Читать книгу The Raven's Assignment - Кейси Майклс, Kasey Michaels - Страница 10

A t ten o’clock the next morning, Jesse passed by the well-dressed secretary who held the door open for him, and into the large, teak-paneled law office of Rand Colton, oldest son of former Senator Joseph Colton.

His relatives. Amazing. A whole, huge branch of the family Jesse and his family hadn’t known existed until a few short weeks ago. The wealthy, socially and politically prominent branch of the family, about as far away from Oklahoma and Black Arrow as a person could get.

He’d seen photographs of Senator Colton, read stories of the scandal and murders and near tragedies that had nearly torn the California family apart.

He’d run several Colton names through the Internet, read the microfiche newspaper articles at the library, and had come to the conclusion that the last thing these people needed was for another problem to rear its ugly head, both privately and for public consumption.

The public had consumed plenty already, with the murder attempts on the former senator by both his business partner and his supposed wife.

That had been the double whammy, that his wife had been the victim of amnesia for ten years while her twin sister, a convicted murderer, had impersonated her, taken her place in Joe Colton’s house, Joe Colton’s bed.

Bizarre.

It was the stuff of tabloids, made for TV docudramas, all that sleazy stuff. Except it all had happened to good people.

But all of that was over, in the past. Problems solved, lives mended, the future bright.

Until these latest revelations that, thankfully, were still hiding under the press’s radar. Until, if the information Jesse had received thus far was correct, it had been learned that his grandmother had been the legal wife of Joe Colton’s father, Teddy. The only legal wife of Joe Colton’s father.

Making Senator Joseph Colton the bastard born on the wrong side of the blanket. Oh yeah, the tabloids would gobble it up if they knew. One thing Jesse wanted to make very clear to the senator’s son was that nobody in the Oklahoma branch of the Coltons planned to go public with anything. Ever.

“Jesse,” Rand Colton said, walking around from behind his desk, his right hand extended in greeting. “Or should I say, cousin?”

Jesse took the man’s hand in his, felt the dry warmth and solid strength he hadn’t expected to find in the grip of a lawyer. “Jesse’s fine,” he said, then took a seat on a chair that was part of a small conversational gathering of chairs and couch on one side of the large office. “Are we really sure?”

“You’ve spoken to your family?” Rand asked, lowering his six-foot-two-inch frame into the facing chair.

“Yes, when I went home after my grandmother’s funeral. I couldn’t be there in July, as I was traveling in Europe with the president, but I finally got there. They’ve been having some pretty interesting times in Black Arrow.”

“Thanks to my uncle, yes,” Rand said, shaking his head, then looking toward the now-open door. “Is there something wrong, Sylvia?”

“Oh, no sir, Mr. Colton. I only wondered if you and Mr. Colton might like some coffee,” the secretary said.

“Coffee?” Rand asked, looking at Jesse.

“Sure,” he answered, and turned to smile at the secretary. “I take it black, thank you.”

“Oh, no trouble, Mr. Colton,” Sylvia gushed, and Jesse saw a slight flush in her cheeks. “Really. It’s absolutely no trouble at all.”

As the secretary turned to exit, and nearly collided with the doorjamb, Rand said, “Do you always have that impact on women? I doubt I’ll get any coffee at all. You’ll probably get coffee and doughnuts.”

Jesse settled himself in his chair once more, and grinned. “It’s my Comanche blood, I suppose. Some women find that exciting.”

“I find that Comanche blood interesting, frankly,” Rand said, crossing one long leg over the other. “From everything I’ve learned about Teddy Colton—our mutual paternal grandfather—he was a heavy drinker, a social climber, a pompous ass—and a world-class bigot.”

“I really wouldn’t know,” Jesse said, resting his arms on the chair. “But I’ve seen early photographs of my grandmother just before she went to Reno to get a job that would allow her to send money home to her parents, and she was a beautiful woman. I mean, truly beautiful. He probably couldn’t help himself.”

“I can believe that. I can also believe that Teddy met her and married her—before his society marriage to my grandmother. My paternal granddaddy, a bigamist. It’s still mind-boggling. Have you seen the documentation?”

Jesse nodded. “On my visit home, yes. I brought the deed and marriage license back with me so I could look into the matter here. Although why Gloria—my grandmother—never told her sons the full truth is still beyond me.”

