The Scandal and Carter O'Neill (2 page)

Jim Blackwell lifted his cell phone and snapped a shot of the pregnant elf on the chair.

“Oh, crap,” Amanda said.

“I’ve never seen this woman in my life,” he said to Amanda and to the crowd.

Elf girl shook her head and got off the chair. “I knew you’d say that,” she whispered, convincingly heartbroken.

Thank God, the little liar started to walk away.

“You need to go after her,” Amanda said, furiously whispering in his ear.

“Are you nuts?”

Amanda pointed to Jim Blackwell, who was writing everything down. “Get to the bottom of it, before he does,” she said. “We can’t let that guy get the drop on us any more than he has.”

Amanda was right. He pushed his notes into her hand, and she immediately stepped forward and began spinning the situation, but it was like waving a tissue in front of a bull. Carter felt every eye, especially Jim Blackwell’s, on his back as he approached the girl.

He caught up with her at the front door and put one hand under her elbow. Carefully, so it didn’t look as if he was manhandling her, he spun her around and led her back around toward the pool, and the second exit onto an alley, where things would be less busy.

“I’m sorry,” she said right away, her voice breathy. “Really, really sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“About what?” he snapped. “Ruining my career?”

“Getting your attention.”

“Really? Nothing but accusing a total stranger of leaving you knocked up and alone?”

“You just kept ignoring me. Which, may I say, was pretty rude.”

“Don’t talk,” he said. “Don’t say one more word.”

“Okay,” she said quickly. “Right. I’ll shut up.” The silence lasted for all of ten seconds, in which Carter recognized the delicious smell coming off the woman. Ginger cookies. Weird. “Hey, sorry, I know I’m supposed to keep quiet, but could you just ease up on the grip?” she muttered. “And slow down—you’re like ten feet taller than me.”

It was true. She barely came up to his shoulder and Carter realized he was practically dragging the woman. He didn’t even want to imagine what kind of headline that would create, so he slowed down.

He even managed to wave at Mrs. Vogler as if this were all normal, all part of the plan, but she wasn’t buying it—she watched, slack-jawed.

He punched open the door to the pool and led her into the giant cavern. As soon as the door shut he dropped her arm, still walking toward the side door onto the alley. Trying to control his suddenly rampaging anger.

“This place really is in bad shape,” she said, staring into the empty tiled hole that used to be a pool. “You sure it’s going to cost less to rebuild? That seems counterintuitive.”

He turned back and looked at her, the pregnant pixie who might have just created the worst scandal to hit this administration, and she was gazing into the deep end.

She must have caught a whiff of his fury because she straightened and managed to look like a very contrite pregnant pixie. Her hands fiddled with the edges of her coat. “I’m sorry,” she said, waving her hand behind her. “About all that.”

“Why the hell did you lie?” he asked. “Do you even know what you’ve done?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Try to explain it,” he breathed, barely keeping it together.

“Let’s go outside,” she said, stepping by him. She gave him a wide, nervous berth, but he still smelled ginger and sugar. Sweet and spicy.

He hit the doors under the unlit and cracked exit sign and led her into the bright warmth of midday. He yanked at his tie.

“Is this a medical situation?” he asked. “Are you off your medication, or escaped from the psych ward?”

The woman was silent, scanning the alley as if searching for someone.

“Do I need to call the cops?” he asked, and that got her attention.

“No,” she said quickly. “No cops. I was told—” She blinked big green eyes, and then shut up.

“Told what? By who?” he asked, his voice hard.

“Whom,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry?”

“By…ah…whom? It’s an object-subject…” She blinked again, the pretty green eyes like pine trees in sunlight. “I’ll shut up.”

He stepped up to her and looked down at her glossy black hair. “Unless you give me one reasonable answer right now, there will be cops and you will be in more trouble than you can possibly handle.”

“A woman gave me a thousand dollars to get you out here alone,” she blurted.

Carter blinked, speechless.

“But I don’t know where she is.” Pixie looked around again.

“What woman?” he finally asked.

“I don’t know her name,” she said. “She was blond. Pretty.”

Carter stepped back. No, he thought. This can’t be happening.

Amanda came barreling out the door they’d just come through.

“What the hell is going on?” she asked.

