First Lady (4 page)

“On the other hand, I wish you'd marry her. I've had your wedding present ready for over ten years, just waiting for a bride.”

“I hope it wasn't a case of Twinkies.”

“Why, don't they have a shelf life of a century?”

Cuddy grinned. “Maybe Alice'll come home, wake up, and realize she should have married me in the first place, instead of a guy without air conditioning.” Cuddy's grin vanished abruptly. “Well, great!”

I saw the reason for his frown, and for the crowd, and for Carol Cathy Cane's presence outside. She hadn't been there for me after all. Governor Andrew Brookside had just walked into the building. His press secretary Bubba Percy was easing him past the herd of reporters as they all slipped around the striking sanitation workers and through the doors, jostling to stay close to the fast-moving, good-looking man known to everybody in the state as “Andy.” CeeCee must have already gotten whatever sound bite she wanted out on the steps because she hadn't followed the crowd inside. She looked down on print journalists anyhow. She was a personality.

I muttered, “Take it away, Chief,” as Cuddy tossed his jacket over his other arm, smiled, and held out his hand.

Tall, crisp, and handsome, in his early forties, with the deep tan of the athletic rich, Governor Brookside had always had a brightness to him, as if he wore armor made of all the silver trophies and gold medals, bronze statues and brass plates he'd ever won in his lifetime. The more glory, the more Andy seemed to throw off light. Light gleamed from his polished shoes and his luminous tie and his radiant hair as he strode toward us now, his golden hand outstretched. He stopped when he reached us, and the whole circle of reporters stopped with him, leaning into his light. As he rubbed my shoulder, he shook my hand. “You and Alice coming to the banquet tonight?”

“Alice is still up in the mountains visiting family, but I'll be there.”

“Good. And you tell Alice I don't want to hear any more about her not running for re-election in November. We count on her voice in the General Assembly.” Only then did the governor turn his profile slightly as a camera flashed, and reach for Cuddy's hand. “Captain Mangum, congratulations again, see you tonight, you'll be at our table.”

Cuddy said, “Looking forward to it, Governor,” and withdrew his hand from Brookside's. We all knew that the “our” in “our table” meant Andy's wife Lee, the first lady.

“How is Lee?” I asked.

“Lee is perfect.” The governor smiled. “Always. She looks forward to seeing you, Cuddy, it's been a long time.”

The governor's wife Lee Brookside had been born Lee Haver, as in Haver County, Haver University, billions of Haver Tobacco Company cigarettes smoked, despite the warnings, by millions of people; as in Haver keys to open Carolina doors for Andy to sprint into the presidency of Haver University and from there to vault into the governor's mansion. No one doubted that without the first lady, Brookside would never have won that election, a close ugly race against the then current Lieutenant Governor, a cousin of mine. But nothing had ever stopped Andy Brookside from getting where he wanted to be. Maybe, like the old heroes, he had a goddess for a mother who wrapped him in magic and kept him safe.

First Lady Lee Haver Brookside was the personal reason why Cuddy didn't like the governor. He was in love with her. He always had been.

There are two things Cuddy and I never talk about, even after all this time together. They both have to do with love.

One is the death last Christmas of my infant son Copper and the weight of that loss on my marriage to Alice.

The other is Cuddy's love of Lee Haver Brookside. They fell in love when they were in their teens; her parents broke it up and I'd always suspected he'd never gotten over her, even during his short marriage to somebody else and his short engagement to Briggs Cadmean's daughter.

I'm certain that Lee and Cuddy started seeing each other again after he became police chief and that they were seriously involved during Andy Brookside's first gubernatorial campaign. I suspect that Cuddy asked Lee to leave Andy and marry him. Cuddy Mangum is not a man who has affairs. I think the relationship was ended by the assassination attempt that sent both Cuddy and Andy to the hospital and almost sent Andy to the morgue. The affair was over, I mean, not the feelings. Cuddy is also not a man who stops loving someone he has loved as long as Lee. Alice and I used to speculate about what had happened. I had never asked him. But I'm a good detective and I notice things.

