Murder on Capitol Hill Page 3

  Wilfred MacLoon, the senior senator from Utah, who happened to have an intense personal and political dislike for Cale Caldwell but whose wife was an active member of Veronica’s board of directors at the performing arts center which, to Caldwell’s chagrin, frequently brought MacLoon into their social life, had already had too much to drink. He swayed as he spoke with a couple near Lydia… “I never could stand Virginia,” he was saying. Lydia thought he was talking about someone with that name, then realized he was referring to Caldwell’s home state. “I was in the Navy there. Hellhole of the world. Backward damn state if I ever saw one.”

  As MacLoon rambled on, Lydia recalled the origins of the MacLoon-Caldwell hostile rivalry. There had been numerous incidents during their long and often parallel careers in the Senate that had caused sparks to fly, but none turned out to be as volatile as the recent, intense controversy over the placement of the most expensive and elaborate missile defense system ever conceived by any government. MacLoon had fought long and hard to have Utah chosen as the site for its construction. It would mean a huge infusion of money into his state, and some people felt that his political future depended on how successful he was in bringing home, so to speak, the bacon.

  Not only was Caldwell against Utah as the site, he was opposed to the missile system itself from its conception. Debates, increasingly heated, had gone on for nearly a year; now the issue was close to a vote. Smart money was on Caldwell and his troops. He was, after all, Majority Leader.

  This dispute between Senators Caldwell and MacLoon had overflowed into the public arena, had been the subject of newspaper headlines and television news reports. Once the two of them had actually gotten into an arm-waving argument on the front steps of the Senate and nearly came to blows…

  MacLoon’s voice was getting louder. His wife tried to pacify him, but her efforts only resulted in infuriating him. He walked up to the ice sculpture. “Right there,” he said, pointing to the right side of the sculpture where Newport News was located. “One hell of a hellhole, but then again, what would you expect considering who it sent to us.”

  MacLoon then casually picked up the ice pick left behind by the ice sculptor, aimed it at a corner of the sculpture.

  “For God’s sake,” his wife said as she led him away.

  “Don’t overreact, darling,” he said. “Just a joke. I’m not, after all, an idiot. Only idiots act out what they feel. Didn’t you tell me that once?”

  “I did,” she muttered, “and I’m telling you again.”

  “No sweat, my dear. I just thought a little drama might go a long way in a good cause. Not to worry.” And suddenly he seemed very calm and rational….

  “Time to escape,” Clarence said.

  “Not just yet,” Lydia said. “Veronica would be disappointed—”

  “Would dinner at the Adams interest you?”

  “Yes, but not so much that I’d leave this minute. Another half hour, please, Clarence.”

  “All right, but I’ll need fortifying. Can I get you something?”

  An easy way out, she thought, because at that moment Mr. Wonderful… just ask him… Quentin Hughes was putting down his empty plate on the table and in his charming fashion saying to Lydia, “Who invited the weirdo?” He nodded toward the corner where the two male Caldwells had attempted their reconciliation. The senator was gone. Mark Adam was still there, eyes uneasily taking in the room before he pushed away from the wall and disappeared behind a line of guests.

  “I’m sorry, but the kid’s a loser,” Hughes said. “Anybody who gets involved with those cults is playing with a half a deck to begin with. How come he’s here?”

  “To say hello to his father, I believe.”

  Hughes shrugged and his eyes went to the dip in Lydia’s neckline. “You look especially well tonight, counselor. In fact, the best-looking woman on the ranch. Free for dinner, by any chance?”

  “Sorry… I’m with Mr. Foster-Sims—”

  “Who’s old enough to be your father. Actually, I thought he was.”

  “Excuse me.”

  He took hold of her arm. “Oh, come on. I was, in my feeble fashion, trying to pay you a compliment—”

  She ignored him and went to where Clarence stood behind the piano player.

  “Maybe I should start playing again,” he said to her. “Then I could get to attend all the swell Washington parties.”

  “Snob,” she said into his ear.

