The President's Daughter (13 page)

“Keller. Simon Keller.” He reached a hand to Dina instinctively, grasped her smaller hand with his own.

“I’m Dina McDermott.”

Of Blythe Pierce, Miles Kendall had said, she could light up a room just by walking into it. The same could be said of the young woman who stood before Simon at that moment.

She dazzled the eye. It was as simple as that.

“It’s good to put a name with the face.” Dina unhooked the leash from the dog’s collar, and the dog immediately climbed the steps to sniff at Simon’s leg. “I didn’t know you knew my mom.”

“Actually, I’m writing a book and happened to come across the name of someone who, it turns out, was an old friend of your mother’s.”

“What’s the book about?”

“Former President Hayward.”

“Mom, you had a friend who knew a President? You’ve been holding out on me! Who was this friend?”

“Her name was Blythe Pierce,” Jude said tersely.

“What was her relationship with the former President?” Dina asked as she stepped past Simon to enter the house. A soft wake of fragrance trailed behind her, just enough to tease Simon’s senses and send a wave of tension running through him.

“She had no relationship with him.” Jude’s response came just a few beats too quickly. “She dated his Chief of Staff for a time, that’s all.”

“She apparently attended a lot of events at the White House with Hayward’s Chief of Staff,” Simon added, sensing Jude’s unease. “Her name came up on a lot of White House records—dinner parties, dances, special events—and I just became a bit curious about her.”

“Wow, I’ll bet she has some stories to tell.” Dina raised an eyebrow. “Mom, are you going to make Mr. Keller conduct his entire interview on the front porch?”

“Well, I thought he was almost—”

“Simon.” He looked past the mother to the daughter. “Please call me Simon.”

“Simon, can I offer you an iced tea, since my mother appears to have forgotten her manners?”

“That would be very nice.” Simon smiled. “Thank you.”

“Mom, you take Simon into the living room and I’ll get his drink. What can I get for you?”

“Nothing,” Jude replied roughly.

The younger woman held the door open for Simon while the older woman stood as if rooted to her spot.

“Mom, are you all right?” Dina asked.

“Yes, yes. I’m fine. I have a bit of a headache. . . .”

“Then I won’t take much more of your time,” Simon promised.

“I’ll bring you some aspirin,” Dina told her, then to Simon said, “Please. Sit and chat with my mother. I’ll be right back.”

Simon stood in the doorway of the living room, waiting for Jude to react.

Finally, he reached out to take her arm. “Mrs. McDermott, would you like to sit down?”

“I’d really like you to leave,” she whispered, shaking off his hand.

“I promise I won’t stay long. There are just a few questions I need to ask.” Simon went to the sofa and sat down. The basset followed. Simon dropped a hand down to rub behind the dog’s ears, and the dog fell at his feet, contented and unaware of his mistress’s inner turmoil.

The phone rang and was answered somewhere in the house on the second ring. A minute later, Dina came into the living room carrying a tray with two glasses and set it on the table that stood between her mother’s chair and the sofa. She offered Simon his glass, then handed her mother a glass of water.

“Here, Mom, here’s some aspirin.” Dina dropped two white tablets in the palm of her mother’s hand. “That was Polly on the phone. She’s locked herself out of the greenhouse. I’m going to have to run.”

Simon started to stand up, his good manners inbred.

“No, please, stay seated,” Dina said, then turned to her mother. “I’ll call you later. I want to hear all about this mysterious friend of yours.”

“I’m sorry you have to leave.” Simon found himself standing anyway.

“I’m sorry, too.” She looked as if she meant it. “Make sure we know when your book comes out, so Mom can get lots of copies for the library. I’ll definitely want to read it. Maybe I could get an autographed copy.”

“I’ll be happy to personally bring you one.”

“Can I count on that?” She smiled, and her eyes held him spellbound.

“You betcha.”

She turned and disappeared through the front door before Simon could react.

“She’s beautiful, Mrs. McDermott,” Simon said softly.

“Leave her alone,” Jude growled, obviously not pleased by the interplay between her daughter and her visitor.

“I was asking about Blythe,” Simon reminded her.

“What is it you want to know?” she asked coolly.

“I want to know about her relationship with President Hayward.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do. I think you know everything about it.”

The silence between them stretched wide before being filled by the sound of the dog scratching behind his ear and a clock on the mantel ticking.

“I think I would like you to leave.” Jude stood up, her back ramrod straight, her face grimly resolved.