“Take her,” Carter said, gesturing toward the pregnant woman. He didn’t even know her name, which was crazy considering the story she’d just started. “Put her in my car and don’t let her leave.”

“You can’t do that,” she said, her little face all screwed up with outrage.

He leaned in, close enough to see the freckles across her nose, the thickness of her black eyelashes. “You can wait for me in my car or you can wait for the cops in my car, it’s your call.”

She took her full bottom lip between her teeth, biting until the pink went white. “Fine,” she said, and whirled, her pretty coat sweeping out behind her.

“Who is she?” Amanda asked.

“I have no idea,” he said. “But don’t let her leave.”

Amanda followed the woman through the gray doors, and Carter was left alone in the alleyway.

He stared up at the clouds stretched thin across the slice of blue sky between the buildings. All he ever wanted was to do the right thing. Something good. And somehow it always got screwed up.

“Hello, Carter,” a voice behind him said. A voice so familiar, despite its ten-year absence from his life, it made something small and forgotten inside him twist in fear and love. He didn’t even have to turn to see her, the perfect blond hair, the thin body no doubt impeccably dressed, the cold, ice pick eyes.

Of course, he thought, she would show up now.

“Hello, Mother,” he said.

ZOE MADISON HAD MADE a lot of mistakes in her life. Big ones, small ones, forest-fire-size ones that had burned her life to the ground.

If there were an authority on mistakes, she was it.

And she knew—from the backseat of Carter O’Neill’s expensive car, with its leather seats and fake wood—she knew that what she’d just done, the lie and the drama of it all, was not a mistake.

First of all, Carter O’Neill was going to be fine. A guy like that was born fine. He was simply too good-looking, too cool and calm, to not be fine. He was like James Bond or something. Though, she thought with a smile, James Bond had gotten batted around like a cat toy by that wily Tootie Vogler.

He was actually far more handsome when he was frazzled, which was saying something, because it wasn’t like the guy was ever hard to look at.

That little scene she’d caused in there would simply blow over.

And if she felt any doubt, any little wormhole of guilt, it was because of the reporter-guy asking the questions. She hadn’t counted on a reporter, and that might take some repair work. Maybe she’d write a letter to the editor or something, tell the whole world she was off her meds. Or stalking the handsome deputy mayor with the lips so perfect they should be bronzed.

More likely, though, she’d just be explained away in some kind of press release issued by the mayor’s office.

Yeah, she nodded, liking that one the best. They’d take care of it.

The second reason that what she’d done was not a mistake was that the guy was planning on tearing down the heart of this community as if it was nothing; as if a year without day care and senior bingo nights or after-school dance programs was all just an afterthought. A footnote on some memo.

Beauregard had clawed its way out of the gutters and the programs offered at Jimmie Simpson had been part of that. She was part of that. And pretty damn proud.

And third, and most important, she had a thousand dollars in her pocket. Like a roll of hope, heavy and dense. She tucked her hand in her pocket, just to feel the thickness, the tension in the rubber band.

A thousand dollars.

She had no insurance, and her savings were going to be eaten up by the hospital birth, so a thousand dollars could buy a lot of diapers. A little bit of security.

And for that—she put a hand under her belly, where she could feel her little guppy doing a soft-shoe number—she would cause any number of scenes.

For the baby, she’d do anything.

The woman, Amanda, stood outside Zoe’s door, with a cell phone attached to her ear, a distracted guard.

Zoe rubbed her hands over the smooth leather and the slick wood panel on the door. Was it real, that wood? Who knew, but fake or real wood in a car was weird. Seriously, did the world need such a thing?

Yeah, she thought, sliding over to the other side of the car, her mind made up. She didn’t need to feel bad. Carter would be fine. Money made a lot of things go away, and Carter had money. He had money and shine and polish. Hell, he had a staff.

Watching Amanda’s back, she silently opened the door and slowly crept out of the car. Amanda didn’t even twitch.

Zoe ran off into the side streets.

“I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN Dad getting arrested would make you surface. What are you doing, Mom?” Carter asked, dimly wondering why he still called her Mom. After all she’d done, the years of screwing with their lives, he still couldn’t just call her Vanessa. It was a little sick.

“Let me see you, Carter,” his mother said, her voice gruff with the appropriate amount of manufactured emotion.

