Tail Spin ft-12

by Catherine Coulter

  “Hello, Rachael, where are you? I went by the senator’s house, but no one was there. Well, there were some FBI guys wandering around in the backyard, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. What’s going on? I can’t find you. Where are you? I’m worried.”

  “I’m preparing my speech for tomorrow night at the Jefferson Club. I hope you’ll be there, Greg. I know it would mean a lot to my father.”

  “What about Jacqueline and your sisters?”

  “They sent their regrets.”

  She was deeply asleep when Jack found her an hour later in his bed, a small smile playing on her mouth, her head turned slightly to the side. Her braid was lying against her cheek.

  He eased down beside her and kissed her.

  She didn’t jerk away, only turned her head toward him and slowly opened her eyes. She looked up to see him leaning into her, not an inch from her nose. “I’m sure glad you’re not the bad guy,” she said, and raised her hand to smooth his hair, “or I’d be in big trouble.”

  “When I was a little kid,” he said, stroking her hair, “I always wanted to be the robber, wanted to be the major badass when we played, but my big brother said I couldn’t snarl and talk jive well enough, so I had to suck it up and be the cop. I guess I got used to it.” He kissed her again. “So that means you’re not in big trouble.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “I was doing that old-fashioned police work I told you about, and I talked to some people. I stopped off at Feng Nian, brought us some Chinese.”

  He saw the spark of panic in her eyes.

  “Absolutely no one knows you’re here with me. No one followed me, believe me, I checked often enough. You’re safe. Tomorrow night, this will be over.”

  Will it? she wondered, and let him help her up. It was all too simple, too straightforward, too planned. She knew Laurel wasn’t simple. She didn’t know about Quincy and Stefanos.

  Rachael smiled when he turned to smooth down the covers. Her mom would pronounce him a good man.

  “You’ve got a lovely apartment.”

  “Thank you. My mom was my interior decorator.”

  A mom supplying bling was okay.

  “But the photographs are yours.”

  “Yes,” he said, “they are.”

  “You might not snarl and growl enough for a badass, but you’re an excellent photo artist.”

  “Ah, well, not really ... well, anyway, thank you. You should see Savich’s pieces. He whittles.”

  She ate the entire carton of kung pao chicken but didn’t read him her speech. “I’m still thinking, and rewriting,” she said.

  “As you should. It’s quite an honor.”

  She sighed. “Yes, I realize that.”

  Jack’s cell rang.

  FIFTY-TWO

  The Jefferson Club Washington, D.C.

  Monday evening

  When it came down to it, you placed good people around you and trusted them to do their jobs. If you couldn’t, it was time to hang it up. The six undercover FBI agents working the big room were the best—smart and focused.

  Savich spotted Director Mueller standing with Rachael. Jack, he didn’t see. He was checking out the catering staff imported for the event. He’d already arranged checks on the extra waitstaff the club had brought in for tonight’s shindig, and the permanent staff for that matter.

  Savich smelled a mellow, woodsy perfume and turned to see Laurel Abbott Kostas coming toward him, a flute of champagne in her hand, dressed in an undoubtedly very expensive black dress that did nothing for her. Odd how well he thought he knew her, yet this was the first time he’d ever seen her in the flesh.

  She wasn’t wearing a long gown, like most of the women. Instead she wore potentially sexy black fishnet stockings on her heavy legs, but her feet were in low-heeled pumps, a real clash in message. Her coarse graying hail was pulled back and clipped at the nape. She wore a tore a touch of lipstick, nothing else. But the diamonds—she was wearing mounds of them everywhere, her ears, throat, wrist, fingers. She looked like she’d cleaned out a display case. De Beers had to love her.

  Her husband, Stefanos, another player whose character Savich thought he understood fairly well, was at her side, dressed in an expensive tuxedo, his black hair slicked back from his swarthy heavy face, a handsome dissipated face Savich didn’t like or trust. He watched Kostas’s eyes roam and assess. He looked bored and restless, and on edge. He held a whiskey in his hand and used it as an excuse not to shake hands when Savich introduced himself.