“Pride,” Rand said with a slight nod of his head. “The way I’ve heard it, thanks to my father, is that when she realized she was pregnant and contacted Teddy, it was to learn that my grandmother was also pregnant. She could have raised one hell of a stink but she didn’t. She just went home to raise her twin sons on her own. I admire her greatly. A simple woman with real class and a giving heart. Teddy, on the other hand, didn’t trust her.”

“Never measure others by the length of your own lodgepole, as my great-grandfather would say. Teddy would have used information like that as a hammer, and so he felt sure Gloria would, as well. But she never did.”

“And she never took a penny from the trust Teddy set up in her name,” Rand said, “or from the house he put into the trust for her. The Chekagovian embassy. I’ve already asked the lawyers who handle the trust to request that the embassy be vacated, and that’s well in hand.”

“I can’t believe we can evict the Chekagovians,” Jesse said with a smile.

“We didn’t have to. It seems the embassy was already in the process of being emptied in favor of a newer building closer to the Capitol. It should be entirely vacant by the end of next week. I’ll make sure you have keys waiting for you at the lawyers’ office, as I’m sure you’ll want to see the place. I know I would. Say, next Friday?”

Jesse lowered his eyelids, thinking that Samantha would be pleased when he told her he could take her on a tour of the estate. Nothing like turning this entire thing into a dating opportunity. He blinked, ordered his mind to concentrate on the matters at hand.

“Thank you. And about the trust? I’m still having a hard time getting my mind wrapped around that number. Ten million dollars?”

“Rounded down, yes. Sixty years of interest is a lot of interest, especially when the stock market began taking off—and especially when the trust was handled well enough to get out of that market and into safer funds while it was still high,” Rand said, grinning. “And imagine. If my uncle Graham hadn’t gotten greedy, nobody might have known about any of this.”

“Yes, how did that happen?”

Rand and Jesse both stood up as Sylvia entered, carrying a tray holding a small pot, two cups and saucers and one plate of doughnuts. “Thank you, Sylvia. Sylvia?” Rand prompted as his secretary continued to stare at Jesse.

“Thank you, Sylvia,” Jesse said, and the secretary blushed again, then backed her way out of the room.

“Truly amazing. I believe it’s called charisma, Jesse,” Rand said as he sat down once more. “Living in this town, you ought to run for office. You’d certainly get the female vote, if Sylvia’s any indication.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jesse said, then took a bite of the glazed doughnut he’d selected.

“Anyway,” Rand said, picking up his coffee cup, “it was Graham, my father’s brother, who contacted our lawyers here in some desperation, wanting to sell up anything that might be left of their father and mother’s estate.”

“Yes, I remember the name now. Graham. The younger brother?”

“That’s him. Graham earns plenty working for my dad, but money just runs through his fingers, so he was looking for another way to make a quick buck. The way I heard it, some junior law clerk, God knows why, mentioned the Georgetown mansion. Never should have happened because my grandfather had apparently explicitly demanded the estate be kept private unless the inquisitor had the deed in hand. Anyway, the clerk was disciplined, although I’m rather glad he made the mistake, if not happy how Graham reacted to learning of your grandmother’s existence. He went ballistic, thinking about the money and the possible scandal.”

“So you don’t mind any of this?”

Rand shook his head. “The money simply isn’t an issue. As for the scandal? It’s ancient history. Besides, if the news had come out years ago, when Dad was running for the Senate, I imagine his handlers would have put a hell of a spin on it. Who knows, he could have ended up as president.”

Jesse laughed, as did Rand. “My family met your father in Black Arrow. They were very impressed with him. Even my great-grandfather, and let me tell you, the old boy isn’t an easy sell.”

“Dad’s good at impressing people. It comes naturally to him, probably because he’s a good man. I wish I could say the same for Graham.”

“He’s the one who hired somebody to find the marriage license, birth certificates, the deed to the Georgetown mansion, and destroy them? The same guy who ordered the town hall burnt down?”

“Not to mention the break-ins at the newspaper office and your late grandmother’s feed and grain store, yes. Busy, busy, busy. Although Graham swears he never told his hireling to do any of that. No violence, he told the guy, or so he says. Just to find the papers and destroy them, as if destroying evidence and robbing a family of its just inheritance were forgivable. But that’s Graham. He sees things his own way. Luckily, the documents were always in a locked box in your grandmother’s bedroom.”

