She was as gracious as Jack had found her in Georgia, and even though the mourning period was not yet over, she looked more rested and relaxed than on their first visit. She asked about Harry, and Jack kept up his end of the pleasantries by asking about her daughter, who at that moment entered the room, as if on cue, still quite striking even in blue jeans, a sweatshirt, and no makeup.

  “You remember Elizabeth?” said Mrs. Grayson.

  “We met briefly,” said Jack.

  Elizabeth wiped her palms in her sweatshirt and then shook Jack’s hand. “Excuse the way I look,” she said. “We’re in a packing mode.”

  “Totally understand,” said Jack. “Moving is never pleasant, and I’m very sorry for the circumstances of yours.”

  “Yeah, it pretty much sucks.”

  “Elizabeth,” her mother said.

  “Mother, please. That word no longer has the sexual connotation that your generation thinks it does. Right, Jack?”

  Jack fumbled for a response. “I think I’m kind of the transition generation on that one.”

  “Cute,” Elizabeth said, smiling. “How long are you in town?”

  “As long as it takes to get my father through the confirmation process.”

  “I’ll be here helping Mother another week or so. We should have lunch. I can fill you in on all the secrets.”

  “Secrets?”

  “The kitchen and the dining room are on separate floors. The ghost dresses in buckskin, but he’s been spotted only by the Mondale children. That kind of thing.”

  “I’m sure Jack is quite busy,” said Mrs. Grayson.

  “He looks old enough to decide for himself.”

  “Indeed. Which is precisely—” Mrs. Grayson stopped herself this time, as if to steer away from a sore subject.

  “Mother thinks I’m asking you on a date, which scares her. My ex-fiancé was in his forties. She didn’t approve.”

  “Forties?” said Jack. “Heavens to Murgatroyd.”

  “So, lunch?” said Elizabeth.

  Jack didn’t even want to test Theo’s theory that this Georgia beauty had thus far in life dated only Generation Y porn addicts and desperately needed her own personal Clark Gable. And then, of course, there was Andie.

  “I think—”

  “If you say no, I’m going to short sheet the beds before your father moves in.”

  “Well, if you put it that way.”

  “Good. I’ll call you,” she said.

  She smiled and left Jack and Mrs. Grayson in private. The former Second Lady settled into the armchair, and Jack took the chair opposite her.

  “That Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Grayson with a shake of her head, “she certainly has her father’s spirit.”

  “That’s a good thing, I’m sure,” said Jack.

  The widow didn’t answer.

  “How can I help you, Jack?”

  He wasn’t sure where to begin. “It’s been a strange week.”

  “I’ve been following it all in the news,” she said.

  The news. If that was her only source, she knew nothing about Sunday’s e-mail from the man who claimed to be able to make Harry Swyteck president. That wasn’t Jack’s focus anyway. “When you say you’ve been ‘following it all,’ does that include the death of Chloe Sparks?”

  “Who?” she said.

  “You’ve never heard of her?”

  She shrugged. “Should I know her?”

  “Last year she was a White House intern assigned to the vice president. She was fired for—”

  “Ah, yes. The druggy.”

  “She was murdered Saturday night.”

  Mrs. Grayson paused to absorb the news. “I hadn’t heard about that.”

  “From what I’ve gathered on the Internet, it was much bigger news in her hometown of Chicago than it was here. What little media attention it got in Washington was couched in terms of Chloe being the younger stepsister of White House reporter Paulette Sparks.”

  “How awful for Paulette. I’ve always thought she was such a class act. And her sister—well, what a terrible downward spiral for a young person with so much promise.”

  “She was a reporter for the Inquiring Star when she was shot.”

  Her arms folded in a defensive posture. No one among Washington’s elite escaped the Inquiring Star. “Now that you mention it, I think I had heard that somewhere.”

  “Chloe was having discussions with an anonymous source who claimed to have information that could bring down President Keyes.”

  “Now that sounds like something I would have heard on the news.”

  “It’s not public information. I heard it from Paulette Sparks. She also told me that Chloe was trying to communicate with the vice president—trying so hard that the FBI contacted Paulette about possible stalking issues. Do you know anything about that?”

  “No.”

  Jack paused, expecting her to say more. But she was finished.

  “You don’t seem to believe me,” she said.

  “I do. But honestly, I came here expecting you to say that Chloe’s anonymous source and her attempts to contact the vice president had everything to do with the questions you have about your husband’s death.”

  “Well, I didn’t know about those things, so they obviously could not have raised any questions in my mind, could they?”

  She seemed to be closing that door pretty tightly. “Obviously not.”

  “But I’ll make a deal with you, Harry Swyteck’s son Jack. I will tell you what makes me question Phil’s death, if you’ll tell me what the FBI doesn’t seem to want anyone to know: What caused you and the FBI to arrange that meeting with a homeless man outside the museum on Sunday morning?”

  Jack paused. Telling her about the anonymous e-mail was no small step, even if Paulette Sparks—a member of the media—did already know about it.

  She said, “Naturally all of this remains between us. You have my word on it.”

