Death of a Political Plant (18 page)

An important look suffused Morton’s face as he got up and hurried into the hall; he obviously hoped that any new twist, even Lannie Gordon’s arrival, might provide him a major break in the case. Louise turned around in her chair and saw her. Lannie Gordon was tall, with shoulder-length red hair and wearing a pale-green suit with gold buttons. Even from a distance Louise could identify it as a Chanel. Although Lannie’s eyes had traces of red from crying, her face was smooth as a mask, her expression unreadable.

How could Jay have married this woman, who was so hard and smooth? As Lannie looked into the office, she and Louise exchanged long, unsmiling glances. Then, Morton hustled her away down the hall.

Johnson cocked his head in the direction in which they had gone. “You’re sure you don’t know her? She seems to know you.”

“Only from what Jay said about her. And he shared quite a bit with me. There was a lot of competition over the child, Melissa, but I think Jay was fond of Lannie. That didn’t mean he trusted her, exactly.” She told him of the outcome of the custody battle that had stretched out for years between two
people who still appeared to have feelings for each other. “You might say that Jay won the battle” she said, not realizing the irony of the statement until the words came out.

Sergeant Johnson made a note of it. After she answered a few more questions, he seemed satisfied. He escorted her to the door of the office. A tall man, he smiled down and said, “Now, Mrs. Eldridge, play fair with us, okay? If you find out anything, we need to know, to solve this crime. Remember, it was your friend who was murdered. You should have the largest stake in finding the perpetrator.”

The words brought tears glistening to her eyes again, but she blinked them back. “Of course I’ll share anything I learn.”

“And I think we had better make a search of your house, too. We’ll do that early tomorrow.”

Her heartbeat quickened, and an image of the carefully hidden memos came to her mind. She had done an expert job; they would never find them in a million years. In fact, only a dedicated gardener like herself would ever uncover them. “I’ll expect you. But of course I thought of that possibility, of something being left in our house. I have checked every room and even in Bill’s and my computer disk containers.”

He smiled. “Then we’ll just give it a once-over ourselves; I’m sure you don’t mind that.”

By the time they had arranged a time for tomorrow’s search, it was almost seven. She stepped out of the warren of offices, went down the hall and into the front office. Through the windows, she could see that the dark northern Virginia skies had opened. They let down a colossal rainstorm with winds that whipped against the glass in splattery sheets. Gully-washers that would probably soak the basements of many area homes. She looked down at her thin cotton-lawn flowered
dress. Without raincoat or umbrella, she was going to get soaked on the way to the car.

Clutching her shoulder purse close to her body, she was about to step beyond the shelter of the little porch, when a large gray BMW cut close in front of her and stopped in an exhibit of quiet control. The driver’s side window slowly rolled down.

Framed there was the face of Lannie Gordon. She, too, must have forgotten an umbrella, for her red hair was plastered against her oval face. Her tear-streaked amber eyes stared at Louise with such intensity that Louise shrank back.

“It’s Louise Eldridge, isn’t it?” she said in a smoky voice. “Hop in for a minute. In fact, I’ll do you a favor and drive you to your car so you don’t have to get as wet as I did.”

Louise was impressed with the woman’s civility. And now she had a chance to relieve her curiosity by talking to the hard-driving Lannie Gordon. For her curiosity was as acute as Lannie’s: They were probably the only two women that Jay McCormick had ever loved.

Lannie bunted the car as close to the porch as she could so Louise could climb into the passenger seat without getting wet. It was a sumptuous car, with leather seats, luxurious legroom, and fine music playing out of special speakers embedded in the rear. It smelled of cigarettes. In fact, Lannie had one cocked in her left hand.

“I’ll crack the window,” said the woman, seeming to read Louise’s distaste. Or had her nose wrinkled up unbeknownst to her? With one hand, Lannie maneuvered the car slowly ahead. “Where is your car?” she asked.

