Murder on Capitol Hill (3 page)

As the first guests arrived Veronica excused herself from Jason and Charles to greet them. Lydia and Clarence were among the first, and after briefly chatting with their hostess they gravitated toward the nearest bar.

“Okay, I’m ready to leave,” Clarence said after
getting a brandy. It was his standard refrain immediately after arriving at just about any such soiree.

“Look,” Lydia said, ignoring him and nodding toward the door. “I may be wrong but I think that’s Mark Adam Caldwell.”

“So?”

“So, Clarence, if it is, Veronica has pulled off a coup of sorts. Mark Adam is, after all, the wayward son, Peck’s bad boy, the black sheep of the Caldwell clan.”

Clarence looked at the young man who’d entered the room. His first thoughts were that if he were a Caldwell son he’d been the product of Veronica Caldwell and a stranger, or Cale Caldwell and a stranger. Or… He looked nothing like the others in the family, had none of their unmistakable patrician features. Nor was he as tall as even his mother. He had a bull-like neck that barely provided separation between his head and wide, thick shoulders, the product of years of ritualistic weight lifting. Dark eyes set in small sockets were in constant motion, like tiny ball bearings swiveling about on a broad, fleshy face. His nose could have belonged to a professional prizefighter. His head was clean-shaven, and he wore an ill-fitting tan suit. The collar of his shirt dug into the folds of his neck, and his tie barely reached his distended belly.

“I knew him,” Lydia said, “before he went off the deep end and joined that weird cult in Virginia.”

“It was quite an embarrassment to his father, wasn’t it?”

“It still is. Veronica says Cale’s never forgiven him. I’m amazed he’s here. I thought he’d been disowned.”

“Maybe the mumbo jumbo has worn off. Prodigal son returns, asks forgiveness of his father. Will he forgive him?”

Lydia shrugged. “Who knows… Veronica got him here, and I can only assume that Cale will be pleased to see him.”

They watched Mark Caldwell go to a secluded corner of the room, lean against the wall and watch sourly as his mother greeted her guests.

“Why don’t you go say something to him?” Clarence suggested. “He looks pretty miserable.”

She did. “Mark Caldwell?” Lydia said as she approached him, hand out.

He scrutinized her, she thought, like a cornered animal might a potential enemy.

“I’m Lydia James. Remember me?”

He obviously didn’t, but went through the motions of shaking her hand. A long awkward pause. Finally she said, “Quite a night for your father.”

“I guess so. Excuse me, I want to get something.” He went quickly to one of the bars and ordered a Seven-Up.

Lydia returned to Clarence. “That was quick,” he said.

“He never was very talkative. Sort of nice, though. I hope he puts things together and gets out of that awful cult. It’s scary what they can do to a person who’s susceptible to control. You’d think after Jonestown and all the exposés, but they go on. My God, even the daughter of the senator who was killed there went and got herself a guru…”

More guests arrived, some of whom joined Lydia and Clarence, but Lydia’s attention was focused on
Mark Caldwell, who’d gone back to his corner. She felt sorry for him, wanted to break away and try again to put him at ease. She didn’t. Along with her sensitivity to his discomfort was an apprehension about Cale Caldwell’s entrance and his reaction to seeing the son he’d washed his hands of years ago.

Moments later, the Senate Majority Leader came through the door looking every bit the part of a successful and powerful senator. His face, tanned the year round from a sunlamp in the Senate barbershop, provided a healthy, handsome scrim for a wide, dazzling smile. As usual, he was dressed immaculately in one of a dozen suits he kept in his office to change to for nighttime activities. He kissed his wife, slapped a Senate colleague on the back and waved to well-wishers across the room.

The pianist immediately launched a medley of “man” songs—“Man of La Mancha,” “The Man I Love,” “My Man”… Guests pushed toward the door to greet the guest of honor. Lydia glanced over to where Mark Adam Caldwell stood, saw that he’d made no move toward the door, that his sullen expression hadn’t changed.

Senator Caldwell made his way through clusters of people and now came up to Lydia and Clarence. “Hello, Lydia,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “Mr. Foster-Sims, glad you could come.”

Someone touched him on the back. He turned, and as he did he spotted his son for the first time. Although Lydia could not see his face because his back was to her, the tightening of his body was evident. His shoulders hunched up, veins at the side of his
neck bulged. His wife came up to him with their other son, Cale, Jr., on her arm.

