“They loved Robert,” she replied.
Russell’s smile suggested that they both knew the truth, knew that the crowd had loved Robert Constable only because they had not really known him. It also suggested something deeper, something that Hillary understood immediately: the crowd loved her for the same reason.
“I better go,” she remarked coldly. “I have a very long day tomorrow.”
“I’m sure they’ll all be busy now,” said the president as he turned and got into the limousine.
She watched the motorcade speed away and then, full of thoughts of her future, stepped into her own waiting car, and headed home. It was ten minutes past eleven. Her mood began to darken as she remembered the call she had to take in twenty minutes. Why was Jean Valette calling her, and why now, the night before the last piece would be in place for what she had been waiting for all her life?
Maybe it was nothing. Perhaps he just wanted to offer his own congratulations. Probably he wanted to remind her that he had always been their friend, her and Robert’s, and that he hoped he could in some manner be helpful in the future. That was it. Everyone wanted to remind you of their friendship once you had a position in which you could do something for them. Perhaps she ought to tell him that it might be best if they put things on hold for a while, that things were a little too delicate to do anything that might cause someone to start looking at what their relationship had been like before. Jean Valette would understand. He was too intelligent not to realize the consequences of making a mistake at this point.
The house was cloaked in darkness. Two Secret Service agents escorted Hillary inside while several others took up their positions on the grounds. Though she was not yet vice president, as the former first lady, and the widow of a slain president, she had never stopped being under their protection. Leaving the two agents downstairs, she went up to the privacy of the second floor. She did not like coming back to an empty house. She was used to having people around, people who worked for her and shared her ambitions, people who were always full of ideas, eager, all of them, to be the first with the latest rumors or the latest news. She needed that, the constant noise, the constant attention, the sense of being in the center of things, but tonight she was all alone. Everyone who worked for her had been at the Kennedy Center, listening to her speech.
The study was pitch-black. She turned on the desk lamp and sat down. It was almost eleven-thirty; the call would come any minute. She glanced at the photographs that covered the desk, a chronicle of what now seemed ancient history, the times beyond remembering when she had last had the chance for what might have been a normal life. She wondered why she still kept them. She supposed it was to remind her of the price she had paid, and how that price had been so much greater than what she had originally imagined. She remembered what it had been like, when she was young and attractive and every man she met eager to have her, and how she had known even then that any one of them would be a better husband than Robert Constable. Knowing it, she had done it anyway, because Robert Constable was going to be president, and no one was going to be able to stop him. It seemed odd now, looking back, that she had never once doubted that extraordinary, improbable fact. She had known he was going to be president, and she had known that there was every chance he would make her life a living hell. She had hoped she might be wrong about that.
The clock struck eleven-thirty. She moistened her lips and began to rehearse in her mind what she was going to say. It was so quiet she could hear her own breath. A minute passed, and then another. She tapped her fingers softly on the desk’s leather top. Five minutes passed, then ten.
“Damn,” she muttered in frustration. “Five more minutes, that’s all I’m giving him.”
Suddenly, she felt a strange sensation, one she could not account for, a kind of warning, a premonition, that something was different, not quite right.
“I’m afraid Jean Valette won’t be calling tonight. I’ve come instead.”
She jumped to her feet, pointing into the darkness at the other side of the room, where from the chair in which he had been sitting Bobby Hart rose to greet her.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Hillary Constable stared at Bobby Hart in wild-eyed disbelief.
“Where did you come from you? How did you get here?”
“What’s the matter, Hillary? I thought you would be glad to see me. Didn’t I do everything you asked, try to find out who killed your husband before-what was it? Yes, I remember: before all the rumors started and the country tore itself apart? Didn’t I find out everything you wanted to know about how much of Robert Constable’s involvement with The Four Sisters could be traced back to you?”
In the dim light of the desk lamp each movement cast a shadow on the wall, creating the illusion that they were on a stage playing to an audience they could not see.
“When I asked you to do that, I didn’t know you were the one who had had him killed!”
Hart had been sitting in that darkened room for a long time, waiting for her to come in, waiting to confront her with what he knew. He had been thinking about what he was going to say to her, what she was going to say to him, from the moment he had gotten on the private plane from France. He thought he was ready for anything, but when he heard this he could barely restrain himself.
“I was the one who had him killed! You miserable… Who the hell do you think you are? Your husband was a liar and a cheat, and the biggest thief who ever held the office, but you-you’re worse. I know all about you; I know all about you both. The Four Sisters didn’t come to your husband, he went to them. He started it, he demanded money, tens of millions, and you knew all about it, didn’t you? You knew what would happen if someone got hold of that story; you knew what would happen if he talked to Quentin Burdick. That’s why you did it-why you had your husband killed-to protect yourself!”
“That’s a damn lie!” she screamed back. “I’m going to put an end to this right now.” She picked up the phone, but Hart caught her by the wrist and forced the receiver back.
“You’re not going to do anything.”
“And just how are you going to stop me?”
“With this, if I have to.”
He pulled his jacket to the side, revealing a pistol tucked into his belt. He saw the smirk start onto her lips, the arrogant dismissal of what, despite the gun, she thought an empty threat.
“You think I won’t-after what you’ve done to me? You think I don’t know how? I remembered well enough when I had to shoot the son-of-a-bitch who murdered Austin Pearce. Trust me, I’ll use it if I have to.”
The smirk vanished, replaced with uncertainty if not yet fear.
“Why are you here? What do you want? What do you hope to prove? Everyone knows what happened, why you had Robert killed. You think that because you somehow got back into the country, all you have to do is hold a press conference and announce that you’re innocent?”
“You’ve already done that for me today, in the Rose Garden, you and Russell, when you denied knowing anything about The Four Sisters. Weren’t you a little worried when you did that? Didn’t you wonder how much Philip Carlyle really knew?”
“You weren’t there. How do you know the name of the reporter?”
Hart smiled at her in a way that made her mouth go dry.
“We were for a while both guests at the home of Jean Valette.”
Darkness swept across her eyes and for a moment she thought she was about to faint. She took a deep breath and dropped into the chair.
“At the home of Jean Valette,” she repeated in a lifeless monotone. “I didn’t… What you said I did-I didn’t have anything to do with Robert’s murder. I really thought-when I saw the evidence, the records of payment-I thought what they said about you was true. But, Jean Valette-why would you, why would that reporter…?”