The Dirty Secret Read online

  Pleasants County had a reputation as a relatively open-minded place where people voted for individual candidates based on their perceived merits regardless of party affiliation. Thus, the courthouse was populated by office holders from both parties, and it was largely (although not entirely) devoid of the political posturing and backbiting that was common elsewhere.

  Staring toward the open door at the rear of the room, Jack flipped Rikki’s arm with the back of his hand. “Speaking of rock-ribbed Republicans,” he announced dramatically. “Here comes the sheriff.”

  A barrel-chested man about six feet three stood in the doorway with a broad-brimmed deputy’s hat atop his buzz-cropped head. Clad in a button-up gray shirt with black epaulettes, he had a silver badge clipped to his left chest pocket. A small paunch crested the waistband of his black Sansabelt trousers as he crossed the room toward Rikki and McCallen. “Mornin’, Senator,” he said. Then he nodded curtly her way. “Mornin’ to you, too, Rikki.”

  “How’s everything goin’ today, Sheriff?” Jack inquired.

  Doug Vaughn shrugged. “We busted a meth lab up on the Pike last night. City boys had a DUI down by the Wendy’s. That’s about it.”

  “Pretty quiet night then, huh?” Rikki asked rhetorically.

  “Yup,” the sheriff replied. Then an awkward silence developed.

  No wonder they call him “Silent Doug,” Rikki thought. She had initially suspected that Vaughn’s quiet demeanor would be an impediment on the campaign trail. But his reputation for diligence and integrity had helped him win re-election by the widest margin on the ballot.

  “So how long do you think we’ll be here?” Rikki asked, hoping the question would breathe some life back into the conversation.

  “Coupla hours at most,” Jack answered. “There’s only 18 challenged ballots, so there’s not a whole lot of fighting for the lawyers to do here.” He motioned with his head toward the front of the room, where two men were sitting at separate tables facing the commission’s platform. Apparently oblivious to the discussion around them, their faces were buried in thick green books. From the looks of their virtually identical black pinstriped suits, Rikki surmised they must have gone shopping together at Peckerheads R Us.

  “Good,” Silent Doug said. “I need to get the paperwork done on that meth lab anyway.”

  Rikki stared at the sheriff and struggled to remember which one of his eyes was the “good” one. For the life of her, she could never remember whether it was the right eye or the left that had been replaced with a glass orb after some hideous incident in Vietnam. She had heard a variety of stories over the years about what supposedly cost Silent Doug his eye, but she had no idea if any of them were true and her sense of decorum dictated she not ask him about it directly. After a few moments of intense scrutiny, Rikki detected the tell-tale inch-long scar beneath the sheriff’s left eye. Thereafter she directed all of her attention toward his right eye, feverishly trying to devise a mnemonic to burn that detail into her brain for future reference.

  “All right, folks,” a raspy female voice called from the front of the room. Rikki turned and saw Alice Snyder, the sole Republican on the county commission, taking her seat on the platform as her two Democrat counterparts followed suit. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Rikki took a bite of her brownie and hoped “the show” would be over soon.

  CHAPTER 4

  CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 12:45 P.M.

  Luke Vincent could not imagine what Tabatha must have looked like at twenty, because staring at her now – as she approached forty – she was simply stunning. Standing five-ten in her bare feet, her long legs were smooth and carved, leading up to the spectacular ass that first caught his eye the previous year at a Christmas party. Her stomach was flat as a washboard, and although her breasts filled D-cups, they simultaneously felt soft and firm, seeming to defy gravity as she rode herself to climax again and again.

  After Tabatha satisfied herself, she slid off the bed and knelt in the floor. Governor Vincent recognized the cue and stood before her, weaving his fingers into her long, silky red hair. Vincent gently guided her as she took him in her mouth. The long, slender fingers of her left hand gingerly cupped his balls while her full lips gracefully slid up and down him, working their magic.

  Vincent gripped her hair tighter, pulling her toward him with increasing force. Tabatha moaned with excitement and stared up at the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential nominee. Her blue eyes were ferocious and determined, and she worked him like an engine piston.

  After rolling around with Tabatha for a half-hour, West Virginia’s fifty-three-year-old governor could take no more. His breaths grew shorter as the expectation rose. Sensing the moment of truth was nigh, her pace quickened and her muffled moaning grew more urgent. At last, Vincent let loose and cried out in ecstasy. His legs felt jelly-like, and his eyelids fluttered spastically, mimicking the synapses firing in his brain.

  At his release, Tabatha emitted one last moan then began chuckling softly. Although Vincent had seen this reaction before, it still unnerved him. As she consumed the last drops of his discharge, staccato bursts of laughter somehow escaped her full mouth and Vincent silently scolded himself again for his carnal weakness. I’ve got to stop doing this! She’s a demon in bed, but crazier than a rat in a coffee can!

  Finally spent, the governor closed his eyes and shook his head from side-to-side as if clearing out cobwebs. “Whew!” he exhaled, leaning away from Tabatha as if to detach from her mouth. His progress abruptly halted when he felt her fingernails digging into his butt cheek.

  Vincent stared down and saw displeasure burning in her blue eyes as she unwrapped her lips from him. Squeezing out the last of his essence with her right hand, she dabbed it off with a fingertip and inserted it between her pouted lips. “I wasn’t finished,” she declared. Her voice was sonorous, sensuous and gravely serious.

  “Sorry. I must have forgotten how thorough you are.”

  Tabatha stood and casually brushed her hair from her face. Standing naked, her statuesque figure glistened with sweat. She ran her palms across the governor’s chest. “Of course you have. You haven’t seen me in almost three months.”

