Murder Inside the Beltway - Margaret Truman [47]
They said little until drinks and salads arrived.
“Bob spoke with me a few days ago about the situation,” Rollins told her.
“What situation?”
“The rumors about his alleged adulteries, and your refusal to address them.”
“God, you are a lawyer, aren’t you,” she said. “ ‘Alleged’? You know as well as I do that he’s been sleeping around for our entire marriage.”
Rollins knew she was right, of course, but didn’t confirm what she’d said. There was nothing to be gained, and he had become adroit over the years at withholding comments that didn’t promise a benefit, just as he’d honed his ability to lie when an occasion suggested or demanded it—usually small white lies, lies of omission, mostly in a professional context, but sometimes personal, too. He didn’t consider having told Sue that morning that he was having lunch with Scraggs to be a lie. It was simply pragmatic. To have said that he was driving to a romantic inn in Maryland to have lunch with Deborah Colgate would have created an awkward moment. Awkward moments with Sue were best avoided.
Rollins considered his next words. “Let’s say that’s true, Deb. I would never, could never, condone that. But if it’s been going on for as long as you say—and you’ve been aware of it for all those years—then why choose this pivotal moment to take action? I know you’ve never been a fan of politics, and you know that I haven’t been either. But to bail out on Bob now seems to me to be—”
“To be what, Jerry? Unpatriotic? Disloyal?”
“Those are your words, not mine.”
The serving of their lunch interrupted the conversation. With the waitress gone, Deborah said, “I’m afraid, Jerry.”
“Of what?”
“Of everything blowing up in my face, a revelation from the Pyle people, a bombshell of some kind, photos, another bimbo rising out of the gutter…”
He cocked his head waiting for her next words.
“A revelation about us.”
• • •
They’d discovered that their feelings for each other ran deeper than close friends shortly after Bob Colgate announced his run for the presidency. Of course, they weren’t strangers meeting on a train, or falling into each other’s arms on a business trip. They’d known each other for a long time, from her husband’s days in the Maryland senate.
Back then, Rollins was an up-and-coming D.C. attorney who’d been recommended to Colgate’s recently formed special task force on a banking scandal that had rocked the state’s financial institutions. The governor and Rollins quickly forged a close working relationship that morphed into a personal friendship despite their obvious differences.
Colgate was as gregarious and impetuous as Rollins was reserved and calculating. Physically, they were opposites, too. Governor Colgate was a tall, solidly built man who was forever dieting to thwart a tendency to pack on weight. He had a mane of sandy hair with just the right tinge of gray at the temples, and a ruddy complexion. Rollins was slender, and shorter than his powerful friend. His complexion was as gray as his outlook, his silky dark hair thinning, off-the-rack clothing drab in comparison to Colgate’s custom-made suits and shirts from Savile Row.
It was their differences that brought them increasingly close.
Rollins’s thoughtful nature, honed by his law training, balanced Colgate’s penchant for shooting from the hip and the trouble to which it occasionally led. And Colgate’s loose style provided Rollins with, by extension, the excitement lacking in his day-to-day life.
As their working relationship solidified, their families grew closer, too. Sue, Deborah, and Deb’s college roommate, Connie Bennett, became a threesome, although Deborah’s duties as Maryland’s first lady often limited her availability to socialize with them. Still, there were plenty of occasions when they hooked up for a shopping spree, a girls’ night out, or a lengthy gabfest during which they exchanged views of virtually everything, including their love lives.
At parties enjoyed by the couples, spirits were high and laughter reigned. Spirits of the other