“Understood.”
“Oh, very well. You’re such a stubborn man. He’s been tranquilized. I’ll have him taken to the vet’s barn. You’ll have to see to setting the leg yourself.”
“Thank you, Lynwood. I’m much in your debt.”
“I’m in your debt, sir. Honorable work. Well done.” He put his hand to Showers’ shoulder again. “Well and finely done.”
Lenore was very flushed. As her husband turned to leave, she darted up and kissed Showers’ cheek. “See you at the inn tonight, darling,” she whispered—loud enough for the others to hear. “We’re going to have quite a party.” Then she followed her husband out the door.
Becky’s eyes were gleaming. “You’re crazy.”
Showers asked the medic for a pen. Taking it, he leaned over the table, writing something on the back of the check. Then he handed it to Becky.
“I want you to go to the hospital and give this to Jimmy Kipp,” he said. “You can use my Cherokee.”
The gleam vanished. Becky was thunderstruck.
“David, this is for $7,500! You need this money. For the auction tonight.”
“I’m not going to the auction. I expect I’ll be spending the night in the vet’s barn, with Moonsugar.”
“David, you can’t be serious. If you miss the auction you’ll never get that horse. I got the number. It’s 17A. They’ll start the bidding on him sometime after nine o’clock. You’ve got to be there! You told me how much you want him!”
“I don’t have money to bid on that horse.”
“You do with this!” She held up the check as though it were a holy vessel.
“That’s for Jimmy Kipp.”
“Please, David. Don’t do this!”
“Becky, you’re not my slave. If you don’t want to take that to the hospital, I’ll do it myself later. But I’m not going to the auction. I’m going to be with Moonsugar.”
The girl was tearful. “I’ll do what you say. But you’ll be damned sorry for it.”
When she was gone, Showers stood up, with some small success putting a little weight on his injured ankle. “At least it’s the same leg I banged up yesterday,” he said, pulling on his shirt. “If worse comes to worst, I can hop.”
The medic went to a metal locker and took out a pair of crutches. “If you’re going to walk, Captain, use these. I’d stay off that ankle as much as possible for a couple of days.”
His shirt buttoned and his blazer on, Showers took the crutches, stopping to adjust them to his height. “Bloody nuisance.”
May sat up. “Can I help you?”
He halted, as though he’d forgotten she was there. “Help me? Oh, no. I’m quite fine. Thank you very much.” He bowed to her slightly, then swung himself out the door.
He’d forgotten his boot and racing silks. May snatched them up and, darting past the puzzled medic, followed the jockey.
“You left these,” she said.
“Oh. Thank you.” He stopped, injured leg bent, and reached for her bundle.
“Please,” she said. “Let me carry them for you.”
“Well, if you insist,” he said. “Thank you very much. It’s not far. Just down there.” He swung off toward a long low building on the other side of some corrals, then paused. “Are you all right? You were feeling poorly.”
“I’m fine, really. My name is May Moody,” she said, giving him her best smile.
“David Spencer Showers,” he said. “You’re the movie actress they announced over the public address system, aren’t you? You should be up at the winner’s circle.”
“No I shouldn’t. Not with that winner.”
An amused expression came over his face, but diminished into sadness. “A terrible spectacle today. I’m sorry you had to see it.”
They ambled slowly along, May clutching the dirty riding clothes to her chest. She was astounded by this man, not simply because of his courage and sacrifice, but because of the ease and swiftness with which he had made these enormously consequential decisions. May knew producers and directors back in Hollywood who could spend weeks in mental mumbling over the most trivial details. She would herself sometimes fret for days over whether to repaint her living room or ask for a change of a few words in a script. This man had chosen to risk his life, abandon a sure triumph, give away a large sum of money, give up a horse he obviously wanted to buy very badly, and devote a lot of time, effort, and money to another horse that was likely going to die anyway—and he’d done this all in a matter of a few minutes, without hesitation.