“And the lawyers here have verified everything from the original deed for the Georgetown property to the marriage license,” Jesse said, perhaps a bit too sternly.

“Your whole branch of the Colton family is quite legitimate. You can rest assured that nobody on our side of the family is going to oppose your claim in any way.”

“Thank you. And I can tell you that no one on our side of the family is going to look this gift horse in the mouth, or try to profit from a sad situation by going public with it.”

Rand seemed relieved by his last statement. “Sounds like we’ve agreed, then. Good, and I thank you. So, what do you and your family plan to do with the estate? With all that money?”

Jesse grinned, looked quite boyish for a moment. “We haven’t the faintest damn idea, cousin.”

Samantha ate at her desk, some quite wonderful beef sandwiches left over from the Sunday roast.

She knew the meat was good; it had been a nearly perfect rump roast she’d prepared with garlic mashed potatoes and freshly steamed broccoli. Rose, the live-in maid, who was a full-time student and the only staff Samantha would allow her mother to put in the house, had sworn it tasted like ambrosia. Samantha had agreed.

Yet, today, it tasted like cardboard.

She lifted the top piece of bread and stared at the meat, lettuce and mayonnaise. Nope. Not cardboard.

“Damn,” she said, closing the sandwich once more and putting it back down on the desk.

“Something wrong?” Bettyann entered the office and put some papers down on Samantha’s desk, then deposited her rounded rump there as well.

“Nothing I’d want the media alerted for,” Samantha said, and watched as Bettyann blushed to the roots of her dyed blond hair.

“What…what does that mean?” the secretary asked, looking so guilty Samantha was surprised to not see the woman’s hand stuck wrist-deep in a cookie jar.

“It means, Bettyann, that someone was here yesterday, asking questions about me, and you answered them.”

“I did? What did I say?”

Samantha shook her head. Some things just weren’t worth the effort. “Nothing, forget it.”

“No, really,” Bettyann said, standing up once more, and leaning her hands on the desktop. “Did I say something I shouldn’t have said? And who did I say it to?”

“I’m not sure. Some secretary. Do you remember someone asking questions about me?”

Bettyann shook her head. “No. I do remember someone—a woman—coming in here yesterday, asking questions about everyone. You know, run-of-the-mill gossip. What it’s like to work here, how are the bosses—stuff like that. I thought she was thinking of applying for the job we advertised last week. You know, sort of feeling us out without actually handing us a résumé? Why? Was it a reporter? Oh, cripes, Samantha, please tell me it wasn’t a reporter.”

“It wasn’t a reporter,” Samantha assured her. “Still, Bettyann, in the future, please try not to be so helpful to strangers, okay?”

“No, not okay. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m really, really sorry.”

“I know. But we’re getting closer and closer to New Hampshire, Bettyann, and the magnifying glass is being applied everywhere, including this office. I’ve been working on a memo directed to all staff, concerning questions that may come into the office. A sort of protocol to follow. I should have done it sooner.”

Bettyann grinned. “Oh, good, it’s your fault. I knew it wasn’t my fault.”

“Spoken like a true politician. Get out of here,” Samantha said on a laugh, and watched as Bettyann, hips exaggeratedly wiggling, left the office.

Once the secretary was gone, Samantha rewrapped her half-eaten sandwich and shoved it back into the navy-blue thermal bag she’d brought from home. Maybe she’d be hungry later, although she doubted it.

After Jesse Colton showed up, and looked at the papers locked in her bottom drawer? Maybe then she’d eat. Or she’d never be able to eat again.

Three hours later, while considering designs for a new series of campaign buttons, Samantha looked up at a knock on her opened office door.

She put down the buttons and stood up, then walked around the desk to give the well-dressed brunette a hug. “Aunt Joan, what brings you to the salt mines?”

Mrs. Mark Phillips bestowed an air kiss on Samantha, then stepped back to look around the cluttered office. “Oh, my. Time to get the bulldozers in here again, my dear,” she said as Samantha quickly moved a stack of files from the only other chair and motioned for the senator’s wife to sit down.

