Murder on K Street Read Online Free PDF Page B

a small television set to catch yet another report on the murder. Rotondi threw on some clothes, snapped on Homer’s leash, and took the dog out for his daily ablutions. Back in the bedroom, he again stripped down to his shorts, slipped into a robe he kept at the house, and joined Emma.
    “Anything new and exciting?” he asked. “Or true?”
    “The police are still conducting their investigation at the senator’s house. He evidently wanted to return there this morning but couldn’t. They had a video of him entering his Senate office building. No comment from him, of course.” She turned off the set with the remote. “Will you be seeing him today?”
    “I’m sure I will. I told him I’d check in with friends at MPD to see how the investigation is
really
going. Lyle isn’t impressed with the detective who arrived on the scene. There’s not much else I can do for him.”
    “He needs a friend.”
    Rotondi nodded. “I wish I could intervene with Polly. He’s always chalked up the problems between them to their political differences, Polly the raving left-wing liberal, her father, the U.S. senator, the calculating centrist. I’ve never bought it. You don’t sever ties with a daughter just because she sees things different politically.”
    “Some would, Phil. Besides, she’s been a vocal opponent of virtually everything he stands for. It’s one thing to disagree with your father’s political views, another to attack him in the press at every turn. You’ve said it yourself, how some of these liberal causes have taken advantage of her, put her out there whenever they wanted to make a point about an issue championed by her father.”
    Rotondi grunted and looked out the window into the haze of another hot one in Washington. “Maybe the funeral will salve things between them. Funerals sometimes accomplish that. I know that Jeannette would be pleased if that happened.”
    “What about the funeral?” Emma said.
    “I don’t know. I suppose they’ll announce plans today. I’d better get moving.” He started for the bathroom but turned. “As long as I’m in D.C., I’d like to catch up with Mac and Annabel Smith.”
    Mac Smith had been a top criminal defense lawyer in D.C. and Maryland for years, until on a rainy night years ago his wife and son were slaughtered on the Beltway by a drunk driver. The personal loss was, of course, devastating. But when a skilled fellow defense lawyer had managed to plea-bargain the drunk driver’s case down to what Smith considered an insultingly small sentence—a slap on the wrist, and not a very hard slap at that—he’d lost his zeal for trial work, left the firm he’d established, and accepted a teaching position at George Washington University’s law school.
    His wife, Annabel Lee-Smith, had experienced a similar epiphany, although without the accompanying personal tragedy. She’d been a respected Washington matrimonial attorney with a thriving practice. But years of mediating between warring spouses, many of whom were willing to destroy their lives and those of their children in order to “be right,” had taken a toll. She’d always loved art, especially pre-Columbian art, and dreamed of opening a gallery. She hadn’t acted upon that dream until meeting Mac Smith and falling in love with the handsome, brilliant widower. He encouraged her to retire her lawyer’s shingle and to follow her true passion. Together they found charming space in Georgetown where Annabel opened her gallery. The fulfillment of that ambition was closely followed by another, the marriage of Annabel Lee to Mackensie Smith. Life couldn’t get any better for either of them.
    Rotondi had butted heads with Mac in Baltimore courtrooms where he’d prosecuted cases, Smith defending the accused. Their courtroom confrontations were spirited, skillfully conducted, and often heated. But they’d simultaneously developed a personal friendship that transcended these professional bouts, and had nurtured