  “A privilege of age. You have fifteen minutes.”

  “I’m ready now, I guess. God, I detest men who undress you with their eyes.”

  “Hughes?”

  “Yes.”

  “I noticed… You know, I’d never admit it to him but I still sometimes listen to him when I can’t sleep. He’s provocative and can usually get something out of his guests. Basically, though, he’s a variety of rat…” His face suddenly lit up as he spotted Boris Slevokian, a violinist. Clarence had once been Boris’s accompanist and they’d made several world tours together.

  “Come and say hello to Boris,” Clarence said.

  “I’ll be over in a moment. I want to talk to Veronica about something.”

  Clarence headed for his friend and Lydia scanned the room for her hostess but couldn’t find her. Nor those most likely to be with her—her husband, their sons or Jason DeFlaunce. She started to ask someone, when Senator Caldwell suddenly appeared from behind one of the green folding screens. His face, no longer reflecting his earlier ebullience, was set in a tight angry mask as he pushed through a small cluster of guests and disappeared behind another screen that separated the desecrated shrimp tree and melting ice carving from the rest of the room. A waitress was in the process of dismantling the silver tree.

  Lydia looked toward the door. Clarence and Boris had disappeared. She decided to ask Cale Caldwell if he knew where his wife was. She managed only a few steps toward where she’d last seen him when she was intercepted by the director of one of Washington’s semiprofessional repertory theaters full of the good news that Veronica and her board had given them the green light to stage a production at the center. Nodding and trying to move off she saw Quentin Hughes emerge from behind the screen she was headed for and move toward the door. “Excuse me, I…”

  Two Irishmen had encouraged Hughes to play “Danny Boy,” and they now sang loudly out of tune with each other and their accompaniment.

  Lydia finally excused herself and took another step toward the screen—and stopped short as the sound of a female voice cut through the party cacophony. It was a scream, a cry for help. Then a second scream, even louder. The singing cut off, the chatter died. All eyes looked in the direction of the screen as a third and final scream slashed at everyone within earshot, made them immobile like players in a game of statues.

  Lydia, finally out of her trance, moved around the screen. At first she saw only the source of the sound, the young waitress who’d been removing the shrimp tree. Her eyes were open wide, fixed on the floor, her fist against her mouth, as though to stifle another cry.

  Lydia followed the direction of the waitress’s stare to a pair of highly polished men’s shoes and two neatly creased trouser legs extending from behind the table.

  Lydia forced herself to the waitress’s side, where she could share her view. There, on the floor, his eyes open to their widest, his mouth twisted as though trying to say something, was the Honorable Cale Caldwell, the Majority Leader of the Senate of the United States. Water from the melting ice sculpture of his beloved home state of Virginia dripped onto his forehead. His red-and-blue striped tie was still neatly in place beneath a buttoned suit jacket. He looked so typically neat.

  Except for the oozing, spreading red stain coming from where an ice pick had been rammed through his chest, just above the button of his suit jacket.

  The waitress gave up to unconsciousness, pitched forward and landed across the senator’s legs.

  Lydia turned to those who’d crowded behind the screen and said what was all
too obvious.

  “He’s dead. My God, he’s dead.”

  5

  Clarence, Lydia, Boris Slevokian and one of Cale Caldwell’s Senate aides, Richard Marvis, were seated in Clarence’s apartment. It had taken until one in the morning before the Washington Metropolitan Police Department had allowed the guests to leave.

  Now, the initial shock over, Lydia could allow the tears to come as she sat in a corner next to a massive copper bust of Bach.

  “No, I’m all right,” she said to Marvis as he came over to comfort her. “Thank you.”

  “I do not believe this,” Boris said. He’d retained most of his Hungarian accent even though he’d been in the United States for more than thirty years. Now he paced the room, hands clasped behind his back, perspiration on his bumpy, broad forehead glistening in light from pin spots used to illuminate Clarence’s numerous works of art. “It was like being back in a communist country the way the police treated me. I felt like a prisoner. They told me that I am not to leave the city until they question me again. Question me.”

