The Governor's Lady (8 page)

“Inconsequential. Irrelevant. Powerless.”

Cooper stared out the window, feeling Kincaid’s eyes on her, feeling the cold, suffocating grayness outside. She turned back. “I intend to
be
the governor. I wouldn’t have run otherwise.”

“Well, Felicia doesn’t believe that. She thinks you’ll dance at the end of Pickett’s strings, and she thinks having good old Roger here to babysit is proof.”

“What’s your role in all this, Mr. Kincaid? This campaign of Felicia’s.”

“I’m a reporter. I’ll do my job,” he said flatly. “Felicia Withers doesn’t tell me what to do or how to do it because I don’t let her.”

“Do
you
think I’m Pickett’s puppet?”

“I’m waiting to see.” He stood. “But let’s leave it at that. Thanks for your time.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

It took him a moment. “I’ve been hanging around this place for forty-five years, and I’ve seen every sorry-ass excuse for so-called public servants you can imagine. I’m hoping you’ll be different. You have a chance to be. And God knows, this place needs it.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay.” He turned to go, but she stopped him. “Any advice?”

He gave her a piercing look. “First of all, don’t for a moment entertain the idea you’re bulletproof. That happens to people who run for office. It’s an ego thing. Issues, ideas, all that is secondary. You’re saying to voters, ‘Choose me.’ If they don’t, it’s rejection on the most personal level. If they do, the tendency is to think you’re more wonderful than you are, maybe even that you’re bulletproof.”

“I don’t think that, I can assure you.”

“And then, for all your plans of being your own boss, there’s Pickett. His campaign is getting attention, and that makes the big boys, the national press, start digging. And from there, it’s a straight line to here. If you’re a phony running a farce, they’ll have you for lunch.”

“And Pickett, too,” she added.

“If he really means for you to
be
the governor, he’s taking the risk you’ll do something that embarrasses him. If he tries to be a puppet master, that proves you’re a phony and he’s pulled a fast one.” He cocked his head, waiting.

“I’m not a phony, Mr. Kincaid,” she said quietly. “And I’ll prove it.”

He shrugged. And then he was gone.

Roger bustled in, all atwitter. “What did he want?”

Cooper sat lost in thought, ignoring him.

“Kincaid. What—”

“It was an off-the-record conversation. On both sides.”

“And …”

“Off the record means it’s not to be repeated.”

“But …”

“To anybody.”

He came into the room and stood behind a chair, gripping the leather back so tightly his knuckles turned white.

“You don’t want to be here, do you, Roger?”

“That’s beside the point.”

“You’d rather be with Pickett.”

He started to say something, stopped himself. “We’re all working for the same goal, Cooper. We’re all working for Pickett.”

“We are?”

“Sure. It does Pickett no good if we get blindsided by something Kincaid’s got up his sleeve.”

She rose, smoothing her skirt. “Mr. Kincaid doesn’t have anything up his sleeve, Roger. We had a private, personal conversation.”

She watched Roger make the great effort to gather himself, to swallow for a moment all that made him frustrated and pissed off—the years of accumulated slights and menial jobs and ignominy. That had been his reward for absolute loyalty to Pickett Lanier. And now this. Babysitting. She felt sorry for him.

“It’s okay, Roger, believe me,” she said, summoning patience, keeping
her voice gentle. “I appreciate your concern. You’re doing your job. But here’s this: I am not working for Pickett, and you are working for me. Now, send Rick in here.”

She held up the sheaf of press releases. “Rick, where did this stuff come from?”

“Left over from the last crowd.”

“Have a seat.”

Rick sat at the conference table in front of her desk.

“Look,” she said. “From now on, whatever goes out of here to the media, I want to know about it. This is
our
press office, yours and mine.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Let’s not let it happen again.”

He hesitated. “There’s one other thing. Your mother.”

“What about her?”

“I’m getting a lot of questions—her condition—and the hospital isn’t authorized to release anything.”

“Okay, what do we do?”

“Well,” he stammered, “what do you …?”

She leaned toward him and gave him a smile. “Rick, we’re both new at this, but you know more about it than I do. So I depend on you to give me your best advice. I may not always follow it, but I damn sure need it. So?”

“Well, Roger said—”

“Roger is my chief of staff, not my press secretary. I want to know what
you
think.”

Rick sat up straighter. “It’s been almost twenty-four hours, and the press people have had nothing but the barest facts. One reporter tried to sneak in, but the hospital has things buttoned up tight.”

“So?”

“We need to give ’em something solid.”

“What are the options?”

“We could let the hospital take care of it, put out a release, maybe even send an administrator and your mother’s doctor out to answer questions. Or we could put out a statement from our office. Or you could talk to ’em yourself.”

“Who
is
her doctor?”

“A cardiologist named Cutter.”

“Nolan Cutter?”

“Yes.”

“An old friend.”

“He’ll be helpful?”

“I’m sure of it.” She sat back in her chair. “So what’s your advice?”