  “Mr. Kostas,” Savich said, and nothing more, very aware that Laurel was giving him the once-over. When he turned back to her he saw a spark of interest in her flat cold eyes. What was that about?

  Laurel said in a smooth, dismissive voice, “I know who you are. I saw you on TV, running that ridiculous FBI press conference.”

  He smiled at her. “I’m Agent Dillon Savich. And you are Mrs. Laurel Kostas?”

  She nodded. “I see you’re wearing a tuxedo, Agent Savich, and it is expensive. A surprise, I suppose, given you’re a policeman.”

  Stefanos was looking at a woman’s cleavage. His eyes slid past Savich to his wife, and he said with world-weary contempt, “The whiskey is watered down.” Then he turned on his heel and made his way through the crowd toward the bar, where the woman and her cleavage were standing.

  Laurel said, “I suppose you’re here because Rachael is. She isn’t actually going to tell everyone what the senator did, on an occasion like this, is she?”

  “You will have to ask her, Mrs. Kostas. I really don’t know.”

  He motioned to the waiter carrying a silver tray of champagne flutes. At her nod, he handed her one, took the empty one and put it on the tray.

  “Where is Quincy Abbott, ma’am?”

  “I left him speaking to the vice president about the current power struggle between the French and the Germans, nothing new there. Actually, no one seems to get along with either of them. In business, as in war, I’ve learned it’s always best to pit them against each other. Where is Rachael? I don’t see her. Perhaps she’s decided not to make a spectacle of herself, not to make us all the butt of malicious gossip?”

  He smiled his vicious smile that Sherlock told him could freeze your heart, but it didn’t seem to work on Laurel. He said, “If you look to your left, you’ll see her speaking to Senator Mark Evans. There was a break-in at her house Saturday night. The intruder was careless and left us some evidence.”

  She went stiff, her cold eyes suddenly needle sharp on his face, and he’d swear he could see her thinking. He knew she had a formidable mind, and wasn’t easily rattled. She said in a bored voice, “Evidence? Well, it’s about time you found something, isn’t it? What did you find?”

  “Sorry, ma’am, I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not? Who cares, after all?” He heard it then, fear in her voice, a thick undercoat of it. She moved closer, the movement making her diamonds dance and glitter madly.

  He leaned close, as well, and went with his gut. “Do you know who shimmied up the oak tree to climb in through a second-floor window, Mrs. Kostas? Did her scream scare him away? Or was it the alarm going off?”

  She took a quick step back from him and looked toward her husband, who was speaking now to a senator from Arizona. She turned, said to him over her shoulder, “Can you really see one of us climbing a tree, Agent Savich? I think not. But it seems to me Rachael has to run out of luck sometime.”

  “Everyone eventually does,” Savich said. “You included, ma’am. Ah, here are Agent Sherlock and your niece.”

  “She’s not—” Laurel shut her mouth, something, Sherlock imagined, she did neither often nor easily. But she was smart enough to get the lay of the land before she charged into battle.

  Savich introduced Sherlock to Laurel, who ignored her to land squarely on Rachael.

  “So,” Laurel said, looking Rachael up and down, “you have to have an agent sticking to you now?”

  Rachael sa
id, “Yes. I’ve found I prefer it.”

  Quincy and Stefanos joined them, probably, Savich thought, because they believed Laurel needed reinforcements. Laurel made begrudging introductions.

  Sherlock shook the men’s hands. Stefanos held her hand a bit longer than he should have. She cocked her head at him. “You have such lovely hair, Agent Sherlock,” he said, that accent meant to warm and seduce. “There is no red hair like yours in my country. It is glorious.”

  Boy, you lay it on with a trowel, don’t you? She smiled at him.

  Quincy Abbott looked like he wanted to bolt, but inbred civility won out and he shook Savich’s hand. He gave only a mildly displeased nod to Jack, who was standing at Rachael’s shoulder. When he took Sherlock’s hand, his eyes went hot. Now that was interesting. It wasn’t lust, not at all like the message Stefanos had broadcast to her. What was it? Was it anger? Did his look mean he hated female cops? She’d heard Rachael say he was a misogynist. She looked at Dillon. He was stone-faced.

