Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [108]
Chapter 40
That Same Evening
Penn Hills, Pennsylvania
“You play as if that song had just been written.”
Roseann looked up into the smooth, familiar face of the Senate majority leader, Gary Jackson, senior senator from Pennsylvania.
“Thank you,” she said, playing the final chords of a surprisingly up-tempo theme from Gone With the Wind.
“Are you from the area, one of my talented constituents?” Jackson asked.
“No, sir,” she said. “Washington, DC.”
“Really? Fairly far from home for a gig.”
Roseann laughed. “You sound like a musician instead of a senator.”
He grinned. “I was, played my way through college. Drums.”
“That’s wonderful,” she said. “If we had a set here, you could sit in.”
“Afraid my—what’s the term?—afraid my chops wouldn’t be up to it.”
“Neither is this piano,” she said. “I don’t think it’s been tuned since the Johnstown flood.”
“Well, you certainly overcome it.”
“Any requests, Senator?”
“ ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’?”
“Sure.”
The discordant piano aside, the first of two sets went smoothly. Senator Jackson approached her again during intermission as she stood alone in a corner sipping a Diet Coke through a straw.
“Are you returning to Washington tonight?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“That last flight?”
“Yes.”
“I’m on it, too. Care to ride to the airport with us? There’s just myself and an aide. Plenty of room in the car.”
“Thank you,” Roseann said. “I appreciate that.”
“Don’t forget Rufus has a vet appointment in the morning,” Annabel Reed-Smith said to Mac as he pulled up in front of the terminal at Reagan National Airport. She was catching a late-evening commuter flight to Philadelphia for a meeting the next morning with a pre-Columbian dealer.
“I won’t,” he said. “Give me a call when you get settled in the hotel.”
“I always do, although I never really settle into a hotel. I’m only settled when I’m with you.”
“Is that a comment on hotels? Or my daily ego builder?”
“Both.”
They kissed. She left the car and entered the terminal.
Mac smiled as he watched her. He loved everything about his wife, including her legs and her walk, purposeful, yet with a charming tall person’s awkwardness.
Sometimes you get lucky, he thought as he pulled away.
Chapter 41
That Same Evening
Washington, DC
Max Pauling called the flight weather line the moment he rushed into the private and corporate flight operations center at Reagan National, and was told the weather between Washington and Charleston, West Virginia, was passable but deteriorating. He checked the charts covering the Charleston area, filed an IFR flight plan, and ran to his plane, where a ground service technician had fueled it and moved it to a tie-down closer to the ops center.
“Thanks,” Pauling said, casting a wary glance at the sky before climbing into the left-hand seat, shutting the door, and running through his preflight checklist. He was cleared to taxi to an active runway parallel to the one handling commercial takeoffs and landings, and took his place in line behind two corporate jets. Five minutes later, cleared, after waiting not very patiently, he advanced the throttle. The small, single-engine plane rolled slowly forward, then accelerated until reaching sufficient speed to break gravity’s tether and wobble into the sky, a brisk crosswind threatening to push the light aircraft off its path over the runway’s center line. He banked right, following the air traffic controller’s instruction, and climbed away from the airport and its traffic. He adjusted his heading, set his automatic direction finder to the Charleston radio frequency indicated on the chart strapped to the top of his right thigh, and engaged the autopilot.
The horizon ahead was clear, but low, black clouds preceding a front were moving in from the south, to his left. Now on course, and with the instruments guiding him to Charleston, he was able to sit back and reflect on what had sent him running to his plane.
Until coming to Jessica’s apartment and seeing her note, his thoughts had been exclusively on the events