“Mrs. McDermott, I found you. Very easily, I might add, once I knew who to look for.” Simon remained seated. “How long before someone else finds you, too?”

“I can’t imagine what Betsy was thinking.” Jude’s eyes filled with tears.

“I’ve been asking myself the same thing.” Simon removed the envelope from his pocket and took out the photograph of Blythe that he’d taken from the Pierce home, then placed it on the table between them.

Jude turned from it as if she could not bear to look upon the face. “Please leave, Mr. Keller.”

“Mrs. McDermott, how do you explain the fact that your ‘daughter’ looks like a clone of your best friend? Your friend who has been dead for almost thirty years. And your daughter is how old?”

Jude went to the front door and opened it. “Please leave now.”

Simon stood and leaned over to pick up the photograph but made no move to the door.

“What is it that you want from me?” Her eyes pleaded in a way that words could not, her fear strong enough that it reached toward Simon from across the room. “Are you blackmailing me?”

“No, no, of course not,” he tried to reassure her. “I just want the truth, Mrs. McDermott. I’m only looking for the truth.”

She merely shook her head and gestured for him to leave.

“Does she know?” Simon asked. He took a card bearing his name and phone number and placed it on a table near the door.

Jude turned her head away.

“Please . . .” Jude pleaded as she opened the door.

“Does she know that her birth mother died when she was just a baby?” Simon whispered, sympathy welling in him for the woman in spite of his compulsion to search out the story. “That she was deliberately run down on a city street and that the police made little more than a cursory effort to find the car that killed her?”

Jude stood silent.

“Or that her father was a former President of the United States?” The random, impossible thought that had been lurking in the far recesses of his mind slid from his lips before he even had time to examine it.

The stricken look of sheer terror on Jude’s face told Simon all he needed to know.

Simon stepped through the open door and paused on the top step. “Who does she think her father is, Mrs. McDermott?”

Jude reached out and with one hand slammed the door in his face.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Simon watched Miles Kendall take bites out of the small chocolate-covered mint patty, one of several Simon had stopped to pick up on his way to St. Margaret’s. When the chewing had ceased, Simon settled against the hard wooden back of the chair and studied the face of the old man before him. He seemed quite cheerful and alert. His eyes were clear and bright. It looked like he might have found Miles on a good day. He could only hope.

“Miles, can we talk about Blythe?” Simon asked. “Do you remember Blythe?”

Kendall nodded slowly. “She had lavender eyes.”

“Yes, I know.” Simon nodded and thought of Dina.

Simon’s hand slipped into his pocket and switched on the recorder. “Miles, can we talk about Blythe’s death? Do you remember when she died?”

Kendall stared straight ahead, and for a moment Simon thought he’d lost him.

Then the old man spoke, his voice barely a whisper: “She’d only been back for a few days. Less than a week.”

“Where had she been, Miles? Do you remember?”

“Where her friend was.”

“Who was her friend?”

“Jude. Blythe left the baby with her, and came back.”

“Blythe left the baby with Jude?”

Miles nodded.

“How do you know about the baby, Miles?”

“I saw her.” Kendall looked up, a tiny smile on his lips.

“You saw Blythe after she had the baby?”

“I saw the baby. She was just . . . perfect. Perfect, just like her mother. Dark straight hair, big round eyes. Just as beautiful as her mother. He wept when I told him about her.”

“By ‘he’ who do you mean, Miles? Who wept when you told him that you saw Blythe’s baby?” Supposition wasn’t enough. Miles had to say the name.

“Graham.”

“Was it Graham’s baby, Miles?”

“Oh, yes. Graham’s and Blythe’s.”

Bingo.

“And did Graham go to see the baby with you?” Simon willed his pulse to remain steady. There was much more ground to be covered. The story was far from complete.

“No, no, he couldn’t do that. That’s why I went. To make sure she was all right. That everything was all right.”

“And was everything all right?”

“As long as she stayed there, it was. But as soon as she came back . . .” Kendall’s eyes closed tightly and his hands began to shake. “She wasn’t supposed to come back. I never counted on her ever coming back. I never thought she would be in such danger. . . .”

“What happened when she came back? Who was the danger, Miles?”