She was at a loss as to what to say to him. Idle chatter was not very appropriate. As they walked, she contented herself with stealing glances at him, wondering why he wasn’t doing the same with her. He was much younger than she had thought at first. His hair color and the long scar on his face had added years that weren’t there. He was also quite tall. She was five feet six, and had to look up to him.
As they neared the barn, two stable hands came out, followed by a large woman in riding boots whom Showers introduced as Alixe Percy. She took Showers’ clothing from May, and began talking about the injured horse. The jockey thanked May again, then started into the barn. May suddenly felt very sad for him, realizing how miserable the man had to be beneath all his manners and sangfroid. Such a beautiful day had been made so awful—so quickly.
May found her escort waiting unhappily for her by his Mercedes.
“I don’t want to go back to Washington just yet,” she said. “I’d like to go to that horse auction tonight. Would that be all right?”
Granby looked surprised, and not altogether pleased.
“Whatever you wish, Miss Moody.”
Bernie Bloch had led his group from the winner’s circle back down to his Rolls-Royce. He poured last drinks all around, and then began packing up his liquor chest. There were three races still to be run but the only one that mattered to him was over and he was ready to go back to the comforts of the Dandytown Inn. Robert Moody realized that this would be taken as bad sportsmanship by the locals, but he was ready to go himself. He’d been completely unnerved by the twin shocks of seeing his daughter after so long and then having her flee from him—in front of everyone.
He decided he’d spend the rest of the day on the telephone. In fact, if Bloch was planning on making a big night of it out here, Moody thought he might slip away back to Washington. He’d had enough of this place, and these people.
“Are you going to look for your daughter?” Deena asked, quietly.
“No.”
“That wasn’t very nice of her to go running off like that.”
“She still sees things her mother’s way.”
“What’s she doing in Washington?”
“I don’t own the town, Deena.”
“Are we going to have her underfoot this summer?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Wasn’t it wonderful, what that Captain Showers did?” said Sherrie Bloch.
“If my jockey pulled a stunt like that I’d kick his ass into the next county,” said Bernie, slamming down the trunk lid.
“You ought to send the man a bottle of champagne,” his wife said. “He’s the only reason you won.”
“Shut up, Sherrie.”
There was a stirring among some of the spectators farther down the rail. People were turning to one another, talking excitedly. Whatever the news, it traveled rapidly from one to another, spreading out through the crowd. The excitement was audible, almost palpable. Moody saw Lenore Fairbrother. She listened as someone spoke to her, then began laughing. She looked over at Bloch’s group, her laughter uncontrollable.
“What the hell is her problem?” Bernie said.
“I’ll go ask,” Moody said.
She began moving away, but he caught up with her quickly.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Fairbrother. What’s going on?”
“Death, dear boy,” she said, her laughter subsiding. She put her hand on his arm. “Vicky Clay. Your friend’s traine
r? She and her husband killed each other. Fucking! Your poor Mr. Bloch’s won his race and lost his bimbo!”
She began to laugh again, until a man came up and pulled her away.
The assistant commonwealth attorney, Wayne Bensinger, a dark-haired, thin-faced young man wearing glasses, a short mustache and an ill-fitting tan polyester suit, was only three years out of law school. The most serious felony he had ever prosecuted was an armed robbery of a convenience store in which a counter clerk had been wounded by flying glass when the perpetrator’s firearm had accidentally discharged, shattering an overhead light fixture. The perpetrator, a nineteen-year-old first offender, had been sentenced to eight years. Virginia juries could be tough. Bensinger, who had a wife and an infant daughter, sometimes worried about the young robber—about what might be happening to him in the state penitentiary, what the boy might do when he got out.
