Private Indiscretions

by Susan Crosby

  “What did it say?”

  “‘On Monday night everyone will know what Randall did.’” He glanced her way. “Something happening then?”

  “I’m presenting an award to Lilith at a banquet.”

  “Widely attended?” he asked.

  “A few hundred.”

  “Public.”

  “Extremely. Television and newspaper coverage, I’m sure.”

  “So, we have two days.”

  “With nothing to go on.” Dana waited for him to add something comforting, but his pager toned again.

  “‘A credible lead,’” Sam read aloud.

  The words gave her hope.

  Eleven

  The next morning the phone woke Dana from a sound sleep. She grabbed the receiver after the second ring, eyeing the clock at the same time. Nine o’clock? She’d slept until nine o’clock? She sat up, abruptly awake, and said hello.

  “Do you have something to tell me?”

  Dana let her shoulders loosen. “Good morning to you, too, Lilith.” She balled some pillows behind her and leaned back, yawning.

  “What? Oh. Good morning. What’s going—”

  “How are you feeling?” Dana asked, interrupting, trying to set the tone.

  “Huh? Well, to be honest, grouchy. My husband hasn’t let me out of bed for three days except to move to the sofa. And now my best friend has a new boyfriend and didn’t bother to tell me. I had to read about it in the Chronicle.”

  “What page?”

  “What pa—? I don’t know.” Her voice was clipped. “Hold on.”

  Dana listened to the sound of pages being turned. Anticipation whirled.

  “First section, page seven.”

  “Photograph?” Dana asked, wondering how Sam was going to feel about it.

  “Yes. In fact, there’s only a photo, and a caption. You’re holding hands with Sam. It says, ‘Senator Dana Sterling attended the funeral yesterday of Ernest Giannini, a family friend from her hometown of Miner’s Camp, California. Pictured with her is Sam Remington, formerly of Miner’s Camp.’”

  “Is it a good picture?” She was toying with Lilith until she could get her own feelings under control.

  “Oh, sure. You look swell together.”

  Dana’s hands were tied. She couldn’t tell Lilith that Sam had just been doing her a favor. If she trusted anyone, it would be Lilith, but Dana couldn’t expect Lilith not to tell her husband, and Jonathan was one person too many to include.

  “He does seem to be the right height for me,” Dana said, still playing.

  Two beats passed. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”

  She smiled at last. “I am, actually. I’m having the time of my life.”

  “You said you weren’t going to see him again.”

  “I changed my mind.” She kept her voice light. “He’s fun.”

  “Sam Remington is fun?”

  “He makes me feel alive, Lilith. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve felt like that?”

  “Is that all there is to it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is he really a love interest? Or is something else going on?”

  Dana wished she could share, but she couldn’t. She wondered, though, if she would be forced into it soon, if anything had turned up on the TV news this morning. She’d called a Sacramento aide late last night and asked him to watch the eleven o’clock news for her. He reported later that they hadn’t covered the funeral. “Like what?”

  “You tell me.”

  How much to reveal? “I called Sam after the reunion and learned he was working in San Francisco. We’ve been together quite a bit since.” There. No lie.

  “You didn’t say a word to me at my dinner party. You told me I could start setting you up.”

  “I’d only seen him once at that point. Anyway, you don’t like him, and it’s a new relationship that may not go anywhere. I wanted to keep it to myself.”

  “Yet you were photographed in public, holding hands. You’re more careful than that, Dana, so it seems to me you’re making a point. People have been waiting to see who you would end up dating. Why Sam?”

  Lilith was right about everything. What point was she, Dana, making? Sam had intended only to force Harley’s hand—but it had gone beyond that. Way beyond that. They’d made love. Wonderful, satisfying, please-can-we-do-it-again love. “I like him,” she said to Lilith. “And that’s all I’m going to say on the subject.”

  “Are you sure that’s all there is to it?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Lil. Give it a rest. I had my doubts about Jonathan, as you’ll recall. I gave him a chance. You could do the same, you know. Besides, this agitation can’t be good for the baby.” Her call-waiting alert beeped. She was grateful. “I’ve got another call. Can you hold on a sec?”

