Murder Inside the Beltway - Margaret Truman [85]
She gave him a rundown of things she thought he might want to look at, and calls to return.
“Thanks, Caroline. You’re the best keeper a man could have.”
She fought against tearing up and left.
At ten o’clock, she called him on the intercom. “Jerry, Kevin Ziegler is on the phone.”
“Ziegler?” Rollins said. “What’s he want?”
“I don’t know. He just said that it was important that he speak with you.”
“Tell him I’m on another call but will be off soon.”
He hadn’t spoken with Ziegler for months. Prior to the launch of the Pyle and Colgate campaigns, they’d occasionally run into each other at social or political events around town, and had shared a table at luncheons and dinners at the National Press Club and other venues at which speakers of interest appeared. He disliked Ziegler, which put him in the mainstream of general feelings about Pyle’s puppet-master. At the same time, he recognized the man’s intellect and admired his steely resolve to get what he wanted, for his candidate and, by extension, for himself.
Why was he calling? Rollins wondered. Was it to express his concern for what the Rollins family was enduring? He preferred to think that was the case.
He picked up the phone. “Hello, Kevin,” he said.
“Jerry. I wasn’t sure I’d catch you at the office, considering what’s going on. Good God, man, what an ordeal.”
“Yes, it’s been rough.”
“Especially for that lovely wife of yours,” Ziegler said. “How is she holding up?”
“She’s standing tall. How are you, Kevin?”
“I’m doing just fine. Jerry, I’ll get to the point. We have to talk.”
“About what?”
“That’s better left for when we get together. Are you free for lunch?”
“As a matter of fact, I’m not.”
“Can you make yourself free for lunch? It’s important, Jerry. I realize that everything pales in comparison to your personal ordeal, but there may be something we can do to help in that regard.”
Rollins’s face twisted into a question mark. What could Jack possibly mean?
“Jerry,” Ziegler said, “the president is deeply concerned about what’s happened to you and your daughter. He wants to do everything in his power to get that little girl home safe and sound, and to pull out all the stops to accomplish that. We can discuss the role he might play, along with other things I need to run by you.”
“I, ah—all right, Kevin. I’ll cancel my lunch. Where would you like to meet?”
“I’ll set it up at my club.”
“Which one? You belong to a few.”
“It isn’t a club exactly, Jerry. Sort of a sanctuary from the madness of everyday life in the White House. It’s a lovely, secluded country retreat only a few miles into Maryland. I’ll come by and pick you up at the office, say at twelve thirty?”
Rollins thought for a moment. Could he agree without running it past the detectives? He knew he couldn’t.
“Twelve thirty will be fine, Kevin.”
He hung up and pondered what had just transpired. Ziegler’s call was unseemly. To have had no contact with him for all these months and then to receive a call out of the blue the day after Samantha’s kidnapping was, well, bizarre. President Pyle wanting to help? Absurd. There was nothing he could do. Rollins knew that if he played into such a scenario, anything that came from Pyle and his administration would be spun purely for political posturing and gain, an empty offer to reach across the aisle to his competitor’s best friend and chief advisor, in his time of need. The spin machine had always been distasteful to Rollins, but he was as much a part of it as anyone else in D.C.
He called Massie into the office. “Brian, my plans have changed. I need to cancel my lunch date with Testa from Senator Prescott’s office. Would you please call him for me and offer my apologies.”
“Sure. Want me to suggest I meet with him?”
“Not a bad idea. You know what it’s about.”
“Why the change, Jerry?”
“A last-minute thing. I’m having an unchangeable lunch with someone else.”
Massie waited to see whether Rollins would elaborate, mention the name of his new lunch date. He