Monument to Murder - Margaret Truman [90]
“A lawyer. He teaches at GW.”
“He’s gotten a lawyer involved?”
“Yes. Jeanine, we have to do something and do it now! If this were ever to boil over and become public it would mean—well, you know what it will mean.”
“Mitzi, you’ve got to calm down. We can think this through. Where is he now?”
“Brixton? He’s here in D.C. at the Hotel Rouge on Sixteenth Street.”
“Have you talked to your father?”
“No.”
“Call him and see if he knows anything more about this aside from what he told you previously. Get back to me after you do.”
“All right, but tell that bastard Millius to put me through the minute I call.”
“Just do what I suggested,” Jeanine said and hung up.
Ward Cardell had just come in from a swim when his daughter called.
“Hello, honeybunch, how are ya?”
“Terrible.”
Her father laughed. “What’s the matter, had a foul-up at one of your dinner parties, some drunk congressman fell asleep at the table with his face in the vichyssoise?”
“I’d welcome that, Daddy, after what I’ve just gone through.”
“Hold on now, honey, while I get me into a robe. Ah’ve been swimmin’. Hot as Hades here.”
He listened to her recount the call from Mac Smith. When she was finished, his voice assumed gravitas. “Let me make a few calls about this Brixton character,” he said. “Sounds like he’s a hard man to get a message through to. Don’t you worry. I’ll take care of it.”
If his words had been intended to comfort and assuage her concerns, they hadn’t. She’d no sooner ended that call when she dialed Jeanine Jamison’s private number again. Millius answered. “It’s Mitzi again. Is she there?”
“Hold on, Ms. Cardell.”
Jeanine came on the line. “You talked to your father?”
“Yes. He says not to worry, but I am worried. Can you talk where you are?”
“I’m in my office.”
“Why does Millius answer your private line?”
“Because I’ve asked him to. Look, Mitzi, maybe we should get together.”
“Soon.”
“Tonight. Fletch is off on a trip, back late tonight. Come for dinner.”
“I have a dinner party tonight, the Brazilian ambassador and his wife.”
“Your choice.”
“I can’t cancel. Can I come after dinner? I don’t care what time it is.”
Jeanine’s sigh indicated what she thought of that suggestion, but she said, “All right. But make it as early as possible. Develop a headache before dessert. Goodbye.”
• • •
Brixton stayed for lunch at Marylee’s house but made his excuses as soon as it seemed acceptable. “I have to get back to D.C.,” he said.
“Business?” Miles Lashka asked.
The attorney, who sat next to Marylee at the table and made a habit of touching her hand and whispering in her ear, struck Brixton as a phony but probably a successful one. He’d spent a good deal of time discussing the trouble he was having with his backhand, and if Brixton heard “Miles says” or “Miles thinks” or “Miles knows a lot about that” from Marylee one more time he would’ve been tempted to tip the table over on them. Was Marylee about to marry this guy with a deficient backhand? If he cared, he would have taken her aside and advised her to dump him. But the truth was that he didn’t care, at least not about what she decided to do with her love life.
His daughter was more ebullient than he’d ever remembered, the pregnancy undoubtedly contributing to her bubbly conversation. As for his mother-in-law, she begged off lunch and went to take a nap.
“Hope you’re feeling better,” Brixton said as she left the room.
“Goodbye, Robert,” she said, her words trailing behind her.
Brixton bid goodbye to everyone, giving Jill an especially warm hug and kiss. “I think it’s great that you’re going to have a kid,” he said.
“If it’s a boy I’m going to name him Robert,” she said.
It touched him.
“Hope your backhand gets better,” he said to Lashka.
“Just a matter of practice,” said the attorney with a wide grin—he had perfect teeth—and a manly slap on Brixton’s arm.
He drove back toward The District but pulled off at a rest stop to make calls on his cell phone. The first was to Flo at her shop.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“Not so good. Mac Smith called Mitzi Cardell and got