The President's Daughter (22 page)

“I left them a note. I told them we’d be back maybe by dinner. We will be back by dinner, don’t you think?”

Simon studied her face, the dark circles under the lovely eyes, the tension around her mouth.

Well, of course she’s tense,
Simon reminded himself.
Over the course of the past seventy-two hours, she’s found
out that she isn’t who she thought she was, her mother isn’t
her mother, her father was the President, and someone tried
to kill her. Enough to wear down anyone.

“We should be back by dinner. Though I doubt Jude will be happy to find out that you’ve taken off with me. I can’t shake this feeling that she still looks at me as close kin to the Antichrist. And she may be worried if you disappear for a day.”

“She knows how to get in touch with me.” Dina held up her cell phone. “Besides, I have my bribe all prepared.”

Dina held the shopping bag open. “Coffee and warm blueberry muffins. Mrs. Brady thought we should have a little breakfast to take along.”

“We?”

“You will let me come, won’t you? I really need some time away from both my mother and Betsy.”

Simon reached for the bag.

“Does that mean you’re going to take me along, or are you planning on making off with the muffins?”

“I’d never pass up an opportunity to spend a day with you.” Simon opened the front door and held it aside. “You didn’t need the bribe, but as long as you’ve gone to the trouble, we can’t let Mrs. Brady’s muffins go to waste.”

A low gray mist hovered over the pastures. In another hour, it would be burned off by the rising sun, which was, at that moment, still easing its way into the morning. The air held a slight chill and a dense warm scent that wafted up from the barn.

Dina stepped past Simon, thinking that Blythe must have known such mornings in this place, once upon a time. The sense of connection was unexpectedly strong, and she tried to shake it off.

“So, what do you think of Betsy?” Simon asked to break the silence as they reached the main highway.

“I think she’s a nice lady who’s had a few bad cards dealt.”

“She seems delighted to have you at the ancestral home.”

“That would make one of us.” Dina opened the bag and took out napkins and a muffin, which she passed to Simon.

Simon raised an eyebrow. “I was beginning to think you were all right with this.”

“If by ‘this’ you mean all the lies I’ve been told over the past thirty years, no, I’m not
all right
with it.” Dina took a second muffin from the bag and began to nibble.

“But surely you understand why—”

“On an intellectual level, of course I do. I know that everyone did what they did out of love for me. But at the same time, the fact remains that I’ve been lied to about the most fundamental facts of my life. Even finding Betsy has been a bit of a shock, when I’d been told I had no family except my mother. . . .” Dina’s voice cracked with the layer of anger that lurked just below the surface. “I love my mother—Jude, that is. We’ve always been very close, and that’s what has made this all so difficult for me. It’s always been the two of us. You have no idea of what a wonderful parent she has been. Mother and father and best friend. Everything that’s happened”—she waved her hand—“can’t change the fact that she’s been an extraordinary mother. But what has changed is that she’s not really mine.”

Simon drove in silence. They had reached I-95 just above Wilmington, Delaware, before Dina spoke again.

“Even the money that I thought I’d inherited from my father was really from Blythe. It was money that Blythe had left to Jude for me.”

“Does it make a difference, which parent had provided for you?” Simon asked.

“It makes a difference because it was a lie, too.” Dina sighed. “Emotionally, this whole thing is much more complicated than you could imagine. The depth of the anger I feel is so great that it frightens me, but, I’ve discovered, so is the love. The bond between us goes so much deeper than even I understood. Blythe Pierce may have given birth to me, but I don’t know her. I know almost nothing about her. She doesn’t seem real in my life. Jude raised me. She’s the only family I’ve ever known. No matter how angry I may feel toward her, she’s still my mother. There are a lot of issues we need to deal with, she and I, but all that will have to wait until this is over. Right now, I’m more concerned with trying to find the person who tried to kill me. And, if possible, who killed Blythe.”

“That’s very mature of you.”

“Are you being sarcastic?” Dina opened the bag that sat between her feet. “Are you ready for coffee?”

