TailSpin - Catherine Coulter [129]
The evening rolled on. A distinguished man Savich recognized but couldn’t place, wearing a black bespoke tux that disguised his paunch, stepped onto the dais to stand behind the podium. He adjusted the microphone and greeted the guests, and announced dinner. Everyone migrated to their tables, and for three minutes Savich couldn’t see anyone clearly in the crowd. Ah, there was Director Mueller. He had Rachael’s arm and was leading her to a table at the front of the room where he sat on her right. Jack was to be seated on her left, only he wasn’t there.
What was happening in the kitchen?
Savich was at the point of heading back there when Jack came through the swinging dark-paneled doors, straightening his tux as he made his way to his table. He spoke briefly to Director Mueller and eased in beside Rachael.
Savich and Sherlock stood for a moment by the doors to the large, dark-paneled nineteenth-century gentlemen’s club, which turned coed in the late fifties. Interesting how it still retained the original smell of countless cigars puffed inside its walls over the decades, sort of sweet and old, like lace in an antique trunk.
Savich sat at one of the front tables with Laurel, Quincy, and Stefanos, four couples separating them, Sherlock at one of the back tables with Greg Nichols. Jimmy Maitland, to cover all the bases, sat with Brady Cullifer.
Savich listened to the rock-hard political conversations going on around him and wondered when the rubber chicken would make its appearance. He wondered how they would rubberize his vegetarian dish.
To his surprise, he was served spinach lasagna, a tossed salad, and green beans dotted with pearl onions, all delicious. For the predators, they brought out what looked like a Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings.
A gentleman at the microphone announced that Thanksgiving was Senator Abbott’s favorite meal of the year. There was appreciative laughter. And more laughter when he announced there would be gelato for dessert, because pear tart-lets prepared for more than two hundred people never made it to the table tasting quite like fruit.
Forty-five minutes later, the vice president walked to the podium and adjusted the microphone upward. He spoke of his long friendship with John James Abbott, of his major legislation and his ability to work with both sides of the aisle, no matter the party in power. There was a low buzz of conversation about that statement until the vice president managed to get off a couple of old golf jokes, then turned it over to a senator from Missouri. It went on from there, each speaker with an amusing or touching anecdote about Senator Abbott.
When the crowd was feeling no pain at all, what with the waitstaff serving the hard stuff as well as rivers of wine, the vice president said, “I would like to introduce all of you to Jimmy’s daughter. As you know, he didn’t know she existed until she knocked on his door. In the last six weeks of his life, his happiness shone like a beacon. He once said to me she was the daughter of his heart. Many of you have had the opportunity to speak to Rachael this evening, to experience her kindness, her sense of humor, and her charm, doubtless inherited from her father. I give you Ms. Rachael Abbott.” He stepped forward to hug her when she gained the dais.
I’m still alive. The turkey was good, the cranberry sauce homemade and delicious, better yet, no one has tried to get near me with a knife. No one has tried to lure me to the men’s room.
She looked out over the room at the men and women who ruled the world. She knew her mascara had smudged a bit because she’d cried at some of the stories told by her father’s colleagues.
She looked at older faces, lived-in faces, faces that held both knowledge and secrets, and at that moment held a good deal of benevolence. And she saw clearly their sense of self-satisfaction; it was tangible, seemed to fill the air.
The lights were dim, the scents of discreet perfume mixed with the rich smells of the Thanksgiving dinner.
She caught Greg Nichols’s eye, cocked her head at him,