Murder on Capitol Hill (10 page)

***

Outside, a heavyset man wearing a dark suit sat in a dirty, gunmetal gray sedan. He looked down at a steno pad on his lap on which he’d noted the time they’d arrived at the apartment and the time Lydia had said, “
I want to stay with you tonight
.” He adjusted a knob on a powerful receiver slung beneath the automobile’s dashboard that was tuned to an FM signal broadcast through a tiny microphone concealed in Foster-Sims’s bedroom. Silence. The man stretched, scratched at his belly. He looked at his watch. It would be a long night, and he hoped they would wake up and say something else, anything else, before it ended, if only to break the monotony. That was what he disliked most about these assignments, the monotony, and the strain on his hemorrhoids from sitting all night.

Quentin Hughes walked briskly through the terminal at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. His flight from Des Moines had been delayed, and he had only twenty minutes to make his connection to Washington.

He stopped at a wall phone, gave the operator his credit card number and waited for his call to go through. Christa, his producer, picked up the page at WCAP.

“I’ve only a minute, anything I should know about? Any calls?”

“Lots of them. A Ginger Johnson called… she’s from the Senate committee investigating the Caldwell murder, says she’s the special counsel’s chief researcher. She’d like to talk to you.”

“Anybody else?”

“Nothing that can’t wait.”

“I have to go. I’ll probably be there just in time for the show.”

He picked up a small leather overnight bag from the floor. An eight-by-eight-inch package wrapped in plain brown paper had never left its secure spot beneath his arm. He hugged it even closer as he headed for the departure gate.

“I can put that package in the overhead rack,” a flight attendant said once they were aloft.

Hughes shook his head. “No, thanks, I’ll keep it with me.”

She looked at him more closely. “Are you Quentin Hughes?”

“Yup.”

“I’ve seen you on TV.”

“You live in Washington?”

“Uh-huh. I’ve heard you on the radio too.”

“Ears and eyes check out. How about the rest of you?”

“Everything works.” She didn’t smile when she said it. “Excuse me, I have other passengers.”

She provocatively ignored him throughout the flight, which had its desired effect. He liked her looks—medium height with dark brown hair and ultra-white, as the ads said, teeth that she frequently displayed, a little full in the hips but years away from that becoming a problem. As they prepared to land at National Airport she stood next to him. “Two whole days off. I think I’ll celebrate.”

“With anybody in particular?”

“Not yet.”

“Discuss it at dinner?”

“A girl has to eat.” Moments later she returned and handed him a slip of paper on which she’d written her address and phone number….

“I’ll drive you home,” he said. “Time’s a problem for me, I’m afraid. I’ve got a show to do tonight.”

He arrived at the studio at 11:45. He and the flight attendant… he still thought of her job as “stewardess”… had ordered in Chinese food and had
lingered in her small apartment until he’d had to leave. He told her he’d call the next day but knew he wouldn’t.

He lingered for a few minutes after the show with the departing guest, a professor of geology at George Washington University. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Christa scooping up paraphernalia from the table, including the package he’d carried with him from Des Moines, and that had sat next to the microphone throughout the program.

“Don’t touch that,” he said from across the studio.

“Pardon
me
. What’s in it, a bomb?”

He excused himself from the professor, grabbed up the package and went to his office. Christa followed. “I was cleaning up, that’s all,” she said. “What’s so important about that package, Quentin?”

“Nothing… something personal.” He glanced down at a slip of paper on which Ginger Johnson’s message had been recorded. “Am I supposed to call her back?”

“Yes, as soon as possible.”

He put the paper in his jacket pocket. “What are you doing now?” he asked.

“Home to bed, like any good little girl about Washington.”

“I’ll come with you.”

She felt a distinct twinge of displeasure… anger, even… at being so taken for granted, but a rush of expectation, willy-nilly, went with it. And in a way she was flattered. Obviously he wasn’t in the mood for the mindless young woman he’d been living with…

She fixed him eggs the way he liked, loosely scrambled,
no butter, while he took a shower. She noticed that the package wasn’t in the bedroom. He came out of the bathroom wearing a robe he’d kept there for years, and carrying the package beneath his arm. He sprawled out on the bed and waited for her to bring the tray with his eggs. She did, then snuggled in beside him. “Why the hurry-up trip to Des Moines, Quentin?”