Joan Phillips was in her early fifties, but good genes and even better plastic surgery had her looking like a well-preserved forty. Or less.

Dark hair, marvelous blue eyes, skin the consistency of cream. A figure that flattered her designer suits. Jewels glittering on her hands and at her throat and ears, but discreetly, and half of them heirlooms that whispered rather than screamed “old money.” A cultured voice, the ability to look adoringly at her husband as he made the same stump speech for the fiftieth time.

In short, Joan Phillips was the perfect candidate’s wife.

Joan bent down and picked up the “Calm Day Across America” advertisement proposal Samantha had fashioned into an airplane and soared across the office…which was about as far as she thought it should go.

“Is this an editorial comment, or were you just playing?” the senator’s wife asked, unfolding the makeshift airplane and reading the copy.

Samantha smiled. “I’ll let you decide after you read it, okay?”

“Well, that must have taken at least two seconds of thought,” Joan Phillips said after a moment, and then she refolded the page, sent it soaring toward the most distant corner of the room. “Did they come up with anything better than that, I most sincerely hope?”

“I’ve narrowed it down to two, yes, and I’ll send those over for you and the senator to make the final decision. Or would you like to see them now?”

“No, no, not now. There’s plenty of time for that when Mark and I are alone. I don’t want to make up my mind without his input.”

“Okay,” Samantha said, wishing she didn’t feel so nervous. Clumsy. All those bad things she always felt when in the presence of the neatly put-together Mrs. Mark Phillips.

It had always been that way, since she’d been a child. Uncle Mark was a doll, a peach. And his wife was lovely, ambitious. Very, very perfect.

Samantha always felt as if her own hair had to be messy and tangled, her blouse missing a button, her panty hose laddered with runs, whenever she was in Joan’s presence. The woman didn’t mean to make Samantha, or anyone, feel uncomfortable, but that perfection of hers could be intimidating to those who had to deal with her day to day in any official capacity.

To the public, she was just perfect. Pretty, friendly, articulate…even hip.

“Um…so…what does bring you down here, Aunt Joan?” Samantha asked when the silence became uncomfortable. For her, not for Joan. Joan was never uncomfortable.

“Well, dear, to tell you the truth, I just came to use the postal machine for some correspondence your uncle Mark and I want sent out. Is that what it’s called? A postal machine? You know, that machine that marks envelopes with postage so that there’s no need for stamps?”

“Close enough,” Samantha said with a smile. “Would you like me to arrange to have one purchased for your home office? It would be more convenient for you.”

“No, that’s all right. I’m just as happy for an excuse to come see you and all our eager volunteers, dear. Besides, I have an appointment to have my nails done in a half hour.” She reached into the lizard-skin briefcase she’d carried into the room with her and pulled out several flat, brown envelopes. “I’ll just have someone stamp the postage on these and then I’ll be out of your way.”

“Oh, I’ll do that,” Samantha said, coming around the desk to take the envelopes from the woman.

“Really? Goodness, we don’t pay you enough, dear. Thank you.”

Samantha’s heart was pounding as she accepted the envelopes.

And that’s what they were. Envelopes, just envelopes. Four brown envelopes, the size needed to slip a typewritten page inside without folding it. Didn’t all envelopes look alike? Of course they did.

Samantha put them on the desk behind her, then sort of blocked them with her body as she asked, “Is the president still deciding whether or not he’ll be able to attend the fund-raiser next week?”

Joan rolled her eyes. “You know him, always trying to be the center of attention. Will he, won’t he? I told your uncle Mark to announce that some Broadway cast, or one of those popular boy bands, or somebody like that would be there to perform. Entertainers always mean more media coverage. That would get Jackson to the affair, you could count on that, humming ‘Hail To the Chief’ to himself all the way.”

“The whole world would want to be there if we could get that sort of entertainment, Aunt Joan. Even the opposition. But this isn’t going to be that big a do, you know. Just two hundred of Uncle Mark’s closest friends and supporters. Individuals. Nothing corporate. Nothing to excite or upset anyone. We’re just getting our feet wet.”

