The President's Daughter - Mariah Stewart [43]
“Mr. Keller, I love to talk about my family. My husband, in particular.” She leaned past him to open the door, then settled back against the wood frame after Simon had stepped past her. “Those days in Washington . . . they seem so long ago.” Here she laughed. “Well, yes, of course, they were so long ago. So many years since we left. There are some things you never forget.”
“Ah, secrets, Mrs. Hayward?”
“Everyone has their secrets, Mr. Keller.” She smiled as she closed the door.
Simon rehashed the interview as he drove to the Green Airport to catch his plane back to Philadelphia, where he’d left the Mustang. Mrs. Hayward had appeared to be exactly as she had been in the old television and documentary footage he’d watched over the weekend. Gracious, charming, a hint of humor, obviously well-bred. Obviously devoted to her children and to her late husband’s memory. And, all in all, as had her daughter, Celeste had come off as one cool customer.
Especially when confronted with a picture of her husband’s mistress. If Simon hadn’t been studying Celeste’s face carefully, he might have missed the way her eyes had narrowed with hatred. The way her nose had turned up as if in memory of an incredibly offensive odor.
Simon was convinced that the former First Lady had been well aware of her husband’s affair with Blythe Pierce and that the years had done little to ease the rage that awareness had evoked.
Even now, almost thirty years later, for just the briefest of moments, Celeste Hayward had looked mad enough to kill.
CHAPTER TEN
Simon stood in the shelter of a small grove of trees that defined the perimeter of a tiny parking area adjacent to a playground and for a long moment studied the house across the street.
It was a tidy little place, a pristine white Cape Cod with dark green shutters, a small wreath of silk pansies on the front door, which was painted to match the shutters, and the number 218 in black wrought iron affixed to the siding. There was a small porch with two rocking chairs, and narrow wooden boxes under the front windows. Blue hydrangeas were painted on the mailbox that was attached to the wall just next to the front door. At the end of the driveway, a dark green Taurus station wagon—several years old—was parked in front of the one-car garage. The yard was defined by white picket that matched the fence that separated it from the neighbors’. All in all, the house looked homey and comfortable and fit right in with all the other houses on the street in this middle-class neighborhood.
Whatever Jude McDermott did with Blythe Pierce’s money, Simon thought, she sure didn’t splurge on a big fancy house.
Glancing back at the station wagon, he added, Or on her wheels.
Modest house, modest car. Simon wondered just what it was that the McDermott woman had spent her $6 or so million on.
“You looking for Jude?”
Simon paused, halfway up the sidewalk. The question came from the opposite side of the fence that separated one tidy house from the other.
“Yes,” he replied.
“Won’t be back till after five.” An elderly woman toddled around from behind a forsythia that was in full bloom. “She’s at work.”
“Oh.” Simon glanced back at the car in the driveway, wondering how the woman had gotten to work if her car was here. If, in fact, that was her car.
“Down to the library,” the woman volunteered.
“Oh. Down in town there?” Simon pointed toward the commercial district he’d driven through that morning.
“That’s right. Just a block off Main. You a friend?”
“A friend of a friend.”
“Well, she’s there till five. If you see her, tell her I brought Waylon over for a spell.”
“Waylon?”
The woman gestured to a sleepy-eyed basset hound that lounged under a lilac that was just coming into bud.
“Waylon doesn’t look too lively this morning,” Simon observed.
“Don’t let him fool you. He’s quick as a whip. When he has a mind to be.”
“Thanks for your help,” Simon replied, smiling at the improbability—Waylon looked anything but quick—and nodding to the helpful neighbor.
Simon