He talked between bites. “To see my mother, she hasn’t been feeling so hot…”

“Oh? And she sounded so strong last week when she called—”

“Forget it, Christa… It was a good show tonight, huh?”

She punched him on the arm lightly. “It always is, and you know it.”

“Yeah, right… Hey, I’m really beat, Christa, okay? Wake me at eleven. Big day tomorrow…”

She reached for him beneath the folds of his robe, but he turned his back. She could wait. She removed the tray and watched television in the living room until eleven, then woke him. He rubbed his eyes, yawned and pulled her down on top of him. Damn him, it was worth waiting for….

***

An hour later, Ginger Johnson received a call from Quentin Hughes. “Thanks for calling back,” she said, then went on to tell him about her role with the committee and her need to talk with him about what he’d observed at the Caldwell party, and to see whether his long association with the family might provide some insight into the murder.

“I’ve been through all this with the MPD—”

“I know that, but Ms. James thought—”

“How is she?”

“Fine, just fine. Really, Mr. Hughes, I’d only need an hour of your time.”

“All right. How about dinner?”

“I was thinking of—”

“That’s the only time I’m free for the next six months.”

“Well, if that’s the case, I suppose I’ll have to work overtime. Any preference in restaurants?”

“Is the committee buying?”

“I suppose.”

“Good, make it Petitto’s, on Connecticut, Northwest. See you there at seven.”

Ginger reported her conversation with Hughes to Lydia. “Dinner? Protect your flanks, he’s a dedicated womanizer.”

“By me that’s not all bad, Lydia. The way things are going… or not going… with Harold.”

“Forewarned is… Did you ask him about getting the videotape of his last interview with Senator Caldwell?”

“I didn’t have a chance but I’ll bring it up at dinner. You said you wanted to discuss the Jimmye McNab murder before I interviewed Hughes.”

Lydia nodded. “The rumor is that Jimmye and Hughes had an affair. That wouldn’t be so unusual, but some people say she represented one of the few real, two-way relationships he’s ever had. I’ll tell you what I know at lunch. Come on, my treat.”

***

As Lydia and Ginger left the office to go to lunch, Quentin Hughes entered his apartment in the Watergate,
placed the brown package in a fireproof, locked chest in the bottom of a closet and returned the key to its hiding place on a nail behind the refrigerator. He lay back on the couch, kicked off his shoes and thought about the last twenty-four hours. After a while he got up and called his mother in Des Moines.

“I was worried about you,” she said. “You said you’d call when you got home safe. You know I hate airplanes.”

“Yeah, I know, Momma, but I got busy. It was good seeing you.”

“You don’t visit enough.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I’ll have more time in a couple of months. Thanks for keeping the package safe.”

“I did just like you told me. I kept it under all the blankets in the closet and never told nobody it was here. I don’t even ask anymore what’s in it. That’s your business, I guess. Thanks for the money. It costs so much to heat the house these days. I called the furnace man but he said—”

“I have to run, Momma. Thanks again. I’ll call soon.”

“You say that but you never do, son, except when you need somethin’.”

“Goodbye, Momma.”

Now he slept until Christa called him at five. He showered, shaved and left for his dinner engagement with Ginger Johnson, wondering as he drove to the restaurant what she looked like. All right, so he was a rat… but at least he liked women, which was more than you could say about most of the men in Washington.

Although Lydia had the power to issue subpoenas, she chose to make one final effort to obtain Horace Jenkins’s voluntary cooperation at the Washington MPD. She called and asked to see him. Evidently she caught him in a good mood because he immediately invited her to visit his office at her convenience….

“What can I do for you, Lydia?” Jenkins asked after she’d settled in the green vinyl chair and was served coffee by a clerk. Good and hot. Jenkins and the MPD had their points.

“Tell me what sort of progress you’re making in the Caldwell case.” She sipped the coffee.

“Happy to oblige. Let’s see, we’ve finally interviewed everybody who was at the party.”

“And?”

“And we’ve ruled out about half.”

“On what basis?”

