The Governor's Lady (43 page)

They were at the Big House by midmorning. She checked on Mickey, found her still asleep.

She and Allison, bundled in sweaters, took coffee to the Adirondack chairs in the backyard. A warming trend was muscling aside what was left of the bitterest cold. A brave sun filtered through the bare limbs of the pecan trees.

They sat quietly, Cooper absorbed with what she had seen, trying to piece together the parts of the little she knew.

“You’re preoccupied,” Allison said. “What with?”

“I don’t know yet. Hopefully before long. Sorry.”

Allison had slept late. She looked rested, the pinched look gone from her face.

“Do you need to go back?” Cooper asked.

“It’s okay,” Allison said. “They know the situation at school. I brought some classwork with me. I can work on my laptop and email it. So I’ll stay awhile, if it’s all right.”

“Of course it’s all right.” She took Allison’s hand.

“Have you talked to Dad?”

“Not for a couple of days. Have you?”

“I don’t want to right now. But I have talked to Grandmother.” Allison smiled. “She wants to go fishing.”

Lawn chairs on a dock at the edge of Fate Wilmer’s pond. Mickey
had wanted to go out in a boat, but Cooper put her foot down on that. Mickey looked like a mummy, swathed in blankets, wrapped so firmly and packed so tightly into the chair that she had little room for movement. Her scrunched-up face peered out, and her mittened hands held the cane pole, which Cooper had baited with a cricket, along with her own.

It had turned into a stunningly beautiful day, the temperature in the low sixties, the air calm, the surface of the water lightly rippled. Where the shallow creek emptied into the pond, a heron fished stilt-legged, ignoring them. The quiet was broken only by the sounds of birds and squirrels.

Fate Wilmer’s pond, Mickey had insisted, not the one beyond the pasture behind the house, the one where Cleve’s bones rested.

“Did you and Daddy fish here?” Cooper asked.

“This was your place, yours and his. I was never much for fishing. He took me out on a big boat in the Gulf one time. I thought I was going to die.”

The plastic corks bobbed listlessly.

“Can you catch fish in January?” Mickey asked.

“I’ve never tried before.”

“You think I’m nuts.”

“Uh-huh.”

She heard the distant crackle of a radio. The entourage—ambulance, security detail, Fate’s car with Estelle and Allison—was a hundred yards away, down the gravel road that led from Fate’s house to the pond’s edge.

They sat quietly, letting the afternoon settle around them, watching the floats.

“I grieved for him, too,” Mickey said. Her voice seemed firm, determined, insistent.

Cooper knew instantly what she meant. She waited.

“Of all my regrets, and there are many, Jesse is the greatest. All that
followed—for Cleve, for me, for you and me—grew out of that one unspeakable, unforgiveable decision.”

Cooper didn’t say anything for a long while. And then she said, “Mother, few things in this world are truly unforgiveable. But yes, for me, for a long time now, it has been unspeakable.” She swallowed hard, trying to keep her voice under control. “I loved Jesse. I have missed him all my life.”

“I know you have.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I can see it in you, and in the way you and I haven’t been able to …”

“Forgive.”

“Yes. For that and all that came after.”

Cooper shifted in her chair, turning toward Mickey. “It may be that’s all we really have, the right to forgive.”

“The right?”

“It’s a choice, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Another long silence. And then: “I never knew how to ask. Pride, stubbornness, meanness. And you?”

“Anger, hurt, loss. People taken away from me—Jesse, Daddy, Pickett. And you. You took yourself away.”

“I didn’t know how to be what you needed. When I tried, I got it wrong. So I stopped trying. We have caused each other great harm. Mostly my doing.”

“But not all.”

“No, not all.”

“But here at the end, we haven’t left it unspoken. We’ve been honest about the damage. Beyond that”—Cooper took a deep breath—“we can forgive.”

Mickey hadn’t looked at her until now. “I love you, Cooper. I’m incredibly proud of you, not for what you’ve won, but for the woman you’ve become.”

“I love you, too,” Cooper said, and marveled at how it sounded, how right, after all this time.

Cooper took the cane pole from Mickey, laid it and her own on the weathered boards of the dock between their chairs. Then she took Mickey’s hand in her own.

“Now,” she said, “I have something I need to share with you.”

She told the story of the land deal, her trip, what she had seen and learned. She took her time, spinning it out. Mickey listened, and the silence hung for a time in the afternoon air after Cooper finished.

Finally, Cooper said, “Well?”

“Who else besides Pickett?”

“I don’t know. I think Wheeler does.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Mickey said with a thin smile and a touch of awe in her voice. “That’s about the juiciest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Any advice?”

Mickey grimaced. “Whatever you do, don’t let the bastards get away with it.”

As the ambulance took them back to the house, Mickey lapsed into a sleep from which she could not be roused. Paramedics took her upstairs, and Estelle put her to bed.

Fate spent a few minutes in the room, then sat with Cooper and Allison. “We’re getting near the end,” he said. “Things are shutting down. How long, I don’t know. She’s in something resembling a coma, and I imagine she’ll remain there. I can stay if you like.”