“I'm here to see your mayor.” Brookside smiled in his easy confidential way.

Cuddy nodded. “Well, Carl's in a real bad mood about this strike. I hope you came with a box of cigars.”

Cigar-addicted Carl Yarborough, Hillston's first African-American mayor, was Cuddy' partner in what
Newsweek
had called “the booming, bustling, fresh and flourishing New South.” It hadn't been so fresh this morning when Carl had arrived at the Cadmean Building to find trash bags piled in front of his office by Hillston's mostly African-American sanitation workers, who had also left a large sign accusing the mayor (unfairly) of contemptible indifference to his racial brothers in the matter of a 6 percent raise. After the protestors had returned to their picket line, I'd seen Carl in the men's room puffing away in a blue smoky funk.

Andy Brookside winked at the press. “With my family connections, I guess I could lay my hands on a few cheroots for Carl.” The young reporters laughed with him at the fact that he'd married into tobacco billions. Andy started for the stairs, and then he turned, dropping like a flirtatious handkerchief the possibility that he might have something interesting to say to the press tomorrow, why didn't they swing by the Capitol to hear it? His teeth and eyes and shirtfront sparkled as he waved good-bye.

But Shelly Bloom, a young woman at the
Sun,
scooted up the stairs and blocked him: Was Brookside changing lieutenant governors in his upcoming campaign for reelection? Is that why he was here to see Carl Yarborough? Because Shelly had heard rumors….

Someone handed Andy a cell phone; he took the call and gestured to Bubba Percy to handle Shelly. Randolph Prewitt Percy—Bubba to us all—a reporter himself before he quit to become the governor's press secretary, quickly elbowed a path through the crowd and pulled Shelly away from the governor. “Shelly,” he said, “I've heard rumors that you're got Eric Clapton's name tattooed in a heart on your fanny, and it's Hewitt here who's spreading those rumors.” Bubba threw his arm around a disheveled grungy old-timer from KWWB-FM, who collapsed in an embarrassed coughing fit.

Shelly patted Hewitt's back. “Percy, don't you think it's time for you to join the grown ups?”

“Not yet,” Bubba said and made as if to kiss her. “First I want to give you a hickey.” As the press snickered, he moved among them, a smart, conceited man, large and pretty, with peachy freckled skin and just on the good side of pudge. “Hi, boys and girls. Who started this little press conference here in the lobby?” He slid next to Cuddy and slapped his back. “Captain Hog! You announcing you finally caught that Guess Who Killer? About time.” Bubba checked his wavy auburn hair in the glass display behind him. “Here you and Mayor Yarborough turn Hillston into Paradiseville, get us profiled on
20/20
.” He turned to Cuddy, grinned knowingly. “And then all of a sudden Hillston's got mad dog killers on the loose and the streets are full of garbage. Doesn't look good. Make an arrest?”

Cuddy glared at him. “No, we haven't made an arrest.”

Bubba did some loud tsk-tsking sounds. “No? Man, I bet it tears you to bits to have women scared to go out jogging, scared ole Guess Who's gonna give them a buzz cut from the neck up.” The youngest reporters laughed.

“Bubba, it tore me to bits for women to go out jogging when
you
lived in Hillston.” The reporters laughed again. Cuddy then gave Bubba a long friendly squeeze on the shoulder at the trapezius muscle, pinching a nerve until the big man's smile broke and he jerked loose.

Ending his call, Andy Brookside asked us if there was still a possibility that G.I. Jane was a local girl. Bubba threw his arms out with a sardonic chortle. “Well, if she
was
local, she didn't have enough friends, and if she was just passing through, southern hospitality's sure not what it used to be.”