  “I’ll just say goodbye. Dana, if Sam makes you happy, I’m happy, okay? Honest.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you at the banquet tomorrow night?”

  “If my husband the warden lets me out of my cell. Bye.”

  Dana clicked to the other line. “Hello?”

  “Good morning.”

  Ah. The call she wanted. “Good morning, Sam.”

  “Did you sleep in?”

  “I did. Just woke up, as a matter of fact. How about you?” Yesterday she’d awakened and he was there in the room, a lovely memory.

  “I just woke up, too. Nate called to say our picture is in the Chronicle.”

  She couldn’t tell from his tone of voice how he felt about that. “Lilith just told me. I haven’t seen it yet.”

  “My guess is it’s in the L.A. Times, too, which presents a problem for me. I can’t be in on the interview with Jordan James if he thinks you and I are seeing each other. He’ll jump to his own conclusions.”

  Jordan James, nicknamed J.J., was Randall’s former roommate at Stanford and campaign manager for all eight elections. He was currently the head of Clarity Studios in Hollywood, a failing movie-production company. Rumor had it he was about to sign on to run the campaign of Dana’s same-party opponent, the one she wasn’t going to throw her support to. J.J. had offered to take over Dana’s reelection campaign, but she’d put him off with the same answer she gave everyone, that she hadn’t made up her mind.

  “What are you going to do?” Dana asked Sam.

  “Arianna will be wired. Plus, she’ll have an earpiece so that I can ask questions through her.”

  “When do you think you’ll be done?”

  “Depends on his answers. Anything new there?”

  “I miss you.” That’s new.

  She was greeted with silence.

  “Hilda is always off from Sunday night to Wednesday morning,” she said, disappointed at his lack of response but still determined to break down more barriers with him. “If you’re back in time tonight, I’d like to make dinner for you.” Please say yes. Please—

  “I’ll have to let you know later.”

  He sounded both rushed and distracted. She tried not to take it personally. “Okay,” she said cheerfully.

  “If you need to go anywhere today, you’ll let Nate take you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “One more day, Dana.”

  One more day. It sounded like a death sentence.

  Sam hung up the phone. “I miss you,” she’d said, the words flowing over him like warm, scented water.

  He sat on the edge of his bed, his arms resting on his thighs. She’d cried for him. He didn’t know how he felt about that. He wasn’t used to open sympathy or the freedom that had come when he’d finally told her about his father.

  They’d barely spoken during the rest of the drive to San Francisco. He hadn’t kissed her goodbye either, but had stopped at her house only long enough to pick up Arianna and head to the airport. He wasn’t about to kiss the client in front of his partners.

  Arianna had pronounced him “gloomy” and took advantage of the break to catch an hour’s sleep, leaving him a
lone with his thoughts. His thoughts turned to making love with Dana. How she felt in his arms, how she looked when pleasure overtook her, how her touch both soothed and aroused. She’d given herself freely, holding nothing back, then curled into his body and slept.

  He’d held her for a long time, satisfying his own needs, easing away from her only when he was in danger of falling asleep himself. They couldn’t spend the night there, not with his car in the driveway.

  As it turned out, they’d been lucky not to have her parents walk in on them naked in her bed.

  God, he’d felt like a teenager again, being taken aside by her father to walk outdoors after dinner. They were only missing the cigars for their man-to-man talk.

  “So,” her father had said. “You met up again at the reunion?”

  Sam forced a civil response. “That’s right.”

  “My girl’s come a long way.”

  “Yes, sir, she has.” A preemptive strike was called for, Sam thought. Bring up the subject first. See what the man wanted without letting him circle the issue for half an hour. “Just as you predicted on prom night.”

  The tactic caught Mr. Cleary off guard. He clammed up for more than a minute. “We liked Randall. He was reliable. He was good for her.”