He hunched over the table, fingers drumming on the wood, then looked up. “A statement from us, just some basics—her present condition, resting comfortably, hospital doing a great job, yada, yada. Then later today, the administrator and the doc talk to the press folks, keep it to your mother’s medical condition, nothing personal.”

“Personal?”

“I’ve had some questions about why Mickey wasn’t at the inauguration. Asking if you and she are … estranged.”

“I see. Well, I could say that’s none of their damn business, but I guess in my present state of affairs, just about everything is their damn business. Or at least they think it is.” She rose and reached for her coat. “My mother didn’t attend the inauguration because she’s sick. But just stick to the statement.”

“You want to see a draft?”

“You know what to say. Line up the hospital people. Sooner or later, probably sooner, I’ll need to have a press conference myself. This, things in general. But not just yet. Let’s see how things shape up.”

“Gotcha.”

She picked up the sheaf of press releases and gave him a smile. “And no more of these.”

When he was gone, she stood at the window, looking out at the Capitol grounds, the sky even darker now, a somber, lowering gray, the crew at the bottom of the marble steps finishing their dismantling of the inaugural stand, traffic moving up and down the boulevard. Everything ordinary now, things moving on, business as usual. The vast machinery of state government grinding along as if nothing unusual had happened yesterday, and wouldn’t today or tomorrow. And here she was, in this cavernous room with its massive desk and its flags and portraits.
This must be
, she thought,
the way it was for every person who won this office, no matter how massive of ego, no matter how brimming with confidence. After all the hoopla, sobering reality
.

She felt the aloneness in spades. But something else, too. Unlike the others, she hadn’t spent a lifetime clawing her way up the ladder, piling up political debts, dragging baggage that included worn-out ideas and ways of looking at things. All right, she had an understanding with Pickett, but that damn sure didn’t mean she was a puppet. And it damn sure didn’t leave room for being babysat.

FIVE

She was finishing lunch when the call came from the hospital: Mickey had taken a turn for the worse. She said she was dying.

Cooper was halfway there when Pickett called. “I hear you had a visitor.”

“Word travels fast,” she said. “Where are you?”

“Keene. Cooper—”

“What’s in Keene?”

“A college.”

“Is Carter with you?”

“Yes. No, he’s here, but not with me at the moment.”

“Tell him to call me.”

“All right, all right,” he said, exasperated. “Why in the hell were you talking to Wheeler Kincaid? Roger said you wouldn’t let him sit in, wouldn’t tell him what it was about.” He rattled off the words, bit off the ends of his sentences—all business, all Pickett with his butt
puckered at the prospect of a nasty surprise.

“It was an off-the-record conversation,” she said.

“Cooper, for God’s sake!”

She laid the cell phone on the car seat and gave him a good thirty seconds of silence.

“Cooper, are you there?” his voice came tinnily.

She picked up the phone. “Is Roger checking in with you by the hour? Is it part of his babysitting duties?”

“Nobody’s babysitting,” Pickett snapped.

“Well, Pickett, my sources tell me Roger describes it as babysitting.”

“I’ll speak to Roger about that.”

“No, you won’t,” she said. “I’ll handle Roger. You spend your time winning Keene.”

“Cooper …” He was almost pleading now.

“All right, Pickett, here’s what happened. Wheeler Kincaid asked to speak to me alone. I said okay.”

“The man’s dangerous. If he’s up to something—”

“Hush and let me finish. What he came to tell me was that Felicia Withers is on the warpath, and I’m the wagon train.”

“Shit!”

“She told the people at the
Dispatch
she intends to expose me as a farce, and you as a snake-oil salesman.”

“Shit, shit,
shit!
”

“Come on, Pickett, you aren’t surprised, are you? It’s Felicia.”

“I just thought she might give us a little time.”

“Felicia doesn’t think there’s room in town for both of us.”

“I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’ll call you later.” He rang off abruptly.

She tried to imagine him climbing out of his car, forcing that great smile, thrusting out his hand.
Hi, I’m Pickett Lanier. Running for president
. Was it snowing in Keene or just a miserable, bone-jarring January cold? She wished for a brief moment she could be there with him, tell
him,
Hey, it’s okay, Pickett. Go win New Hampshire. I can handle this back here, me and Roger. You do that, I do this
.

But she wasn’t there with him. Pickett would have to fend for himself.

When Cooper got to the hospital, Mickey was sitting up in bed, bright-eyed, color good, a bit cocksure. Cooper stared, taken aback.

Before she could speak, Nolan Cutter was there, tousled and white-jacketed, stethoscope dangling, flipping intently through pages on a clipboard. “Hi,” he said with a smile.

“Hi yourself.”

Mickey glared at Cutter, eyes narrowing. “Who the hell are you?”

“Nolan Cutter, Miz Spainhour. Old friend of the family.”

“Where’d you come from?”

“Down the hall.”

“Are you a doctor?”

“Last time I checked.”

“Are you
my
doctor?”

“Yes. I was here yesterday when they brought you in. I checked you over and got you settled. Been back a couple of times since. Remember?”