Murder on Capitol Hill Page 22

  Christa grabbed up her suitcase and purse and ran up the street toward the restaurant. She stopped in front of it, turned to look back at the parking lot fence. As far as she could tell, neither man had realized she’d left, too busy with each other… she hoped. She darted into the restaurant and said to the first person she saw, a man in a tuxedo, “Could I use your phone?”

  “Of course—”

  And it occurred to Christa that if Hughes got away from his attacker he might well look for her in the closest place, which happened to be this restaurant. “I was supposed to meet someone here,” she said to the tuxedoed maître d’. “Her name is Amy Upshur. My plans have changed and I’ve got to leave. Would you tell her that…?”

  “Miss Upshur called. Are you sure you can’t wait for her?”

  Christa shook her head. “No, I have to go right now. Tell her I’m sorry, I’ll write her.”

  Christa started to leave, turned. “Are you Joe?”

  “Yes.”

  She kissed his cheek. “That’s from Amy.” Also from herself now.

  ***

  The Eastern Airlines shuttle to Washington was full, and a second section had to be put on. Christa sat back in her seat on the 727 and tried to collect her thoughts. Having Quentin Hughes come up to her on the street in New York was still like a bad dream. She had no idea how he’d learned that she was in New York. It didn’t matter. What did was that he clearly was not about to accept the loss of that damned tape. Of course he won’t, she thought as the plane pushed away from the gate and the pilot increased engine power to begin his taxi toward the active runway. That tape is worth too much to him…

  Unlike her mood—her life—the flight to Washington’s National Airport was easy and smooth. Christa went directly to a bank of public telephones, where she dialed several numbers, all in the hope of reaching Lydia James. Each one produced nothing but a long succession of unanswered rings. She clenched her teeth, swore silently, then she rummaged through her purse until she came up with a scrap of paper another telephone number was written on. She dialed it, and Ginger Johnson answered.

  “This is Christa Jones, Miss Johnson… Quentin Hughes’s producer. I’m sorry to bother you but—”

  “That’s okay,” Ginger said, “I know that Miss James was anxious to hear from you. What can I do for you?”

  “Do you know where Miss James is?”

  “Matter of fact I do. She told me she and Mr. Foster-Sims are attending a concert at the Caldwell Center—”

  “They’re there now?”

  “I suppose so. I’m not sure what time the concert started but I’d think it’s any minute now. Can I help you, Miss Jones? Lydia and I work together very closely and—”

  The sound of a receiver being clicked into place.

  “Who was that?” Harold asked.

  “Somebody the committee’s been involved with.”

  “I’ll be glad when you’re through with that damned committee.”

  Ginger, who was wearing a thigh-length blue terry-cloth robe, plopped down on the couch next to him. She ran her fingertip around the outline of his ear. “I wasn’t thinking about any committees, Harold. Care to fool around?”

  He said he did.

  30

  John Conegli arrived home too late for dinner, ducked Marie’s plaints, changed his shirt, slipped into his overcoat and was about to leave the house when the phone rang. He heard his wife ask who was calling, then her irritated: “It’s for you, your highness, some guy calling from New York. Hal.”

  Conegli took the phone, and cupped the mouthpiece with his hand. “Hal, what’s up?”

  Standing in a phone booth on the corner of Forty-Ninth Street and Third Avenue, collar up against the cold, Hal said, “Damndest thing happened—”

  “You got the package from her?”

  “No. I’ve been tailing her ever since I picked her up at Port Authority, like you told me. I never seen her with any package like you described. Every time she came out of that apartment she wasn’t carrying any package, and I figured her purse wasn’t big enough… anyway, tonight she comes out of the apartment carrying her purse and a suitcase, the same one she had with her from the bus station. So I follow her. She gets on an uptown bus. She comes up to Forty-Ninth Street, gets out of the bus and looks in a store window. Then she starts walking east on Forty-Ninth. I followed her, too. How do I know? That’s my job… right?… to know these things. She gets halfway down the street, stops and looks through a fence into a parking lot. Before I know it this other guy comes up behind her and starts to mug her.”