Louise pointed to the aged station wagon not far away and Lannie guided her BMW to an empty slot alongside it. They sat there, with the BMW motor purring quietly.

“Thanks so much, Lannie,” said Louise, turning to look at the woman. “And let me just say that I’m very sorry for your loss and Melissa’s loss.” Here was Jay’s former wife, carefully made up and wearing the most elegant clothes Louise had seen in a long time. She could hardly picture the two of them together, but a much different-looking and—acting woman probably fell into the arms of the idealistic young Jay McCormick two decades ago.

“Actually, his death has shaken me a lot more than I thought it would. We were together fifteen years, you know, and viewing his body was the most horrible thing I’ve ever had to do.” Louise could see the woman’s chest heave, and she was afraid Lannie would burst into tears. “His eyes,” Lannie said. “I hated looking at what happened to his eyes. They said it was the fish, sucking.” She shook her head and quickly bowed it.

Louise remembered, too, and tried to restrain a shudder. Just then, lightning cracked outside the car; a huge boom of thunder followed. “Lannie, this storm is making me awfully nervous; I have to get home.” She groped for the door handle, but before she found it, the woman’s trembling hand reached out and touched her arm. She could feel the long nails pressing into her flesh. “Oh, don’t go yet, Louise. It would be a comfort to talk just a few seconds. And I hope you don’t mind me calling you Louise. I feel I know you from your television program.”

She was surprised at that statement. With those long fingernails, painted peach today to complement her suit, Lannie didn’t appear the type of person who grubbed in the soil.

“I can stay a minute.”

The woman exhaled a stream of smoke and said, “I have a wonderful garden—and gardener, of course, since I have five
acres on the river. I watch your show for its sheer entertainment value. A bit of light stuff on a late Saturday morning before I leave to go back to work.” She smiled graciously at Louise, and there was no apparent malice in her words. “You have a most engaging sense of humor and your delight in plants is obvious. But I really don’t subscribe to your organic views in the least. They’re so off-the-wall that sometimes they make me laugh.” Then she took another big drag on her cigarette.

“Somehow I didn’t think you would be organically inclined.” The woman didn’t think smoking was bad for her lungs, so why should she be interested in chemical-free gardening?

Lannie smiled. “Because I’m a smoker? You don’t understand smoking, Louise, and why I fight for tobacco, although you should, because”—she cast a look at Louise’s dilapidated car in the adjoining parking space—“I’d guess you’re a liberal. It’s a rights issue: We’re, in a sense, fighting for your precious First Amendment rights.”

Louise kept silent and tried not to inhale.

Another drag, and then Lannie snuffed the butt out in the ashtray. “Oh, but let’s not argue over that. What I really want to know, Louise, is what Jay was doing in your house.”

“In my house? What made you think he was in my house?” It seemed crazy, but this woman sounded jealous.

Lannie tapped her nails nervously against the steering wheel. “Recently, I discovered Jay was in Washington and secretly meeting with Melissa; I’m sure he was paranoid about the custody decree and whether I’d skip the country with our—wonderful child. Since he chose to drive an old heap, he was ridiculously easy to identify in our neighborhood, where people tend to drive new cars. I followed him and saw him park in back of your holly hedge.”

No, Jay hadn’t been hard to follow. Belatedly, Louise realized the gray car circling the cul-de-sac was Lannie Gordon’s. “All right. He stayed with us for a week.”

“I thought so,” said Lannie. “Look, I know what you meant to Jay back in those old bygone days at Georgetown before the two of us met. You were always the passionate, committed type, the way Jay told it, until you tossed him aside and left him a mere half of a man. I restored his ego eventually, but it took some doing.”

Louise pulled her breath in sharply.

“First, I thought the two of you might be getting together again, except you and your husband both are listed in the phone book. So I gathered he was just a guest in your house. Now he’s died in this horrible accident. And I can tell that you’re the type who would keep his secrets for him now, out of guilt if nothing else.”

“Wait a
minute
” said Louise, flustered.