The last homicide in Banastre County had happened many years before. A local horse trainer, who had been sleeping with the wife of a wealthy farmer, had shot the man to death in his own bedroom. The trainer had claimed that the husband had found him in bed with the wife and gone back downstairs for his gun. When the husband returned, the trainer had hit him over the head with a boot, taken the pistol away, and shot the husband twice. The trainer was quite popular in the county, especially with the ladies, and the farmer was not. The trainer was convicted of a charge of unlawful use of a weapon and given three months in the county jail. He was acquitted on the homicide charge.
In an aside, the judge had faulted the sheriff for shoddy police work. He had lost evidence—the boot—allowed fingerprints on the murder weapon to be smudged, and failed to take a sworn statement from the wife, the only witness to the crime.
The sheriff, Richard Cooke, was still in office. Arriving at the inn more than an hour after the maid had discovered the bodies of the Clays, he had assumed like everyone else that the two had overdosed on drugs and alcohol, but wasn’t going to take any chances. He called the state police to have evidence technicians sent to the scene and, while waiting the nearly two hours it took for them to arrive, had his deputies take Polaroids of the bodies, the contents of Meade’s veterinary bag, the room, the corridor outside, the lock on the door, and even the view from the window—to show that no perpetrator could have gained access to the chamber through it.
Cooke also began taking statements. He drew up a list of all the inn’s guests and employees, adding the names of all those known to have been in the inn at any time that evening. It was a very long list.
He started with the employees. There were delays. A deputy had to be sent to the next town to buy a sufficient number of blank tape cassettes to record the statements. The man was dispatched again to buy fresh batteries for the recorder. But the sheriff was insistent. Everyone would be interrogated.
The interviews were conducted in the office of the inn’s manager. People were allowed to go about their business in the inn—return to their rooms, use the bar and dining room, lounge about the lobby. But they were not allowed to leave the premises until they had given their statements.
Commonwealth Attorney Bensinger sat with the sheriff for most of the questioning, jotting down notes to himself or doodling, not altogether sure whether Cooke was following proper procedure, or whether all this was necessary. During the interrogations, he heard a great deal about Vicky Clay’s love life and self-destructive habits, but little that was useful in determining how she had ended the night dead. She’d been in the bar much of the evening, arguing with her husband, flitting from man to man, drinking compulsively. She’d last been seen a short while after nine o’clock. The stories were largely the same, though there were still many left to question.
Robert Moody was among them. He had gone directly to his room to shower and change clothes, remaining there to work his telephone. If Sorenson was weakening, other senators might be even softer. A phone call coming out of the blue on a Sunday could stiffen them up, the White House reaching anywhere, at any hour, to offer friendship and make its wishes known. In the Bush administration, the president himself would be doing this job. Moody’s boss found such intercourse just too, too distasteful. More and more, the man was reminding Moody of Woodrow Wilson. Not that that was such a bad thing. Wilson had depended on his Colonel House as absolutely as Moody wanted his president to depend on him.
Moody was going to deliver on this damned Earth Treaty, on the accompanying Earth Bill, on anything else the president had in mind. He had promised himself this triumph, just as he had promised himself that he would be governor, that he would one day be a millionaire, that he would marry Deena Atkinson, though at the time she had been married to someone else.
In all, he reached twelve senators—nine of their own and three liberal Republicans. Every call was worth it. He could sense every one of them straightening up a little at his crack of the whip. A few asked for some things in return that Majority Leader Reidy had never told him they wanted. A couple were a hell of a lot softer on the treaty question than Reidy had indicated.
Moody also checked on the Belize situation. There had been no more arrests or killings, but the Mexican government had dispatched some troops to its southern border, placing them in position to enter either Belize or Guatemala.
Moody ordered that a stern warning be sent to the Mexican embassy to cool it—a message made in the president’s name but signed by him.
Moody felt good when he was done with his calls. Deena had gone downstairs long before him. He found her in the bar with Bernie and Sherrie Bloch. Bernie was drinking a martini, and was very angry.
“These goddamned hayhead cops,” he said. “They’re keeping us here until we all give statements about Vicky. I’ve got to get over to that horse auction.”
