Party Lines (9 page)

Zell
cradled the phone between his shoulder and ear and began typing on his
computer. A moment later he was grinning ear to ear. “Holy shit.” Then to
Beckwith: “Look at this.”

The
editor turned the monitor of his computer around so his reporter could see it.
On the monitor was a split screen of Lindsay Martin – one a photo of her
taken at a rally for Clara Faircloth and the other a mug shot of the campaign
manager as a younger woman. Her hair hung in blonde braids and she held a plate
in front of her bearing the words Farmer, Lindsay.

Beckwith
shook her head. “God it sure looks like the same person,” she said. “But the
name.”

Beckwith
spoke into the phone. “Hold on.”
Then again to his reporter.
“She apparently took her mother’s maiden name later, no doubt hoping to escape
her past.”

“Holy
shit, Craig. This is big. I mean, really big. Who fed you this tip?”

Zell
put his head back and laughed. “Now why doesn’t that surprise me?” Another
pause. “Hell yeah, we’ll use it. It’s not every day you find out the golden
girl managing one of the most-watched campaigns in state history turns out to
be an arsonist!”

On
the other side of the desk, Beckwith’s eyes widened.

“You’re
kidding,” she said.

“No,
ma’am I’m not,” Zell said, hanging up the phone and tapping the pictures of
Lindsay on the screen. “We have our front page campaign story after all.”

***

Lindsay
had not meant to fall asleep at the townhouse, and was roused awake at 3 a.m.
by the sounds of a siren in the distance. Glancing at the bedside clock, she
was awake in an instant, quickly pulling her clothes on and jotting a note to
Ron apologizing for her sudden departure.

“I’m
sure you’ll understand,” she wrote, punctuating the words with a smiley face.

Cross-town
traffic was light in the wee hours, and the doorman of her building was nodding
off when she went past. Although it was technically still the middle of the
night, she found it difficult to get to sleep once she was back in her own bed.
It felt lonely, and she missed Ron very much – missed the feel of his
strong arms around her, the smell of his cologne, the confident touch that left
her a gasping, throbbing mass of nerve endings.

In
the morning she and Clara were scheduled to go over a proposal by the Hopkins
campaign to jointly attend a town hall meeting in one of the state’s many
struggling blue-collar communities. It was an unusual suggestion for the
Hopkins campaign, and Lindsay had been tempted to ask Ron about the idea in
advance. But she’d honored their mutual agreement not to discuss work when they
were together and pushed the subject from her mind while they’d been together.
The community was deeply religious, and very right wing; perhaps that was why
Hopkins felt he’d have a friendlier reception there. But with the economy as it
was
,
Lindsay wasn’t so sure.

She
rolled over in bed and looked at the bedside table. Her cell phone was there
and she realized that she’d gone to Ron’s without taking it. Now she picked it
up and looked at the little outside screen. “Eight missed calls,” it read.

Rolling
over onto her back, she began to open the phone and then slammed it shut. It
was probably nothing important, or at least nothing that couldn’t wait until
the morning. She was suddenly sleepy, and grateful for it. Tomorrow would be a
busy day; it wouldn’t do for her to show up at Clara’s office all bleary-eyed.
So putting the phone down, Lindsay snuggled under her covers and fell asleep.

***

Lindsay
overslept a bit the next morning and set a speed record getting herself ready
to go. Pulling on a white blouse and grey skirt, she stepped into a pair of
black heels and ignored the ringing phone as she grabbed her briefcase. The
message light, she noticed, was blinking on her machine but she had no time to
check them if she wanted to get to the office on time.

She
rushed back to the bedroom to get her cell phone so she could check her
messages on the way to work, only to find it dead.

“Great,”
she said, jamming it in her bag. She could always just charge it at the office.

The
sky was overcast as she exited her building. The morning doorman, Stew, gave
her an odd look as she went past and she almost stopped to ask him if
everything was
alright
before decided there wasn’t
time.

In
the car Lindsay rushed through traffic, pleased to hit only two red lights on
the way to her destination. Her stomach growled when she got in the elevator,
and she regretted not having had the time to grab a bagel at the food car next
to the newsstand where she usually picked up the morning papers.

The
elevator gave a muffled ding as the doors slid open. Lindsay jogged down the
hall, determined to start her day chipper and focused to make up for being
preoccupied the day before.

Opening
the door she saw Clara standing there and instantly began to apologize for
being a few minutes late, but stopped when she noticed the older woman’s
expression.

“What’s
wrong?” she asked, a knot suddenly forming in her stomach.

“My
god. You really don’t know?” Clara walked over, looking quizzically at her
campaign manager. “I’ve been trying to reach you since late yesterday afternoon
when that awful reporter from The Times started calling me.” She held out her
hand, offering Lindsay a folded newspaper.

Lindsay
looked at Clara, puzzled, and then opened the paper to view the front page. Her
head swam as she took in the mug shot of herself under a headline that
screamed, “FAIRCLOTH CAMPAIGN MANAGER HAS CRIMINAL PAST.” And underneath that a
smaller subhead that declared “Hiring of arsonist calls candidate’s judgment
into question.”

“No,”
said Lindsay, walking over to the couch. She could not take her eyes off he
headline. “No. It can’t be.”

She
scanned the article as numbness spread through her with each line. “Faircloth
admits knowing about Martin’s past…
.After
the
conviction on lesser charges, the former activist adopted her mother’s maiden
name, repeated attempts to reach Ms. Martin were unsuccessful.”

Lindsay
put the paper down and put her head in her hands, wondering how she could have
been so stupid. All this time he’d been using her, and she’d allowed herself to
be blinded by her own feelings, by her own submissive tendencies. What had
Clara called the kind of woman who’d fall for a guy like Ron? Stupid? Lindsay
suddenly recalled how angry that had made her. But Clara had been right. A tear
rolled down her face. She looked up at Clara, but the candidate was looking out
the window, her back facing Lindsay.

