“What’s the big deal about a Hermès scarf?”
“They’re very expensive, and so beautiful they make you weep.”
“Yeah, right, I can see myself crying over a scarf.” He gave her a look. “Only a woman.”
When he started the car, she said pleasantly, “Did I mention that you’re a pretty sharp dresser? Maybe you’d like to hear about the shoes I bought to go with the Hermès scarf?”
He groaned, rolled his eyes. “All right, I can see where this is all going.”
“Probably so. I’ve always felt sorry for guys. Even though you obviously know how to dress, are doubtless well aware of the effect you have on the female population, you still don’t have the gift of the shoe-shopping gene. No man alive has it that I’ve ever seen. That’s the gene that forces a credit card right out of your wallet when you pass a neat pair of shoes, no matter how many are already in your closet. No, all guys have is the Home Depot hard-wired into your brains. It’s really sad.” She turned the heater on full blast.
He laughed at her. “Another good use for macho guys—fixing toilets.”
“All right, you got me fair and square. Tell me everything that happened yesterday.”
To his surprise, he did. She asked questions, grew thoughtful. She said finally, “The pancreatic cancer, that will come out soon, won’t it?”
“Oh yes, too many people know. Everyone likes to talk, everyone. No exceptions to that, unfortunately.”
She felt tears sting her eyes. Her stepfather would have died in any case. But he would have had six more months to live. Perhaps he would have had a chance, with new drugs discovered every day—
“I read up on pancreatic cancer. It’s a killer, so don’t go there, Callie. Someone brutally murdered him, that’s our only concern. Whatever fate would have dealt him we have no control over.”
“My editor called again last night, on my cell, thank God. If he’d called the house, I would have freaked. I hate leaks, I really do, and if Jed Coombes had gotten the Kettering house number, I’d be doomed.”
“What has he offered you to feed them information?”
“The inside track to a Pulitzer Prize.”
He whistled. “Hard to turn down.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll earn one on my own. I nearly got one last year, it was that close.” She held up two fingers, nearly touching.
“What did you do?” He was driving very carefully even though there weren’t many cars on the road, the sun was bright overhead, and the snow was melting. But the occasional pockets of slush could take a car into a ditch with no warning.
“I have snitches, like you cops do. One of them tipped me off that a child pornography ring was operating out of the Barrington Hotel right here in Washington. I broke the story.”
He jerked the steering wheel in his surprise and nearly sent them into a telephone pole. It was dicey for a moment until he got the car straight again. “You were the one who broke the Cadillac Ring story?”
At her nod, he could only stare at her. “I’ll tell you, Callie, you had a lot of people pissed off at your paper about that. We already had undercover guys in there gathering evidence, then you had to move in with your battering ram. Lucky for the good guys we were nearly ready to close them down.”
“Yeah, sure you were,” she said, eyes narrowed. “I heard about an undercover operation, but I didn’t see anything coming out of your efforts. I got all the evidence for you, Detective Raven. Oh yeah, you guys did a great job—once I cracked it.”
Well, okay, she had done a lot and she had given them a day’s warning, he’d hand her that. And she had uncovered more evidence than they had, dammit. He decided to give the devil her due. “Well, maybe you did okay. It was federal racketeering for the bastards. The Attorney General brought them all down. There were big names among their clients, lots of money.”
“It was the children that got to me. They were stolen from all over the world. They weren’t physically hurt, actually, they were just prisoners with anything they wanted—so long as they did exactly what they were told.”
“They were all returned to their families.”
“Yes, but their lives will be messed up in the short term at the very least. Poor kids.”
“All right, so why didn’t you pull a Pulitzer?”
“Olsen Tynes at The New York Times broke that big political scandal about Governor Welles in Louisiana. Since the Times is Northern liberal, and the governor was Southern conservative, they poured everything into nailing him.”
“So you’re telling me you’re philosophical about that?”
“What do you want me to do? Go blow up The New York Times?”
“The least you could have done was not date that moron New York Times reporter you caught in bed with another woman. Me, I’d have gotten right in this Tynes guy’s face, made sure he knew who should have carried off the prize.”
She grinned at him. “Thank you, Detective Raven. I feel all sorts of warm and breathy getting advice from such an alpha male.”
“Breathy?”
“Do you know, I’m beginning to think you’re becoming resigned to me hanging around you.”
“Not in this lifetime. Well, you’re not as bad as I thought you’d be. Look, now we’re heading into the hills of Virginia, horse country, that’s where Justice Xavier-Foxx lives. I can’t imagine how she can help us, but who knows?”
“Did you know Justice Holmes said the nine Justices were like nine scorpions trapped in a bottle?”
He grinned at her, shrugged. “Well, all the Justices are in the same small area for hours on end. Maybe she heard something, saw something. I will live in hope until the contrary is shoved in my face. Did Holmes really say that?”
She nodded. “Okay, let me fill you in. As you know, she’ll go down in the history books as the first black woman appointed to the Supreme Court. She was at the top of her class at Stanford, law review, all extremely accomplished for a black woman back in the sixties—pretty remarkable. She wanted to clerk for Justice Raines, a noted conservative on the Court. She was recommended by two top Federal Appeals Court judges, none of which mattered since only men were taken by both parties, and still are, for the most part. You’ll appreciate this—she has three women law clerks out of ten in the total count of thirty-six.
“She’s much like my stepfather, usually votes conservative—pro death penalty and against attempts to increase prisoners’ rights. Like him she can go the other way as well—she’s very much a proponent of women’s rights, rabidly against sexual discrimination, and pro abortion, except partial birth abortion, which she is very much against.
“Her husband trains horses, races them, has quite a stud program. She uses a hyphenated name—Elizabeth Xavier-Foxx. It’s interesting, isn’t it, how the two women Justices have kept their maiden names? I guess it gives them more heft, like they really were somebody before they got married.
“Even though she’s black and a woman, there were attempts to derail her confirmation, the excuse being that there was lots of money on her husband’s side, with perhaps the taint of corruption.”
“What was the accusation? That she’d be influenced unduly whenever there was a case about federal horse racketeering?”
Callie laughed. “Nah, it was just politics as usual.”
“What do you know about her confirmation?”
“Well, after some huffs and puffs because she wasn’t staunchly pro abortion all the way, and she was—gasp—pro death penalty, the Senate confirmed her. They knew it was an historic moment. No one was willing to try to shoot her down. She’s expecting us?”