A Vote for Murder (2 page)

The last words I heard from Mara as I pushed open the door—and she headed back to the kitchen—were, “You are a sly one, Jessica Fletcher.”

I chided myself on my walk home for having mentioned George Sutherland. Knowing Mara, half the town would have heard about it by noon, the other half by dinnertime. Mara didn’t mean any harm with her penchant for gossip, nor was she the only one. Charlene Sassi’s bakery is another source of juicy scuttlebutt. (What is it about places with food that seem to spawn hearsay?) Small towns like my beloved Cabot Cove thrive on rumors, and in almost every case they’re utterly harmless. As far as George Sutherland was concerned, there had been plenty of speculation that he and I had become romantically involved since meeting during a murder investigation in England. There was no basis to those rumors, although he’d expressed interest in advancing our relationship to another level, and I’d not found the contemplation unpleasant. But after some serious talks during those times when we managed to be together, we decided that neither this handsome Scottish widower, nor this Cabot Cove widow were ready for a more intimate involvement, and contented ourselves with frequent letters, occasional long-distance phone calls, and chance meetings when our schedules brought us together.

The rain started just as I reached my house. I picked up the local newspaper that had been delivered while I was gone, ducked inside, closed some windows, made myself a cup of tea, and reviewed the package of information Senator Nebel’s office had sent, accompanied by a letter from the senator.

It promised to be a whirlwind week in Washington, and I added to my packing list an extra pair of comfortable walking shoes. The reception at the White House was scheduled for five o’clock the day I arrived. Following it, Senator Nebel would host a dinner at his home. The ensuing days were chockablock with meetings and seminars at the Library of Congress, luncheons and dinners with notables from government and the publishing industry, and other assorted official and social affairs. Why event planners think they must fill every waking moment has always escaped me; everyone appreciates a little downtime in the midst of a hectic week. My concern, however, was that I wouldn’t find time to enjoy again being in George Sutherland’s company. It had been a long while since we’d last seen each other, our schedules making it difficult for him to come to the States from London, where he was a senior Scotland Yard inspector, or for me to cross the Atlantic in the opposite direction. It had been
too
long, and I didn’t want to squander the opportunity of being in the same city at the same time.

When I picked up the newspaper, a headline on the front page caught my eye: NEBEL’S VOTE ON POWER PLANT STILL UNCERTAIN.

The battle within the Senate over the establishment of a new, massive nuclear power plant in Maine, only twenty miles outside Cabot Cove, had been in the news for weeks. From what I’d read, the Senate was almost equally split between those in favor of the plant, and those opposed. Its proponents claimed it was vitally necessary to avoid the sort of widespread blackouts the East Coast had experienced since the late fifties, five of them since 1959, including the biggest of them all in 2003. Senator Nebel, who’d pledged to fight the plant during his most recent campaign, had pointed to the enormous cost, not to mention the ecological threat the plant posed to our scenic state, and further condemned the lobbyists behind the project and their clients, large multistate electric power companies that would benefit handsomely from the plant’s construction. Some members of President David Dimond’s cabinet had enjoyed strong ties to those companies prior to entering public service.

But the article claimed that Nebel’s opposition to the plant could no longer be taken for granted, according to unnamed Washington insiders. The piece ended with:
Reports that Senator Nebel has recently received death threats are unconfirmed, although unnamed sources close to the senator say that security has been beefed up for him, both on Capitol Hill and at his home.

Death threats!
Usually they came from demented people who have no intention of carrying through on them. But you can never take that for granted, and every such threat must be taken seriously. I knew one thing: Our junior senator had chosen a contentious time to be hosting a literacy program at the Library of Congress. Was there ever a time when something important, something potentially earth-shattering, wasn’t going on somewhere in the world, and by extension in Washington, D.C.? I doubted it.

I replaced that weighty thought with a more pleasant one: visiting the White House and meeting the president, spending time with some of my fellow writers, and, of course, touching base in person with George Sutherland.