  Jack was still considering it. She was a curious woman, the widow Grayson. But for reasons he could not fully explain—perhaps it was the way she had reached out to him at the funeral—he trusted her.

  “You’ve got yourself a deal,” said Jack, and then he fell silent.

  “I’m listening,” she said.

  “Former Second Ladies first. Please.”

  She smiled thinly, as if she liked his style. And then she told him.

  Chapter 16

  “With or without training wheels, dude?” said Theo.

  Theo Knight was the last person Jack had expected to run into at the hotel bar at the end of the day. A flight of tequila shots was set up before him. “Training wheels” were lemon and salt.

  “I’m not doing tequila tonight,” said Jack. “And what the hell are you doing in D.C.?”

  “Interview.”

  “For what?”

  “Secretary of Education. I’m big on educational programs. Head Start. Wipe No Child’s Behind. All the big ones.”

  “It’s Leave No Child Behind, Einstein. Seriously, what are you doing here?”

  “Your father’s lawyers want to talk to me.”

  Shit, I am a potted plant. “Nobody told me about that.”

  “Said they’re afraid something might come up about the settlement money you got from the state of Florida to pay me back for the four years I spent on death row.”

  Jack processed it: it took an act of the state legislature to get compensation for wrongful conviction. Harry’s signature had approved the settlement that made it possible for Theo to buy Sparky’s Tavern.

  “So,” said Theo, “with or without?”

  “I’m meeting with about a dozen lawyers and the White House chief of staff first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Definitely without,” said Theo. He slid the brimming shot glass in front of Jack.

  “Did you not hear me?” said Jack. “No tequila.”

  “Dude, what did we do when your ex-wife turned into a fruitcake?”

  “Tequila.”

  “When your girlfriend Mia dyed her hair, changed her name, and left town?”

  “Tequila.”

  “When Réné chose relief work in Africa over a love life in Miami?”

  “Tequila.”

  “Exactly. We’re talking tradition here. You can’t break tradition.”

  “You’re talking as if Andie dumped me.”

  “Well, she’s going to—if you don’t get rid of this really nasty case of Washington-itis.”

  “You talked to her?”

  “Yeah. She likes Miami fuckup Jack. Not Capitol suck-up Jack.”

  “You make me sound pathetic.”

  “You are pathetic.”

  Jack raised his glass. “I’ll drink to that.”

  They belted back their shots together.

  “Smooooth,” said Theo.

  Jack winced, as if he were drinking gasoline. “I hope we’re not starting with the good stuff,” said Jack, and he belted back another shot. He slammed the empty glass on the bar and added, “Vice President Grayson had ED.”

  It was a perfectly timed non sequitur that had Theo coughing on his tequila. “You mean…the guy…couldn’t—”

  “Is there another kind of ED?”

  “I don’t know. What do politicians get—electile dysfunction?”

  “Stop being an idiot. He had ED.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “His widow told me.”

  “When?”

  “Right after his daughter asked me out to lunch.”

  “You shittin’ me?”

  “No.”

  “Dude, you gotta let me come on that date. A mother-daughter thing is like my biggest fantasy.”

  “First off, it’s not a date. She wants to tell me what it’s like when your father is vice president.”

  “Sounds better than a date,” said Theo, as he slipped into an affected Elizabeth Grayson voice. “Oh, Jack, I’ve been so lonely. Greta Garbo lonely. Farmer’s daughter lonely. Lonelygirl 15 on the Internet lonely. Kiss me, you fool. Kiss me right now!”

  The pucker was enough to make the businessman at the other end of the bar get up and leave.

  Jack said, “And even if it was a date, Marilyn Grayson is fifty-one years old.”

  “Damn. Old enough to be your…sister.”

  “Shut up and listen. There was a perfectly legitimate reason for her to tell me about her husband’s condition.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “In addition to ED, Phil Grayson had atherosclerosis.”

  “I dare you to say that after one more shot.”

  “Focus. The thing is, you can’t take any of the ED medications if you have atherosclerosis. What’s the big warning you hear on all the TV commercials for ED medication?”

  “If you have an erection lasting more than four hours, call your girlfriend’s girlfriends.”

  “That’s not the warning I’m talking about. You can’t take the drug if you have atherosclerosis. It can cause a fatal drop in blood pressure and a heart attack.”

  “And this is important because…?”

  “The toxicology report from Vice President Grayson’s autopsy hasn’t been made public yet. But it will be released soon, which is why, I’m sure, Marilyn Grayson was so candid with me. The whole world will know this in a few weeks. It will disclose that the vice president had taken an unusually high dosage of ED medication a few hours before his death.”

  “But the man died on a hunting trip with your dad.”

  “So what does that tell you?”

  “Your dad’s gay?”

  “No, numb nuts.”

  “Then Grayson probably had a honey on Miami Beach. Big deal. Doesn’t everybody?”

  “That’s one interpretation,” said Jack. “Marilyn Grayson has another.”

  “Two honies in Miami Beach? Maybe a mother-daughter combo.” Theo belted back another shot. “Lucky bastard.”

  “Will you give that up already?” said Jack. “It comes down to two possibilities. One is that Grayson took a pill to have sex with a woman who was not his wife, knowing that the medicine could very well send him into cardiac arrest and kill him.”

