm going to go hop in the shower. I think you need time to think about this, so I'll wait until Monday for your answer.”

With that, Jenna stood and let her robe fall from her naked body. She could almost feel his eyes on her as she walked away with a laugh. But reaching the bathroom, her hands went to her face and she sobbed.

•  •  •

As with many other young women with looks and talent, Blair had come to the Big Apple hoping to make it in musical theater on Broadway. But like most of those other young women, she quickly learned that what passed for superior ability in Denver, Colorado, was not necessarily going to stand out in a town filled with other aspiring singers, dancers, and actresses. There had been a few modeling jobs, but they were always going to be limited—petite, fit, and pretty rather than leggy and gorgeous, she wasn't tall enough or exotic enough for runway shows. Most of her modeling gigs had been for television and billboard campaigns as the wholesome, girl-next-door type with enough curves and playfulness in her blond looks and lively hazel eyes to hold the attention of male consumers. But most women, one modeling agency director told her, would find her “intimidating.” “You're just too much like ‘one of the guys'—a very sexy one of the guys, I must say, and I'm gay—for our Manolo heels and Gucci purses customers. They
know
they can't keep up with you. But I'll call when we're selling Old Spice aftershave.”

She'd kept her hand in the acting business by answering cattle calls for “crowd scenes” and choruses on the big stage and bit parts in off-Broadway productions. But part-time actor's wages and modeling didn't pay the rent on her two-bedroom East Harlem walk-up, even with two roommates.

What had allowed her to squeak by was working as a bicycle messenger delivering important packages and letters between businesses in Midtown Manhattan. She'd been into mountain biking in her home state of Colorado, so she had the legs, stamina, and bicycle survival instincts it took to be a NYC messenger. Something of a daredevil, she actually enjoyed dodging cars and pedestrians as she powered her way from the Upper West Side to Wall Street. But as her dreams of a career on the stage faded, she started thinking about what she was going to do when her legs gave out or she wanted to do more than subsist. And the more she thought about it, the more pursuing a law degree at NYU appealed to her, but it cost a lot more money than she had to spend.

Then Connie Rae Lee, one of the girls she'd met and befriended at a cattle call to be flying monkeys in the hit play
Wicked
, had called one day four years earlier wanting to know if she was available to attend a party “with some very important people who might be able to do you some good.”

Lee was a free spirit who, when they met, made her “real” living as a yoga instructor. Tall and willowy with long tresses of dark, layered hair and stunning blue eyes, she got a lot of offers from men but was keeping an eye out for one with money. “As Mama always said, it's just as easy to marry a rich man as a poor one, and you get to go more places,” she informed Blair when they went out on the town.

Apparently this theory had worked for Lee, who had found herself a rich boyfriend, a big-time political honcho named Rod Fauhomme. “He's overweight . . . okay, let's call it fat . . . and he has a temper,” she told Blair over coffee one morning, “but he's not bad-looking and says he's going to take care of me. We go to a lot of fun events, and we just got back from Hawaii. Besides, he's gone half the time to Washington, D.C., so it's not like I have to put out all the time. . . . I could do worse.”

Lee hadn't sounded very convincing, nor had Fauhomme apparently offered an engagement ring yet. But he had put her up
in an expensive town house on the Upper West Side, paid her bills, and gave her a nice allowance. The first time Blair had seen her after she moved into the new digs, her friend was wearing a thousand dollars' worth of new clothes, shoes, and accessories. She was also sporting the fading remnant of a bruise on the side of her face.

“What's that?” Blair asked, pointing to Lee's cheek.

“Oh, this,” Lee said, quickly placing a hand to her face to hide the mark. “It's nothing. Rod likes it rough sometimes and he gets carried away. But it's all good. He's going to take me to a dinner at the White House after the president's inauguration. He'd take me to the inaugural ball, but he says it's kind of a stuffy affair and I wouldn't be comfortable. So we'll just go when we can get a little more of what he calls ‘face time with the prez.' You know he was the president's campaign manager, right?”

It was shortly after that conversation that Lee called with the offer to attend the party. It sounded like fun, so Blair had said, “Why not?” And didn't think anything of it when Connie added, “You could make a lot of good connections at these parties, so don't be afraid to show off those pretty titties, girlfriend, if you know what I mean.”

The party was in the penthouse suite of the Carlyle Hotel on Manhattan's ritzy, fashionable Upper East Side. She was suitably impressed as Connie pointed out the various movers and shakers in the room, including the mayor, two major Broadway stars, a producer, a Hollywood actor known for his left-wing politics, two congressmen, a slew of very wealthy attorneys, bankers, and CEOs, some with their bored, “cosmetically altered” wives and others with beautiful girlfriends who looked to be about half their ages. And, of course, Rod Fauhomme, whom she'd never met, but he nodded at her and winked when Lee pointed him out across the room talking to the mayor.