  “Mug her? I don’t believe it—”

  “In New York, you don’t believe it? This guy, he’s tall, a headful of sort of gray hair, pins her up against the fence. I thought about just grabbing her suitcase and taking off… but what the hell, I’m a lover, right? So I decide to pull the guy off. Which I did. I saved the broad—”

  Johnny looked at his watch. He had to leave. “Look, what about the suitcase?”

  “Well, while this character and I are mixing it up, she picks up the suitcase and takes off.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Beats me.”

  Conegli hung up and left. He drove quickly to the Caldwell Performing Arts Center… he knew Lydia and Clarence had planned to go to some concert there and had decided to follow them after it was over on the off chance that Lydia James might lead him to the package. He found Clarence’s car, parked near it in a space that gave him an unrestricted view of the center’s front entrance.

  He settled back to wait.

  To wait. The story of his life. Well, at least it gave him a chance to let his fantasies take over. Right now the lady was coming out of the water… like the one in the TV commercial. Dripping wet and all for him. And she didn’t look anything like Marie. What self-respecting fantasy would…?

  31

  Quentin Hughes still felt shaken as he boarded an Eastern Airlines flight to Washington at New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

  He wasn’t certain where Christa had gone, but felt it a reasonable assumption she would go back to Washington. Anyway, he had to return to do his show.

  He thought about what had just happened on Forty-Ninth Street, how the man had pulled a revolver from a small holster beneath his armpit and shoved it into his stomach. Obviously he was some kind of a professional, and Hughes had come up with the best story he could… that this was his girlfriend and she’d run out of their apartment and stolen things of his… The man with the gun didn’t seem much interested one way or another in his story, but had let him off, almost as though he were an afterthought. By then, of course, Christa was gone.

  Finding Christa had been a hopeless job until a phone call that morning from Amy Upshur. He and Amy had been close in Des Moines for a brief time, something Christa never knew about. After some initial chitchat Amy told Hughes that Christa was at her place and acting strangely. He’d asked her what she meant and she’d said, “Well… it’s crazy, but she claims you were somehow mixed up in the death of Senator Caldwell and that journalist… what was her name?… Jimmye something…”

  “Like you say, that’s crazy—”

  “Well, that’s why I finally decided to call you. For her own sake too, I thought you ought to know about it. Christa is a wonderful person, I’d never do anything to hurt her but I’m worried that in her present state of mind she’ll hurt herself, and other people too…”

  Hughes had caught the first flight to New York. He’d not wanted just to arrive at Amy’s apartment, so he sat in a café across the street and hoped that Christa would show up. His timing had been right; he’d had to wait only an hour before she came out of the apartment carrying her suitcase…

  Now back in Washington, he drove to Christa’s apartment. He rang the bell. No answer. He decided to go to the studio and call her apartment from there during the night until he got her.

  He told his new producer, a long-legged young woman with a degree in communic
ations, and with such other requisites as long red hair, green eyes and a Scottish burr, that he wanted a rerun ready to go at a moment’s notice should he suddenly have to leave in the middle of the show.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Just do what I tell you.” He went into an empty office to try Christa’s number.

  “I don’t like to be talked to that way,” she said.

  “Shut up.”

  “I quit.”

  Hughes couldn’t hear her—or, at the moment, care.

  32

  Lydia and Clarence waited for the program to begin—it featured an up-and-coming cellist named Vittorio Pelini accompanied by an established Washington pianist, Marshall Gottlieb. Also, and which pleased Clarence, in addition to sonatas by Beethoven, Schubert and Debussy, was String Quartet No. 2 by Alexander von Zemlinsky, “a pretty adventuresome item,” said Clarence.