  “It’s procedure, that’s all,” Dick Marvis told him. “After all, as far as they’re concerned, anyone at the party might have done it.”

  “Poor Veronica,” Lydia said.

  “The doctor seemed to have things under control,” Clarence told her. “I’m sure she’s been sedated and is resting… she has her sons—”

  “God, Clarence, how much should a person be asked to take? First Jimmye, now this.”

  “Jimmye? Oh, yes… how long has it been, two years?”

  Jimmye McNab had been raised by the Caldwells since infancy, following the simultaneous death of her parents in an automobile crash. Jimmye’s mother and Veronica had been sisters, and the suddenly orphaned child had promptly been taken in by Veronica and Cale Caldwell to be raised as one of their own. She’d never been legally adopted, for reasons unknown to Lydia. What she did know was that approximately a year before Jimmye was found bludgeoned to death in a park in downtown Washington, she’d broken with her surrogate family and had seen little of them.

  At the time of her death, Jimmye was also one of Washington’s most visible and respected TV journalists. She’d uncovered and broken numerous important stories in the nation’s capital, and there had been talk of a network tapping her for a top anchor spot in which her natural journalistic ability and exciting good looks would be put to more solid commercial use.

  “I’m afraid,” Lydia said, “that I thought of Jimmye when I saw Cale on the floor. I remember talking to Cale and Veronica right after Jimmye died. They tried to be so strong, but you knew what they were going through. Veronica’s too decent to have such a dreadful thing happen twice.”

  He’d brewed a pot of coffee. “We’ll all feel better after this. It’s two in the morning.”

  “Why?” Lydia asked of no one in particular. “Why would someone kill him?”

  “That’s the MPD’s problem,” Marvis said. “But anyone in the public eye makes enemies.”

  “You worked with him,” Lydia said. “Do you know of anyone who could hate him enough to stab him to death?”

  Marvis shrugged. “He had his enemies but no more than any other man in a leadership position. I suppose Senator MacLoon led the pack.” He lit a cigarette, crossed his legs. The smoke drifted in Lydia’s direction, making her want one, too. She’d stopped smoking ten years ago, and although the craving had long since disappeared, there were times like this when it came back with a wallop.

  “Being killed at a party certainly compounds the MPD’s job,” Clarence said. “How many guests were there, two hundred, maybe more? All at least theoretical suspects.”

  “Not all,” Boris said. “I did not even know the man.”

  “You’d met him, hadn’t you?” Lydia asked.

  “No. His wife, yes, when I gave a recital at her theater. Him, no. I am an apolitical man, I have no interest in politics or men who practice it. Art and politics are not compatible.”

  Foster-Sims noticed that Lydia had wrapped her arms about herself. “Are you cold?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll get you something.” He returned with a white cardigan sweater and draped it over her bare shoulders.

  “I think I’d better be heading home.”

  Marvis checked his watch. “Me too. If I thought working for Cale Caldwell was a busy job before, I can picture what this morning will be like.”

  Lydia looked at him. “I was surprised that you weren’t at his office, Dick. It must be alive with press—”

  “That’s Joe Borgen’s territory, he’s the press aide. I’m strictly a legislative type… sorry, but that’s Washington…”

  He stood, nodded to Lydia. “If there’s anything I can do, please call. I know you were a particular favorite of both the senator and his wife.”

  “Most upsetting,” Boris said after Marvis had left. “A party in a man’s honor terminates in his murder. If man listened more seriously to music perhaps he would not be so much the savage. I must be going.” Boris pulled a black tam from his jacket pocket and yanked it down over his large head, took black leather gloves from the other pocket and slipped them over thick stubby fingers that seemed never to have been meant to caress a violin yet did so with grace and precision. “Good night,” he said, bringing his heels together and bowing to Lydia. He shook Clarence’s hand, spun around and departed with great flourish.