The press chuckled, but without much enthusiasm; most of them aren't native, and for them, Hospitality is just the name of a fast food chain on the interstate. At this point, Bubba's cell phone rang. Reporters tried to listen in as he briskly answered it, but he stepped away, moving the governor off to the side with a nod that must have conveyed a clue as to who was calling, for Brookside grabbed eagerly at the phone. After Bubba blocked the reporters' path, they turned on Cuddy and me. Shelly, the
Sun
reporter who was always giving me a hard time, took the opportunity to do so again. With her short wings of rich black hair, her sharp nose, and huge inquisitive eyes, she swooped down on me like a small pretty falcon, wanting to know why I was busy turning the homicide division of HPD into a local joke.

“Seems to me you're the ones doing that,” I said.

Shelly abandoned me and tried Cuddy. “Come on, Mangum, is murder the only crime you
can
get away with in Hillston? What if there's another G.I. Jane, what if there's another
dozen
, before you stumble over the guy because his taillight's burnt out and there's a woman's body in his trunk?”

Cuddy told Shelly he wasn't sure what her question was, but that if she was implying we were dealing with a serial killer like Ted Bundy, she shouldn't be provocative. Despite the two Guess T-shirts, it was possible the Neville and the Balmoral Heights stabbings were isolated. Out of the corner of my eye, I was watching Andy Brookside, who seemed to be passionately engaged with whoever was calling him. From all the way across the room, I could feel him pouring his (considerable) seductive power into the phone. Then he laughed happily and handed the phone back to Bubba, who continued the conversation with the caller.

Meanwhile Shelly was rubbing Cuddy the wrong way by smiling as she asked if he'd read Fulke Norris's full-page ad in last Sunday's
Star.
In it, North Carolina's eminent “philosopher poet” had charged the Hillston police with vindictive harassment of his brilliant math professor son, a loving heartsick husband who had emphatically
not
murdered his wife. The elder Norris was a “state treasure”: Emeritus at the University, he wrote pretty books of spiritual poetic advice illustrated with pastel drawings and printed on handsome creamy paper. They sold in the millions (my mother had a shelf full), and Norris's plangent voice could be heard reading them on public radio from time to time. Norris's ad (accusing Cuddy of incompetence and bias) had probably precipitated the
Star
editorial calling for his resignation.

“I understand Mr. Norris's reluctance to believe in his son's guilt,” Cuddy said. “But I think we caught the right man.”

Shelly couldn't leave it alone, darting forward with her thin avidity, like a bird snatching at a string. “When are you going to admit you can't catch Guess Who at all?”

“I'm not. There are no unsolved homicides in Hillston,” he said flatly.

“Sixty-five percent of homicides in America
are
unsolved.”

Cuddy wheeled around on her. “I don't know where you're getting your statistics, Shelly, but there will be
no
unsolved homicides in Hillston as long as I'm head of HPD. That's zero percent. Is that clear enough?” The hardness of his voice caught her off guard; his style with the press tended toward the casually facetious, but now he was even jabbing his finger an inch from her startled face. “And hey, about Professor Norris? Why don't we let a jury decide on his guilt or innocence instead of you folks and his father? Isaac Rosethorn can flit around like a fat old Tinker Bell throwing fairy dust in your faces, but if Norris shot his wife, I don't care if he invented algebra and his father is goddamn Billy Graham!”

The huddle of reporters stared at him, even Bubba Percy and the governor looked over. Cuddy caught himself and laughed. “Please don't tell Isaac I called him a fat old Tinker Bell.” Everyone looked relieved as he went on in his normal, wry, easy style. “I apologize, Shelly. But I don't want to hear how you can get away with murder in Hillston. There's nobody smart enough to do that. I will catch Guess Who. I guarantee it.”

Bubba grinned, walking toward us. “But it must sting, Chief, Guess Who just rubbing your nose in it, leaving that toe tag telling Savile here to bring you the body. So can you put a date on closing the case?”

Cuddy looked across the lobby where Brookside paused to listen. Then he turned back to the reporters, “That woman's killer will be in custody by the Fourth of July. That's a promise. By the Fourth of July.”

