Murder on K Street

by Margaret Truman

  “Yeah, I think so. My sister and I tied up some loose ends today.”

  “Going to Camelia’s bash tonight?”

  “Sure. You?”

  “Right. I’m leaving now and stopping at home before the party. Is your wife coming?”

  “No. Tough getting sitters these days. Teenagers don’t want to bother anymore making a few bucks watching somebody else’s kids. Mommy and Daddy give them all the money they need.”

  Marbury got up and laughed. “I know what you mean, Neil. If I have kids someday, I intend not to spoil them.”

  “I wish you well in that, Jonell. See you at the party.”

  Marbury left the building, and Neil Simmons went through a sheaf of papers without focusing on any of them.

  At the other end of the long corridor, Jack Parish sat in his office with Rick Marshalk. He activated a small digital tape recorder he’d taken from a locked cabinet that had recently been delivered. Inside the cabinet was other electronic equipment all tied in to a system that delivered conversations from a series of offices in which listening devices had been installed simultaneously with the sweeping of those same offices for other bugs. Parish activated the recorder.

  “What’s going on?”

  “About what?”

  “About this place, Neil. Marshalk and Parish have turned it into an armed camp. You’d think we were some Defense Department think tank with top-secret information about where the next war will be.”

  “I don’t know, Jonell. I’m just the president.”

  “You’ve heard the rumors.”

  “Which ones?”

  “About Justice investigating us. You must know something about it, Neil. I’ve even heard it might involve money laundering for the mob.”

  “Just a rumor, Jonell.”

  “I’m getting really worried, Neil. I had a conversation with Camelia the other day. She’s bailing because she’s concerned about what’s coming down. I’m thinking of doing the same thing.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Look, Jonell, I’m as aware as you are of things here getting out of hand. I hear the scuttlebutt as clearly as you do. Do you have something else lined up?”

  “No, but I’m not worried about that. I had a long talk with Marla about it. She’s all for me leaving.”

  “Well, Marshalk will obviously miss you if you decide to resign. You have to do what’s right for you—we all do.”

  “Things shaping up for your mom’s memorial service?”

  “Yeah, I think so. My sister and I tied up some loose ends today.”

  “Going to Camelia’s bash tonight?”

  “Sure. You?”

  “Right. I’m leaving now and stopping at home before the party. Is your wife coming?”

  “No. Tough getting sitters these days. Teenagers don’t want to bother anymore making a few bucks watching somebody else’s kids. Mommy and Daddy give them all the money they need.”

  “I know what you mean, Neil. If I have kids someday, I intend not to spoil them.”

  “I wish you well in that, Jonell. See you at the party.”

  Parish looked at Marshalk after turning off the recorder.

  “Play that recording of Marbury and Camelia again,” Marshalk said.

  “Something wrong?”

  “It’s Marshalk. He insisted on taking me to dinner last night and—”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing wrong with going to dinner with your boss. It’s what he said that bothers me.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “He—he basically threatened me, Jonell.”

  “Threatened you? With what?”

  “About what I’ve learned about Marshalk Group since I’ve been here. He’s afraid that by going back to work at Justice, I might use my inside knowledge of how things work here to bring some sort of legal action against him and the firm.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “He doesn’t think it is. It was creepy, really creepy. He was all smiles and happy talk during most of the meal. But then he got serious, very serious, and gave me this lecture on how he expected me to treat what I know as sacred, and that…”

  “And that what?”

  “And that he’d hate to see something terrible happen to me.”

  “He said that? I mean, those were his words?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what he said. Oh, he couched it with lots of flowery talk about what a great career I have in front of me, and how much he’s appreciated the work I’ve done here. But when he said that—when he threatened me—my blood ran cold. Jonell, the Marshalk Group breaks the law every day.

  That’s one of the reasons I’m leaving. This place is a legal train wreck waiting to happen.”

  “Come on, Camelia, it can’t be that bad.”