  Stefanos said, “You look magnificent, like a cabaret singer from the thirties, Agent Sherlock.”

  “Thank you,” Sherlock said.

  Savich agreed with Stefanos. Sherlock was wearing a long black skirt, a black top that bared her shoulders, and her hair was loose, a sunset of curls around her head, pulled back from her face with two black clips. She looked good, that was Savich’s remark when he saw her, and she’d known he wanted to haul her back upstairs. Even Sean, standing at his father’s side, had stared at her. “I wouldn’t know it was you if it wasn’t for your hair, Mama.”

  She’d laughed and kissed him soundly. But Savich bet she had no plans to kiss Stefanos Kostas.

  Stefanos said, “You’re really an FBI agent? You?”

  “You were thinking I was perhaps a runway model?”

  “Maybe that’s not too much of a stretch.”

  Rachael said, “Agent Savich and Agent Sherlock are married. They have a little boy.”

  “What?” Stefanos asked. “You’re actually married to him? But, I—”

  Laurel rolled over her husband. “Married? I’ve never heard of FBI agents being married to each other before, but I suppose our government allows just about anything.”

  “Not really,” Sherlock said.

  “I have two boys,” Laurel continued. “The elder is nearly grown up now. He met a girl in New York City and is convinced he’s going to marry her.”

  “How old is he?” Jack asked, though he knew very well.

  “Damian is sixteen.”

  Quincy said, “Stefanos isn’t happy about this, even though it’s only a young boy’s crush, isn’t that right?”

  Stefanos shrugged. “He can have his fun. I only hope he doesn’t contract some disease from her.”

  Quincy said, “You’re an expatriate xenophobe, Stefanos—you want both your sons to marry into old Creek families.”

  Stefanos smiled at his brother-in-law, sipped at his whiskey like an elegant sloth.

  Jack asked Laurel, “What did you think of the FBI press conference?”

  Her heavy face froze. “I already told Agent Savich it was ridiculous. To me it smacked of conspiracy theories, which are generally nonsense. It is like saying the Warren Commission lied. How can you disprove a negative? I suppose the FBI will continue prodding and poking about, annoying us until we have our lawyers manage to cut you off at the knees.”

  Savich said pleasantly, “I certainly agree with you about conspiracy theories. However, do you really believe, Mrs. Kostas, that your brother took up drinking again, that he got into a car after not driving for eighteen months?”

  “Perhaps the senator considered cutting back on his drinking, even spent some time not driving, but in the end, he seems to have been doing both. There seems no doubt about that. Stefanos, Quincy, do you agree?”

  Stefanos looked bored. Quincy, in a very discreet one-finger move, adjusted his toupee.

  Laurel said, “No matter what the senator said, he would not have called a press conference and made a grand announcement of his guilt. He knew if he spoke up, he would lose everything—the prestige and power of being a senator, all the privileges of being wealthy and sought after, of being endlessly feted and admired.”

  Jack said, “And last but not least, he would probably have gone to jail for vehicular homicide.”

  “That is not possible. The senator had excellent lawyers,” Stefanos said. “He would never have spent a day in jail.”

  That might be the truth, Sherlock thought.

  “No matter,” Laurel said. “The senator lived for those things. He did not like to lose. What happened the night he died was an accident. All these theories—and that’s all they are—they sound like those ridiculous conspiracy theory blogs.”

  “Jimmy told me he was going to do it,” Rachael said. “There was no reason for him to tell you if he hadn’t made up his mind.” Was that the truth? To say it, flat-out, it sounded so simple and straightforward. She said, “Besides the three of you, he also told Greg Nichols. Yet you still doubt it, even after Jimmy told you the misery he’d been living with for eighteen months?”

  Quincy said, his voice dismissive, “I will say this one more time: it was a phase, nothing more. The senator was self-indulgent. He liked to analyze things to death—business, politics, a specific piece of legislation, how he was going to get back at another senator or congressman or staffer who got on the wrong side of him.

  “Look, I’m sure he felt very sorry about what happened to the little girl, he had a conscience, after all.”