“Nonsense, Samantha. Your uncle has been raising funds on a daily basis for all of his three terms in the Senate. It’s what has to be done. Only two hundred people? He doesn’t need something small to get his feet wet. We’re in fund-raising up to our ears, and have been since the beginning. You know as well as I that money for this presidential bid has been collecting in the proper accounts for almost two years. How else are we able to underpay you so badly, hmm? Now, who do you have for entertainment?”

“I’m…um…I’m still considering several options,” Samantha said, desperately running through the file cabinet in her brain, wondering who she could call at the last moment, because she had not booked any entertainment.

“Well, good, then it’s not to worry, is it?” Joan said, getting to her feet in one fluid, graceful movement. “I must be off, I’m afraid. A stop at the salon, and then we have a dinner with several members of the party’s California Primary Committee tonight at seven. We all know a candidate, to be viable, has to carry California. Have to plan ahead, right?”

“Definitely, and we’re already polling well there, I’m happy to say,” Samantha agreed, following Joan Phillips out of the office and through the central room that was loud with ringing telephones, clicking computer keys and the general babble of any office. “I’ll…I’ll be sure to get those envelopes in the mail for you, Aunt Joan. You said they were from both you and Uncle Mark?”

“Did I? Oh, yes, of course. Although we all know that, to your uncle, we’re all errand boys, happy to do his bidding. Mine, his, ours, what does it matter? We must send out mail by the ton. Maybe I will take you up on that offer of one of those postal machines, dear. Except then I wouldn’t get to see you so often, now, would I?”

With another exchange of air kisses, Joan Phillips was gone, and Samantha, after heaving a relieved sigh, was heading back into her office, carefully closing and locking the door behind her.

She spent the next two hours with a phone pressed to her ear, trying to round up some sort of entertainment that would follow the thousand-dollar-a-plate fund-raiser. As she dialed, then was put on hold, she pushed the envelopes Joan had left around her desktop with the eraser tip of a pencil.

She wanted to keep her distance, just in case one of them tried to bite her.

No return address, not on any of the envelopes. Just like the envelope locked in her bottom drawer. Computer-printed address labels, and all the addresses post office boxes, again just like the envelope locked in her bottom drawer.

Could she open the envelopes? Was that legal? There weren’t any stamps on them yet, so it wasn’t as if she’d be tampering with the U.S. mail.

Technically.

But it would be a breach of trust. Uncle Mark’s trust in her. Her trust in him.

After two long, frustrating hours, Samantha had wrangled a gratis appearance at the fund-raiser out of a popular female country-music trio, promising their agent that the media coverage would be “substantial.” Three very pretty girls; talented, and they wore skimpy costumes. That alone ought to make that thousand-dollar-a-plate rubber chicken go down easier.

But she still didn’t know what to do with the envelopes. Five of them now. Fairly bulky.

No wonder her aunt Joan, known to be tight with a penny so she could spend lots of dollars, hadn’t wanted to trust licking the correct amount of stamps. With only a post office box address, and no return address, the envelopes would end up in the dead letter office if the postage wasn’t sufficient.

So much more efficient to use the postal machine in the campaign office.

Except that, Samantha knew, as a senator, Uncle Mark could send out all the official mail he wanted via his office, and at no charge.

So this wasn’t official mail. Without the return address, it probably wasn’t campaign literature, either.

So what was in these other envelopes? More of what she’d found in the first one?

It was that last thought, the one that had been nagging at her all afternoon, that had Samantha unlocking the bottom drawer and sliding the four envelopes into it, on top of the first envelope.

Jesse checked his watch for the second time in as many minutes. Was he already too late? He should have known he wouldn’t get out of the office at a reasonable hour. Reasonable, in his line of work, meant anywhere between six and eight. Face it, reasonable quitting times, for those working in the West Wing, were a joke.

It was now almost nine, and he had chosen to jog over to Phillips’s campaign headquarters rather than take his car and spend another twenty minutes hunting up a parking space.

He stopped outside the office building and looked up. Second floor. Yes, there were still lights on, which meant that Samantha was there, waiting for him.

Probably with her lovely slim, coral-tipped fingers drawn up into fists. Pacing, cursing him, second-guessing herself for having contacted him in the first place.

No matter what, he was pretty certain he wasn’t going to be greeted as if he’d brought the flowers of May along with him. Not when she was so nervous about whatever the hell she thought was so important about the mail she’d discovered.