Jane looked at Alex, checking for signs he was buying her pitch. Funny to be on the same team with him, instead of battling for sound bites. Wonder why he was never a TV reporter. Those shoulders. Those cobalt eyes. All that hair. She reached out a hand, trying to persuade him, almost touching his jacket.
“I’m telling you, Alex, it looks like she’s-”
“She’s another Lassiter groupie.” Alex shook his head, dismissive. “Or some political activist. Wants a job in D.C. Wants Lassiter to vote for the omnibus bill. It’s an election. Everyone wants something.”
“But what if there’s something between them? Look at the Cohasset shot. See how she’s looking at him? That’s-” Jane paused, analyzing the photo. “-it’s lust. What can I tell you?”
“She is hot.” Alex yanked off his glasses, held the photo under his desk lamp. His wide gold wedding band glinted in the light. “No mistaking that.”
No mistaking? Was that some sort of crack? She didn’t make mistakes, damn it.
Jane held up a different photo. “Who would wear this slinky getup outside? In October? She’s at least thirty years younger than Lassiter. And she sticks out like high beam headlights. You think she’s just doing her civic duty?”
“You can be a knockout and still be a political activist, Ryland.” Alex slid the photos into a pile, tamped down the edges, handed them to her. “These were to give you a sense of the campaign. Not to send you into reporter fantasy land.”
“Two little words,” Jane said, tucking the photos into her tote bag. “Monica Lewinsky.”
“Three little words,” Alex replied. “Leave it alone.”
“But-”
“Jane. Listen to your editor. Don’t go near this in print. This close to the election, it’s ethical quicksand. And if he’s having an affair? It’s hardly even news. They all do it.”
“But-” But Alex was ignoring her, swiping pages on his iPhone and almost turning his back. Dismissed. Fine. She had listened to him, exactly as he asked. But if “they all do it”? That simply confirmed there was a story. She was determined to find it.
4
“Jimmy never knew him.” Kenna made an infinitesimal adjustment to the photo on the polished mahogany fireplace mantel, caressing it for a moment as she spoke. “He was a month from coming home.”
The black-framed photograph of the marine, dark curly hair, desert fatigues, squinting into the sunshine, held the place of honor in the cozy Deverton living room. A folded American flag in a stark wooden box sat next to it.
“You must have been so proud of your…” Lassiter hesitated.
“Husband.” Kenna finished the sentence, slowly sliding her hands into her back pockets, the toe of her silver ballet flat tracing a pattern in the pile of the creamy shag rug. A blond curl escaped from the ribbon, fell across one cheek. She looked at Lassiter from under her lashes.
“Yes. I still think of James every day. Jimmy was less than a year old when it happened. Three years later, I’m still working on explaining it to him. Why he doesn’t have a father.”
“You-,” Lassiter began.
She turned to Lassiter, earnest. “No, please, this isn’t about me. Or even Jimmy.” She gestured through an archway toward a toy-littered playroom. “He’s happy entertaining himself with his trucks. Today is about you. And your campaign, Governor.”
“Owen,” he said.
Kenna agreed, with a shy smile, then tapped her silver-linked watch. “I believe you said your schedule allowed fifteen minutes here, Owen. That means only twelve minutes left for you to win me over.”
“May I speak to Mrs. Lassiter, please? This is Jane Ryland at… the Register.” The new title snagged her. “Sure, I’ll hold. I’m following up on the interview request from this morning.”
About six hours ago.
The scruffy chair rattled over the murky once-gray carpeting as Jane swiveled to get comfortable at her new desk. Her half of her new desk.
Tuck-was he the flannel-shirted surfer-looking guy in the photo pinned to the peeling corkboard?-had graciously cleared off one of three adjustable wooden bookshelves and emptied one of four battered metal desk drawers. Someone’s idea of sharing. He’d scrawled a note on a Post-it pad: “Welcome, Roomie.” Someone’s idea of camaraderie.
She thought of her old office at Channel 11. Sleek built-in corner shelves holding her kept-from-J-school tattered reference books. Lighted mirror. Huge bulletin board covered with dangling plastic-sleeved press passes, happy snaps, and souvenir campaign buttons. Mike the mailroom guy delivering fan letters, the occasional skeevy plea from a creepy admirer, sometimes even rants from hostile viewers. After the trial, she’d gotten a few particularly unpleasant ones, ridiculous, but she’d told Jake about them, just in case. Where’s the mailroom here, anyway? Back then, she’d had a door that closed. And locked.
Good-bye to that. This was her new domain. Fabric-covered cubicles. Tops of heads of strangers. Fragrance of aging coffee. Buzzing tubes of fluorescent lights. Half an office.
Now some huffy press assistant was asking, could she take a message?
“No,” Jane replied. “I prefer to talk to Mrs. Lassiter directly. Do you know when she’ll be available? And wouldn’t it be better if she took a break, as you called it, after the election?”
Silence. Then a tinny Sousa march as someone hit the Hold button.
Slipping the phone between her cheek and shoulder, Jane typed her password into the coffee-smudged beige computer on the desk, puffed the dust from the monitor. She pushed aside a haphazard stack of Tuck’s file folders, the one on top marked LONGFELLOW BRIDGE, and clicked into the Register’s Web site. The front page of the latest edition appeared on the screen.
The “hold” music stopped.
“Jane?” The new voice was soothing, conciliatory. Sheila King introduced herself.
Another press secretary. And soon after, yet another refusal of the interview.
“Sheila? I’m confused.” Jane leaned back in her chair, the heels of her boots stretching past the cubicle divider. “I’m simply looking for the standard-issue candidate’s-wife interview. No surprises, no big deal. Just, hey, how ya doin’. How goes the campaign.”
Jane stared at the dingy ceiling tiles as the press secretary spun out excuses and double-talk. Give me a break. She snapped her chair upright and clicked down the Register’s online front page.
The main headline, byline Tucker Cameron, read POLICE CONTINUE TO DENY SERIAL KILLINGS. Below that, a Tuck sidebar, POLICE INSIST NO “BRIDGE KILLER.” My elusive deskmate is getting some big ink. She clicked on “Politics.” There, the headline read GABLE GAINS IN POLLS, LASSITER LAGGING. Maybe Alex was on to something.
“No, you listen,” Jane said into the phone. “You’re telling me Moira Lassiter’s ‘not available’? ‘Not now. Not tomorrow. Not next week.’ That sounds a lot like ‘not ever.’ Might I ask why?”
“Dump truck. Box truck. And what’s this one?” Lassiter had folded his soft charcoal suit jacket over the back of the overstuffed couch and sat on the living room floor, legs akimbo, surrounded by a convoy of miniature vehicles.