“She begged me to bring her to the party. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want her there. It was not a good idea. I told her, ‘Blythe, you don’t understand how it is now.’ But she was insistent. She promised she would never ask me again. ‘Just this one last time, and then I’m leaving and I won’t be back,’ she said. ‘Just this one last time.’ ”

Miles was openly weeping. “He talked about getting a divorce, about divorcing Celeste and marrying Blythe. About not running for a second term—”

“What?!” Simon exclaimed. “What did you say?”

“—but she wanted him to. Thought it was his duty. She could take care of the baby, raise her, until he was finished. He was too good a President, she said. The country needed him. But then he would marry her.”

“Graham Hayward considered
not running for a second term
?” Simon whispered the words aloud, incredulous. This sure hadn’t shown up in any of the material provided by Philip Norton.

Simon wondered if Norton knew. . . .

“She had orchids in her hair that night.” Miles was rambling now. “And she wore her lavender gown.”

Oblivious to his tears, Miles shook his head slowly. “I took her home that night. It shouldn’t have happened. I never thought anything like that would happen. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. . . .”

“Miles, this is important.” Simon leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Who else knew about the baby?”

“I didn’t tell about the baby. Not ever,” Miles protested. “I never told. . . .”

“Who else might have known? Who else would Hayward have confided in?” Simon wondered aloud. “Who else knew about Blythe? Who knew about the baby?”

But the veil was descending, and Miles Kendall began to slip back into a place where no one could follow.

“Just like that.” Kendall turned slowly to the window, a look of bewilderment crossing his face. “Just like that, she was gone. It shouldn’t have happened like that. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. . . .”

All the way back to Arlington, Simon tried to digest the dramatic information that Miles Kendall had shared, wondering how much the man’s memory could be trusted.

If what Kendall had said was true, Graham Hayward might have served only one term, not two. He’d have left Celeste for Blythe. He’d have acknowledged his child.

Someone very obviously had not wanted any of that to happen. And Miles, Simon was beginning to realize, knew who that someone was.

Had Miles kept that secret all these years?

And who else, Simon wondered, had Graham told about the child he had had with his would-be bride, about his plans for a happily ever after that had nothing to do with the wife and children he already had?

The orderly took his time walking from the bus stop to the dirt path that led down to the parking lot. It wouldn’t be long, he figured, before he had the keys to that sweet Camaro in his pocket, so every day now he scouted the lot for the primo parking spots. Not too close to the trees, lest a storm bring down a branch, but not too far out into the open, either. The hot sun could do a number on that excellent paint job.

He passed through the front door and into the lobby, as usual, smiling at the new nurse’s aide who worked the second shift, the redhead with the long legs and tight sweater under the jacket of her uniform. And as usual, she pretended not to notice him. Today it didn’t bother him so much, though. He figured she’d be smiling back soon enough, once she got a look at what he’d be driving before the month was out.

He stopped to take a glance at the visitors’ log, as he’d gotten into the habit of doing. There’d been no activity in a while, but since he was being paid to look—and since he didn’t want to be reminded again that he was being paid to look—he looked. He almost missed it, because there’d been that one hundredth birthday party for Mr. Harris today and all of his children and grandchildren—all thirty-two of them—had shown up for the luncheon and signed in. But there it was, right after the last of the Harrises.

S. Keller to see Mr. Kendall. In at 1:25. Out at 3:00 on the nose.

He didn’t bother to wait for his break but went directly to the locker room and dialed the number.

“Hello?”

“Your friend’s visitor was back today.”

“Keller?”

“Yes. He signed in around one-thirty, out at three.”

“What kind of a day is our Mr. Kendall having?”

“I don’t know. I figured you’d want to know right away, so I haven’t seen him yet.”

The pause was long and somber.

“Want me to go in and talk to him, then call you back?”

“No. I’ll come see for myself. I’ll be there around eight. You’ll watch for me at the side door?”

“You got it.”

“Have him in his room before I get there.”

“Sure, fine. Okay,” the orderly replied, even as the line went dead.

He whistled on his way back to the nurses’ station to see what was happening on the floor that day, mentally jingling those car keys as he went.

The visitor was there, at the side door, at eight sharp. It was already dark, and the figure slid into the dim shadows of the dayroom like a wraith. Barely acknowledging the orderly, the visitor followed the short hallway to Kendall’s room, nodding to the few sleepy residents who lingered here and there in the corridor, none of whom, by tomorrow morning, would recall that Miles Kendall had had a visitor this night.

“Don’t get lost,” the visitor told the orderly before closing Kendall’s door. “I’ll need you to let me out.”

