Death of a Political Plant Read Online Free PDF Page B

again.
    “Why are you concerned, Jay? It sounds like a great outcome for you.”
    “It’s because my ex-wife’s so darned disappointed, Louise.It’s as if I’ve snatched her soul away. She firmly believes Melissa is better off with her: She gave her the best of everything and even took her to Europe a couple of times. I think the girl makes Lannie feel like a better person. So now, I’m hoping she doesn’t do something desperate, like taking Melissa abroad to live. She has a house in Ireland, and God knows she has the money for the two of them to just emigrate.”
    He leaned forward, elbows on the table, intent on his story. “Right after the judge’s decree in February, which takes effect next Friday, I flew here to D.C. to check things out. I was afraid Lannie might take off with our daughter then. I felt terrible spying on her, but I had to. Then, I came across a story that I first got wind of last fall in California. Got a deal going to stay in Washington, and I’ve been, well, working here ever since. And keeping an eye on Melissa, unbeknownst to my ex.”
    He shook his head, as if he had dwelled enough on the matter, and then looked at the clock on the greasy tan wall. “Louise, it’s after six: Are you sure we aren’t running overtime?”
    She had called Bill from her office at Channel Five, telling him she was bringing Jay home. He sounded a little put out, but he remembered Jay. She told him they were going out to get coffee first. “We’d better go, so I can dream up something for supper.”
    Jay slid out of the booth, protesting. “Louise, I don’t need care and feeding—just a room where I can stay out of sight.”
    “You’re having dinner with us, don’t be silly. Bill will be glad to see you again.”
    As they walked to the door, Jay looked around the bar. He said, “This place is just like our old college hangouts in Georgetown.”
    She smiled up at him. “That’s why I brought you here.”
    He followed her the eight miles home on the crowded highway in a dull-colored old Ford that looked like it wouldn’t pass the emissions test. But Louise could figure it out: Her old flame was going incognito, and that included his car.
    Of course, her seven-year-old Honda wagon, which smelled of all her garden acquisitions, from plants to peat to manure, wasn’t much better.

Five

    B ILL E LDRIDGE RARELY HAD OC casion to feel jealous regarding his wife. True, men always admired her. Even Tom Paschen, the other night, had expressed his appreciation of Louise, in his twisted, misogynist way. But this was usually a source of pride for him, to know he had such a willowy, attractive, and charming wife. But Jay McCormick was something else. Bill had hurried home from work and changed into his most youthful sportsclothes when he heard Louise was bringing the guy home. For dinner, or maybe it was more than dinner: What did she say,
to stay awhile?
    Then they hadn’t rolled in until after seven o’clock, reasonable in view of the heavy traffic across Fairfax County at that time. But they were laughing and chatting together in that damnably annoying, intimate way that they had been when he first met the two of them at Georgetown. And Louise, in the clothes she had worn on location, looked especially romantic: white frilly blouse and flowing mauve skirt, her long brown hair bundled up in an old-fashioned style with a ribbon, no less.
    He smoothed back his barely thinning blond hair, and realized he didn’t have the moxie he had back then. He had seen Louise that day twenty-one years ago in Washington and got carried away by a combination of lust and good judgment. He’d decided right then he would marry this luscious creature. And just by being his easy self, though a little more rooted than the mercurial Jay McCormick, and full of talk about his sexy new job with State, he had won the lady.
    Louise had given their guest a tour of the house and he commented on how much he liked the antique furniture. He