“Yes to the coffee, no to the sarcasm. And I think it’s very generous of you to put your own hurt aside right now, even more remarkable that you’re willing to do so in conjunction with Betsy
and
Jude.”

Dina passed Simon one of the travel mugs that Mrs. Brady had filled with coffee.

“Betsy’s been kept in the background long enough.” Dina leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes for a minute. “And besides, it’s time they made up.”

“You sense bad blood there?”

“Oh, you could say that.”

She rested for another mile or so, then turned to Simon and said, “Interesting, don’t you think, that they each look at the situation from the opposite side?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that all along Betsy’s been concerned mainly about Blythe’s murder and all along Jude’s been worried more about the affair becoming public and about protecting me.”

“And which are you focused on?”

“Both. I want to find out who killed Blythe. I want justice for her. And I want to keep my anonymity.” Dina sipped at her coffee, then asked, “Do you have any idea of what my life would be like if the press found out that I was Graham Hayward’s illegitimate child?”

Simon shifted uncomfortably. He
was
the press. At that moment, he didn’t want to think about being the one who could well bring yet even more distress into her world.

“It may not be possible to do one without the other,” he said softly.

“Why not?”

“If we find the person—or persons—responsible for Blythe’s death, how can we can seek justice without the truth being made public?”

Dina turned her head and looked out the window at the passing scenery, her silence testimony that if she hadn’t considered this win/lose possibility before, she was considering it now. In the sun’s light the circles under her eyes grew darker, more noticeable. Simon wished there was something he could do, something he could say, that would ease the pain she must be going through. He wondered when she’d had her last full night of sleep, uninterrupted by heartache.

“How did you get involved in all this?” she asked.

“I’m writing a book about Hayward.”

“I know that part.” She glanced at him from the corners of her eyes. “Why Hayward?”

“Why Hayward indeed,” Simon muttered. “It’s a long story.”

“It’s a long-enough drive to Arlington, I would think.”

“I was working on a book of my own when I was offered the opportunity to work on the Hayward project by Philip. It isn’t the type of story I’m really interested in, but I needed the money and he threw in the additional incentive of a two-book contract, presumably to publish the book I’ve been working on.”

“What’s your book about?”

“It’s about laundering money coming out of South America and the involvement of several highly placed U.S. officials.”

“Sounds intriguing.”

“I thought so.”

“Apparently Dr. Norton thinks so, too.”

“It was a carrot.” Simon checked the rearview mirror, then sped around the slow-moving station wagon that was straddling the white line.

“What do you mean, a carrot?”

“He offered to publish my book so that I’d agree to the Hayward biography.” Simon’s eyes never strayed from the back end of the car in front of him. “He knew I’d have problems getting a publisher to buy my book and he wanted me specifically to write his book.”

“Why, and why?”

“I’ve come to the conclusion that he wanted me to write the book because he thought he could steer me away from the whole Blythe/Hayward affair. And he knew I’d have a problem getting a publisher on my own because I’d already quit my job with the
Washington
Press
because of the book.”

“You quit your job over a story?” Her eyes narrowed.

“The legal department wanted me to name sources, and I couldn’t do that. My editor wouldn’t back me up. I didn’t feel I had much of a choice.”

Dina seemed to be digesting his words. “So you decided to write a book about it.” Dina nodded. “Without naming your sources—”

“Right.” Simon changed lanes again.

“That takes a lot of nerve.”

Simon floored it and eased around the back of an 18-wheeler, muttering, “I hate 95.”

“What?”

“I hate driving on I-95.”

“So I guess when you were given the opportunity to work on this book, it must have seemed too good to be true.”

“And obviously was.”

“You think he was using you so that you wouldn’t put anything in your book that he didn’t want made public?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe that’s not necessarily a bad thing, when you consider the people who could be hurt.” She bit her bottom lip and looked pensive.

“You sound like Norton. That’s pretty much what he said.”

