President's Girlfriend 06 - The Sins of the Fathers (15 page)

Dutch
continued to look at him.
 
It was damn
uncomfortable for Christian.
 
Dutch’s big
green eyes always seemed so laser-focused.
 
But he kept on.
 
“Even when you
and the First Lady came over, and you went into the back to speak with her
mother, she tried to go back there with you.
 
I told her no, she should let you handle it.
 
But she snatched away from me.
 
Then Uncle Marcus tells her not to go back
there and she doesn’t go.
 
It’s like he
has more sway over her than I do, sir.”

Dutch leaned
back in his chair.
 
Christian didn’t
realize it, but Dutch was seriously considering every word he spoke.
 
“You’re coming to me with this why?” he
asked.

That wasn’t
exactly the ringing bell of support Christian had hoped for.
 
But he didn’t buckle.
 
“I’m coming to you because you have more sway
over her than any human being on the face of this earth.
 
I’m coming to you because I have nowhere else
to go.”

Dutch could
feel Christian’s distress.
 
And he
couldn’t argue with his logic, either.
 
Jade was certainly enamored with her father, even Dutch would have to
admit that.
 

He tossed
his review sheets onto his desk.
 
“How do
you think she feels about you, Chris?” he bluntly asked his wide-eyed
son-in-law.

Christian
had to think about this.
 
“You mean Miss
Redding?”

“How does
your wife feel about you?” Dutch corrected.

“Oh, yes
sir.
 
I see.
 
Well, I think she . . . I’m not sure but I
think she loves me.
 
Somewhat.”

Dutch
frowned.
 
“She loves you somewhat?
 
What the hell kind of answer is that?”
 

“What I mean
is that Jade isn’t a touchy-feely kind of woman.
 
She doesn’t like to discuss love and stuff
like that.
 
She never even wants to have.
. .”
 
Christian was turning beet
red.
 
He didn’t mean to reveal so much.
 
He looked at Dutch.

Dutch stared
at him.
 
“She doesn’t have sex with you
on a regular basis?” he asked.

Christian
was embarrassed, but the truth was the truth.
 
He exhaled.
 
“No, sir, she
doesn’t.”

“How often?”

Christian
thought about this.
 
“Used
to be once a week or so.
 
But now
that Uncle Marcus is staying with us, it’s been kind of like never.”

Never?
 
Dutch could hardly believe it.
 
How could the young man take it?
 
All Dutch’s life he had to have it, and
certainly more than once a week at that.
 
Even now if his dick wasn’t sliding inside of Gina’s warm folds at least
every other day he was antsy.
 
And this
kid was standing before him talking about getting it maybe once a week, or now
not even that regular?
 
Dutch could
hardly believe it.
 
That daughter of his
needed a swift kick in the ass for torturing young Christian the way she was
doing.

“I don’t
know, sir,” Christian continued, attempting to make sense out of what Dutch saw
as nonsense, “but she just doesn’t seem to find me very interesting anymore.”

Dutch
thought about that response.
 
Was careful in his reply.
 
“Does she find Marcus Rance interesting?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,
sir,” Christian replied without hesitation.
 
“They get along great.
 
They play
cards together and cook meals together and talk about all sorts of things.
 
She loves his company.”

“Does she?”

“She does
very much, sir.
 
I mean, I like Uncle
Marcus too.
 
He’s a real upfront
guy.
 
He talks about the old days when he
was a drug dealer and it’s real fascinating how he’s turned his life around.
 
I mean, Uncle Marcus used to be a straight-up
gangster.”
 
Christian said this with a
laugh, as if he, too, was mesmerized by the attractive Marcus Rance.
 

“And Jade
asks him all kinds of questions,” Christian continued.
 
“I talk about my job here at the White House
and she’s bored to tears.
 
Marcus talks
about his days selling drugs and she’s blown away with excitement.
 
I don’t know, sir.
 
I think she’s just thrilled to have her uncle
in her life.”

“The thing
is,” Dutch said, leaning forward, his voice measured and slow, “Marcus Rance is
my wife’s half-brother, that’s true.
 
They do have the same father.
 
He
is most definitely some kin to Gina.
 
But
he is also, most definitely, no kin to Jade.”
 

Dutch said
this and stared intensely at Christian, to gauge whether or not the young man
understood.
 
And on some level Dutch
could see that he did get it.
 
He did
understand the significance of having a smart, savvy, attractive former drug
dealer like Marcus Rance all up in his wife’s face.
 
But on that deeper,
I’d better do something about this
level, Dutch could see that the
poor kid was completely out to sea.
 

Which meant, Dutch knew, that he would eventually have to intervene.

His desk
intercom buzzed again.
 
Dutch pressed the
button again.
 
“Yes?” he said with more
than a little impatience in his voice.

“I hate to
disturb you again, sir, but the Vice President would like a word.”

Dutch
exhaled.
 
Forget any prep work before his
press conference, he thought.
 
“Send him
through,” he said.

