38
Laurie was opening gifts at her surprise party by the time Senator Daniel Longfellow poured himself a glass of Cabernet in the kitchen. His wife was preparing dinner for the dogs. Because of Lincoln’s food allergies, he required a mix of prescription canned food and kibble made from rabbit and squash. And because Leigh Ann was convinced the dogs would notice if they received differential treatment, that meant Ike received the identical recipe.
The senator noticed Leigh Ann glance at his glass, but she didn’t comment. It was rare for either of them to drink wine on weekdays. It was a rule they’d both adopted not long after they met, when they realized they were imbibing a bit too frequently given the demands of their studies at Columbia. “Dry weekdays” then became part of their routine—one of many they had adopted to maximize both their health and their productivity.
But the visit from the Under Suspicion producers had him in the mood for a glass of wine. “I think it went okay,” he said to Leigh Ann. “How about you?”
“I can only speak for my part of the conversation. They seemed quite reasonable. I got the impression, though, that she didn’t know much about the original police investigation. That surprised me.”
Daniel took a sip of his wine. “Then you underestimate the number of chips I had to cash in to make sure that the police left our name out of the entire case. Apparently the commissioner meant what he said when he assured me that the investigating detectives saw no reason to involve us any further.”
He had worked so hard—no, they had worked so hard—to get to this place. When he was first elected to the state assembly, he was certain he’d go to Albany and accomplish all of the sweeping changes he had called for during that first, energizing campaign. But he was only one of one hundred fifty members of the assembly, and the entire place was mired with gridlock, patronage, and cronyism. He had barely learned his way around the capital before it was time to start hustling for campaign donations and locking down ad buys again. The political pundits kept calling him a rising star, but there was nowhere for him to rise to. The state senator and governor weren’t going anywhere. He was stuck in place in what was supposed to be his “starter job” in politics.
Not to mention, the place where he was stuck was a place Leigh Ann hated. Behind very closed doors, she called Albany “All-Boring” and reminded Daniel on a daily basis how much smarter they both were than his elected colleagues. Because of the commute between the capital and the city, for all practical purposes they had a long-distance marriage for large parts of the year.
And then suddenly, thanks to a cabinet appointment for one of New York’s two U.S. senators, the sky opened up, and rising Daniel Longfellow had a place to go. After completing the remaining two years of the previous senator’s uncompleted term, he had been handily elected in his own right three years ago. He enjoyed a nearly 80 percent approval rating statewide, which was unheard of in these divided times. And most importantly, at least to him, he believed he was actually making a difference. He tried to ignore all the chatter about pursuing an even higher office. Every day, he tried to use the power of the office he currently occupied to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, just as he had promised.
But sometimes he felt as if he might never be able to put the dark phase of their past behind him. When Alex Buckley had called last week asking him to meet with his fiancée about the Martin Bell case, he felt the reemergence of a panic he hadn’t known for the last five years. Maybe I should have told the police the full story when they first asked about Martin Bell, he thought. After surviving a war, I should have been tough enough to let the chips fall as they may. I’ve tried to live my entire life honorably. I made one mistake, and sometimes I think this guilt might just put me in the grave.
Trying to calm his nerves, he told himself that Leigh Ann was probably right, as she almost always was. Their answers had seemed to satisfy Laurie Moran, just as they had satisfied the police after Bell was murdered.
“Do you think I should have someone from the office call to follow up?” he asked. “We could mention the possibility of a defamation suit if they were to repeat Kendra’s suspicions on air.”
She looked at him as if he had suggested flying to the moon on a bicycle. He knew that Leigh Ann loved him—almost as much as he loved her—but he also knew (and adored the fact) that his wife didn’t suffer fools.
“And give them a story about a senator trying to silence a widowed mother?” She placed the dogs’ meals into their personalized feeders. “Don’t give them fire when there’s no smoke. Our statements made it all well and clear: Martin Bell was just a man on the board with me, an old childhood acquaintance.”
They both knew that wasn’t exactly true.