“How astute of him.” Dina settled back again, studied the scenery, then asked, “Do you drive through D.C. to get to Arlington?”

“No. We can, but we don’t have to. Why?”

“I was just thinking. . . .”

“About . . .”

“About maybe seeing the place where Blythe lived.”

“Do you know the address?”

“Yes, I have it written down. Betsy said that she lived on Connecticut Avenue not far from the zoo.”

“Easy enough to find. We can take a little detour.”

“Do you mind?”

“Not at all. Arlington’s only across the bridge from the city. We have all afternoon.”

“Thank you. Betsy said she had an apartment in a lovely old Art Deco–style building that’s still standing. And someday—not today, but someday—I’d like to see the park where she and Betsy used to walk. Betsy said there was an old gristmill there called Pierce Mill that she and Blythe used to stop at. And I very much want to see Dumbarton Oaks.”

“You’ve never been there?”

“Oh, yes, many times. They have the most wonderful gardens there.” Dina sighed. “Glorious at every time of the year. They were designed by Beatrix Jones Farrand, who was one of the first women landscape designers in this country. She designed some of the ironwork gates and the garden sculptures.”

“Sounds like she was a very creative lady.”

“She’s my idol. When I was in school at College Park, I used to come into the city every chance I got to visit the gardens there, which are still for the most part as Farrand planned them, though of course they belong to Harvard now. Their Center for Studies in Landscape Architecture offers wonderful workshops and lectures, many of which are open to the public. I had planned to attend a symposium there a few years ago but had to cancel.”

“What was the topic?”

“Environmentalism in landscape architecture.”

“Sounds very intellectual.” Simon raised an eyebrow. “I always think of gardening as being a little more down-to-earth. No pun intended.”

“There’s room for both dimensions in every field, the ideological as well as the practical.” Dina smiled for perhaps the first time since their journey had begun. “I’m surprised you’ve never been, since it’s right there in Georgetown.”

“Well, I’ve been to the museum. When I was a junior, I took a course in pre-Columbian art and a visit to the Dumbarton gallery was a must. They have a world-class collection of both Byzantine and pre-Columbian art.”

“Betsy told me last night that Blythe was a volunteer there while she lived in D.C.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Isn’t that incredible? I’d been there as a student, so many years later. We walked the same paths. . . .”

“That is a pretty incredible coincidence.” Simon paused to reflect.

“I thought so. It appears we may have had more in common than I originally thought. And it’s funny, too, that I spent all those years at College Park—I got my master’s there as well as my bachelor’s—just a few miles from D.C., and now I find that I have connections to the city I could never have imagined.”

Simon changed lanes and eased past the Honda that had been sticking faithfully to the speed limit for the past several miles.

“Including a father who lived in the White House.” She spoke the words so softly Simon wondered if she hadn’t been talking to herself.

Simon thought of passing the tractor trailer in front of him, but his steering wheel began to shimmy when the speedometer pushed eighty. He eased off the gas and fell back into the inside lane.

“What?” Simon asked when he glanced over and found Dina gazing out the window.

“I haven’t taken a day off in so long that I feel like I’m playing hooky.”

“You must invest a lot of time in your business.”

“Every waking moment, in one form or another,” she admitted.

Dina paused as if something had just occurred to her. “Simon, do you think there’s a possibility that the person who was after me might go to my farm to find me?”

“I guess anything is possible, but they’d have to know that you own your business and where it is—”

“Neither would be difficult to learn in a town like Henderson. All you have to do is stop at the first gas station and ask.” Dina shifted in her seat. “And speaking of which, maybe I should call Polly and tell her to let me know if anyone . . . strange . . . comes around.”

“That’s probably not a bad idea.”

Dina searched in her purse for her cell phone, then hit the speed dial button.

“Hi,” she said, forcing an upbeat note. “What’s going on? . . . . They called this morning? Can you just call them back and tell them I’ll be in touch as soon as I get back. . . . Well, I’m not sure. . . . I’m taking a sort of minivacation. . . .”