We sat at the head table with the governor and his wife on one side and the Parsonses on the other. On the opposite side of the dais, Bob Rangle was red-faced and drinking a glass of white wine that seemed to be bottomless. The one time we found ourselves face-to-face during cocktails, he scowled and quickly turned away. I wasn’t surprised that he was finally showing his true feelings, but I was disappointed that he had chosen to show them here.
I had only one Budweiser before I switched to Perrier, but I was as light-headed as if I’d kept drinking beer. I took a few bites of my prime rib, then lost my appetite. I had refused to prepare some long-drawn-out speech. That was part of doing it my way. Still, I knew enough to at least jot down some notes for what I was about to say. My stomach felt light and queasy, and I was wiping the sweat from my palms on the legs of my pants, concentrating on taking slow deep breaths when a waiter tapped my shoulder.
“Mr. White?” he said. “Those men asked to speak with you.”
Standing at the bottom of the steps that led up onto the dais were two uniformed police and a man with an auburn mustache wearing a navy blazer. On either side of them were the stone-faced state troopers who protected the governor.
Lexis saw me looking at them. When I stood up, she said, “Raymond?”
She touched my arm. At that moment, all of it-the adulation, the glamour, the power-began to melt away, and the only thing that mattered to me was her.
I was suddenly struck by the feeling that I’d done something wrong, even though I hadn’t. I should have told Lexis about Roger Williamson and the letter and the girl. Why hadn’t I?
It was too late. My legs were numb, but I was already at the steps.
The man in the blazer and the orange mustache took a paper out of his inside pocket. He handed it to me.
“Raymond White?” he said quietly.
“Yes.”
“Would you please come with us?”
“Why?”
He looked out at the crowd that was beginning to crane their necks. A murmur rose up.
“Because you’re under arrest,” he said. “For the murder of Celeste Oliver.”
11
FOR A LONG TIME I was blinded by my raging hatred for Frank. I would scream his name in the dark. Shout the things I would do to him. Dream about the pain I would inflict. But over the years that hatred settled into my bones, its ache less sharp, but also more complete.
It was a year and a half before I realized Frank was not the only one responsible. I don’t mean that weasel-faced Rangle or even that potato-headed insincere drunk, Russo.
There was also someone else.
Daylight was gone, but Dean Villay could still make out where the expansive canopies of the old chestnut trees ended and the night sky began. He could see better than most in the dark. He could see the small triangular sail of the Laser nearly two miles to the south out in the middle of the lake.
Soon the moon would be up. Until then, his fiancée was taking a ridiculous chance. As if on cue, the drone of a speedboat passed by, heading to the south. No navigation lights on. Another drunken fool or a kid who didn’t know better. Villay clenched his hands. His chubby lip curled.
Allison had no business doing this to him. Taking chances. He understood her need to get away. She was upset about her father, even if she barely knew the man. And the party had been a bore, with her mother droning on about the good old days when their mansion on the lake was the center of society for central New York. Now it needed paint, new window casements, and another bathroom.
He had enough people to prosecute already without having to worry about some errant boater and a criminally negligent homicide. He ground his teeth and turned away, walking up the lawn beneath the chestnuts toward the big house. The last of the cars were pulling away down the gravel drive, their tires crunching. Older people mostly, the kind who still tried to look young. Friends of his mother-in-law-to-be.
He threw his gray blazer over his shoulder and climbed the back steps, careful to avoid the rotted one that was second from the top. The screen door screeched and he stepped into the steamy kitchen. Allison’s mother wiped her hands on the sides of her pale green chiffon dress while she bitched at two of the caterer’s people.
“In my day, to flaunt yourself like that was a disgrace,” she was saying. “People would call you lewd. A hussy. You’ll not be paid. Not out of my pocket.”
The mother had insisted that the help for the evening wear black dresses with white aprons and matching headpieces. This particular girl hadn’t buttoned her collar all the way to the neck. Villay rolled his eyes.
“Dean,” Allison’s mother barked. “Where were you? There are two police officers looking for you. They’re in the salon. I gave them lemonade.”
Villay excused himself, thankful for the distraction. The two city cops sat on the big musty couch with their hats on the coffee table. They jumped to their feet and set the tall clear glasses back on the doilies Allison’s mother had provided for them.
“She told us to wait here, sir,” the older one said, pulling his hat over his iron gray crew cut. The blond one nodded.
“They tried to call,” he said. “The chief said you were here.”
Villay took the cell phone out of his pocket and turned it back on.
“My engagement party,” he said.
The older cop nodded as if he knew and said, “The chief said he was sorry to bother you, but that you’d want to know. There was a girl murdered on the North Side last night, some stripper, and we just arrested Raymond White…”
“Not the one in the paper? The one who’s going to be congressman?”
“They’re pretty sure,” the cop said. “The chief had Detective Simmons pick him up at the governor’s fund-raiser.”
Villay squinted his eyes. His mouth dropped open and he leaned his face toward the cop.
“Lady across the street has been complaining about this girl running a whorehouse,” the cop said. “She’s been collecting tag numbers. Anyway, she saw Raymond visit and leave last night. Picked him out of a photo lineup. Looks like they fought for a while. He cut her throat with a fishing knife. They found the knife under the backseat of his car and blood on the steering wheel.”
“Raymond White?” Villay said, more to himself.
“The chief thought you’d want to talk to him. We’re holding him at the Public Safety Building. The television stations are all there…”
Villay returned to the kitchen to tell Allison’s mother that he was being called away on an important murder case.
12
“I’M GOING,” I SAID, shaking the cop’s hand off my arm. The detective with the orange mustache grabbed my hand and pushed it up behind my back, slapping a cuff around my wrist. One of the uniformed cops pulled my other arm and pushed that back too. I felt the metal bracelet chafing the bone of that wrist as well. They shoved me out onto the sidewalk into the flash of blue lights. Television cameras, already there for the governor, were jostling for a shot, moving in. The white glare of their lights blinded me from every direction.
Someone shoved a microphone into my face. The foam windscreen bumped my nose.
“Get back,” the detective said, pushing the reporter away.
I ducked my head and they put me into the back of a car. The cameras bobbed up and down outside my window, following the squad car as it pulled slowly away from the curb. The Public Safety Building was just three blocks away, and the media were moving like a horde up the sidewalk as we entered the newly constructed six-story building. I had to wait to pass through the metal detector and I stood there next to a derelict wearing tattered jeans and a filthy shirt.