Lindsay
could tell by her posture that she was angry, not because Lindsay had lied to
her. Clara was aware of her past. No, she was angry because she couldn’t reach
her when she’d needed her most. If she’d been accessible –as she was
supposed to be – Lindsay could have had a heads up, could have explained
the situation to the reporter in her own diplomatic way that would have
diffused the situation and softened the blow. But she had not. She’d been
unreachable, and even now she knew she could not tell Clara why.

Lindsay
wiped the tear away. Now was not a time for tears. Even if she wanted to cry,
she didn’t deserve the indulgence. She’d been betrayed through her own
stupidity. Now she was reaping what she’d sown.

Chapter
Seven

Her
legs felt as if they were made of wood when she finally raised herself from the
couch.

“I
have to take care of this, Clara,” Lindsay mumbled as she reached for her
purse.

Clara
shook her head. “I don’t know what you can do,” she said. “But if it’s any
consolation I don’t regret hiring you. I regret that they – the Hopkins
campaign –
is
using you to hurt me. But I still
believe in you. I just wish….”

She
stopped and looked away.

Lindsay
pulled the strap of her handbag over her and turned to face the older woman. “You
wish what?”

Clara
sighed. “The past few days you’ve been so secretive,” she said. “I’ve sensed a
difference in you, Lindsay. You seem worried, distracted and I have a strong
feeling there’s something going on with you that I may have a right to know –
something you’re not telling me.”

Lindsay
felt tears come to her eyes. “There is,” she said, forcing
herself
to swallow the lump in her throat. “Clara, I’m afraid I’ve done something
stupid. Something really, really stupid.”

“What?”
Clara Faircloth’s blue eyes grew wide.

Lindsay
ran her hand nervously through her hair. “God, Clara. I wish I could tell you.
I really do. Not now. Not until I undo it.”

She
turned and walked towards the door, with Clara in pursuit.

“Undo
it? Undo what? What is it, Lindsay? Maybe I can help!”

But
it was too late. Lindsay was gone, leaving Clara standing there steeped in
feelings of confusion and concern.

***

He
couldn’t believe it. Even standing there, paper in hand, he couldn’t believe
it.

Unlike
Lindsay, Ron Sharp had been made aware of the Times article before he reached
work. He’d been in his car, flipping through the radio stations when he heard a
talk radio host mention her name. Quickly he scrolled back through the
stations, expecting to hear another glowing assessment of her political acumen.
But what he heard was a discussion of the scandal, and mockery by one host
being unsuccessfully balanced by genuine concern by another.

He’d
accelerated through traffic, ignoring the one-fingered salutes from other
drivers he cut off in his haste to get to Bradford Hopkins’ huge Georgian-style
house. Ron wanted to reach his boss before the morning press did. He didn’t
want Hopkins gloating about Lindsay’s misfortune to the media. He didn’t know
how the Times had gotten the news about her past, but he was sure she was
thinking it had come from him. He didn’t want this mistaken notion to be
compounded by Hopkins’ on-air crowing about her character.

But
he knew he had to be careful; he didn’t want to tip Hopkins off to his
relationship with Lindsay, not because he was ashamed of it but because he’d
promised to keep the matter private.

His
mind drifted back to the night before and his heart twisted at the memory of
how she’d confided in him, how she’d told him how natural it felt to put her
trust in him. It had been a wonderful night, and were his mood not so agitated
he would have thought with fondness about the spanking he’d give her.

It
had been her first introduction to a “good girl” spanking.

“Do
you trust me?” 
he’d
asked her, and she’d looked
up at him with her wide, beautiful eyes and said ‘yes.’ But there was still an
edge of apprehension in her voice. When he’d floated the idea of spanking her
for their mutual pleasure she’d been hesitant.

“Not
all spankings are for punishment,” he’d said, gently guiding her across his
lap. “Not all spankings have to hurt.”

She’d
been wearing an adorable pair of tap pants with delicate lace around the edges.
The fabric molded to her bottom, accentuating the tantalizing shape of her
cheeks. Lindsay had trembled slightly as he’d rested his hand on her bum,
squeezing first one firm, springy buttock and then the other.

“Do
you trust me?” he’d asked again.

“I
trust you,” she said, her voice soft, sweet.

She’d
trusted him.

He’d
raised his hand then, and delivered a firm smack – not too hard, just
hard enough to leave a barely-visible blush through her underwear. She’d moaned
a little, but had not struggled.

She’d
trusted him.

So
Ron had delivered another, this one a little lower. He’d used his entire hand,
the span of it covering the lower half of her bottom. This time she’d moaned
louder and her hand had started to come back to cover her bottom, but Lindsay
had stopped it and instead had gripped the coverlet to her side, thrusting her
bottom up a little as she did. She was offering herself to him now, and Ron had
murmured that she was a good girl, a very, very good girl.

She’d
trusted him.

He’d
begun then to test her, to help her find the limits between pleasure and pain.
This was, he’d tell her later, important for both of them to know. For purposes
of pleasure, he’d bring her to the brink of tolerance; for purposes of
punishment he’d take her as far beyond it as the misdeed warranted. “Did she
accept this?” he’d asked. She had.

She’d
trusted him.

And
the idea that all that had now changed over something he’d not done cut him to
the core. He wanted to drive straight to her house, to explain he’d not done
this thing to her. But he knew the media would be seeking him out for comment
on the story. Already his Blackberry was buzzing away, but he’d only tried to
reach one person: Lindsay. And she’d not answered.