Charles handed Caldwell a drink.

“Thank you, Charles,” he said, never taking his eyes off Mark Adam. Veronica looked at Lydia, smiled, then said to her husband, “Well, go on and say hello. He’s here to pay tribute to you too. Please, just go over and shake his hand.”

“Why is he here—?”

“I just told you…”

“I’m not sure I—”

“Cale, it wasn’t easy for him to do it. Please, don’t drive him away again.”

Lydia’s gesture was involuntary as she reached out and touched the senator’s arm. When he turned and looked at her, she nodded her head, trying to encourage him to do as Veronica asked.

He took a deep breath, glanced at those around him, then slowly strode toward where his son stood.

Few guests were unaware of what was occurring in the corner between father and son. Lydia, Clarence, Veronica and Cale, Jr., said nothing as they watched the hesitancy with which the senator offered his hand to Mark, and the apparently reluctant acceptance of it. The senator seemed to want to move closer, to close the gap between them, but it didn’t happen. They remained a few feet apart, hands clasped, their words inaudible to onlookers.

The pianist, who’d stopped playing for a few minutes, started again, which prompted an increase in conversation. The air was soon filled with the mosquitolike drone of party badinage.

“Shrimp?” Clarence asked Lydia.

She saw that a small group gathered around the shrimp tree was systematically stripping it of its shellfish leaves. “We’d better dive in,” he said, “it’s going fast.” She nodded, gave a final look over her shoulder at Cale Caldwell and his son.

One of those at the shrimp tree was WCAP talk-show host Quentin Hughes, who was known in Washington party circles for his bottomless appetite for freebies. He’d stacked his plate with shrimp, smothered them with cocktail sauce.

“Hello, Quentin,” Lydia said coolly. She’d known Hughes a number of years, and twice had been a guest on his all-night radio interview and call-in show. She’d never particularly liked him—though she respected his professional talents—but could understand why a good many women did. He was very handsome, tall and erect, with good features and an intensity in his eyes that made people feel when he fixed his attention on them that they were the most important people in his life at that moment. This night he wore a double-breasted blue blazer that was nipped at the waist to show off his trim figure. His gray slacks were creased to a razor’s edge, and a pair of black Gucci loafers had been shined to an appropriately dull sheen. He could, on self-demand, produce charm from every pore, especially when the conquest of a female was in the wind. Women liked men like that, even if they weren’t good for them.

He smiled at her now. “Oh, Lydia James, girl barrister. How are you?”

She said just fine and introduced Clarence, who
shook Hughes’s hand, and for a moment his smug facade faded. “Are you still on the air, Mr. Hughes?”

Hughes smiled tightly, turned to Lydia. “You should come back on the show. You were a good guest, as I recall.”

She shrugged. “Afraid I have nothing very exciting to talk about these days, nothing like when I was in criminal law. The world of FCC license applications is hardly the stuff exciting radio shows are made of.”

“I take care of the excitement,” Hughes said as he crammed two shrimp into his mouth, sauce dripping to the floor.

Wilfred MacLoon, the senior senator from Utah, who happened to have an intense personal and political dislike for Cale Caldwell but whose wife was an active member of Veronica’s board of directors at the performing arts center which, to Caldwell’s chagrin, frequently brought MacLoon into their social life, had already had too much to drink. He swayed as he spoke with a couple near Lydia… “I never could stand Virginia,” he was saying. Lydia thought he was talking about someone with that name, then realized he was referring to Caldwell’s home state. “I was in the Navy there. Hellhole of the world. Backward damn state if I ever saw one.”

As MacLoon rambled on, Lydia recalled the origins of the MacLoon-Caldwell hostile rivalry. There had been numerous incidents during their long and often parallel careers in the Senate that had caused sparks to fly, but none turned out to be as volatile as the recent, intense controversy over the placement of the most expensive and elaborate missile defense
system ever conceived by any government. MacLoon had fought long and hard to have Utah chosen as the site for its construction. It would mean a huge infusion of money into his state, and some people felt that his political future depended on how successful he was in bringing home, so to speak, the bacon.

