Murder on Capitol Hill Page 15

  Joanne Marshall, Cale’s secretary, was behind a receptionist’s desk when Lydia now entered the outer office. She stood. “Cale will be free in a moment, Miss James. Please take a seat.”

  Lydia sat on an antique church pew that was covered with red corduroy cushions. She took in the office and realized what an influence Veronica Caldwell had on her son’s tastes. The reception area had the look of an old schoolhouse. The wood on the walls was dark, and the floor was covered in a green carpeting in which scenes of early America were woven. There was a genteel calm to the room.

  Moments later Cale came through a door, smiled. “Come in, Lydia. I’m glad you could make it.”

  Cale’s office looked much the same as the outside area, except that it was four times as large. There was a wall of framed photos, built-in bookcases, a small round conference table with four ladder-back chairs. Cale’s desk was massive and old. Burns along its edge testified to a previous owner’s habit of leaving lit cigarettes or cigars on it.

  Cale went to a window and looked outside. He turned, propped himself against the sill. “Lydia, I know you’re busy. I’ve debated asking you to meet with me for quite a while now. What I want to talk to you about isn’t pleasant, at least for me, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that you were entitled to know what’s on my mind.”

  “That’s a turn of events, Cale. I was getting the feeling that the one thing I was not to have was information. From anyone.”

  “I can understand why you feel that way. It must have been rough.” He pushed away from the window and leaned against his desk.

  “It isn’t all past tense,” Lydia said as she adjusted herself in a bentwood rocking chair. “I’m still involved. I suppose you know I’m to write a report based on what the MPD comes up with.”

  “Yes. I’m still his official counsel. I expect to have another attorney brought in within a few days. It’s a decision the family must make, Mark Adam’s defense. Some of the best legal minds in the nation would probably prove counterproductive. I think of the Patty Hearst case. F. Lee Bailey, brilliant as he is, was wrong for her, I feel. I think when an attorney becomes famous, juries often want to see him lose even before the trial begins.”

  Lydia agreed. His defense would apparently be based on legal insanity, and there were certain attorneys who could better present that plea to a jury than others.

  An awkward silence, broken by Caldwell. “One of the things I insist on with any counsel chosen for Mark Adam is that the entire matter of Jimmye’s murder be excluded from the proceedings. In fact, and you’re one of the few people I’ll talk to about this, part of the arrangement made with the MPD had to do with that issue. It was the only consideration given us, but it was an important one. Mark Adam confessed to both murders in exchange for an understanding that Jimmye’s case would be closed without further examination. Actually it wasn’t much of a concession from the police. Mark Adam is being charged with and tried for the murder of my father only. Solving Jimmye’s murder provides a bonus to the MPD. Lord knows, they solve few enough cases, and when they can close the door on one this easily, they’re damn pleased.”

  Lydia took a moment to digest what he’d said. True, there was nothing so unusual about the arrangement. In multiple murders the accused was usually brought to trial for only one of them. Why then, she wondered, was she reacting with skepticism, even anger? Perhaps because they’d tried to dissuade her so many times from following up leads on Jimmye’s murder.

  Caldwell continued: “I’ve heard through the grapevine that you’re still interested in looking into Jimmye’s case. I honestly don’t know why you would want to do that, Lydia. It doesn’t make much sense. From what I can understand, the committee formed to investigate Dad’s death is virtually out of business. The only thing left is for you to prepare a report. If you had any questions before about whether Jimmye’s death links up with my father’s, they should be truly a thing of the past now that Mark Adam has come forward.”

  She decided to be direct. “Cale, I can’t come up with concrete evidence, but I simply can’t accept Mark Adam’s confession.”

  Cale shook his head. “You’re an amazing person, Lydia. You won’t let go of some notions, no matter what facts stare you in the face. Look, we’re family. Yes, we all wish that Mark Adam had not done what he’s done. We all wish that he was a normal, rational human being. But that’s not the case. He’s seriously disturbed. It doesn’t take a psychiatric genius to come to that conclusion. The fact is, he killed our father out of a long-standing hatred for him. A lot of young men dislike their fathers. A lot go through life coping with it one way or another. Mark Adam, sad to say, wasn’t able to do that. When he came to Dad’s party and again had a chance to see the man he’d built such a dislike for from his early teens, well… it was just too damn much for him.”

