Murder at Union Station - Margaret Truman [2]
She wrapped the white terrycloth robe tighter around her against a chilled wind off the bay and continued to watch Rich and Geoff Lowe on the putting green. She couldn’t hear their words, but she knew what they were discussing. How could she not? That’s all Richard had talked about for the past year. He was consumed with it, driven. “I’m a man on a mission,” he would often say when she questioned the long hours he worked on the book. She wished Rich hadn’t gotten involved with Lowe, a pretentious sort if she’d ever seen one, and she’d seen plenty of them in Washington, D.C., basking in the reflected glory of their powerful political bosses, like secretaries to high-profile physicians who assume their bosses’ status and press it upon patients.
Meeting like this in Bermuda was Lowe’s idea, silly cloak-and-dagger stuff, Kathryn thought. She didn’t like the influence Lowe seemed to have developed over Rich. The man she’d fallen in love with had been changing before her eyes since hooking up with the young Senate staffer, and not for the better.
Marienthal looked up and waved, gave her that boyish grin. She returned the greeting and raised her glass. “Up in a minute,” he yelled, and walked off the green with Lowe.
They had dinner that night in the hotel’s Harley’s Bistro, a large, modern room with huge windows overlooking the pool and Hamilton Harbor beyond, Rich, Kathryn, Lowe, and Ellen Kelly, who worked with Geoff but who was obviously more than that; they shared the same hotel room. Kathryn wished she and Rich could spend a week alone in romantic Bermuda, but that wasn’t in the cards. He’d been away for almost three weeks, returning to Washington from Israel only yesterday and announcing they were flying to Bermuda to meet Lowe and Ellen Kelly, who’d already been there a few days enjoying themselves.
Unsurprisingly, Lowe dominated the dinner table conversation, ranting about politics, which, Washington style, he seemed to feel only he had a handle on, and vilifying the current administration and president. Adam Parmele was in his first term and running for a second. Geoff Lowe was a short man, not much taller than Kathryn, who was five feet, four inches tall. He was chunky, with a large face dominated by a broad nose that would not be out of place on a professional prizefighter. Balding prematurely, he had strands of blond hair long at the sides. He was type A personality personified; even when seated he seemed to be in motion.
Rich and Kathryn had heard Lowe’s lectures too many times over the past year to react with anything but feigned interest, and she sensed a similar paralysis in Ellen, although Lowe’s colleague and girlfriend seemed to exhibit dutiful interest in his words. But the redheaded, green-eyed Kelly also seemed aware of Rich and Kathryn’s situation because she would turn the conversation around to them whenever Lowe took a break.
“How was Israel this time, Rich?” Ellen asked.
Marienthal laughed and sipped his wine. “Great place. Same as it’s always been,” he said. “I’ve been there so often lately I ought to start wearing a yarmulke.”
“Adam Parmele’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian situation, if you can call it an approach, is ridiculous,” Lowe said, obviously not interested in learning more from Rich. “His whole foreign policy is a joke. Anybody with half a brain could have seen that when he was running—waffling, saying one thing one day, reversing himself the next.” He shook his head and sat back in his armchair. “Another four years with this liberal bumbler and we’ll really be down the drain—the economy, crime, foreign policy, all of it.”
Again, Ellen changed the subject out of deference to Rich and Kathryn, asking Kathryn a question about her job at the library, which led to a lengthy tale of how she’d only recently been promoted into the rare documents room, which answer carried them through dessert but stopped short of coffee with Sambuca.
They ended the evening in the lobby. At least Kathryn thought