He turned, thinking he was prepared, but he wasn’t. Could never be. Her presence was a punch in the gut and a slap in the face. A pain and an offense all at the same time. She was lovely, of course. Looking at her, shrouded in cool elegance, you’d never guess she was one step up from being a grifter. A common thief.

Despite her presence in a dirty Baton Rouge alleyway, she looked like Princess Grace.

She looked, actually exactly like Carter’s sister, Savannah.

Her smile, a sharp little slash in her face, was like opening a door to a burning room, and he was suddenly filled with anger and fury. Smoke and fire.

“I can’t come see—”

“No,” he said quickly. “You can’t. That was our deal. I testified and you were supposed to stay away from me. From all of us.” He stepped toward her, gratified when she flinched, one foot sliding backward.

That’s right, he thought, something primal roaring to life, you’d better be scared of me.

But then she stopped herself, stiffening her thin shoulders as if facing a firing squad. “You’re my son,” she said.

He paused and barked out a bitter laugh.

“I understand you’re mad, Carter, but there are things we need to talk about.”

“Sure there are,” he said. “Like why you broke into Savannah’s house a few months ago. Twice. That broke our deal, too, Mom.” He sneered the last word, because one shouldn’t have dirty deals with their mothers, bargains made to keep the distance between them permanent. “You’re supposed to stay away from all of us. I should send you to jail.”

She blinked the beautiful blue eyes that he and both his siblings had inherited. In the past few years it had gotten so bad he could barely look at Tyler and Savannah and not see his mother. Not see all the ways he’d failed his siblings. The ways he’d let them down.

“We need to talk about the ruby,” she said.

“You want to talk about where you hid it, after you stole those gems seven years ago?”

“I didn’t steal the gems,” she said.

“Dad may go to jail, but I know somehow, you’re at the bottom of this. So take your story somewhere else. I’m not buying.”

He had a pregnant liar to deal with. A public image that was going to take the beating of a lifetime if Jim Blackwell had his way.

“It’s not a story, Carter. I just…is it so wrong to want to see you? To want someone in this family to know the truth?”

It had been twenty years since Vanessa had dropped him, along with his brother, Tyler and sister, Savannah, off with their grandmother, Margot. Ten years since she’d resurfaced to bribe him into lying for her on the stand. And now, suddenly, she thought she deserved a chance to tell her side of the story?

“This family wouldn’t know the truth if we sat on it,” he snapped. He turned to leave, walking up the slight hill toward the end of the alley.

“I didn’t steal the gems and I didn’t plant them in the house. You’re right. I was looking for them months ago, but I didn’t find them. But now that the diamond has surfaced, everyone is going to come looking for that ruby and it could get ugly. For all of us. If they’re not at The Manor, there’s a chance Margot has them on her.”

“Margot?”

“She could be in danger, Carter.”

“I can’t believe this,” Carter sighed. “You’re trying to convince me you care? About us? Or someone else getting their hands on the ruby.”

“Do you think I would be here if I wasn’t worried? If I wasn’t serious?”

“Yes.”

She sighed, exasperated. “I paid that girl a thousand dollars, Carter.”

Right. Money. Not something Mom parted ways with easily.

Vanessa opened her mouth, but from the end of the alley, he heard Jim Blackwell’s voice talking to Amanda.

“I don’t know where he is,” Amanda was saying, very loud.

“You know,” Jim said, “for a PR gal, you’re a shit liar.”

“Monday night,” he said to Vanessa, resigning himself to the fact that he needed to manage his family, because out of his control, they could ruin everything. “At 8 p.m., outside of my office. Anyone asks who you are, you lie.”

She nodded and stepped into the shadows, the faint click of her heels against the asphalt fading away as Jim Blackwell appeared at the top of the alley.

“I never pegged you as the deadbeat daddy type,” Jim said, his face awash with victory. “Not very nice of you.”

Carter stalked up the alley, wishing, truly wishing that politics weren’t so important to him so that he could just haul off and punch Jim in his fat mouth. But his job, the work he did, the work he wanted to do, it all mattered.

“No comment,” was all he said as he stomped by. “And I’ll have your job if even one word of this is blown out of proportion.”

“Come on, now, Carter. I’m a newsman, I only want to tell the truth. I just don’t understand why you have such a problem telling it.”

Carter ignored him and continued to his car, where a very stressed Amanda stood.

