The First Lady's Second Man, page 1
part #3 of Linda Darby Mystery Series
The First Lady’s Second Man
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Copyright © 2016 David M. Bishop.
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Cover Art: Paradox Book Covers and Formatting
Stories by David Bishop
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David Bishop’s mysteries currently available – By Series:
Matt Kile Mystery Series (in order of release)
Who Murdered Garson Talmadge, a Matt Kile Mystery
The Original Alibi, a Matt Kile Mystery
Money & Murder, a Matt Kile Mystery Short Story
Find My Little Sister, a Matt Kile Mystery
The Maltese Pigeon, a Matt Kile Mystery
Judge Snider’s Folly, a Matt Kile Mystery
Maddie Richards Mystery Series (in order of release)
The Beholder, a Maddie Richards Mystery
Death of a Bankster, a Maddie Richards Mystery
Linda Darby Mystery Series (in order of release)
The Woman, a Linda Darby Story
Hometown Secrets, a Linda Darby Story
The First Lady’s Second Man, a Linda Darby Story
The Ryan Testler Character Appears in: (in order of release)
The Woman, a Linda Darby Story
Death of a Bankster, a Maddie Richards Mystery
Hometown Secrets, a Linda Darby Story
The First Lady’s Second Man, a Linda Darby Story
Jack McCall Mystery Series (in order of release)
The Third Coincidence, a Jack McCall Mystery
The Blackmail Club, a Jack McCall Mystery
Short Stories
Money & Murder, a Matt Kile Mystery Short Story
Love & Other Four-letter Words: A Maybe Murder, a collection of seven short stories
Coming Next (Working Title)
The Year We Had Murder
Book 7 in the Matt Kile Mystery Series
www.davidbishopbooks.com
david@davidbishopbooks.com
Dedication
This novel is dedicated to my family and all those who have read my novels. I appreciate your interest in my writings and the faith you display by purchasing my stories. I trust you will enjoy this one. I would be pleased to hear from you after you read it. david@davidbishopbooks.com
In writing this and other stories, my aim is to create characters with whom readers can relate, like or hate as they reach deep within the story to learn if those characters get what they deserve, are captured or saved, seduced or simply survive. The connecting magic of the author-character-reader triad rests in the fact that readers, like the characters living within the pages of fiction, have themselves endured trials and tribulations in their own lives.
I would like to acknowledge all who have found their way into my life, challenging me and enriching me by their presence, goodness, and affection. And last, but certainly not least, this book, as with my others, is dedicated to those I love.
Special thanks to the wonderful people who read early drafts and made suggestions which unfailingly enhance my stories.
Thank you.
1
Linda Darby sat in the sand beside a crop of sea grass. Her squirming widened the cavity in the sand made by her simple act of sitting. She felt uneasy, restless, and didn’t understand why. Her life seemed somewhat settled, but not fully. That wouldn’t happen until she resolved her long-distance relationship with Dixon Wardley.
As for Ryan Testler, he was history. She could never accept a long-term loving relationship with a man in his line of work. Although, without his talent at what he did, Linda would have been murdered two years ago.
She eased down to lie on her back, the sun-warmed grit probed her bare shoulders, and took away the cool the wind had brought to her legs. Overhead, the grayed clouds moved with a sloth-like slowness. A high reddish-orange hue smeared around the gorged clouds, waiting for that sudden moment when they would throw down their rain. The sun seemed to dissolve into the sea, and the coming twilight cloaked her like a caressing blanket. Linda was unable to see the wind-pulled sand, but it was there. She could taste it. The waves were another matter. Ambient light sparked the caps as they tore free for a short ride on the wind.
When the mist chilled her seaward cheek, she rose and walked back to her condo, climbed the eight steps, and settled into a chair outside her beach facing bedroom. From her somewhat elevated deck she could see the finer sand silently scrambling over its heavier brethren.
After another hour slid by, the rain seemed imminent, and she went in to shower away the lingerie-thin coat her body carried back from the beach.
#
The morning woke her as it always did. She kept the horizontal blinds beside her bed parted, the window open just a smidge. The morning sun crept in, teasing her and caressing her eyelids. The coolness drawn into her nostrils.
An exhilarating beach run usually began Linda’s day, but her uneasiness immediately returned. It wasn’t the uncertainty of Dix. She had been pondering that man for some time. No, she just felt odd. Off. A formless fear piggybacked on her physical sluggishness. Normally, running helped shake off any doldrums or the aftereffects of the drinks she enjoyed some nights while ogling the local hunks at Millie’s Sea Grog. Last night she stayed home, her feelings more gloom than malaise.
