After Midnight Part 21

"Hi, Aunt Derrie! What's up?" Phoebe asked.

"Cortez was just here," she said bluntly. "Listen, didn't you say that he showed you FBI credentials?"

Phoebe brushed back her long hair and felt a faint twinge of jealousy that surprised her. Why had Cortez gone to see Derrie? "Yes, I did," she said.

"Tell me what the two of you did."

"He pushed me down in the long gra.s.s and ripped off my blouse..." Phoebe began wickedly.

"Phoebe! This is serious," she added. "And strictly business, if that's what's unsettled you. You know how I feel about Clayton."

"Yes, I do. I'm sorry. Isn't it silly to feel possessive about a man you've only seen two times in your life? And he's too old and too different, I know all that," she added before Derrie could.

Derrie, oddly, didn't agree with her. "I know he was looking for the waste dumping site. Think hard, dear, when you saw those drums, do you remember seeing a logo on them?"

Phoebe hesitated, trying to force her mind back. "Well, yes, I do," she said. "It was faint, though. Very faint..."

"That's all I wanted to know. Thank you." There was a pause. "Why are you sitting at home?"

"I'm not, really. I'm going out with some of the gang. We have to pick up Dale. He lives next door to the Seymours."

"I don't suppose you'd stop by there and tell Nikki to call me?"

"Why can't you telephone her?"

"Mainly because they've changed the unlisted number," Derrie said, hating to admit it. "I guess Clayton was afraid I might pester him on the phone or something! I can't get the new number from the operator, you know, and I certainly can't call Clay and ask for it."

"I see your point," Phoebe mused. "Okay. I'll do it. Uh...Cortez didn't mention me, did he?" she added offhandedly.

"In fact, he did," she returned. "He thinks you're very attractive."

"Oh." Phoebe's heart lifted. She smiled to herself. "Good night, Aunt Derrie."

There was a smile in the voice that replied, "Good night, my dear."

Chapter Fourteen.

Nikki was deeply worried about the way Clayton was acting. He hadn't been the same since the party at the Blairs, and he was increasingly preoccupied.

They were back in Charleston the next weekend, and the campaign was escalating. There were new headlines in the paper about the legal battles Kane Lombard was facing with the South Carolina environmental people. He was probably not going to face criminal charges, but his company was in violation of several statues of the Hazardous Waste Management Act, not to mention the Pollution Control Act overseen by the people at the Department of Health and Environmental Control. She couldn't help feeling sorry for him, and faintly irritated with her brother for making a campaign issue of it.

"Quite a dish Lombard had in tow that night," Clayton remarked over a small supper that night.

"Yes, wasn't she?"

He was watching her, waiting for a show of jealousy. "Her name is Christine Walker. She's a clinical psychologist. Incredible, isn't it, with a figure and face like that? She could have made a fortune modeling."

"I didn't notice."

"Of course you noticed, Nikki!" he said angrily, slamming down his fork. "You were practically making love on the dance floor, you and Lombard. You've got to tell me what's going on!"

She stared at him coolly. "If you must know, he was injured and washed up on the beach. Chad and I looked after him."

"Chad Holman?"

"That's right."

He studied her. "Chad stayed at the beach house with both of you?"

Her eyes met his levelly. "No."

"Oh. My G.o.d, you didn't stay there alone with him?"

"He had concussion," she said stiffly. "I had no choice."

"Of course you had a choice, d.a.m.n it! You could have put him in the hospital and left him there!"

She slammed down her own fork. "No, I couldn't! I wouldn't leave a man I hated in that condition."

"My sister. My sister slept with my worst enemy...!"

"You hold it right there!" She stood up. Her green eyes flashed angrily at him. "I did not, ever, sleep with him. You know it, and you know why!"

He moved away uneasily, eyeing her. "All right," he said. "I know it. But n.o.body else would believe it, not with Lombard's reputation."

"I don't care what people think."

"I have to. Nikki, I'm running for reelection. This isn't some great cosmopolitan city, it's Charleston, where reputations and family honor still mean something! If news of that got out, it could ruin me!"

"It's not going to get out," she said stiffly.

"No? What if Lombard is faced with a jail sentence for that dumping?"

She gasped. "No. They'll fine him, but they wouldn't...!"

"Illegal dumping of toxic waste is a felony. CEOs and presidents of companies have gone to jail for it. Lombard could, too. Faced with years in prison, he'd throw you to the wolves without a second thought. He and his family would use any wedge they had to prevent that!"

"It wouldn't help him," she pointed out. "Even if I'd slept in the same bed with him on Seabrook Island, it wouldn't do him any good to tell it!"

"It would if he could claim that his accident prevented him from finding out the truth about what was going on back in Charleston."

"Nothing was going on," she said. "That employee of Lombard International's who hired Burke's swore he didn't know about Burke's bad environment record. They interviewed him on television, don't you remember?"

"Nevertheless, he can be charged for that," Clayton said with an attorney's knowledge of penalties. He'd studied environmental law. "The fact that he didn't check out Burke's is enough to make him liable under the environmental statutes. He's guilty of negligence, if nothing more criminal. The environmental people are very militant these days, and they should be. Pollution is easy to cause, hard to correct. Prevention is the only way we can insure future supplies of clean water and air."

"But it's okay if we wipe out a species of owl to temporarily save loggers' jobs," she said deliberately.

"You and Derrie! d.a.m.n Derrie!"

"You miss her, do you?" Nikki asked mischievously.

He didn't want to think about Derrie. He hated his office since she'd left it, he was more alone now than ever. He stuck his hands in his slacks pockets and wandered around the room, his eyes lingering on familiar things, family heirlooms like the Early American furniture and the antique coffee mill and the grandfather clock that had been left behind when their parents died. He touched the clock, noticed that it wasn't running at proper tempo. He opened the case, picked up the key, and wound it.

