Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [201]
“You lying, scheming little bitch,” he said, letting her go.
She dropped thankfully back onto the sofa, thinking Buck really looked quite frightening with that wild gleam in his eyes. “It’s all so long ago, Buck,” she said in a coaxing conciliatory voice. “You finished the affair and that was that. And after all, I’m the one who’s had to pay the price.” She shuddered delicately. “Harry was such a … such a scoundrel….”
“I did not finish with Francie,” he said stonily. “You did it for me. Just the way you tried to manage the rest of my life. I didn’t want to leave her, I loved her—”
She latched quickly on to his use of the past tense of the word “love.” “Well, there you are then,” she said. “You loved her, it’s all over, and now she’s gotten herself into this mess. I’m sorry, Buck, but we can’t let it affect our lives, not now with so much at stake.”
He stood quietly, his hands in his pockets, looking at her and he knew the stakes had gotten too high for Maryanne. He thought of the cool impervious beauty he had married and of his alienated children, he thought of his brilliant future and knew it was just ashes. Maryanne had burned their lives away just the way he knew she had burned Harry’s house on Wednesday night.
He turned and picked up his overcoat. “Where are you going?” she said, clutching her silk peignoir to her throat, frightened.
“I’m going to see Francie. I know she didn’t do it—she has the perfect alibi. She was with Senator Buck Wingate Wednesday night—while you were at Harry’s.”
“No! No! It’s not true.” He walked to the door and she ran after him, tripping over the hem of her peignoir.
“You’ve always been a woman who got what you wanted,” he said, “but not this time, Maryanne.”
“I did it for you, Buck,” she screamed, clinging to his arm. “I did it for you … for us”
“Whatever you did, you did for yourself,” he said bitterly, “just the way you always have. Only now you have to live with it.”
She watched aghast as he strode through the door. A little sob escaped her lips and she put her head in her hands, trembling. After a while she pulled herself together and walked into her room. She sat at her dresser, staring in the mirror at her disheveled hair and her own frightened eyes, thinking of how nearly she had brought it all off. She knew Buck would have been in the White House one day and she contemplated the power, the prestige, the acclaim that would have been hers. She would have had it all if it were not for Buck’s stupidity. She wondered what he would do about Harry and decided she wouldn’t worry about that; it was only Buck’s word that the compact hadn’t been left behind on the night of the dinner party. There was no way he or anyone else could prove anything. She was safe. And when he came back this time she would make him pay for it. She would surely make him pay for all he had put her through this week.
She combed her hair and powdered her nose, changed her torn peach peignoir for the blue panne velvet robe and lay down on the chintz sofa to wait for him.
The desk sergeant jumped hastily to his feet when Senator Buck Wingate walked in and asked to see the police chief. “Surely, sir … Senator Wingate. I guess he’ll be home, Senator. I’ll call him for you, right away, sir.”
Buck waited fifteen minutes in a cluttered brown office. A green-shaded lamp burned over the desk, mountains of files spilled from the shelves and there were two old wooden chairs with the brown paint peeling off.
“Senator Wingate. Good to see you, sir. What can we do to help you?” The police chief was a burly man with an intelligent face, red from hurrying.
Buck took a seat. He looked steadily at the police chief and said, “I’m here about Francesca Harrison.”
“The Harrison case?” He looked surprised.
“I’m here to tell you that Miss Harrison did not commit that murder, Chief Rawlins. She couldn’t have. You see, she was with me that night.”
Rawlins drew in a surprised breath; he saw and heard a lot in his job—scandals were scandals, but