  “He wouldn’t be the first guy with a weak heart to take that risk.”

  “True. But what if he wasn’t cheating on his wife?”

  “Then why would he take the little blue pill?”

  “What if someone gave it to him—without him knowing it?”

  “You mean dissolved it in his food or slipped it into a drink?”

  “Exactly.”

  The proverbial lightbulb glowed over Theo’s head. “Dude, that’s it.”

  “What’s it?”

  “I swear that must be what Trina’s been doing to me. I’ll be walking around on three legs all afternoon, wondering where the hell Mr. Happy came from, and then Trina shows up at the bar all rarin’ to—”

  “Stop. This isn’t about you.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m saying, what if someone knew that the vice president had atherosclerosis and pumped him full of pills for reasons other than having sex?”

  “What other reason?”

  “To kill him, genius. That’s why Marilyn Grayson has questions about her husband’s death.”

  “Whoa,” said Theo. “The Viagra Assassination. It’s like Desperate Housewives meets 24.”

  “Except it’s not a Kennedy-or Lincoln-like assassination. This assassin didn’t want people to suspect foul play.”

  “So the question is, who wanted Phil Grayson dead, and who wanted it done in a way that didn’t look like murder.”

  “I may know someone who can help me answer that—someone who hasn’t been telling me everything so far.”

  “Does she have a hot mother?”

  “No,” said Jack, turning very serious. “A dead sister.”

  Chapter 17

  Jack returned to his hotel room by 10:30 P.M. With the aid of Theo’s tequila, he was well on his way to dreamland—until the telephone phone rang at 10:47 P.M.

  “Go to bed, Theo,” he answered, groaning.

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Jack?”

  It was a woman’s voice.

  “Andie?” he said, even though it didn’t really sound like her.

  “No, this is Elizabeth Grayson.”

  He sat up quickly. Head rush—tequila!

  Sorry,” she said, “I woke you, didn’t I?”

  “It’s okay, I had to get up to answer the phone anyway.”

  She laughed, assuming that it was a joke, and only then did Jack appreciate that he’d had more than one shot too many. Theo, I’m going to kill you.

  Elizabeth said, “Mother told me what the two of you talked about and—well, I wouldn’t do this if it weren’t important. I’m in the hotel lobby right now. Can you come down? We need to talk.”

  Jack was suddenly feeling wide awake; this was the second time in two days that a woman had dropped the “we-need-to-talk” bomb.

  “Uh, sure. Give me five minutes.”

  He jumped out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater. A splash of cold water brought color back to his face, but he couldn’t do much about the bloodshot eyes. He made it downstairs with thirty seconds to spare. Elizabeth was waiting on the couch near the grand piano. She apologized again for dragging him out of bed, which meant that he probably looked even worse than he felt. A waitress came from the coffee shop, and they ordered a couple of decafs. When they were alone again, Elizabeth said, “I suppose you’re wondering what’s so urgent that I raced over here at this hour.”

  “Not at all,” said Jack.

  She looked at him curiously, and he smiled.

  “Okay,” said Jack, “maybe just a little.”

  She smiled back, then noticed his distraction.

  “Who are you looking for?” she said.

  Jack had been not-so-discreet in scanning the lobby. “Are we alone, or is there Secret Service lurking about somewhere?”

  “We’re alone. I’m the child of a former vice president now, so I don’t get Secret Service protection. Even children of former presidents only get it till age sixteen. You’ll learn all about that.”

  “Got it,” said Jack. “I’m sorry. You were saying?”

  Elizabeth drew a breath, then began. “My poor mother. She refuses to believe her husband could have cheated on her, and she simply can’t comprehend that he would have risked his life with ED medication to pull it off.”

  “Are you saying that’s what he did?”

  “I have two words for you: Chloe Sparks.”

  “She was at least thirty years younger than him,” he said, suddenly realizing that he was sounding more like forty with each passing day.

  “Thirty-one. That’s why the very idea of me dating older men strikes such a sour note with my mother, even if that isn’t entirely logical.”

  Jack recalled the awkward moment when Elizabeth had invited him to lunch.

  “Anyway,” said Elizabeth, “Chloe Sparks was a tramp. From day one of her internship, she was determined to bed someone in the White House. She aimed high, and my father was stupid enough to bite.”

  “Was this a onetime thing or ongoing?”

  “Ongoing.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m Phil Grayson’s daughter, for Pete’s sake. It was disgusting the way he looked at Chloe. I could see it all over their faces.”

  “That’s your proof? You could see it on their faces?”

  “Don’t minimize what I’m telling you. I don’t need DNA on a cocktail dress to know what was going on.”

  Their coffee arrived, and Jack allowed the waitress to retreat before continuing.

  “So what you’re telling me is…what?”

  Elizabeth stirred a pack of sweetener into her cup. “A couple of things,” she said. “One, the fact that ED medication was found in my father’s blood at the time of his death tells me one thing only: he was a cheater.”

  “You don’t share your mother’s suspicions that someone who knew about his health problems gave it to him surreptitiously to induce a heart attack?”