The reporters vowed to hold Cuddy to his pledge, then congratulated him on the gala tonight. He nodded impatiently. “The Raleigh Medal's honoring the Hillston Police Department, not me. So excuse me, I've gotta go get prettied up. And why aren't y'all over at the Sheraton interviewing our rock'n'roll queen instead of me anyhow? You'd think Janis Joplin was back in town.” A few young reporters didn't appear to be really sure who Janis Joplin was, but they knew Cuddy was talking about Mavis Mahar's final concert at Haver Field, her last appearance in a fifteen-city U.S. tour. Scalpers in Hillston had been selling even bad seats for a hundred dollars each. The reporters jokingly confessed they couldn't get anywhere near the rock star. The police chief was much easier to hound.

Our impromptu press conference broke up and the lobby emptied. Bubba Percy, who was following the governor upstairs, called down to us from the first landing, his voice bouncing around the marble rotunda. “Mangum, you think you're so smart. You think compared to you, Einstein and Madame Curie would be too dumb to figure out long division together! And you call me conceited?”

Cuddy tilted his head, tapped the side of his temple. “I'm not conceited, Bubba, I
am
smart. You're conceited because you're not smart and you think you are.”

“Well, you better hope I.Q. doesn't stand for I Quit when they ask for your resignation, Porcus Rex.”

“You better hope there's a long future in kissing the governor's ass,” Cuddy smiled back, but I could tell Bubba had stung him.

The press secretary knew it too. He grinned. “There's always a future in ass kissing. Happy Fourth of July, Chief. That's, let's see, that's about two weeks from now. Shit man, you'll probably confess you whacked Jane yourself before you'll admit you're clueless.” Laughing, Bubba bounced up the stairs and disappeared down the hall toward the mayor's office.

Cuddy and I stood alone a moment in the empty lobby. “Fantastic,” I snapped at him. “Why'd you let Bubba goad you into a deadline?”

“So meet it,” he said.

I looked at him awhile. “It's arrogance, thinking you're to blame for everything. You know what the difference in us is?”

“Yep.” He gave me his mean smile and counted, touching his key chain to his fingertips. “You've got old money, old manners, old school ties—most of them, I'm sad to say, bow-ties with stripes and dots—”

“I've got looks. Everybody always said I had looks.”

“True. You've got looks, smart pretty wife used to be in the legislature, except she doesn't seem to be around much lately and you don't seem to be doing anything about that.” I flinched. He stared at me a long minute, his face slowly softening. “Hey, look. I'm sorry. I'm in a rotten mood.”

I stepped away. “Don't worry about it.”

“I know this Guess Who mess hit you right when you were trying to deal with…with Copper. I guess I've been hoping the investigation would help pull you out of the hole.”

He almost never mentioned by name my baby son who had died half a year ago. Cuddy, his godfather, had nicknamed him “Copper” for the bright color of his hair and in humorous reference to our profession. Copper had died in his sleep just before Christmas, when he was thirteen months old, so young that friends thought to comfort Alice and me by telling us that had we lost our child later in his life (when he would have been “more real” to us), we would have loved him more. But Alice and I loved him with all the love we had, and all we shared. He was born with a hole in his heart that couldn't be repaired, and his loss left the same defect in us.

I tapped Cuddy's shoulder, acknowledging his kindness. “I'm sorry too. I wish I could clear this case for you by tomorrow.”

“July third will be just fine.” He grinned and headed for the door.

The elevator opened and Sheriff Homer Louge emerged, tall and thick with his flat mean face. He always wore a fresh uniform and a close crew cut. The hair had gone grisly gray but was still in the style he'd worn the night he'd intercepted a pass in the high school football game that had made the Hillston Cougars state champions and made him sheriff of Haver County for apparently as long as he wanted to be, despite two failed marriages and a racial-bias suit against his department by a local branch of the NAACP.