“Ah, Jessica Fletcher, Maine’s very own Agatha Christie.”

Senator Warren Nebel crossed the room, hands extended, a dazzling smile painted across his square, tanned face. “But Dame Agatha could never hold a candle to you,” he added, to my discomfort.

“How nice to see you again, Senator,” I said, losing my hand in both of his. “Thank you so much for including me in this exciting week.”

“What would a literacy program be without someone of your stature?” he said in a voice loud enough for others in the vicinity to hear.

We were in the White House’s Blue Room, an oval room the same size as the president’s Oval Office, and one of the residence’s main formal reception rooms. The chairs and a sofa, a mixture of originals and reproductions of a Parisian gilt suite ordered for the room in 1817 by President Monroe, were covered in a lovely blue fabric. Blue drapes framed soaring windows; the windows themselves framed an imposing view of the Washington Monument, gleaming in the late-afternoon sun. Two lovely Fitz Hugh Lane oils of Boston and Baltimore harbors added a colorful peek at history to complement the room’s appeal.

Our junior senator from Maine wasn’t that junior; his campaign biography stated he was sixty-one. That our second senator, Marjorie Hale, a dynamic woman in her early seventies, had been in the Senate longer than Nebel accounted for his “junior” status. He was a handsome man, tall and lean, in good physical shape, and with a seemingly bottomless reserve of energy. The gray suit he wore was immaculately tailored, a far cry from the jeans and flannel shirts he wore when campaigning back in Maine.

I recalled that Nebel’s political life had not been without scandal, although his had occurred—fortunately, it seemed—early in his career. When he was speaker of the Maine senate, he’d been caught in a compromising position with an aide with whom he’d been having a yearlong affair. His wife, Patricia, was not the sort of woman who looked the other way when confronted by such indiscretions. She filed for divorce. A few months later, to the surprise of many Maine citizens who shared her views, the couple announced they’d reconciled, and he moved back into their modest home in a neighborhood of tract homes north of town. That nasty episode behind him and forgotten—or forgiven by most voters—he ran for a vacated U.S. Senate seat and won by the narrowest of margins. He was now at the end of his second six-year term, and running hard for a third.

I’d gotten to know Patricia Nebel fairly well in Cabot Cove. We’d served together on various civic committees, including fund-raising for the Cabot Cove Free Library, a cause close to Pat’s heart. I’d been a guest in her home on more than one occasion, and I’d hosted a few dinner parties at which she was present. As I got to know her better, I came to realize that she was uncomfortable in the role of politician’s wife. Not that she wasn’t supportive of her husband’s political ambitions. To the contrary, she appeared at many of his rallies, and actively raised money for his campaigns. She was, as the saying goes, a good soldier.

But there was little doubt that given a choice, she preferred the serenity of her vegetable and flower gardens, and experimenting with recipes in her kitchen to the hurly-burly, frenetic pace of the political life. In the early days of her husband’s first term as a United States senator, she accompanied him to Washington with some regularity. Those trips became less frequent as the years passed. Once, when I visited her at her home and we sat sipping iced tea in her garden, she said, “If I had my way, Jess, I’d never spend another minute of my life in Washington. Oh, I know, it’s a truly beautiful city, and what happens there on a day-to-day basis impacts everyone’s life, here and abroad. But I find it—shall I say it?—I find it a cruel place, at least its political side. And let’s face it,” she added with a laugh, “politics is Washington’s major industry.”

Rumors from Washington surfaced now and then in Cabot Cove that our junior senator might not have learned his earlier lesson, and was enjoying extracurricular relationships outside his marriage in the nation’s capital, Washington. But those bits of gossip were generally dismissed as having been generated by political opponents, enhanced by Washington’s well-known penchant for character assassination. What part they played in keeping Pat Nebel close to home remained conjecture.

Senator Nebel interrupted my reverie. “Have you been treated well since arriving?” he asked.

“Extremely,” I answered with conviction.