“What?” he barked, trying to look past her for a glimpse of the lying pregnant elf. The backseat was empty. “Amanda?”

“She’s gone,” Amanda said. “The girl. She just vanished.”

“THIS REALLY HAPPENED?” Tom Gilbert asked, coming to perch his skinny butt on the corner of Jim’s desk. Tom was to the City Desk what lunch ladies were to playground bullies—ineffective and overzealous. In a word, useless.

“Of course it happened,” Jim said, not looking up from his five hundred words about Carter O’Neill’s testimony for his mother ten years ago.

He’d already handed in his story about Carter O’Neill’s love child.

Honestly, this might be one of the best days of Jim’s life.

“Jim?”

“You’ve got a picture,” Jim said, rolling away from the keyboard to face his boss. “It happened. I’ve got two old ladies saying they had no idea Zoe Madison was having a thing with the mayor pro tem. What more do you want?”

“News,” Tom said, smacking the copy against his knee.

“Carter O’Neill, who is going to announce his candidacy for mayor any minute, knocks a girl up and walks away?” Jim laughed. “That’s not news?”

“I don’t think it’s true,” Tom said and Jim sat up.

“You accusing me of lying?”

“No, Jim,” Tom sighed. “Christ, you’re so defensive I can barely talk to you. What I’m saying is I don’t think it’s a story. The Mayor Pro Tem office is going to issue a statement saying O’Neill’s never even heard of this girl, and I don’t want to have to print a retraction in two days for a story tomorrow.”

“That might not happen, Tom.” You lily-livered, soft-handed coward, he thought. “And right now, you’ve got a public official involved in some pretty crummy stuff. I know it’s been awhile since you were out there, but that is news. The girl’s broke—a dance teacher or something—she has no insurance, and she just accused Golden Boy Carter O’Neill of knocking her up. It’s gonna be all over the region, it’s so good.”

Tom stood up, his freaking king-of-the-world attitude putting a few more inches on his lollipop build. “Your hard-on for this guy is getting in the way of your judgment. You did good work two years ago on the Marcuzzi administration. No one can take that away from you—”

Especially you, you little nosebleed, Jim thought.

“But not every public official is out to ruin this town.”

“Carter O’Neill’s father was arrested with a thirty-carat stolen gem! His sister is dating the son of the man arrested for the original theft. The man comes from a family of crooks. His grandmother was a high-paid whore—”

Tom winced, because he had the stomach of a little girl.

“His mother is a known criminal—”

“Convicted once of grand theft auto.” Tom shook his head. “You did this story when Richard Bonavie was originally arrested and Carter answered every one of your questions. He has very little contact with his family. Not everyone running this town is dirty. I think the Marcuzzi administration ruined you, made you see crooks were there aren’t any.”

“Gem theft!” Jim cried. “If Carter has anything to do with it, he’s dirtier than Marcuzzi.”

“I’m not against you,” Tom whispered. “I want to help you. But you’re young and fairly new to the city—you keep running around here half-cocked and we’re all gonna get burned. There’s a difference between journalism and a witch hunt.”

“What about the love child story?” Jim asked, ignoring Tom’s little pep talk.

Tom sighed. “It runs. Copy already came up with a killer headline,” he said and Jim fought back a smile. Of course it would run. It was top-shelf scandal, and scandal sold papers.

“What else are you working on?” Tom asked.

“I’ve got five hundred words on O’Neill testifying for his mother in a criminal case ten years ago.”

“Are you kidding?” Tom asked. “You’re turning into a one-trick pony here, Jim.”

“You’ve got a hole on page three,” he said with a shrug. “I can fill it.”

“Damn,” Tom sighed. “Okay, Jim, but let’s remember what we’re here to do. Tell news, not stories.”

CARTER DIDN’T WAIT for the emergency Saturday-morning meeting to officially begin. He stormed into Amanda’s office and caught her shoving the last of a doughnut into her mouth.

“What are we going to do?” he asked.

“Knock?” she asked, around a mouthful. “Learn some manners?”

He sighed and slapped the Gazette on her desk. The picture of the pregnant elf on that chair stared up at him, mocking him. Jim Blackwell had found out the woman’s name—Zoe Madison. It was right there in the caption, and Carter had spent most of the morning finding out what he could about her.