  “It’s worse, Jonell. Want some good advice?”

  “Sure.”

  “Listen to Marla. She wants you to leave. You don’t want to be on this train when it goes off the rails.”

  Parish turned off the recorder. His office was silent.

  Marshalk, whose mouth was empty, moved it as though chewing something.

  Parish looked at his boss.

  “Nice, huh?” Marshalk said. “There’s no honor anymore. You do the right thing for people, give them the best jobs they’ll ever have, and they stick it to you in the back.”

  Parish returned the cassette recorder to the cabinet and locked it.

  Marshalk got up and went to the door. He paused, turned, and said, “Traitors get hanged. They get strung up because they violated a trust that can take down a country. Nobody’s taking me down, Jack. Nobody!”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Emma Churchill, caterer to Washington’s A-list, liked to arrive at events at least two hours early to size up and set up at her leisure, and planned to do so for the party at the Marshalk town house. But as sometimes happens—fortunately not often—the stars in catering heaven had gotten out of alignment. Her roster of regular help had started calling earlier in the day to inform her that they wouldn’t be available that evening. The bartender claimed he had the flu, although Emma suspected that he’d landed a better-paying job. One of her assistant chefs, a young woman, almost sliced her finger off doing prep work, and Emma ended up running her to the ER to be stitched and sedated. And a server, a dedicated animal lover, called to report that she had to rush one of her dogs to the vet. All this meant frantic, last-minute scrambling to find replacements.

  With her patchwork crew finally assembled at the town house, and with an hour before the start of the party, Emma picked up the pace of preparation. The substitute staff worked fairly smoothly with her, although there were a few snags because of their unfamiliarity with her routine. But everything was eventually done to Emma’s satisfaction, and she went outside to enjoy a few minutes of peace before the crowd started to arrive. She did what she always did at such moments, wanted a cigarette. It had been ten years since she’d stopped smoking, but certain triggers remained. The lull between getting ready for an event, and the event itself, was one of them. Theater intermissions were another.

  She saw two limos turn the corner and head for the town house. Time to get inside, she thought, and returned to where her staff stood ready. “Showtime,” she announced as people began coming through the door; the jazz duo, a pianist and bass player, launched into “Make Someone Happy.”

  She knew many of the Marshalk staff from previous events, and some of them greeted her. Jonell Marbury and his fiancée, Marla Coleman, arrived on the heels of Rick Marshalk and his date for the evening, a stunning brunette a few inches taller than him, wearing a silver sequined dress that might have taken an hour to get into.

  “Hello, there,” Marbury said to Emma. “Where’s your compatriot tonight?”

  “Home missing me, I hope,” Emma said lightly.

  “He’d better be, huh?” Marla said with exaggerated seriousness, followed by a
wicked laugh.

  “Where’s the star of the evening?” Emma asked.

  They looked around. “Not here yet,” Marbury said. “Probably wants to make a grand entrance.”

  “The bar’s over there,” Emma said, pointing.

  “Time for a drink,” Marbury said to Marla, “but only to keep the bartender busy. Nothing sadder than a lonely bartender.”

  Emma watched them move in the direction of the bar and was struck by what a handsome couple they were. She thought about what most of the people in the room did for a living.

  They were lobbyists, highly paid, nicely dressed, well-connected men and women who spent their days—and nights—courting those in government with something to offer in the way of legislation, laws, and rules that would benefit their clients’ bottom lines. Lobbying had become a major Washington industry; the number of registered lobbyists in town had doubled since 2000, and—according to what Emma had recently read—the fees they charged to their clients had gone up as much as 100 percent during that same period. More than half of all elected officials and their staffs now turned to lobbying in their post-government lives.

  She wondered how the intense scrutiny that lobbying had recently come under affected the lives of those at the party. Depictions of the city’s lobbying corps in the press were less than flattering, particularly certain firms that were reported to have progressed beyond legal influence peddling. She’d seen Marshalk’s name mentioned in some of the stories, but to her knowledge no charges against them had ever been filed.

