Murder Inside the Beltway - Margaret Truman [58]
He said nothing. Mary’s thought at the moment was that he was a very handsome young man, well dressed and with a powerful job in a city of powerful jobs. He undoubtedly had attractive young women falling all over him. Then again, she reasoned, he might be one of those men who doesn’t have time to date women, preferring to get his sex by paying for it rather than having to wine and dine a woman into bed, which was time consuming, and probably more expensive.
“When was she killed?”
They gave him the date and approximate time of her death.
He smiled. “I know exactly where I was and what I was doing,” he said. “I was with Senator Barrett at a fundraiser at the Mayflower Hotel.”
“All night?”
“A good portion of it.”
“I’m sure there are people who were with you who can vouch for your presence there,” Jackson said.
“Of course. But I wouldn’t want you approaching them. That would be embarrassing for me—and for Senator Barrett if it got back to him.”
“We’ll be as discreet as possible,” Mary said. “Could you give us some names?”
“You know,” Patmos said, “I find this to be a form of harassment.”
“It isn’t meant to be,” Jackson said. “Names?”
“There were so many people there,” the chief-of-staff said. “Hundreds.”
Easy to get lost in the crowd, slip out, and spend an hour with Rosalie Curzon, Jackson thought.
“Just give us the names of a few who were with you all night,” Mary said.
“I’ll have to think about that,” Patmos said.
Mary took a sip of her now-cold coffee. “We’re in no rush,” she said sweetly.
Jackson and Hall left the coffee shop with two male names, who Patmos said would vouch for his attendance at the fund-raiser. He’d turned on the charm at the end of their meeting, apologizing for anything he might have said that could be construed as arrogant or combative. “Anything I can do to help, please call,” he said.
They stood on Wisconsin Avenue and watched him disappear into a crowd of window-shopping tourists.
“What do you think?” Mary asked.
“I’m thinking that all we have to go on are the few people caught on those tapes. She must have had dozens of other clients we’ll never know about. Shame she didn’t keep a little black book like they’re supposed to.”
She laughed. “I didn’t know that was a rule with hookers, Matt.”
“It should be,” he said.
As they drove back to Metro, Mary said, “I was thinking in the coffee shop about something you said the morning after the murder.”
“What’s that?”
“That she wasn’t wearing that red kimono she wore on the tapes. Sweatpants and sweatshirt. Maybe whoever did her in wasn’t a john, wasn’t there for sex.”
NINETEEN
The Colgate campaign for president was picking up steam every day, which meant increased involvement for Jerry Rollins. He wasn’t happy about that. Colgate was calling upon him for advice at all hours of the day and night, asking that they get together to discuss strategy, or to mediate spats between members of his staff. While Rollins’s displeasure had much to do with the time it took from his law practice, to say nothing of eating into his fragmented domesticity with Sue and Samantha, he also had to admit to himself that he was trying to avoid Deborah.
He’d never imagined he would end up in a quandary like this, not the trap-minded, focused, clearheaded, insightful attorney that he’d always been. Along with the guilt, it was anger at having succumbed to such a basic instinct, cognition overruled by sheer passion and lust.
He’d cheated on Sue. That was bad. He’d slept with one of his wife’s best friends. That was worse. And the woman with whom he’d been arranging sexual trysts was poised to become the nation’s first lady. Certainly that transcended mundane adultery.
His furtive lunch with Deb had been unsettling, at