My day had started early in Cabot Cove. Jed Richard-son, a former top commercial airline pilot who’d retired to Cabot Cove to start up his own charter airline service, had flown me in a small twin-engine plane to Boston, where I connected with a jet to Washington. Jed had given me flying lessons a few years earlier, and I’d earned my private pilot’s license, which most people found amusing, since I don’t drive a car. I can fly a plane, but you never see me on the road behind the wheel of an automobile, as I prefer my trusty bicycle for getting around town.

Both flights had been smooth, and I arrived at Washington’s Reagan National Airport at two in the afternoon, right on time. A limousine was waiting to take me to the magnificent Willard InterContinental Hotel, on Pennsylvania Avenue, where I was checked into a lovely suite. A stone’s throw from the White House, the Willard had been renovated in the eighties to its original splendor as one of Washington’s most imposing hospitality landmarks; over the years it had been a treasured home away from home for many heads of state and other dignitaries.

Now, a few hours after a quick nap, showering, and changing into what I thought was an appropriate outfit for a meeting with the president of the United States—a lavender silk suit and white blouse—I waited to be ushered into his office.

The person in charge of our group was Nebel’s chief of staff, Nikki Farlow, a tall, attractive woman I judged to be late thirties to early forties, although I admit I’m not very good at such judgments. She wore her auburn hair short, off her neck, and had a deft hand with her makeup, tastefully applied to enhance a thin face, aquiline nose, and prominent cheekbones. She wore a severely tailored gray pantsuit and black blouse, an indication that she was all business. Her manner was pleasant enough, although it was evident that behind it was a strong, no-nonsense lady very much in command of her life and probably those of others with whom she was involved. Being a U.S. senator’s top aide would demand the sense of self-assuredness she exuded, and I had no doubt that she was very good at her job. She’d been my contact as the trip drew close, and her attention to every detail, no matter how small, was impressive.

I’d been the first of our contingent to arrive. My conversation with Nebel ended when he saw others being led into the Blue Room by Secret Service agents assigned to that duty, and left me to greet a short, stocky man with a long white beard and flowing hair to match, and a middle-aged woman wearing what appeared to be a housedress that came down to her calves. Her mousy brown hair was pulled back into a severe bun; she wore black running shoes. I recognized her. Marsha Jane Grane, a revered and prolific author whose books were noted for their often violent and salacious content. Her subject matter was cause for criticism in some circles, but her reputation as a woman of letters was firmly established, with numerous literary awards to support it.

Nebel brought them to where I stood and we were introduced. The man was Karl von Miller, whose novels for young adults were among the most popular of that genre. We had only a minute to chat before the rest of our party arrived and we were ushered into the Oval Office, where an exuberant President Dimond came from behind his desk and eagerly shook our hands. He was a shorter man than he appeared to be on television; I suppose the nature of television transmissions, coupled with the office he held, tended to create a sense of height and stature.

He’d obviously been well prepared. He had an appropriate thing to say to each of us about our books, the names of our most recent works coming easily off his lips, his smile never fading. He said to me, “It amazes me, Mrs. Fletcher, how you come up with intricate plots and wrap everything up so neatly at the end. Maybe I should hire you to lend that talent to this office.”

I laughed along with him, then said, “I’m sure it’s a lot easier to do in a book, Mr. President.”

“Unfortunately, you’re right,” he said. “I especially enjoyed your latest work,
A Cautious Murder,
where the murderer was tripped up by his obsession with making everything orderly in his life, even the murder he committed. Neatness did him in.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” I said, impressed that he’d read the book. Or had he? Had an aide fed him that line in preparation for meeting me?
Don’t be so cynical,
I silently reminded myself.

By the time I’d processed that thought, he was on to the next author in line, Ms. Grane, extolling her writings as providing a clear view into the human psyche. We all received that sort of personal recognition in the fifteen minutes we were there. The meeting ended with a White House photographer snapping a photo of each of us with the president, and before we knew it, we were in limousines heading for dinner at Senator Nebel’s home in McLean, Virginia.