  Washington! Was there any other place in the world with as much intrigue on a daily basis, and with so much at stake? Perhaps so, but she couldn’t imagine where. As a caterer, she had a different vantage point from which to observe the men and women who called the shots and determined the future. It would have been easy for her to become terminally cynical, and she regularly reminded herself not to be. It wasn’t always easy.

  As the living room filled, people fanned out to other rooms and to a brick patio at the rear of the house. Emma wondered who the evening’s honoree was. All she knew was that her name was Camelia—a lovely name, she thought, evoking images of sultry summer days in Memphis or Savannah, a swing on a shaded veranda, and a tall, frosty, colorful drink in your hand.

  A few minutes later, three latecomers walked into the room, led by an attractive African American woman who immediately became the center of attention.

  Aha, Emma thought. The lady named Camelia.

  Rick Marshalk approached the woman and embraced her. Emma focused on Camelia’s face, which did not say that she particularly welcomed his gesture. Jonell Marbury also gave the departing staff member a hug. Emma glanced at his fiancée, Marla, whose expression also was not approving.

  “Where’s Neil?” Emma heard a young lobbyist ask a Marshalk colleague.

  “I don’t know. He said he was coming.”

  “I feel bad for the guy, having to bury his mother.”

  “They still don’t know who did it.”

  “Lots of possibilities.”

  “Such as?”

  They walked away, but one’s trailing voice reached Emma’s ears: “Her husband?” His friend punched him in the arm and laughed as they left the living room for another place.

  One of Emma’s servers came to her carrying an empty canapé tray. “If that bastard grabs my butt one more time, he’s getting this tray shoved up his—”

  “Avoid him,” Emma counseled. “I’ll send Millie in his direction.” Millie, the only regular member of Emma’s staff working the party, had a black-belt in karate.

  The party had been going for almost an hour when Neil Simmons arrived. He looked lost to Emma, as though he’d walked into a roomful of strangers and didn’t know whom to approach. Marshalk brought his date to meet him. Jonell and Marla also welcomed him, as did Camelia Watson and some of the guests with whom she’d arrived.

  Emma looked over to where the groper with a fixation on the server’s posterior was overtly drunk. He wasn’t the only one, and Emma whispered to the bartender, “Go easy with him and some of the others. I don’t need a drunk rolling out of here and wrapping his car around somebody.”

  She checked her watch. The party was booked from seven until nine. It was eight thirty. Time for a break, she told herself and headed for the kitchen to hide out for ten minutes. The room had two doorways, one leading into the living room, another on the opposite wall that opened onto a short hallway. She sat on a stool near the latter, allowed her flat shoes to dangle from her toes, and reached down to massage her feet. A conversation from the hallway captured her attention. She immediately recognized Jonell Marbury’s deep baritone voice.

  “You’re acting like a fool, Marla,” he said.

  “Don’t call me a fool,” she said. “If you think I’m going to stand around while you cozy up to Camelia Watson, you’ve got another guess coming.”

  “I wasn’t cozying up to her, as you put it. It’s her going-away party, Marla. I’m just being nice, that’s all.”

  Marla lowered her voice, but it was still audible to Emma. “You aren’t kidding anyone, Jonell, especially me. You’ve had the hots for her for a long time. I’m not blind.”

  “Marla, I—”

  “You’d better make up your mind, Jonell. You’re not a Mormon. You get one wife, one woman. I’m going home.”

  “No, don’t do that, Marla. A bunch of us are going to a bar after we leave here.”

  “Wrong, Jonell. Maybe you are going to a bar, you and Ms. Watson. I’m out of here.”

  Emma heard the click of Marla’s heels on the hall floor. Jonell called out, “Marla, wait.” Then there was silence from the other side of the door.