“No, you wait a minute,” Lannie said in a shaky voice. “I am concerned about Melissa, Louise, and that is all. What I want to know is this: Did he leave anything with you? This isn’t for me, it’s for our daughter. If you have any of his possessions, a Pulitzer-prizewinning story, maybe, that’s what I think it is, since he’s been apparently working around here for months. Or anything else he might have left around, I want it. It doesn’t belong to you: It belongs to Melissa.”

“But that couldn’t be right,” said Louise, shaking her head. “The police would want it first—”

“Why would the police need it?”

Louise looked at Lannie; the woman had no clue that Jay had been murdered and that this was a police affair from now on, nor had Detective Morton apparently divulged it to her.

“Well, if there is a story, there’s the question of ownership by his newspaper.”

“I know the law better than you, and you are wrong,” Lannie said, her voice rising sharply. “You probably already know I am a damned good attorney, Louise. Being in my job means I know when to settle, and when to sue—I know how to sue someone’s ass off!” Looking wide-eyed at Louise, she flinched, as if expecting to be hit. Then, without warning, she burst into tears.

Louise stared at the woman in complete bewilderment. Finally she understood. She reached over and patted her softly on the arm. “I guess you still loved him.”

Lannie nodded, still crying.

Louise felt faint; this was just too much for her to handle. “Lannie, I’m upset, too, over Jay’s death, but I don’t know anything I can do for either one of us. I wish you’d stop threatening to sue me; I don’t even think you mean it. I feel terribly sorry for you and Melissa, but I can’t really help you. Only time is going to do that.”

Fighting tears herself, she turned to grope with the door handle again, and finally got it opened. Quickly climbing out of the car, she slammed the door shut without thinking, though it had only needed a velvet touch.

As she looked back through the rain-smeared windows of the BMW, she could see only the silhouette of the woman’s dejected face.

H
UNCHING OVER THE STEERING
wheel and straining to see through the driving rain, Louise tried to sort out her thoughts: They were as tumultuous as the weather. It seemed to her that Lannie Gordon was grieving mightily over an ex-husband; the old romantic fire had still burned in the woman’s heart.

Why was she so anxious to obtain the story that Jay was writing? Did she, like Louise, believe it was a story about the
presidential campaign? Louise tried to piece it together, and parts of it fit: Tobacco interests and Congressman Goodrich’s opposition campaign went together, as the old song said, “like love and marriage.” In the media, there had been stories of big contributions to the congressman from the embattled tobacco companies. There was plenty of incentive for the industry to support Fairchild’s opponent, since the President had declared war on the industry and successfully fought its efforts to promote cigarettes with kids.

Being a political junkie, Louise knew big contributors got very close to the candidates they supported. Lannie Gordon might be in tight with the Goodrich campaign. Could she have inadvertently tipped the Goodrich people to Jay’s whereabouts? Once Lannie discovered Jay had been killed and not died accidentally, what kind of reaction would she have if she found she had led murderers to her former husband?

By the time she reached home, the rain had slacked off, but Louise’s neck was stiff and her body ached with fatigue. No wonder: With only six hours’ sleep the night before, she had lived through one of the grimmest days of her life. Discovering her dear friend’s mangled body, then discovering his cache of puzzling evidence. Weathering both the questions of police and the emotional meeting with Lannie. And to think the day had started so amiably with the departure of her Perennial Plant Society buddies. It seemed ages ago. Now, she was so tired that all she wanted to do was to crawl into bed and go to sleep.

Though the misty twilight was deepening, she had no trouble seeing the car that butted rudely into her driveway entrance. It didn’t surprise Louise that it was one of those presumptuous sports cars with a spoiler on the rear end that always passed her quickly on the highway to avoid the shame of
cruising behind a relic. She squeezed by it in her bulky station wagon and pressed the garage door control, triggering the faint but welcome overhead light. When she got out of her car, a young man no taller than herself was standing beside her.