The President's Daughter (21 page)

Jude blew out a long, reluctant breath.

“Well, what is it they say about the devil you know?” Jude stood up, her arms crossed over her chest. “Where’s the phone?”

“There’s one on the desk right there in the hall.” Betsy pointed toward the door.

“Dina, would you like to do the honors?” Jude asked.

The first thing that Simon noticed when he returned from his trip to Rhode Island was that the light was blinking on the answering machine on the hall table.

“Simon, it’s Dina. Dina McDermott. Could you please call me as soon as you get this message? I’m at Betsy Pierce’s.”

Betsy Pierce’s?

“Whoa. What have I missed?”

Only the late hour—it was close to one in the morning—kept him from returning the call right there and then. But he called first thing in the morning. Betsy answered the phone, though the conversation did little to quell his curiosity.

“We need to speak with you as soon as possible.”

“We?”

“Jude, Dina, and I. We realize it’s short notice, but—”

“I can be there by noon.”

“Aren’t you going to ask why?”

“Nope. Whatever the reason, I’m sure it’s a good one.”

“Yes, it is.” Betsy’s voice was somber.

Less than three hours later, Simon was being welcomed into the old farmhouse and led into the sitting room where the three women who had summoned him sat.

“Nice of you to invite me to the reunion, ladies.” He touched Dina’s arm and said out of the corner of his mouth, “How did this come about?”

“It’s a long story,” she whispered.

“I’ll bet it is—”

“Let’s go out to the patio,” Betsy suggested, moving toward the door. “It’s really quite a lovely morning.”

“Did you have a nice drive?” Dina asked Simon as they followed Betsy to the back of the house and to the double doors, where she stopped.

“Things pretty glum?” Simon asked softly, so that only Dina could hear.

“I’m trying to shake it; I really am.” Dina looked up into his eyes, and Simon saw the vestiges of what must have been a sleepless night. “I’m trying my best to act normally, but it hasn’t been easy, these past few days.”

Dina’s hands were shaking, and Simon took them in his own.

“It’s all a little overwhelming, you see,” she added before Simon could say a word.

“Are you two coming out?” Jude called from the patio.

“We’re right here,” Dina said as she stepped through the doors, a smile pinned to her face.

Betsy gestured to comfortable-looking chairs that surrounded a glass-topped table with a vast umbrella overhead. The patio overlooked a garden and pool area with the tennis courts beyond. Simon took a seat and waited expectantly for someone to begin.

“Tell him what happened two nights ago, Dina,” Betsy instructed.

Dina did.

“My God, why didn’t you call me?” Simon turned to her, his eyes dark with panic. “Are you all right?”

“Only frightened.” She smiled weakly. “And I did call you. You weren’t home.”

“I was in Rhode Island interviewing Graham Junior. If you’d told me this on my answering machine, I’d have been here last night. Did you call the police?”

“Yes, of course. Of course, at the time I spoke with them, I had no idea there was a reason why the near miss could have been something other than an accident.”

“After that, I knew I had to tell Dina everything,” Jude said. “She can’t very well protect herself if she doesn’t know there’s a danger.”

“That must have been very hard for you.”

Jude nodded curtly.

“So what are you going to do now?” Simon asked.

The three women glanced at one another.

“Actually, we don’t have a plan. This isn’t something one deals with every day, you know.” Dina cleared her throat. “We don’t know where to start or who to talk to. How do you even start to explain something like this to a stranger?”

“And after all, you already know the whole story. We thought the fewer who knew—about Blythe, about Dina—the better,” Jude added. “And since you were already looking into the affair—”

“This isn’t about the affair anymore,” Simon said pointedly. “It’s about the fact that someone has gotten away with murder for nearly thirty years.”

“But how can you separate the affair from the murder?” Dina asked. “Does anyone really think that Blythe would have been killed if she hadn’t been having an affair with Hayward?”

“I’ve thought about that every day since the day my sister died.” Betsy leaned forward.

“And I’ve tried not to think about it,” Jude admitted, a catch in her voice. “I always believed that as long as no one knew about Blythe and Graham—about Dina—there was nothing that could be done about Blythe’s death without putting Dina in danger. Now I see how shortsighted that was.”