  Implying that I’m not? You can’t hurt me that easily anymore. “She seemed to have a pleasant marriage,” Sam said. I’ll bet the reliable Randall didn’t make Dana moan like I did.

  Mr. Cleary eyed him as if unsure of what to say. Maybe he thought Sam admired Dana and Randall’s marriage. But to Sam, “pleasant” wasn’t a word that fit well with “marriage.” How could you spend fifty or sixty years being “pleasant”?

  “Yes, I think they did have a good marriage,” Dana’s father said at last.

  To hell with being tactful, Sam thought. This would end right now. He stopped walking, then waited for Mr. Cleary to stop as well. “Sir, I appreciate your love for Dana, but you were wrong to warn me away from her fifteen years ago, and if that’s your plan again for tonight, you’d be wise to hold your tongue. I don’t know what you’ve got against me, but I’ve come a long way, too. And your daughter’s capable of making her own decisions.”

  Damn, that felt liberating. He waited what seemed an eternity for a reply.

  “Ernie said you were a pistol,” Mr. Cleary said with a slight smile, extending his hand to Sam.

  He shook it, his head high and shoulders back. Yeah, he had come a long way.

  Sam rubbed his hands together as the memory faded. He glanced at the wall where he’d taken down Zo-onna, the Noh mask he’d given Dana. Still hanging was its partner mask, Heita, the face of a brave warrior, his sunburned skin depicting time spent on the battlefield. He looked even more fierce without the balance of Zo-onna’s peace, calmness and purity.

  He didn’t regret giving the mask to Dana. He just hadn’t realized how important Zo-onna was to Heita until she was gone.

  Several hours later, Sam sat in a nondescript car on the street outside Jordan James’s Hollywood Hills home and monitored the conversation inside. It had worked out well to have Arianna interview J.J., after all. The man obviously liked her—or he was doing a convincing job of getting her to think he was the last honest man in America. She’d arranged the interview by saying she was auditing Randall’s campaign contributions for the last two elections. J.J. had somehow surmised she was from the state Franchise Tax Board, although she never said so and he didn’t asked for identification. Fool, Sam thought, at the same time grateful. Arianna had presented copies of all the official tax documents, however, so it had been easy to mislead him. He hadn’t even questioned why she was working on a Sunday.

  In truth, the campaign contributions hadn’t sent up any red flags, but the fact J.J. was about to take over as campaign manager for Dana’s opponent led her chief of staff to conclude that J.J. was the best potential suspect. He knew Randall well enough to know his secrets; he knew Dana well enough to know she would do anything to protect Randall’s reputation. Plus, he wanted his own guy in office, returning himself to the political arena while bailing from a dying business before it went under completely, destroying his reputation.

  “Did Mrs. Sterling participate in a lot of fund-raising events?” Arianna asked from a list of questions designed to ease into personal issues.

  “She wasn’t Mrs. Sterling until after Randall was elected to his second term as senator.”

  “Was she an asset?”

  “She might’ve been, if he’d lived and if he’d run for another term.”

  “If?”

  “He was making noises about quitting. He would’ve had twenty-four years in Congress by then. Time for fresh blood.”

  In the car Sam snorted. Randall Sterling was a career politician. Quit? No way. His power would have been cemented in Washington by then, his reward chairing his choice of A-list committees, maybe even being elected leader. Dana said he’d hinted at running for president. He had the ability and the charisma to win.

  “I know this is completely off topic of the audit,” Arianna said conspiratorially, “but, just between us, what do you think of Senator Sterling’s chances for reelection?”

  The silence that followed probably meant J.J. was gauging Arianna’s ability to keep the information “just between us.”

  “If she runs,” he answered.

  “Is that in doubt?”

  “She hasn’t announced yet.”

  “Are you saying she’s not going to?” Arianna asked, pushing.

  “I’m not saying anything.”

  He must have implied more with his expression than words, because Arianna said, “Ah. You’re not at liberty to say.”

  “Perhaps we could discuss this further over dinner tonight, Ms. Alvarado?”