  “Talented yet so boring,” Clarence said as he sat on a couch. “Sit down,” he said to Lydia, who stood in the center of the room, eyes focused on twinkling lights visible through the window.

  “I’m really beat, Clarence, I guess I’ll be leaving.”

  He shook his head, patted the couch next to him. “Stay a few more minutes. It’ll do you—and me—some good to talk. What do you think about it?”

  “Think about it? What could I possibly think about it?”

  “Look, I know you’re upset. But I also know your brain is working overtime. All these years of law plus the mathematical mind of a musician can’t be completely overridden by emotion. So… who killed Cale Caldwell?”

  “Boris,” she said as she sat next to him.

  He smiled. “Know what I think? I think Mr. Charm, Quentin Hughes, should have been the one with the ice pick in his chest. Did you see him? The minute he realized what had happened he was on the phone calling in a report to his studio. What a ghoul.”

  “He’d say it was being professional—”

  “Also disgusting… what was Caldwell working on lately?”

  “In the Senate? The missile system, a new budget, I think. I meant to ask Dick Marvis about it. I do know he’d been under the gun to resign from chairing the Appropriations Committee on the Interior and Related Agencies because of the pressures of being Majority Leader. I got a feeling from Veronica that he wanted to, but that she’d convinced him to stay with both posts. From her perspective, I suppose the committee is more important than being Majority Leader: Arts funding rides along on what comes out of that committee, especially since Cale also sat on the House-Senate conference committee that made the final cuts. Her husband is the most important member of Congress when it comes to funding the National Endowment on the Arts and the Humanities—”

  “Was.”

  “Yes… You can only speculate on what happens now. Will MacLoon is in line for that committee chair, and you know what he thinks of federal funding for anything besides cars, guns, steel and the right labor unions… God, I’m so damn tired…”

  “I know… but it’s interesting… trying to solve a murder like this is sort of like resolving a chord.”

  “What?”

  “Like the cycle of fifths. A G can go nowhere but to C. To get to G you start with D. And only an A can lead to a D.”

  “Lordy, Clarence, let me close my eyes for a minute.” She put her head on his shoulder, and he put his arm around her and held her close. He glanced down at the beginnings of her breasts above the ne
ckline of her evening dress, felt a familiar response and shifted his legs. Tonight was distinctly not the night for romance.

  Fifteen minutes later, when he was sure she was sound asleep, he gently shifted so that she could stretch out on the couch. She’d removed her shoes earlier in the evening. He straightened out her legs and adjusted a throw pillow beneath her head. She opened her eyes, smiled, closed them again.

  He took a comforter from a closet and placed it over her, turned off all but one lamp, ignored the urge to carry her to the bedroom and went there himself and slipped into bed. Sleep eluded him for nearly an hour. Just as it did arrive, he was jarred awake by the ringing of a phone on his night table.

  “Is Lydia James there?” a male voice asked.

  “Who the hell is this? Do you know what time it is—?”

  “This is Cale Caldwell. If Ms. James is there, please put her on.”

  “Cale Cald…? Oh, his son. Yes, just a moment.”

  Lydia took the call in the living room. “Yes, Cale, hello, what… when?… I don’t know, I… all right, of course, tell your mother that I’ll be there at ten. Is ten okay?… How is your mother?… I’ll see you at ten… goodbye.”

  “What was that all about?” Clarence asked after she’d hung up.

  “Veronica wants to see me. I hate to face her, Clarence, really dread it. Do you have any coffee left?”

  “I’ll heat it.”

  “I’m sorry I fell asleep on you.” She went to the bronze bust of Bach and absently ran her hand over its surface.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “About your cycle of fifths. I was wondering what key this has all been written in, and what, to belabor a metaphor, the final chord will be.”

  “Major, not minor. Bet on that.”

  “Or a deep blues,” she said.

  “Yes, maybe that too. I’ll put the coffee on.”

  6

  Lydia, in her office, pulled papers from a file folder about a client’s application to the Federal Communications Commission for a license to operate a radio station he and a syndicate were trying to buy.