"I remember the sound of that clock chiming when I was very small," Nikki recalled, smiling. "I always thought a little man lived inside."

"So did I." He put the key down and closed the case. His fingers lingered on it. "I feel alone sometimes. Do you?"

"Yes." She joined him, her arms wrapped around her chest. "It's different when you don't have parents. It's hard to talk to people who do."

"Have you...heard from Derrie?" he asked without looking at her.

She averted her amused eyes. "Not since just after the primary election. I guess she's getting settled." She glanced at him. "Mr. Hewett is well-liked," she said. "Don't get overconfident, or do anything illegal, will you?"

"I haven't." He sounded insulted.

She sighed. "Clay, you're walking right on the edge. Don't you know it?"

"I have to win."

"Why?" she asked bluntly. "Why do you have to win?"

He hesitated. Now that she was putting it in those terms, into words, he wasn't really sure. The campaign had been important to him, of course, but only in the past two or three months had it become the most important thing in his life. He stared at her.

"Well, because I want to go back to Washington, I suppose," he began. "I have programs I haven't been able to implement, unfinished projects to work on..."

"You weren't like this until John Haralson came down and started working for you."

"Mosby suggested it. Haralson has always worked well for him."

"Mosby walks around in a fog," she said. "He doesn't want to know how things are done, just that they get done. He's very naive in some ways, and altogether too trusting."

"You aren't still...?"

She laughed gently. "Still grieving for him? Oh, no. I have scars, but I gave up hope long ago. Mosby can't help it, can he?"

"No." He looked at his shoes. "He's never been found out. That's the most amazing thing of all. He pretends to like women, then he pretends to like men. He's managed to keep anyone from finding out."

"How, do you suppose?" she asked quietly. "I mean, how would he keep someone from noticing, in bed..."

"He kept you from noticing, didn't he? You're a babe in the woods, sis," he said without malice. "It's just as well that you are. How about a movie?"

She shook her head. "I'm tired. Washington wrung me out."

He dug in his pocket for his keys. "Bett's still there, on business again." He hesitated. "I might go and see Derrie."

"That would be interesting."

He laughed unamusedly. "Yes. I guess it will." He started out, then paused and looked back at Nikki. She looked fragile these days. "When you had pneumonia, was it really Chad who looked after you?"

She hesitated.

"You'd better tell me. I see him occasionally."

"No," she confessed quietly. "It was Kane. It was so far gone that I could barely remember Morse Code. He knew immediately that it must be me. He came and got me. I don't remember much except that I came to in an oxygen tent."

He stared at her, realizing how dangerously ill she must have been. Kane had saved her life. She hadn't said anything, but she must have bitterly resented the way Clayton had treated Lombard in the press. She owed her life to him.

Clayton felt guilty, and that made him angry. He didn't want to be beholden to his worst enemy. That reporter from the Lombard tabloid was still in Charleston and snooping around, and Haralson was getting pretty nervous. Too many undercurrents were at work here, he thought.

"I need to win the election. I can't have the Lombards digging into our pasts."

"Clay, if they published everything they know, they still wouldn't have a story," she said quietly. "It's Haralson's head that would roll. Mosby is a victim. It would hurt him if things came out, but perhaps not as much as you think. He's hardly a drinking, lecherous playboy."

"Not at all."

"Haralson is keeping you on a very short fuse," she said bluntly. "He's the one who's obsessed with winning the election. Why don't you find out why?"

He frowned. "I know why. He's trying to help me."

"Clay..."

"I'll be in later," he said, smiling easily. "Don't worry. It will be all right. So long as you keep away from Lombard," he said firmly. "Don't let me down, Nikki, please? No fraternizing with the enemy, regardless of what you owe him."

"All right."

She sounded subdued, but he trusted her. He winked lazily and left the house. Paying Derrie a visit had been on his mind for a long time. It wouldn't hurt to see how she was faring. Besides, he thought, Haralson had mentioned something about Curt Morgan and having him followed. If Morgan was doing anything suspicious, perhaps he could get Derrie to let it slip.

Nikki was more worried than ever as she sat watching the evening news. The environmental people had found another toxic waste dump on a deserted piece of farmland. Burke wasn't implicated in this one, and there were no logos on the old oil drums full of toxic waste they found there.

The cleanup crew was putting the drums in over-packs-metal envelopes the purpose of which was to prevent further leaking. Hundreds of gallons of the unidentified toxic substances had already leaked out, however, and leached into the soil. The extent of the damage would be found over time, but first the waste had to be a.n.a.lyzed and identified, and then cleanup operations would begin. The on-site EPA coordinator was hopping mad, promising retribution for this latest "midnight dump" and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.

Along with the new report was a rehash of the site that Burke's disposal operation and Lombard International were accused of creating. Charges were pending, and there had already been a red flag beside the company on the EPA list because of an earlier sewage leak. The news report made that one sound deliberate now, which was, Nikki thought, sure to make Kane's defense even harder. Her eyes narrowed. How strange that the company should change waste handlers on the heels of the leak, and that Burke's should be so easily traced to the site; how fortunate for the environmental people that the dumping site had been so quickly and easily located. And that the logos from Lombard International had been very readable, indeed. And painted on in orange...

She got up from her chair and moved to the telephone without a single thought in her mind except that it had to be a frame. Why hadn't anybody else thought of it? Why hadn't Kane?

She knew the number of his beach house on Seabrook Island. He probably wouldn't be there, but perhaps she could coax his housekeeper into giving her the number.

What if his lover answered? She panicked and almost put down the receiver. It was too dangerous. What if she hurt Clayton by doing this, what if Kane decided to use their time together against her, what if...

"Lombard."