  There was a malignant look on Laurel’s face, a look filled with cold rage, and it was aimed at Rachael. “If you have convinced these three FBI agents that we murdered our own brother, you have done the senator and our entire family, Jacqueline and her daughters included—not to mention the entire country—a grave disservice. You are contemptible, Miss Janes. And no, I will not call you an Abbott; you will never be an Abbott to us.”

  Laurel turned on her low-heeled pumps and walked away, Quincy and Stefanos, after one last caressing look at Sherlock, following in her wake.

  “I hadn’t expected them to speak so freely,” Savich said thoughtfully, watching them begin to work the room, the tall well-built man whose ego was bigger than his brain, and the dowdy woman covered in diamonds, with her powerful, vicious eyes. And Quincy, looking like a beautifully dressed royal adjunct.

  Sherlock said, “Do you know, the three of them have one thing in common. They all radiate clout. Look, there’s the senator from New Hampshire going over to them.”

  “They’re a big deal,” Rachael said. “They’re American royalty, rich—oozing confidence, used to getting what they want.”

  Savich said to his wife as he touched his fingertips to her ear, “I really like the jet-black earrings.”

  “You should, you bought them for me.”

  He could feel the tightly coiled energy rolling off her. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I did.”

  Sherlock said to Rachael, “You look perfect. You’ve struck the right note—classic outfit with a hint of pizzazz.”

  She did indeed, Jack thought. Rachael was wearing a long black gown, as were many woman in the room. Unlike them, Rachael wasn’t showing very much skin, but what showed was potent. She looked beautiful and pale and dignified. Jack imagined she was wound tighter than his grandfather’s watch, a ritual Jack had watched countless times when he was a little kid.

  Champagne flowed along with the stronger stuff. He saw Laurel and Stefanos speaking with the vice president. As each of them spoke, the vice president nodded solemnly. Several times, he leaned in to say something.

  Savich spotted Greg Nichols entering the room, three women and two men with him, former Abbott staffers all. He was wearing a tux, and should have looked buff and competent, but he didn’t. Something was wrong, something was off with him. He was moving slowly and awkwardly. Nichols looked up and met Savich’s eyes across the room. He caught Jack’s eye and nodded
slowly. Then, strangely, he rubbed his stomach. What was going on?

  Greg Nichols felt sick to his stomach. He thumbed another Tums from the bottle and discreetly slipped it into his mouth. How many was that so far? Six? Seven? He hoped it was nerves. Nerves he could deal with, he’d had a lot of practice. No, he was going to have to face it, this was for real, probably the cioppino he’d had for a late lunch— a mistake, his secretary Lindsay had told him, what with the hullabaloo happening tonight with the movers and shakers, and he with his nervous stomach. All right, so the cioppino had been off, he’d known it after a few bites and stopped eating it. Curse Lindsay, she was right.

  He’d already had massive diarrhea and vomited twice. He thought there’d been a bit of blood, prayed he was mistaken, because that was scary.

  But maybe he was feeling a little better now. No, he felt like crap. For a moment, he watched the FBI agent Dillon Savich, the one who’d led the FBI press conference, and chewed faster on the Turns. And that damned agent Jack Crowne, who was sticking to Rachael like glue. Nichols knew he’d been checking on him, and if he didn’t know everything about him already, he would soon enough. He’d know everything about all of them. It wasn’t fair, just wasn’t.

  He looked around at the sea of powerful people, spouses hanging onto senators’ arms, staking claim to power. So much power concentrated in this one room—it was a terrorist’s wet dream. He easily spotted Secret Service agents from long practice. They were everywhere. There had to be FBI there, as well; they were better at fading into the woodwork.

  He realized he no longer cared if Rachael spoke out or not. He was a lawyer, he knew how things worked. He’d roll over on Senator Abbott, no problem with that, since he was dead. Then he’d take the bar exam, and set up his practice in Boise.

  He didn’t need this aggravation that was going to escalate into a shit storm. It was time to cut his losses. It was time to get out of Dodge.

  He saw Laurel Kostas speaking to the ancient senator from Kansas, and at her elbow, nodding occasionally at something his sister said, stood Quincy, that good-for-nothing whiner the senator had tolerated only because he’d felt sorry for him.