  Arianna had a body worthy of a sculptor’s re-creation and she wasn’t hesitant about using it in investigations, with many successes, which only fueled her cynicism toward men and their “think with the brain in their pants” shortcomings. She’d done her homework on Jordan James and knew he had a weakness for busty women, so she’d gone to the interview dressed in a business suit but with her blouse unbuttoned to a distracting level. She’d perfected the art of crossing her legs so subtly, so elegantly, it seemed provocative. Sam had witnessed grown men transform into drooling idiots. Not that Sam didn’t appreciate a woman’s efforts to entice him, like Dana unbuttoning her jacket in her bedroom, revealing a bit of her black lace bra. He’d appreciated that a whole lot.

  “You giving him the full treatment, Ar?” Sam asked.

  “Yes, of course,” she answered. “I’d love to have dinner with you, but I have to fly back to Sacramento tonight to file my report. I’m free now for lunch, however. As long as we don’t discuss the audit. You understand, don’t you?”

  Sam chuckled. She’d nailed J.J. to the wall. She would lead the conversation, and by the end of the afternoon Jordan James would go home hornier than a soldier at the end of boot camp but drained only of information deftly culled over a simple lunch.

  A lethal weapon, Arianna Alvarado. He was glad she was on his side.

  Twelve

  At eight o’clock that evening Sam half listened as Arianna related the day’s events to Nate over a glass of Fumé Blanc and a tray of imported cheese and sourdough baguettes. The paperwork provided by Randall’s accountant and lawyer was stacked on Dana’s library table to be returned. Although a more complete analysis would be necessary to be a hundred percent positive, in their best judgment they could eliminate finances as a cause for blackmail.

  Unless Randall had secret bank accounts, which seemed unrealistic, given his net worth.

  Sam stared into his wineglass. He believed the man was squeaky clean, a rare quality. In the course of investigating someone, Sam usually found a bit of information the subject wouldn’t want revealed. He could dig further into Randall’s life but what would it accomplish? Private indiscretions? He doubted it, and time was too short for Sam to spin his wheels.
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  The focus had to be on Dana alone. Someone didn’t want her reelected. But why?

  The door opened, interrupting Arianna’s dramatic reenactment of J.J.’s moves to lure her back to his house and into his bed. Nate was laughing. Arianna looked haughty.

  “Oh,” Dana said, stopping in the doorway. “I didn’t know you were back.” If there was an accusation in the words, Sam didn’t hear it, but she moved her left shoulder in that way she had, making him pay attention to what was behind the words.

  “Hilda said you were working and not to disturb you,” Sam said, rising and pulling out another chair. “Join us?”

  “Thank you,” she said as she sat, her dark eyes studying him.

  He resisted kissing her, which he ached to do. Once again she looked fragile. Lack of sleep? Worry? Him? He wanted—needed—to see her strength again.

  “How did it go?” she asked as Nate passed her a glass of wine.

  “We think he’s all talk,” Arianna answered.

  “And hands,” Nate added.

  Arianna shoved him. Dana looked puzzled.

  “J.J. got amorous,” Sam explained to Dana.

  “Tried to. I don’t think he’s your guy,” Arianna said. “He’s pretty straightforward. If he wanted you out of the race he would’ve come to you with whatever information he had. He knows how the game is played. He would have tried to convince you to drop out for the good of the party or the state or the country. Whatever. I don’t get any sense at all that he’s playing games with you. He misses the cachet he had as Randall’s friend and campaign manager. His life stinks at the moment. That’s all, I believe.”

  Dana spun her glass around and around by its stem but her focus was on Sam. “Now what? You must have plans or Arianna wouldn’t have returned with you.”

  “She and Nate are going to stay in town through tomorrow, just in case. But I don’t know what else we can do at this point except wait and see what happens. I’d rather be proactive than reactive, but there doesn’t seem to be a new avenue. Unless there’s something else you’ve thought of?”

  Hopelessness flickered in her eyes for just a moment. “No.”