“Bernie’s taking us over to Wintergreen for dinner,” Deena said. “To the Inn at Little Washington.” It was probably the finest restaurant in Virginia.
“Not until I buy this horse,” Bloch said. “It’s one of the early hip numbers. It won’t take very long. But these bastards are stiff-arming me.”
“I’m not sure they have a legal right to do that,” Moody said. “Did you tell them who you are?”
“You bet your ass. But it doesn’t cut any shit with them. Hell, they’re making Lynwood Fairbrother stay. Though he hasn’t complained any. If he did, they might knock off this crap.”
“Why don’t you just get up and leave?” Moody said.
“I tried. Front door, back door. Got stopped by these Smokey the Bear dipshits both times,” Bloch said. “Look, I don’t want any trouble with the Virginia law. I just want them to listen to reason. I don’t know what the fuck happened to Vicky. She’s a goddamned junkie. Anything could happen to her. I just gotta get to the auction. I gotta buy that horse.”
“Why don’t you call the auctioneers? Have them hold off until you get there?”
“I tried. They won’t do that for a buyer. A seller can pull a horse out of the line, but not a bidder.”
“Call the seller.”
“The seller’s in New Jersey. The auctioneer’s acting as his agent, and he acts like he’s never heard of me.”
“Well, I don’t think they can do this,” Moody said. “If they want you as a witness, they have to subpoena you, but they can’t hold you like this unless you’re a suspect.”
“Shit,” said Bloch. “Maybe I am. Maybe we all are.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Moody said.
The White House chief of staff pushed open the door to the manager’s office as though he were entering his own. The sheriff, a deputy, and a dopey-looking kid in glasses and a suit were talking to a bellhop. Moody’s sudden appearance startled them, and angered the sheriff.
“You’re going to have to wait your turn, sir,” he said. “We’ll get to you as soon as we can.”
“Do you know who I am?” Moody said.
“Yes sir. You’re the ex-governor of Maryland. This is Virginia, sir. And I’ve got a homicide
case here with two corpses.”
Moody went to the desk, planted his hands firmly on the top, and leaned forward, glaring into the sheriff’s eyes.
“I am chief of staff to the president of the United States, mister. I am a federal officer with the entire U.S. Secret Service at my disposal. I am dealing with a number of very important matters at the moment, including a crisis in Central America, and I am going to have to return to Washington. Aside from the fact that the wrath of God is going to come down on you if you obstruct me in any way, I am also an attorney. I am familiar enough with the law of this commonwealth to know that you have no legal right to detain me or any of these people unless you have sufficient evidence to place them under arrest.”
“Everyone will be free to go as soon as I get a statement from them. If they try to leave the premises before that, I’m going to treat them as suspects, or arrest them for obstructing justice.”
“The hell you are.”
“I’m doing it. I called Judge Merrick.”
“I’m leaving. If you wish to question me, my office address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. I suggest you get a subpoena.”
He stood up straight. “All right, sir. You can go. We don’t want to interfere with the president’s business.”
“I’m taking my wife with me. And my friends.”
The sheriff hesitated, then looked at Bensinger.
“You’re the investigating officer,” Bensinger said, a little flustered. “Right now, I’m just observing.”
“Sorry sir,” said the sheriff, “but they’ll have to stay. Your wife was seen talking to Vicky Clay in the women’s room last night. Your friend Mr. Bloch was seen talking to her outside his room. We have some questions for them.”
“Then call them in now and get it over with!”
The sheriff became implacable. “They wait their turn. After this man, I’m going to talk to Mr. Fairbrother. I’ve already kept him waiting too long.”
Moody took a deep breath. He had two Secret Service men waiting outside by his car. Push could come to shove. Moody had been pushed by the likes of the British prime minister and the head of the United Auto Workers, but he’d always won the shove.
The Last Virginia Gentleman Page 7