  Lydia started to say something, but he cut her off.

  “Lydia, think of how Mother and I feel about forcing Mark Adam to attend the party. It had been a long time since Dad and my brother had had any contact. We should have known better. But that’s Monday-morning quarterbacking, isn’t it?… You asked me when we had drinks together if I knew why an autopsy had not been performed on Jimmye.”

  Lydia looked intently at him. “Yes, I remember that… Why do you bring it up again?”

  “Because I know you will, Lydia, unless I give you enough reason not to. The only thing I feel will accomplish that is the truth. Fact is, I admire people who demand the truth, even if they are annoying.” He picked up a pencil and doodled on a fresh, clean lined yellow legal pad. “It’s true that the family brought pressure on the MPD to avoid an autopsy on Jimmye. Dad, because of his position in the Senate, was successful in that effort.”

  “Why? What were you trying to hide?”

  He pressed down hard on the pencil and drew a long slash across the page. The pencil’s point broke when it went off the edge of the pad and hit the desk. “Because… she was pregnant, Lydia. Jimmye was pregnant when she was killed—”

  “My God… how awful—”

  “For whom?” He looked up at her. “She was carrying my brother’s child.”

  Mark Adam’s child? Yes… not as Chief Jenkins had sordidly implied—but there was a Caldwell in Jimmye’s picture. She’d concocted scenarios based on the few facts that had surfaced during the investigation, but mostly on hints and rumors. Never once, though, had she sexually linked Mark Adam Caldwell to Jimmye McNab. “But… he was in the cult long before Jimmye was killed,” she said. “How?…”

  There was a pause as he played with the broken pencil, slapped it down on the desk, took out his pocket watch and looked at it, not as someone checking the time but almost as though it were an object in which he could hide. The watch still in his hand, he said, “I’ve told you this much, Lydia, I might as well go all the way. You’ll remember when we had drinks that I mentioned there had been a problem in the family that developed from my brother’s relationship with Jimmye. I suppose ‘relationship’ is the appropriate word. Jimmye and Mark Adam had become involved long before he joined the cult. It was the sort of thing any family would try to sweep under the rug. Imagine the reaction inside a family like ours. Here’s a United States senator, and a wife who is one of the leading patrons of the arts in America. They take in an infant girl who’s related to the wife and bring her up as a daughter, giving her every advantage, treating her as an equal to their two natural sons. What does she end up doing? She ends up climbing into one of the sons’ beds, not just once but on a regular basis.”

  Lydia felt very sorry for Cale at that moment. His eyes asked for understanding, not only of the story he was telling but of the difficulty he was having in putting it into words.

  He then moved into a long monologue, a sort of stream-of-consciousness recall of the events in the Caldwell household that centered around the discovery that Jimmye and Mark Adam had been intimate. “You’ve got to understand that Mark Adam is a very intense pe
rson. Sure, especially a young woman, might feel this was a dynamic quality, be drawn to it. And, sad to say, along with the pleasure of it, our Jimmye’s ambitions were not unreasonably keyed to the older, firstborn Caldwell…

  “…I’ll never forget for the rest of my days that moment when Mother walked into Jimmye’s room and saw them together in bed. God, Lydia, it was the beginning of a nightmare in our family—”

  “What did your parents do? Surely they must have tried to put an end to it.”

  “Of course. They counseled, pleaded, threatened—the works. There would be long stretches where it appeared it was over. During those times the family almost seemed to return to the normalcy it once had. But then it would surface again and all hell would break loose.”

  Lydia slumped in the chair. She couldn’t escape the mental images of the stocky, brooding Mark Adam Caldwell with Jimmye McNab… She’d really not known Jimmye very well, though the occasions when they had been together had been pleasant, and Lydia recalled that each time she was quite impressed with the young journalist. No question, Jimmye had been an extremely beautiful girl—tall, slender and lithe. Her hair was more a mane, and she wore it loose, which gave her a hedonistic quality to men.