“Is there any reason to think that someone
other
than the person who killed Blythe is the same person, or perhaps working for or with the same person, who was driving the van that tried to run me over?” Dina asked.

“I don’t think there’s any question that there’s a connection,” Simon told her.

“We need to find out who that person is before someone else gets hurt,” Jude offered, though everyone knew that what Jude really meant was
before Dina gets
killed.

“Simon, we thought that perhaps in researching your book you might have learned something that could help us to figure out who might have known about Dina’s birth. Who might have a motive for wanting Dina . . . out of the picture. And what we might do to keep that from happening. It’s not the sort of story you take to your local law enforcement agency.”

“Or, in this case, even to your federal law enforcement agency. You don’t know who’s who and who they might be connected to.” Simon pondered the situation.

Simon turned to Betsy. “Are you certain that your father’s investigator never found anything? Have you seen all the reports that he may have received?”

“I started looking for the file, but I didn’t find anything,” Betsy told them. “There’s always the chance that perhaps I missed something. We can take another look after lunch.”

“Simon, you must have some ideas about who might know about Blythe. About me.” Dina leaned back in her chair.

“I’ve been thinking about this for several weeks.”

Mrs. Brady appeared at the top of the ramp that led down to the patio below and asked about lunch. Betsy nodded that now would be a good time.

“And what have you come up with?” Dina asked.

“Well, there’s Philip Norton. My old journalism professor from Georgetown. He was Hayward’s press secretary, and he had been close to Hayward while he was alive and has remained close to the Hayward family over the years. He’s the one who proposed the book I’m writing. Norton knows about Blythe and about Dina. I’m still trying to figure out what else he might know.”

“Philip was very close to the President,” Jude said.

“You know him?”

“It’s been a few years since I’ve seen him, though we’ve spoken on the phone from time to time, so yes, I know him. I can’t believe he’d have harmed Blythe. Or been involved in anything that could hurt Dina.” Jude shook her head slowly.

“Okay, so we know that this Philip Norton knows. Who else, Simon?” Dina prodded him.

“Mrs. Hayward, I believe, knew about Blythe, but I don’t know that she necessarily knew about Dina. It’s possible. If Hayward had in fact told his wife that he wanted a divorce, he might have told her about the child he’d fathered with Blythe. As for the Hayward kids, I have no way of knowing that they knew about either.”

“So you’re saying that maybe Norton or Mrs. Hayward could be the person we’re looking for?”

“I don’t think we should count anyone out at this point. But I think that we also have to realize that there could be any number of reasons why someone may have wanted Blythe dead. This many years later, it’s unlikely that we’re going to be able to figure out all of them.”

“We’ll start with looking for the investigator’s report,” Betsy decided. “And we’ll do that right after we finish this excellent lunch Mrs. Brady is bringing us. . . .”

It took them until nearly four that afternoon, but the report that Foster Pierce had received from his investigator was finally found in an unmarked file.

“Doesn’t appear that there’s much in here. Police report regarding the accident itself . . .” Simon noted.

“May I see that?” Dina asked.

Simon handed it over and continued.

“ . . . and reports from the investigating officer to the effect that, other than one witness, who may or may not have been drunk, a canvass of the neighborhood found no one who had heard or seen a thing. The case was closed within the week,” Simon mumbled as he skimmed the typed pages. “This isn’t the entire police report. I’ve already spoken with the investigating officer. He said his report was six pages long when he turned it in. The report in the file is only two.”

“Someone removed four pages?” Dina’s eyebrows knit together.

“Exactly. The officer told me that the report he’d made had been purged by someone in the department way higher than he was. And since he was a rookie at the time, he was afraid to make waves.”

“So someone with a lot of clout had the investigation stopped,” Dina said softly.

“Well, if you are assuming that someone from our short list was that person, wouldn’t that eliminate the professor? How much pull could he have had?” Betsy asked.

“Depends on whose behalf he was acting,” Simon said. “Don’t forget that he was the President’s press secretary and close friend. So the request to quash the investigation could have come from Hayward. Maybe he didn’t want anyone looking too closely into Blythe’s life. Or her death.”