Commonly, after running, Linda focused her refreshed energy on her day-trading stock portfolio. She went to her computer and tried to steel herself against distractions, but couldn’t stay with it. The surface of the ocean remained unfriendly. The pockets of calmer water were dotted with the black nub noses of seals peeking out before their next dive in pursuit of food or frolic.
Last night, at eight her time, ten his time, she’d called Dix. He was out and didn’t call back. As a result, Linda tossed and turned more than slept. Decision time was at hand, but she didn’t yet know what that decision would be. When speaking with Dix, she wanted to run to him. When alone, she was flooded with reasons why the branches of their lives might not graft well.
Why does life have to be so damn complicated? I’ll be thirty-nine this year and all the stuff I thought I’d figured out at twenty is now a jumbled mess. Is everybody’s life so emotionally scattered, or just mine?
Dix taught school and coached football in their hometown of Caruthers, Kansas, a schedule that didn’t leave him much time to visit Linda in Sea Crest, Oregon. She could, maybe should, go to him more often. She hadn’t returned to Kansas in over six months, a span of time during which Dix had not traveled to see her, either.
It’s harder for him to come during the school year. Day trading provides me the freedom he doesn’t have, so what’s my excuse?
Maybe, down deep, where erratic thoughts incubate into clear thinking, their affair was diluting into a warm memory. Dix wanted them to live in Caruthers. Linda stubbornly clung to her love of her beach condo and the idyllic town of Sea Crest, Oregon. She knew enough people, was independent, and had privacy.
Long distance relationships can be such a bitch. Still, Dix was a very good man and a very good lover.
Why do I feel I must have a main man in my life? Do most women feel this way? Is it merely the meshing of social convention with the lust for a lover?
#
By mid-afternoon, the throb of unused energy pulsed through Linda like the earthy sounds of a distant saxophone. By four, unable to sit still, she walked the road, rather than the beach, into town to get a coffee and a blueberry scone. After walking the two miles, she changed her mind and shopped awhile. Then she ambled into the fresh fish house next to the harbor to see what the fishing boats brought in. Today’s catch was white sea bass, as an entree or as fish and chips, which she chose, with a side of coleslaw. By six-thirty, shopped-out, fed and watered, but still unsettled, she went to a movie. Having just eaten allowed her to avoid the lure of popcorn with the petroleum-based butter flavoring.
On the walk home, Linda kept her hands in her pockets. Starting up the front sidewalk, she brought out her house key. The cool ocean air was damp on the back of her bare hand. On the porch table, under the small light that drew visitors’ eyes to the doorbell, was a white box, long and thin, the kind used for flowers.
Dix? Announcing he’s on his way? Or, maybe to soften the message that again this month he’s not coming.
She carried the box into the kitchen and opened it next to the sink. Red roses. Two dozen. There was no card.
Who sends two dozen red roses without a card?
She began cutting the stems, working the roses into her favorite vase, along with the delicate white baby’s breath packaged with the roses. After removing several roses, she noticed an envelope under the remaining flowers. Not the small white kind that contains a greeting card, but a manila envelope commonly used for not folded documents. It curled around the bottom of the box under the green tissue paper, extending partway up the sides. Without the weight of the full complement of roses, the envelope’s stiffness caused it to bow upward into view.
She turned off the water and put the scissors on the counter. She returned the rose she was holding to its source, extending its blossom beyond the end of the box. She picked up the envelope and held it. Her eyes focused on its unaddressed front. The envelope didn’t have the feel of empty. She put it on the table, sat down and crossed her arms. Her knees drew together, pressed tightly.
Relax, it’s an envelope. It came with red roses.
The glue-line wasn’t sealed. The flap at the top was simply folded inside the envelope. She pulled the flap free and peered inside. One sheet of white paper, thicker than that used for writing, stiff, glossy, more like the kind used for photographs. Her heart rate increased. Her tongue staggered across her dry lips. Linda’s hands became fists. Her knuckles whitened.
What the hell’s my problem? Stop being such a twit.
The photo paper came out blank side up. She turned it over.
Oh my God.
A photograph of Stephanie, the love of her life, her ten-year-old daughter. Her perfectly healthy, wonderful Steffi.
Someone knows my secret.
Her heart seemed to separate away from the rest of her like a yolk parting from the white of an egg. The natural ease of breathing ceased. She released the picture and, unknowingly, curled her lips inside her mouth holding them tightly with her teeth. She drew in a deep breath, her nostrils flaring with the effort. She held it as long as she could. Her eyes went dry and felt larger. She put a palm flat on each side of the photograph. With her thumbs slightly touching the edges of the picture, she leaned over the image of her daughter. Her baby girl was on the playground at the private, boarding Hobart School just outside Portland, Oregon. Stephanie wore the plaid skirt and white blouse uniform the school required all the girls to wear. Her usually unblemished face was violated by a red rubber stamp, circular with a slash-line through it at a ten-to-four angle, like the ones used to designate no entry or no parking. The ugly ink smeared down onto her daughter’s white blouse.