  Lydia also recalled that Jimmye’s ambitions were nearly as different as her appearance—not necessarily a bad quality; in fact, it made her seem sort of disarmingly frank, honest. Veronica had wryly observed on occasion that Jimmye would undoubtedly become whatever it was she wanted—the top network anchorwoman in America, or the world’s leading brain surgeon. The girl was bright, talented and, above all, goal-directed…

  “It must have been an awful thing to live with,” Lydia said, and meant it.

  “It tore us apart,” Cale said. “I suppose every family is tested. Well, this was our supreme test. In a way, it showed that the Caldwell stock is a strong one. Lots of people I know would have folded under the pressure.”

  “What happened when Mark Adam joined the cult? One would think that would have put an end to it.”

  “No. It seemed to have ended before that. Jimmye had left the house and was involved with other men. We still suspected that Mark Adam was seeing her on occasion, but nothing was ever said about it. Usually, brothers are close enough to share those kinds of secrets, but there was never any of that between Mark Adam and me. It was as though we were from two different worlds. Two very different people. We may share some genes, but they sure worked in wondrously different ways in us… Of course, we could only speculate that the experience with Jimmye had, in some way, helped provoke the psychic break that led my brother to go for a life in a religious cult. Who knows what guilt he carried with him? Whatever it was, it was enough to drive him to kill Jimmye—who I guess he came to see as some evil force he had to exorcise, or whatever their damn jargon is.”

  “What about Jimmye?” Lydia asked. “Didn’t she feel guilty about what had happened? It would seem to me that a young woman in her position, having been taken into a loving family and treated as an equal to that family’s natural children, would have some sense of honor, some commitment to that family.”

  “I’m afraid Jimmye wasn’t bothered by such restraints. We all loved her very much, and in her own way I suppose she loved us. But… well, we’ve all known ambitious people, but Jimmye’s ambition had crossed the line into ruthlessness. I don’t know whether you were aware of that.”

  “No, I wasn’t. Not to that extent. I knew that she was hard-driving and determined to succeed, but… frankly, Cale, all of this comes as a shock. I’m not sure I’m able to absorb it all at this moment, put it into perspective.”

  “You may never be able to, Lydia. I haven’t.”

  As Lydia prepared to leave his office, she asked him why he had decided to take her into his confidence this way.

  “As I said when you first came in, Lydia, the Caldwell family has been embarrassed and hurt enough by Jimmye’s actions. Mark Adam did obviously manage to see her again after joining the cult—or she managed it. He’s also told me that Jimmye threatened to go to our mother and father and demand cooperation—”

  “‘Cooperation’?”

  “Money. I told you, Jimmye had crossed over the line to ruthlessness. Of course, my brother… not exactly stable… tragically overreacted. We’d dealt with so many problems with Jimmye that this would not have been as monumentally important as he felt. I’ve no doubt that that cult and its mysticism helped push him to the act, too. Who knows, he may have seen himself not as the family savior but some kind of avenging angel. That cult helps them think in those terms, it seems… The point is, Jimmye is dead and my brother, God help him, killed her. There are very few people I’d have shared all this with… I know it will stay with you.” His expression made the point that to violate his faith would not be taken lightly.

  She asked, “Does your mother know you planned to tell me this?”

  He hesitated, then said, “Yes. And she approved.”

  “What about the rumors that… well, that your father had had an intimate relationship with Jimmye, too? I’m sorry to ask but since we’re getting everything out—”

  He threw his hands up into the air. “It’s nonsense, Lydia. It’s cruel gossip. I’m not going to protest too much, because that will only add to it. No, the only Caldwell—and one is too many—who got involved was my brother.”

  Lydia stood, picked up her briefcase and took a few steps toward the door. She stopped, turned. “Thank you, Cale. I’m pleased that you think enough of me to trust me with this.”