“It could just as easily have been Miles, or someone else, acting on Hayward’s behalf,” Betsy noted. “Or it could have been someone
purporting
to be acting on Hayward’s behalf without Hayward knowing it.”

“I can’t quite see Graham dropping the whole thing and just letting Blythe’s killer go without trying to find out who it was. I do believe that he loved Blythe deeply. I think he would have moved heaven and earth to find out who had deprived him of his happily ever after,” Jude said softly.

“We don’t know that he didn’t.” Simon sipped at the iced tea Mrs. Brady had brought in.

“But if he had found out who had killed her, wouldn’t he have done something about it?” Dina frowned. “I mean, he loved this woman and someone killed her, he finds out who it was . . . he was the
President,
for God’s sake. It just doesn’t make any sense that he wouldn’t have done something about it.”

“Maybe he didn’t know who it was. Or maybe it was someone he couldn’t have retaliated against,” Simon pointed out.

“Who could have had that much power over him?” Dina turned to ask.

A clap of thunder made them all jump.

“Weather report’s been forecasting a big storm this afternoon and evening,” Mrs. Brady announced. “I was wondering if perhaps I could leave after dinner.”

“Go now, before the rain starts, Mrs. Brady,” Betsy told her. “As long as there’s something to cook, between the four of us we should be able to figure things out.”

“There’s chicken in tarragon cream sauce all made up. It only has to be baked. And there’s salad and a strawberry shortcake,” the housekeeper noted. “And I have one of the back guest rooms made up for Mr. Keller, just in case.”

“That was thoughtful of you, thank you. Perhaps we’ll be able to keep Mr. Keller with us for a while.” Betsy smiled. “Now go on home, Mrs. Brady, before the roads start to flood out. We’ll see you in the morning.”

“Thank you,” she said, then smiled her good-byes to the guests.

“Okay, my money’s on Celeste Hayward,” Jude said after Mrs. Brady had departed.

“Or one of his kids,” Betsy suggested.

“Or someone very high up who wanted to put an end to Graham’s thoughts of not running for that second term.” Simon threw his thoughts into the mix.

“How old were the kids back then?” asked Dina.

“Graham would have been around nineteen or twenty, Sarah maybe fifteen or sixteen. She was at boarding school,” Simon told them. “And Gray was at college.” He frowned. “At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what Miles said. I can check the tape.”

“What tape?” Dina asked.

“Twice when I met with Miles I taped our conversation,” Simon admitted. “He talked about the night that Blythe came back from Arizona after Dina was born. And about the night that she died—”

“Is that legal?” Betsy raised an eyebrow.

“I only did it for my own use, so that I wouldn’t have to try to take notes. I was afraid that whipping out a pen and notepad would distract Miles. So I recorded what he said thinking that I could just concentrate on what he was saying. Then when I got back home, I typed up my impressions, recollections of his gestures, facial expressions, that sort of thing, so that I wouldn’t forget anything.”

“Where’s the tape now?” Dina asked.

“It’s at my town house, in Arlington. It didn’t occur to me to bring it. I’ll drive back tonight,” Simon told them.

“Wait until the morning, until the storm has passed,” Betsy said. “And in the meantime, we can speculate to our hearts’ content over dinner. Right now, I suggest we move into the kitchen and start cooking.”

Dina was sitting on the bottom step of the grand staircase, a Bloomingdale’s bag at her feet, when Simon came downstairs early the next morning. She was dressed in jeans and a red turtleneck sweater, her hair pulled back from her pale face with combs on either side. A denim jacket sat neatly on her lap.

“I didn’t want to miss you.” Dina looked up through red-rimmed eyes as he descended the stairs. “I didn’t want you to leave without me.”

“Was I taking you with me?” Simon paused a few steps above her.

“Would you? I’d like very much to go.”

“Why?”

“Because I need to get away from here for a bit. Just to clear my head. I’m afraid I’m getting a bit stir-crazy.”

“Do Betsy and Jude know what you’re doing?” He stepped around her.