  His lecture went on with the information that Zemlinsky had been a teacher of Mahler and that his music often threatened to cross over into atonality but never quite did. Lydia smiled to herself, happy to hear Clarence being so happy in his element, but frankly not much able to concentrate on music. A videotape was too much on her mind.

  They waited for the ritual of his eminence Jason DeFlaunce stepping onto the stage to announce the evening’s program was about to begin. Instead, it was Veronica Caldwell who stepped through the curtains. Most in the audience immediately recognized her, and spontaneous applause rippled throughout the auditorium. Veronica waited for it to die down, then said, “I’m so delighted to be here this evening to introduce the program. I’m honored to be a member of the United States Senate but this center and the arts in America, particularly in Washington, have always been close to my heart. Like religion, they’ve sustained me in our family’s tragedy. I was determined to be here tonight to renew my old involvement in what this center stands for. I assure you that nothing short of a declaration of war would have kept me from it.”

  Veronica stepped back through the curtains. The houselights went down. The curtain opened and the two musicians stepped center stage. Lydia nervously squeezed the oversized handbag on her lap, feeling the contours of the videotape through the leather. Clarence had handed over to her both the tape and Christa’s letter when he’d picked her up, in spite of his conviction that they would be safer at his apartment. Lydia, though, had insisted he give them to her, then shoved them into her bag.

  Somehow she felt that more than one show was about to begin…

  ***

  Well, at least her cats were okay, Christa thought when she got back to her apartment. People who said that cats were aloof and didn’t miss human contact were crazy. Both animals came to her, rubbed against her legs and nuzzled their heads against her hands. She couldn’t stay long. Quentin would be returning to Washington, probably that evening, and would surely come looking for her.

  She looked up the number and dialed the Caldwell Performing Arts Center. After finding out that the performance was going on, she finally persuaded the woman who answered that there was an emergency and she must find Lydia James and bring her to the phone. Thanks to Lydia’s recent publicity, the woman could recognize her and bring her to the phone.

  “Hello, this is Lydia James. Who is this? What’s the—?”

  “Christa Jones—”

  “Oh, well… I’m glad to hear from you. Are you all right? Are you here in Washington?”

  “Yes, I am… Miss James, I must see you.”

  “All right. When?”

  “Right now. Please.”

  “I’ll leave immediately and meet you anywhere you say.”

  Christa considered asking Lydia to come to her apartment but was afraid to stay there any longer. “Meet me at Luigi’s.”

  “On Nineteenth Street, Northwest?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Lydia hurried back into the darkened theater and told Clarence she was leaving to meet Christa at famous Luigi’s.

  Clarence pulled her up from her seat and led her to the lobby.

  “Can’t you meet her after the concert? I’ll come with you—”

  Lydia shook her head. “I promised her I’d be there right away. I’ve got to go now, Clarence.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No, please. If I don’t show up alone she might panic, even run. Stay for the rest of the concert, then go home. I promise I’ll call you the moment I can. Please, Clarence, thanks for understanding—”

  “Look, damn it, I’m not worried about Christa Jones, I’m worried about you.”

  She kissed his cheek. “I’ll call you soon.”

  As Clarence reluctantly went back into the auditorium and Lydia headed for the exit door, Veronica Caldwell, who’d been observing them from an alcove at the far end of the lobby, quickly went to a phone located in the coatroom.

  Joanne Marshall, Cale’s secretary, answered her call. “This is Senator Veronica Caldwell. I’d like to speak to my son.”

  “He’s sleeping—”

  “Wake him.”

  Joanne went to Cale’s bedroom and shook his bare shoulder. “Wake up, Cale. Your mother’s on the phone.”

  “Tell her I’ll call back,” he said sleepily.

  “Cale, she sounds angry. Please talk to her.”

  He sat up in bed, shook the sleep from his head and reached for the phone on the night table. “Mother?”

  “Yes.”

  He told Joanne to hang up the living room extension. After Veronica heard her do so, she said, “Come to the center, Cale, right away.”