  He came around the desk and shook her hand. “Mother and I both felt that you deserved to know. And we have the ulterior motive of hoping, by this full disclosure, that you’ll agree there’s no need for any of this to become part of any further investigation or any report by your committee.”

  Lydia nodded. Under the circumstances, it was the least she could do. But she also did no more, quickly departing.

  ***

  After Lydia had left, Cale Caldwell picked up a private telephone and dialed his mother’s office number.

  “How did it go?”

  “Just fine, Mother. I think Lydia finally understands that there’s no need to expose our family secrets. She’s a friend, Mother, and I believe a good one.”

  “Yes, I’ve always known that,” Veronica Caldwell said. “I would never have considered her for the special counsel’s spot unless I at least had been confident of that. Well, thank you, Cale. I feel a little better. Maybe all of this will finally be over.”

  “It will, Mother. You know, as I talked to Lydia, I felt a renewed pride in being a Caldwell. Something I caught. You…”

  His mother sighed. “That is, at bottom, all anyone has, Cale, pride in one’s family…”

  ***

  It was not until late that night, after Lydia had returned to her apartment, taken a long, leisurely hot bath and finally settled in to watch the late news on television, that she was able even to begin to sort out her reactions to what Cale Caldwell had told her. She did feel a sympathy for everyone involved, with the exception of Jimmye McNab. But now there was another reaction. She was about to give it equal time when the phone rang.

  “How are you?” Clarence asked.

  “Confused. You?”

  “Okay. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “No, I was just thinking, which isn’t recommended recreational exercise.”

  “Right. Well, I spent the afternoon at the health club.”

  “Sounds a lot better than the way I spent mine.”

  “Join up, Lydia? Yoga, exercise, dance classes… tones up the muscles where they count, and so forth.”

  Lydia couldn’t stop her mind from racing. When she didn’t say anything Clarence asked, “Hey, are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. I was just thinking of what you said about your club having dance classes… you know, I think it’s possible I’ve been dancing all day.”

  He laughed, and she cut him off.

&n
bsp; “I mean it, Clarence. It just penetrated that I just might have been choreographed into a Caldwell ballet. Then again, all this unaccustomed life-and-death action may be making me into a paranoid. Maybe I should get me to a cult, too…”

  “You do, sweetheart, and I’ll kill you. With love, of course.”

  “Good night, Clarence. I think you’ve finally given me something to dream on.”

  20

  “Get up,” John Conegli’s wife thundered from another room in their small tract house in Rockville, Maryland.

  He got up in stages, knowing he needed to be on time for his client this morning.

  Marie was in the kitchen.

  “Good morning,” John said through a long yawn.

  “Out all night again—”

  “Don’t start now, Marie. It was no different when I was on the force.”

  “When you were on the force you had days off. When you were on the force we got a steady check. So you had to get yourself kicked off the force and be a big-shot private detective.”

  He started to argue with her, then thought better of it.

  When he’d finished dressing he asked, “How do I look?”

  She turned from the sink where she’d been scrubbing the baked-on remains of lasagne from a pan, narrowed her eyes and took him in. “You look tired.”

  “I am. If I didn’t have this client meeting I wouldn’t get up this morning.”

  She wiped her hands, came up to him and kissed him on the cheek. “You’ll kill yourself with no sleep.”

  “Yeah, I know, but it’s a living, huh?” He returned the kiss and felt much better now that he knew he would leave the house on a pleasant note.

  ***

  He had a lot of time to think during the long ride from Rockville to his destination in Virginia. He’d only met the client once, and that was when he’d initially been hired. At first Conegli had debated turning down the assignment. Ever since starting his own detective agency he’d tried to operate under a set of principles. In fact, he’d turned down the first case ever offered him—a wife who wanted him to bulldog her errant husband. “No matrimonials,” Conegli had told her. He took the next case that came through his door, however, a husband who wanted his wife followed. Somehow that was different, Conegli told himself. A guy had a right to a little on the side, but not a married woman. Besides, the rent was due on his tiny office, he needed the money. Soon he took most anything that came through the door, including matrimonials, never mind who was doing what to whom.