“I’d better
get back to the First Lady’s office, sir,” Christian said.
 
He was an aide in the First Lady’s
office.
 
“I hate to keep bothering you
about my personal life.”

“No bother,
Chris.
 
Not at all.
 
But I do expect you to pay attention, son,
and to keep control of your home.”

“Keep
control of it, sir?”

“Yes,
Christian.”
 
Dutch actually thought of a
proverb from the Holy Bible:
he that
troubleth his own
house,
shall inherit the wind
.
 
“Keep control of your home,” he warned him
again.

Christian
understood.
 
And was about to say so, but
the vice president entered the room.
 
Christian spoke to Crader, and then left.

“Crader, my
man,” Dutch said as he gave up any chance of reviewing notes this morning.
 
Crader McKenzie rarely did casual
visits.
  
If he came, he usually had a
darn good reason.

He, in fact,
walked around the desk to Dutch’s side and sat on the desk’s edge, next to the
president, facing him.
 
Like Dutch, he
wore expensive Italian suits.
 
But unlike
Dutch, his suit already looked rumpled.
 

He handed Dutch
the newspaper clipping Allison Shearer had received in the mail.

“What’s
this?” Dutch asked.

“Read it.”

Dutch looked
at the picture of Jim and Elvelyn Rosenthal.
 
He read the entire article.
 
Then
he looked at Crader.
 
“What’s this?” he
asked again.
 
“Beyond a
tragic plane crash?”

“The woman,”
Crader said.
 
“She
look
familiar to you?”

Dutch looked
at the woman again.
 
“Can’t
say that she does.
 
Who is she?”

“Remember
Vegas 2000?”

Dutch had to
think about it.
 
“The
millennium.”

“Right.”

Dutch
thought harder.
 
“We were in Vegas for
some congressional meeting or whatever it was called.
 
And you were the committee chairman.”

“Right.
 
But what do you remember about that weekend,
Dutch?”

Dutch leaned
back.
 
“I’m sure we boozed and
partied.
 
That’s usually what we did at
those so-called getaways.”

“Remember
the woman that boozed and partied with us, Dutch?
 
With you and me together?”

Dutch stared
at Crader.

“As in the three of us together.
 
You, me, and her.”
 
Crader said this and placed his finger on Elvelyn’s picture.

Dutch looked
at the woman again.
 
Still didn’t ring a
bell.
 
But that weekend did.
 
He’d done a lot of shameful things in his
bachelor days, and that boozy weekend was near the top of his list.

“So we
banged her twelve years ago,” Dutch said, tossing the article aside.
 
“And now, unfortunately, twelve years later,
she’s perished.
 
I hate to be callous
here, but she wasn’t the only one we banged, not even that weekend was she the
only one.”

“No, Dutch,
that’s where you’ve got it wrong.
 
She
was the only one.
 
We screwed around a
lot that weekend, you’ve got that part right.
 
But with her every time.
 
Sometimes together,
sometimes individually.
 
But it
was always only her.
 
Elvelyn.”

Dutch looked
at the photo again.
 
Poor
girl.
 
She was just a plaything to
them back then.
 
A sex
toy.
 
He thought how he would feel
today if some man treated his own daughter the way they treated this
woman.
 
Or the idea of
some man treating Gina that way.
 
Geez.
 
He’d want to
kill the guy.
 
He looked again at Crader.

“Somebody
sent you this?”

“Sent it to Allison with a note for her to show it to me.”

“To you?”

“Right.”

“Did Allison
see anybody or---”

“Nope.
 
It was delivered to her residence as regular
mail.”

“To her home?”
This surprised Dutch.
 
“Then that
would suggest somebody with familiarity with her.”

“Right,”
Crader agreed.

“
Which suggests the person had to have some very intimate knowledge
of that weekend, and they also had to know Ally pretty well.
”

Crader
stared at Dutch.

“Max?” Dutch
asked.

“It has to
be,” Crader said.
 
“He was the only other
person there.
 
He was the guy who
coordinated her visit to our hotel room.”

“Because we
trusted him to be discreet,” Dutch was remembering, “and to find a woman with a
lot to lose, too, if our little
get
together was ever
exposed.
 
Yeah, you’re right.
 
She was some rich college student---”

“---whose
father was a prominent banker or something in Vegas,” Crader continued.
 
“But she liked to get down and dirty, as long
as the guys were hot.
 
And I’m not
bragging,” Crader went on, “but they didn’t get any hotter back then than
Harber and McKenzie.”
  

“You’re
bragging,” Dutch said, “but I get your point.”

“But it has
to be Max,” Crader went on.
 
“Only four
people knew exactly what went on in that hotel room: me, you, Max, and Elvelyn.
 
Elv’s dead.
 
You and I are you and I.
 
It has
to be Max.”

“But the
timing is curious too, Cray.
 
She just
died a week ago.
 
And now this clipping
comes in the mail.
 
Maybe she told a
family member or friend and after her death they decided to send it to us.”