Not only was Caldwell against Utah as the site, he was opposed to the missile system itself from its conception. Debates, increasingly heated, had gone on for nearly a year; now the issue was close to a vote. Smart money was on Caldwell and his troops. He was, after all, Majority Leader.

This dispute between Senators Caldwell and MacLoon had overflowed into the public arena, had been the subject of newspaper headlines and television news reports. Once the two of them had actually gotten into an arm-waving argument on the front steps of the Senate and nearly came to blows…

MacLoon’s voice was getting louder. His wife tried to pacify him, but her efforts only resulted in infuriating him. He walked up to the ice sculpture. “Right there,” he said, pointing to the right side of the sculpture where Newport News was located. “One hell of a hellhole, but then again, what would you expect considering who it sent to us.”

MacLoon then casually picked up the ice pick left behind by the ice sculptor, aimed it at a corner of the sculpture.

“For God’s sake,” his wife said as she led him away.

“Don’t overreact, darling,” he said. “Just a joke. I’m not, after all, an idiot. Only idiots act out what they feel. Didn’t you tell me that once?”

“I did,” she muttered, “and I’m telling you again.”

“No sweat, my dear. I just thought a little drama might go a long way in a good cause. Not to worry.” And suddenly he seemed very calm and rational….

“Time to escape,” Clarence said.

“Not just yet,” Lydia said. “Veronica would be disappointed—”

“Would dinner at the Adams interest you?”

“Yes, but not so much that I’d leave this minute. Another half hour, please, Clarence.”

“All right, but I’ll need fortifying. Can I get you something?”

An easy way out, she thought, because at that moment Mr. Wonderful… just ask him… Quentin Hughes was putting down his empty plate on the table and in his charming fashion saying to Lydia, “Who invited the weirdo?” He nodded toward the corner where the two male Caldwells had attempted their reconciliation. The senator was gone. Mark Adam was still there, eyes uneasily taking in the room before he pushed away from the wall and disappeared behind a line of guests.

“I’m sorry, but the kid’s a loser,” Hughes said. “Anybody who gets involved with those cults is playing with a half a deck to begin with. How come he’s here?”

“To say hello to his father, I believe.”

Hughes shrugged and his eyes went to the dip in Lydia’s neckline. “You look especially well tonight, counselor. In fact, the best-looking woman on the ranch. Free for dinner, by any chance?”

“Sorry… I’m with Mr. Foster-Sims—”

“Who’s old enough to be your father. Actually, I thought he was.”

“Excuse me.”

He took hold of her arm. “Oh, come on. I was, in my feeble fashion, trying to pay you a compliment—”

She ignored him and went to where Clarence stood behind the piano player.

“Maybe I should start playing again,” he said to her. “Then I could get to attend all the swell Washington parties.”

“Snob,” she said into his ear.

“A privilege of age. You have fifteen minutes.”

“I’m ready now, I guess. God, I detest men who undress you with their eyes.”

“Hughes?”

“Yes.”

“I noticed… You know, I’d never admit it to him but I still sometimes listen to him when I can’t sleep. He’s provocative and can usually get something out of his guests. Basically, though, he’s a variety of rat…” His face suddenly lit up as he spotted Boris Slevokian, a violinist. Clarence had once been Boris’s accompanist and they’d made several world tours together.

“Come and say hello to Boris,” Clarence said.

“I’ll be over in a moment. I want to talk to Veronica about something.”

Clarence headed for his friend and Lydia scanned the room for her hostess but couldn’t find her. Nor those most likely to be with her—her husband, their sons or Jason DeFlaunce. She started to ask someone, when Senator Caldwell suddenly appeared from behind one of the green folding screens. His face, no longer reflecting his earlier ebullience, was set in a
tight angry mask as he pushed through a small cluster of guests and disappeared behind another screen that separated the desecrated shrimp tree and melting ice carving from the rest of the room. A waitress was in the process of dismantling the silver tree.

Lydia looked toward the door. Clarence and Boris had disappeared. She decided to ask Cale Caldwell if he knew where his wife was. She managed only a few steps toward where she’d last seen him when she was intercepted by the director of one of Washington’s semiprofessional repertory theaters full of the good news that Veronica and her board had given them the green light to stage a production at the center. Nodding and trying to move off she saw Quentin Hughes emerge from behind the screen she was headed for and move toward the door. “Excuse me, I…”