Monument to Murder - Margaret Truman [97]
She’d stumbled to her dressing table and observed herself in the Hollywood-style mirror. She didn’t like what she saw. Bags under her eyes were exaggerated and dark; her eyes lacked the sort of gleam associated with being alive.
She showered, and dressed for the day with the help of a female aide, trying all the while to sound her usual self, upbeat and positive. It wasn’t easy, with what she’d gone through the night before. The president’s reaction had been surprisingly benign, although she was certain that he seethed inside. He didn’t need this complication to add to what he faced each day from a cantankerous Congress and a constituency on the verge of abandoning him and his agenda. She wanted desperately to do something to resolve the mess she’d led him into but had no idea what that might be.
Mitzi’s involvement hadn’t struck Jeanine as a problem while leveling with the president. But in the gray light of early morning it loomed large. Her friend was known to be flighty and easily sent off-balance; her husband often joked that his wife tripped over bobby pins and paper clips. Was she likely to lose control and blurt something out to the wrong person? Could she be depended upon to keep their confidence and not do something rash? Jeanine couldn’t be sure, and she dwelled on this while breakfasting in the private dining room.
What would Fletch do now that he knew? When he’d left the bedroom he said he had some thinking to do. What did that mean? What could he do? Would he confide in close aides and garner their opinions? She hoped he wouldn’t. It was embarrassing enough to have gotten into such a mess without the people with whom she interacted on a daily basis knowing that she’d stabbed someone to death, and had gone along with the scheme to cast the blame on another.
Louise Watkins!
That scene twenty years ago at Augie’s was as clear in Jeanine’s mind as the evening it happened. Shortly after the incident she would think of Louise sitting in a prison cell and suffer oppressive guilt. But those moments eventually passed, as unpleasant ones often do, and it was rare that she found herself immersed in such introspection. Of course, when Louise emerged from prison and was gunned down, the guilt had resurfaced. But that, too, had passed with time.…
Until now!
Damn this private detective named Brixton. How dare he threaten to drag something from the past into the present and hurt others in the process? Her mind was like a fast-moving slide show of emotions—anger, then a return to feelings of guilt, oppressive remorse, back to anger, and on to wishing it had never happened. But it had happened. And it was happening all over again.
It was now possible, more likely probable, that the world would know what had gone down that steamy summer night in Savannah.
Who currently knew?
The detective, Brixton.
The reporter, Sayers.
The lawyer, Mackensie Smith.
Her friend, Mitzi Cardell.
Mitzi’s father, Ward Cardell.
The president of the United States.
Were there others?
She had to assume that there were.
Of course there were.
She was deep into these upsetting thoughts as she went downstairs to her office, where her staff awaited. Missing was Lance Millius. She asked about him.
“He called in, Mrs. Jamison. He has some personal business and will be here after lunch.”
Millius’s absence wasn’t upsetting. She was aware that he worked impossibly long hours and was entitled to as much time off as he needed.
Other members of her staff conferred with her about projects for which they were responsible, and she forced herself to concentrate on what they said, banishing those other nasty thoughts to their own compartment. But they rushed back to the forefront the minute there was a lull in the conversation and she wondered how she would get through the day.
• • •
Millius had been up and out of his Bethesda apartment early that morning. He’d received a call at six from President Jamison’s chief of staff, Chet Lounsbury, who said that the president wanted to meet with him privately; he was to tell no one, including