  Emma exhaled a stream of air and shook her head. Romance. Men and women. Jealousy. Never easy, she thought as she slipped her feet back into her shoes and left the kitchen to help wrap things up.

  “Great food, as usual,” Rick Marshalk said as he and his date were leaving. “No surprise. You’re the best, Emma.”

  Others passed along compliments, too, as the crowd thinned and the noise level lowered. Soon she was alone with her staff, and they attacked the cleanup.

  “Thanks, everybody,” she said as they gathered on the sidewalk after loading things into the extended minivan Emma used in her business. “Great job. And thanks for filling in at the last minute. Call my office in the morning if you’d like more work with me. You were all terrific.”

  As she drove to her office and kitchen across town, where she would park the van overnight and empty it in the morning, she thought about Neil Simmons’s arrival; she hadn’t seen him for the rest of the evening. She reasoned that it wasn’t easy attending a social event on the heels of your mother’s murder, and that he probably had made what was a mandatory appearance as Marshalk’s president, skipping out at the first opportunity.

  After parking the van, she got in her car and drove home to where Rotondi waited.

  “How’d it go?” he asked after she’d changed into pajamas and a robe.

  “It went fine. Big drinking crowd. Speaking of that, I need a drink. You?”

  “No, thanks. Just some water.” They went to the kitchen, where she poured herself a brandy. He drew cold water from the refrigerator’s water dispenser and used it to wash down two painkillers.

  “Leg’s bothering you tonight?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” He tried to avoid taking the pain medication he always carried with him, but there were times when it was necessary.

  “How was your day?” she asked when they were settled again in the den.

  “Okay. I had lunch with Mac Smith. He says hello.”

  “What was the occasion?”

  “No occasion. I enjoy spending time with him. He’s savvy and straightforward. Refreshing. Were that fellow Jonell and his fiancée there tonight?”

  “They sure were. I ended up overhearing an argument between them. She left the party without him.”

  “Uh-oh, t
rouble on the domestic front.”

  “You might say that. Marla thinks he’s getting too cozy with the woman who’s leaving Marshalk. The party was for her. Anything new on the murder?”

  “No. Was Neil there?”

  “He was, but I don’t think he stayed long. At least I didn’t see him again after he arrived. A group of them were planning on extending the night, going to some bar.”

  “There’ll be a few hangovers at Marshalk in the morning.”

  “Afraid so. What time are you leaving for Chicago tomorrow?”

  “Eleven. I’ll walk Homer. Then let’s watch something dumb and unchallenging on TV. I’m in the mood for dumb and unchallenging.”

  Rotondi hadn’t detailed what was discussed at lunch that day with Emma, but Mac Smith was more forthcoming with Annabel. They’d had dinner out, and now sat on their balcony. He told her what Rotondi had revealed to him over lunch, and Annabel listened without comment. When he was finished, she said, “He sounds as though he’s determined to resolve this himself.”

  “I suggested he confront Neil and the senator with what he knows. He said he’d think about that.”

  She was silent, the brandy snifter pressed to her lips.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Annie, that Phil is wading in deep waters.”

  “Maybe over his head.”

  “He’s a tough guy, a straight shooter. I think he’ll do the right thing. At least I hope he does.”

  Some of the Marshalk partygoers had moved the festivities to the Fly Lounge, a relatively new club on Jefferson Place, NW, arguably the city’s most expensive and exclusive new watering hole. Marshalk had frequently hosted politicians there who enjoyed the atmosphere—including occasional bursts of liquid nitrogen blasting from the ceiling to create the sound of a jet engine’s roar—and the bosomy young waitresses known as “Fly Attendants,” dressed in tight black costumes and knee-high boots. The money Marshalk routinely dropped there—eighteen hundred dollars for the corner VIP section with its own volume control for the music, and a secret code assuring access to a private bathroom—ensured that his party was never made to wait in line outside where a bouncer ascertained whether those awaiting entrance “looked right” and had the “right attitude.”