“No,” Cooper said. “We’ll keep watch. Can you have those machines taken out of there?”

“Of course.”

They stayed through the afternoon. Once, Mickey’s shallow breathing became ragged, and she muttered something they couldn’t
understand. But then she subsided again into profound sleep.

Early evening. They took turns at dinner, Allison first. Then Cooper went downstairs and sat alone in the dining room. Mrs. Dinkins came with a plate of food, set it in front of her, hesitated, then pulled out a chair and sat next to her. “Mrs. Dinkins just wants you to know a lot of people have you in our hearts right now.”

Tears sprang to her eyes. She tried to speak but couldn’t.

Mrs. Dinkins patted her shoulder. “I know.”

Wheeler came after seven. He had bags under his eyes, the skin of his face sagged, and he was wobbly. He toted a battered briefcase. He opened it and took out the land-swap document, smudged and dog-eared from much handling. He flipped it open to an inner page and handed it to her. “See here.” He pointed. “The corporation listed as the owner of the coastal property that’s being traded.”

“Lucretia,” she read.

“Do you know who Lucretia is?”

She shook her head.

“Lucretia Harbin. Jake Harbin’s grandmother.”

Jake. Of course, it had to be Jake
.

“Lucretia was the source of Jake’s money, at least at the beginning.

He took what she left him and built it into what he has now, which is a great deal.”

“I know.”

“Much of what makes up Jake’s empire is a hall of mirrors—corporate entities, mingled trusts, so forth. Most of them, if you looked at the names, you’d never know they were connected to him. But one has the original name: the Lucretia Corporation. It hasn’t been involved in any kind of business dealings for years. Until now.” He reached into the briefcase for another document. “You can look through this later. It’s an
old report from the Secretary of State’s Office on the assets of the Lucretia Corporation. There’s just one—a certain piece of property on the coast, just sitting there all these years since the old lady passed away.”

“Prime land?”

“A gold mine, and that’s what Jake, in his generosity, is proposing to give to the state for development into a park.”

She went back to the land-swap document. “In return for …”

“What at first glance seems like a worthless piece of upstate rock. Except it’s not.”

She sat there with the document in her hands, Mickey’s voice echoing in her head: “Always, always, follow the money.”

She focused on the paper again. Something didn’t make sense, and then she saw it. The coastal land, property of the Lucretia Corporation, was being deeded to the state, but the mountain land was going to a different entity. She pointed to the name.

“PWP Incorporated,” Wheeler said, nodding. “Prince William Partners. Incorporated in Prince William County, Virginia.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You’re not supposed to. That’s the point. And that’s why I went to Virginia. The principal is a man named Sol Vincente. A land developer. Small potatoes—strip shopping centers, a couple of mid-priced residential subdivisions. Nothing in his résumé to indicate he has the moxie or money to turn that pile of rock into a resort development.”

“So, where is this going?”

“The Secretary of State’s Office in Virginia has just received a document reincorporating PWP. Sol Vincente becomes a minority stockholder, nothing more than a frontman. The majority of stock is now held by”—he paused for effect—“the Lucretia Corporation.”

Her mind whirled, trying to keep it straight.

“A hall of mirrors,” he went on. “So we know who stands to gain. But there’s a good deal more, and for that, I have a source.”

“Who?”

“I can’t say. I promised. But he filled in the blanks, stuff it would have taken me a long time to find on my own. Here’s what happens. After you sign off on the deal and it gets through the legislature, PWP will take on three minor, silent partners: Woodrow Bannister, Figgy Watson, and Colonel—now former colonel—Floyd Doster. Anybody with even a tiny stake stands to make a great deal of money.”

It came together in a rush. Between Figgy and Woodrow, they could guarantee passage of just about any piece of legislation. They’d stick the deal somewhere inside a budget bill that nobody would bother to read in detail. So neat. “You and Pickett, you owe me,” Woodrow had said. Now, she knew just how much he meant. And Doster? Money would shut him up. But the biggest winner of all was Jake Harbin. Jake and Pickett, joined at the hip in so many things. Pickett flying around the country in Jake’s plane, financing his campaign with money Jake was raising. Jake calling in the IOU.

“Your source, whoever he is …”

“Somebody I’ve known for a long time. I believe him. It all fits. He’s given me an affidavit, signed and notarized. It’s in a safe place, not to be used unless it’s absolutely necessary.” He pulled a manila envelope from the briefcase. “I’ve written everything down. This is the story.”

She opened the envelope, took out the pages, glanced over them, then shook her head. “Nobody could have done this but you.”

“Probably not.”

“Something like this could win you a Pulitzer Prize.”

“But I’m not at the paper, and I’m not gonna be. So the question is what to do with it.”

“People could go to jail,” she said.

“I’m not a lawyer, but I suspect no laws have been broken. Not yet. And you’re going to stop that from happening. No harm, no foul. But if for some reason word does get out, the people who cooked this up will be in a world of hurt. Investigations, grand juries. And then maybe people
would
go to jail.”