Who would stamp a red blotch on Steffi’s face?
Linda had left Steffi’s father before she began to show. To this day, the man didn’t know he had a daughter. She never told her special male friend, Ryan Testler, about Steffi. She did tell Clark. He was her second husband. He had a right to know before they married. Clark had died over a year ago.
Who the hell knows? Has someone taken Steffi? What do they want?
2
It was late to call the Hobart School. Late to be connected to Steffi. Linda pushed those reasoned restraints from her mind and called Hobart, confessing to feeling silly before explaining she had a premonition. The school put her on hold and, after a seemingly endless few minutes, returned to confirm Steffi was peacefully asleep in her room. “All is well at Hobart,” she was told. That was good, as far as it went, but did little to calm her fear that something horrible might soon befall Steffi.
What’s going on? Roses without a card. That damned red stamp sullying Steffi’s face.
Linda tried to calm herself, but, failing, she tossed a few things into a bag. Her unsteady hand proved incapable of grasping the slider on the bag’s zipper. She sat on the bed. Her fingers gripped her chin, squeezing it as if checking for ripeness. Without knowing when they had started, she recognized the warmth of quiet tears, and the convulsions of trying to hold them back. Her shoulders sagged. Her hands tightened. Her fingers intertwined. She closed her eyes and slowed her breathing.
Those roses were delivered while I was in town. I should have called the florist. No. The sender would have hand carried the box to my porch. He wouldn’t have trusted the florist to handle the picture of Steffi.
When a semblance of calm returned, she zipped her bag closed. After calling the Red Lion Inn and reserving a room, she went out to her car.
From her research years before, Linda had concluded the public schools where she lived were like most public schools throughout America—failing their charge to educate the young. The politicians tell us America has the best schools in the world. Based on the evidence, this was far from the truth, particularly with respect to grades kindergarten through high school. Any lie to get another vote.
Maybe Dix was right. Maybe she should move back to Caruthers. Dix loved children. She imagined he would accept Steffi and invite her into their conjoined lives. Of course, he would be shocked to learn Linda had a daughter. It was one of the issues they would need to work through. That is, if Dix was in her future, which was something she had in no way decided. Maybe the three of them could live like a normal family—whatever a normal family is in today’s world. Linda had gone to school in Caruthers. She understood the school she went to over twenty years ago was not the school that existed today. Nothing much at all was the same as it was twenty years ago, and that, she felt, was both good and bad. Dix claimed the schools in Caruthers were still good. She’d think about it. Right now she needed to get to Steffi. See her daughter. Hug her. Know she was all right.
I’ll be at the Hobart in about two hours.
#
Linda glanced at her watch when she passed through the glare of a street light, the bright cone piercing the front windshield to illuminate her face, then brighten the steering wheel, and finally flash across her thighs. It would be after eleven by the time she arrived near the school. Hobart didn’t allow late night visitors, not unless it was an emergency. They would not consider her ominous feelings an emergency, even if Linda did.
Hobart was small, with about one-hundred girls. The owner was like a second mother to each one of them. She was a homely woman. Linda’s deceased husband, Clark, once claimed that should Pauline Hobart take off her clothes in front of the window, the man across the street would close his drapes. Linda always scolded Clark for it, but smiled at the memory of him saying it with his eyebrows raised like Groucho Marx.
Maybe the time had come to bring Steffi home to live with her. She’d been thinking about it. She always thought about it. Always. Steffi loved the long summer trips they took together each year, and the shorter ones over each Christmas. Steffi loved the Hobart School. Hobart was K-6. In any event, Steffi was in the sixth grade so this would be her daughter’s last year there. Maybe at the end of this year, maybe then she would bring Steffi home. She had to look closely into the quality of schools in Sea Crest and, maybe in Caruthers, Kansas. But she had no more time to juggle her thoughts pro and con with respect to Dix’s proposal that continued to age without her answer.
She’d be in Portland a little before midnight. Maybe get a little sleep, probably not. The only thing that mattered was being on the porch of Hobart in the morning when they unlocked the door.
#
Waiting to checkin at the Red Lion, Linda glanced at a stack of national newspapers on the front counter that used color more frequently than any other newspaper she had ever encountered. The headlines announced that U. S. President Ronald Walker had formally announced his decision to run for reelection. The photo with the article on the front page showed him standing next to his wife, Carolyn, a woman considerably younger than the president, looking up at him. President Walker was at least six inches taller than the first lady. Carolyn wore a blue dress that matched the president’s tie. Presidential, is the word they use for such a grand image.