“I’ll be around,” the orderly promised, then went to make himself useful in the room across the hall.

Miles Kendall sat on the edge of his bed gazing out the window at the dark beyond. Somewhere out there, he was thinking, was a river. On warm nights like this, with the window open, he could smell it.

“Hello, Miles.” The visitor sat on a nearby chair.

“Hello.” Kendall nodded warily. His eyes flickered, narrowing with recognition.

“Do you remember me?”

Kendall stared for a long time but didn’t respond.

“I hear you had company today.”

“I did.”

“What did you talk about?”

“I don’t think I remember.”

“Think harder.”

“Ummm . . . I think . . . Washington.” His chin went up a notch. “I worked at the White House.”

“What did you do there?”

“I worked with the President.”

“Yes, you did. He was your friend, once upon a time, wasn’t he?” The visitor leaned forward. “And I guess being the President’s friend, you know a lot of things, Miles. I’ll bet you know a lot of secrets.”

Miles continued to sit stiffly.

“Did you tell your company—Mr. Keller—any secrets today, Miles?”

“I don’t remember,” he answered, a bit too quickly perhaps.

“What did you talk about today with Mr. Keller?”

“He brought me mints. Flat mints with chocolate on them.”

“That was very nice of him, Miles. Did you tell him secrets after he gave you your mints?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did you tell him about Blythe, Miles?”

“Maybe we talked about Blythe,” Kendall acknowledged, then leaned forward to ensure the impact of his words. “Maybe we talked about the baby.”

“What baby?” The visitor’s head snapped up.

“Blythe’s baby.” Kendall sat back, watching the effect of his words.

“Blythe’s baby . . .” The visitor’s eyes were wide, the voice almost a hiss. “Blythe’s
baby
?”

Kendall nodded.

“Where? Where was the baby?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Was it your baby?”

“Of course not.” He waited for the question to come, knowing that it would.

“Whose baby, old man?
Whose baby?
” The hand grasped Miles’s arm tightly, but in spite of the pain, he smiled.

“Graham’s baby, of course.” He spoke the words knowing what their effect would be, wanting, after all these years, to watch, wanting to see the confusion, the disbelief. Wanting to see pain . . .

“Graham’s baby . . .” This hitherto-unknown piece of the puzzle hit like a shot and shattered into a million pieces.

“A girl. A beautiful girl.” He might have told how he’d held the child many times and wished with all his heart that the child had been his, how fiercely he’d fought against the envy that had, in the end, consumed him and coaxed him to do something for which he’d never forgiven himself, something he’d spent a lifetime trying to forget.

But tonight Miles Kendall was tired of fighting the past. Tonight was a night for regretting words he never should have spoken, secrets he never should have shared. Tonight the guilt he’d harbored for almost thirty years surfaced with startling energy and shook him to his soul. At the same time, it made him strong. Strong enough to mourn the woman he’d once loved, the friendship he’d betrayed.

Strong enough for vengeance.

“What do you know, old man?” Patience began to draw thin.

“I know you,” he said with certainty.

“Do you now?” A wicked smile. “How unfortunate . . .”

“Yes. I know you.”

“Why did you keep this to yourself all these years, old man?
Why didn’t you tell me about this baby?
” Anger rippled along every nerve; rage built with every heartbeat.

“Because I knew what you’d do to her.” He leaned forward, his voice sure. “I couldn’t let you hurt her. I owed him that much.”

A snort of derision. “You have an odd way of repaying your friends, old man. Now tell me, who else knows?”

“I’m not going to tell you.” He spoke defiantly.

“Where is she?” The face loomed close, the voice a hiss. “Tell me where she is. I’m not going to ask you again, Miles.”

Miles shook his head slowly. “No.”

Standing now, the visitor reached into a deep pocket and removed a leather pouch from which a long needle was extracted with anxious hands. The tip was plunged brusquely into the folds of the old man’s neck before he could protest. Miles winced at the force, but he did not blink.

For a very long moment, he stared into the blank eyes of his killer.

Waiting for me to die,
Miles told himself. He tried to speak, but his mouth wouldn’t work. Just as well, he thought. He’d waited long enough to atone for his sins. Now was as good a time as any. . . .

When his head fell forward, the visitor pushed a firm finger into the old man’s chest to help direct his body backward onto the bed.

Content in the knowledge that the old man would not be telling anyone else about Blythe or her baby, the visitor stepped into the hallway and waited for the orderly.