“Instinct, connection or lack of it to the deceased, known attitudes about him, proximity to where he got it, witnesses who said somebody was with them when it happened, that sort of thing. How’s the coffee?”

“Delicious.”

“Well, we public servants aim to please… I suppose you want to know who’s still on the list.”

“I suppose.”

He called out to a clerk to bring him the latest Caldwell file, looked across the desk and smiled. “That’s a nice dress you’re wearing. I wish my ever-loving wife had one like it…” He shrugged. “She’s getting a little thick through the middle, if you know what I mean. Happens, I guess, to women.”

“Men, too,” Lydia said.

He glanced down at his waist and nodded. “Well, it’s different too. I saw a play once where somebody says that men get better looking as they get older, and that women get to look more like the men.”

“What was the name of the play?”

He shrugged. “I never can keep them straight.”

The clerk brought in the file, and Jenkins handed Lydia six typewritten pages from it.

“Mind if I read it now?” she asked.

“When else? It’s not leaving here.”

She dropped the papers on the desk and leaned forward. “Why do we have to go through this all the time? I don’t want to use the committee’s subpoena powers, but you keep forcing the issue.”

“Department policy, Lydia, and you know it.”

“You won’t make me a copy?”

He winced, placed his hand over his heart. “What do you want to do, Lydia, blow my pension?”

She said nothing, just sat there and stared.

He removed his hand from his chest. “All right, all right, I’ll give you a copy.” He opened the file folder and handed her a Xerox of the original she held in her hands. It was obvious that he’d intended all along
to give it to her but was going to drag out the process. No easy victories with Jenkins.

“I’d still like to look at it here,” she said.

“Be my guest.”

She quickly scanned the list, and recognized many of the names, including both Caldwell sons; Veronica Caldwell; Jason DeFlaunce; Quentin Hughes; Caldwell’s aide, Richard Marvis; Boris Slevokian; Charles, the assistant Senate restaurant manager; various members of the Caldwell Performing Arts Center’s board of directors; Senator Wilfred MacLoon and his wife; the pianist who’d played at the party and Clarence Foster-Sims.

“Some of these names are ridiculous,” she said.

He puffed up one cheek and ran a finger around the perimeter of his ear. “Tell me why?”

“Clarence Foster-Sims, Boris Slevokian, the piano player?”

“What’s the matter, Lydia, you got a thing for over-aged musicians?”

“I won’t say what I’m thinking,” she said. “Veronica Caldwell? Now, why would she kill her husband?”

“I didn’t say everybody on that list necessarily had a reason to do him in. All I said was that this list narrows down the possibilities. Everybody on it was
un
-accounted for at the time he was killed… Okay, so you’ve got the list. What next?”

“The transcripts of the interviews you did with everyone at the party.”

“Why everybody? We already cut the list in half.”

“That’s right,
you
did. I haven’t had a chance to make those same decisions.”

“That’s not my problem, Lydia. What you want is for the MPD to do your work. You want interviews? Then grow your own.”

She sighed and pulled the hem of her dress down a little lower over her knees. He took his eyes from them and focused on something behind her. “Look, Chief,” she said, “I don’t understand why you’re viewing me and the committee as adversaries. It seems to me that a lot of money and time could be saved by sharing what we have. Doesn’t that make sense?”

“Sure, if you had something to share. Have you?”

“I hope to soon. We’re beginning to follow up leads and ideas. I have a small staff. We’ll do all we can, but your help would make things much easier. Why won’t you cooperate?”

“Because it’s one-sided, Lydia. More than that, this department is under the gun from everybody and his brother. Somebody gets killed in D.C. and we’re supposed to solve the crime. If we don’t, people say we’re bums. Nobody likes to be called a bum, never mind being one. Add on that the victim is a senator and everything gets magnified a hundred times. You remember the McNab case? Two years and nothing, not a damn lead. Did you read the column in the paper a couple of days ago? The hotshot who wrote it all of a sudden is Sherlock Holmes, and he claims there must be a connection between Caldwell and McNab.”

She was glad he’d brought up the subject of Jimmye McNab. “Well, isn’t there a possible connection?” she asked. “After all, Senator Caldwell raised Jimmye McNab from infancy—”