  “Mother, I’m in bed, I—”

  “Cale, get here. Twenty minutes.”

  ***

  John Conegli watched Lydia exit the Caldwell Center. He expected her to go directly to her car, but instead she went to the first in a line of waiting cabs, which quickly pulled away from the curb. Conegli maneuvered his car out of the parking lot and followed her cab at a safe distance until it pulled up in front of Luigi’s restaurant. He watched Lydia pay the driver and go quickly into the restaurant.

  Pretty strange, he thought. She comes to a theater with her boyfriend, runs out on him, grabs a cab and goes to an Italian joint.

  Since Lydia had no idea who he was, he could safely enter the restaurant and get a look at who she was meeting. Besides, he was also hungry.

  Both the upstairs and downstairs rooms at Luigi’s were near capacity. Conegli spotted Lydia seated at a table at the extreme rear of the downstairs room. She was facing the door. Across from her was another woman… wait, he recognized her… sometimes you could get lucky… he checked their table for the package, saw nothing. Both women he noted, had purses large enough to hold a package.

  Conegli was about to take a table too far from Lydia’s to overhear the conversation when a couple at a table next to hers paid their check and got up. Luck comes in twos, once in a blue moon, he thought.

  He quickly moved to it, then ordered a black olive and anchovy pizza and a glass of red wine.

  Lydia and Christa took passing note of Conegli as he sat down next to them, then returned to resume what appeared a heavy conversation. Conegli leaned to his left, but even this close the general noise in the restaurant made it impossible for him to hear more than snatches of conversation. Well, it was better than nothing. And it sure beat sitting in a car waiting for them to come out. The zesty smell of Italian food tickled his nostrils. He sipped his wine, and made a mental note to make sure the waitress gave him a blank receipt so that he could put in a hefty dinner tab for Mr. Francis Jewel.

  ***

  “I still don’t understand,” Lydia said to Christa. They’d ordered a carafe of white wine.

  “It all fits together, Miss James—”

  “Please call me Lydia.”

  “All right… Well, you asked about the tape you saw of Quentin and Senator Caldwell. I remember the day you came to the station to screen it. You said that there were things that bothered you
about it.”

  “That’s right. One was that Senator Caldwell fiddled with a missing button on his shirt. It seemed so unlike him to make a public appearance without being perfectly groomed. I asked his wife about it and she assured me that he’d worn a brand-new shirt that day.”

  “I was aware of it too, but I knew why the button was missing. Just before the taping Senator Caldwell and Quentin had an awful row… Quentin actually grabbed the senator by his shirt collar and that’s when the button popped off.”

  “What could have caused such an argument?”

  Christa glanced at Conegli, who casually looked away and focused on his wine. She leaned across the table. “Jimmye McNab.”

  “What about her?” Lydia asked.

  “Quentin was insanely jealous over Senator Caldwell’s affair with Jimmye.”

  “Then it was true,” Lydia said. “I’d heard rumors that the senator had been intimate with her but I never believed them. After all, he raised her as a daughter—”

  “Except she wasn’t really his daughter… anyway, the important thing is that Quentin was crazy in love with Jimmye, always had been. When he found out she was pregnant with Senator Caldwell’s child, he became wild… I’d never seen him so—”

  “Senator Caldwell’s child? Are you sure it wasn’t his son’s, Mark Adam’s?”

  Christa shook her head, and thought back to that night when Hughes had told her that Jimmye was pregnant with Senator Caldwell’s child. She’d replayed it over and over to herself, remembering what they’d said to each other, the tears, the shouts of rage, the lovemaking, especially the lovemaking, that was remarkably tender compared to what it usually was…

  “He’s the lowest,” Hughes had said about Caldwell. “He was her father, at least he raised her as a daughter, and he took advantage of her.” The irony of Hughes taking a moral tone escaped him, and was not something that Christa could mention.