Murder on K Street - Margaret Truman [10]
“He needs your friendship.”
“He needs more than that. What was the party?”
“A going-away bash for someone from Homeland Security.”
“I hope you made them take off their shoes before entering.”
He heard an exasperated sigh, coupled with an abbreviated laugh. “I’ll see you later,” she said.
CHAPTER FOUR
Rotondi had been awake for an hour but opted to stay in bed, enjoying his painless repose. The moment he placed his feet on the floor, the pain would stab his leg and stay with him throughout the day.
Emma slept sweetly next to him, on her side, facing away, one foot jutting out from beneath the rose-colored cover. Homer had co-opted a position at the foot of the bed, muscles twitching from a dream. Chasing cats? Being chased by a bigger dog? A lifetime supply of steak bones? A perpetual belly rub? Such simple pleasures.
Emma’s body blocked Rotondi’s view of the clock radio, but he knew it was early morning from the color of the outside light.
Rotondi’s thoughts continued to be dreamlike, and apropos of nothing: contrails high in the sky—did only military jets fly high enough to create them?—chocolate-covered cherries; an egg frying on a D.C. sidewalk in its current heat wave; a cemetery where all the buried sat up, stretched, yawned, and sang “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” a ten-foot-tall judge in black robes smashing Rotondi’s hand with his gavel when he placed it on the bench; and occasionally more mundane matters such as wondering when Homer would wake up and have to be walked. He’d been trying to get Emma to fence in her postage-stamp-size backyard to no avail.
Homer stirred, lifted his head, looked at Rotondi, and flopped down again. Emma stirred, turned, and flung a leg over her lover.
“You awake?” he asked.
“No.”
“Sorry.”
Her movement had caused the cover to slide mostly off, revealing her in the oversize pale blue man’s shirt she routinely wore to bed. Despite spending her waking hours preparing and serving food, Emma Churchill’s figure didn’t reflect that vocation. Not that she was the anorexic model type. Far from it. She packed a solid 145 pounds on her five-foot, seven-inch-tall body, her alabaster skin smooth and firm. A date had once asked whether she was a lesbian, citing coal-black hair that she wore extremely short and her dislike of makeup beyond absolute basic necessities. “Maybe we could do a threesome some day,” he’d suggested, leering. It was their first and final date: “He was lucky I didn’t deck him on the spot,” she told Rotondi when recounting the story. “Schmuck!”
Emma and Rotondi had stayed up for hours last night after they’d arrived separately at her house, watching the news and providing their own commentary and analysis during breaks. Of course, aside from the murder itself, Rotondi had much more to discuss than the TV talking heads, who speculated on everything and knew little. He and Senator Lyle Simmons went back a long way together, a very long way. They’d been college roommates at the University of Illinois since their freshman year, inseparable friends despite a few incidents, one in particular that would have undoubtedly shredded other friendships.
He swung his legs off the bed and stood, giving out a customary groan as his left leg protested. He ignored the cane on the floor next to his side of the bed and limped into the bathroom, where he placed both hands on the sink and lowered his head, moving it in circles until he was ready to face the mirror.
“Good morning,” he said to his reflection, not expecting a response. He wasn’t that crazy. He stepped back and took a longer-range view of himself. Above his boxer shorts was a lean torso with plenty of dark chest hair. That he hadn’t put on weight was more a matter of genes, he knew, than lifestyle, although he did work out regularly. His bad leg had put an end to his running routine, which he missed. He’d been recruited to the U of Illinois on a basketball scholarship—second-team All Big Ten his senior year—and had been a miler on the track team. After