  Vincent sighed. I knew this was going to happen. “The press has been all over me since the convention. There’s no way I could risk seeing you.”

  Softly illuminated by a brass lamp sitting beside the bed, Tabatha’s face turned chilly. “The press can’t do anything that even compares to what I could do to you, Governor.”

  Doused by an icy blast of reality, Vincent’s mind reeled. The campaign’s rigorous pace had pushed the power Tabatha wielded to the periphery of his awareness. Now it was staring him square in the face once more, and he hated it more than ever.

  The governor tried to assume a conciliatory tone. “I know. But think about what that would do to my wife and kids.”

  Tabatha’s laughter rose out of her belly in billowing waves before slowly fading away. “You should have thought about that before you fucked me, Governor.” Caressing the side of his face with her right palm, she stared at him, seemingly amused. Then she stood up on her tiptoes and gently kissed his cheek before walking into the bathroom. Chuckling again with her back to him, she called over her shoulder, “Yeah, you should have thought about that before you fucked me.” Then she pulled the bathroom door shut.

  Vincent retrieved his black boxers from the foot of the bed and clumsily slid them up his legs. Collapsing on the bed, he silently cursed his weakness – his abject stupidity – for getting involved with the dangerous succubus named Tabatha McCallen.

  CHAPTER 5

  ST. MARYS, PLEASANTS COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 6:00 P.M.

  Sitting at her mother’s dining room table, Rikki stared at the aging framed pictures that adorned the room’s walls. The familiar aromas of ginger and garlic wafted from the kitchen, reminding Rikki of her childhood and contribut
ing to the strong sense of nostalgia that the old family pictures evoked.

  The largest framed photo in the room was an 11x17 studio portrait taken when she was seven years old. Her father had just moved the family from Chicago and opened his pediatrics practice in St. Marys that summer, prior to the start of her third-grade year. An only child, Rikki wore a white sundress with her long black hair hanging over her mocha shoulders. Smiling broadly with a mischievous glint in her pale green eyes, she was flanked by her obviously adoring parents clad in their now dated Sunday best.

  Positioned slightly above and to the right of that portrait was an informal 8x10 photo taken the night of her high school graduation ceremony. Wearing the distinctive purple robe and mortarboard donned by generations of Pleasants County High School students, Rikki was blossoming into womanhood. One of her classmates – a slightly taller young man with white skin, brown hair and green eyes – stood to her left with his right arm draped around her neck. Her mother stood smiling in a dark blue silk dress to the boy’s left while her irrepressible father, Dr. G, was positioned to Rikki’s right in a black three-piece suit.

  Like so many times in the past, Rikki felt a pang in her stomach as she stared at that graduation snapshot. She had asked her mother to take it down, suggesting other photos that could be hung in its place. She had argued with her mother, passionately insisting that its prominent position was inappropriate, and she eventually demanded that the picture be removed from the dining room wall. Her efforts were to no avail. Madhani Gudivada insisted that she liked the graduation photo and steadfastly refused to put it away. Knowing that her own stubbornness was but a poor reflection of her mother’s pigheadedness, Rikki finally gave up and just tried to ignore the picture whenever she visited.

  “Dinner’s ready!”

  Rikki tore her thoughts from the past and glanced over to see her mother carrying a white Corning dish filled with khorma into the dining room. The distinctive smell of garlic, ginger and paprika filled the room, and the sight of steaming cubes of lamb mixed with fresh whole potatoes and baby carrots made Rikki smile.

  “Could you bring the roti out of the kitchen, honey?” Madhani asked in strongly accented words that reflected her Gujarati upbringing. Rikki nodded and walked into the kitchen, returning quickly with a plate of warm roti shells in her hands.

  Placing the roti on the table, Rikki watched her mother scoop a small helping of khorma onto her plate without taking a seat. Rikki stared at her quizzically, as her mother habitually insisted they eat at the dining room table even though it was only the two of them now. “Aren’t we going to eat in here?”

  Her mother seemed surprised by the question. “Oh, no,” she responded, donning a shy grin as she slid past Rikki. “I saw the Channel Five van at the courthouse and thought they might show you on the news.” Pride and a touch of excitement were evident in her voice, as she turned and walked into the living room carrying the plate. Two small black folding tables were already situated in front of the burgundy couch, facing the television.

  Rikki chuckled softly. God, Mom is cute, she thought. It reminded Rikki of her grade school trip to the regional spelling bee when her mother had planted herself in front of the TV just hoping to catch a glimpse of her little girl on the local newscast.

  After helping herself to some khorma and roti, Rikki carried her plate and a glass of ice water into the living room and sat down on the right side of the couch. Her mother nibbled at her food while gazing at the television, seemingly enthralled by coverage of a tractor-trailer accident on I-77. Rikki swirled a torn piece of roti in the khorma and took a bite. As always, her mother had used the precise combination of spices that Rikki felt perfectly accentuated the tender lamb meat.

  After an excruciating segment about two women who dressed their dogs up for a make-believe wedding, the coverage turned to the election. “County courthouses all over West Virginia are struggling to cope with a deluge of reporters from around the world as post-election canvasses kicked off today,” said the smiling blonde anchorwoman. “Melissa Dotson was in Pleasants County this morning, as the county commission tackled this important task.”

  The screen flashed to a shot of the courthouse’s front portico and the four white Doric columns that were its most prominent features. An attractive brunette in her late twenties held a microphone emblazoned with WTAP’s logo in her left hand. “Although the stakes are high, the atmosphere here in Saint Marys was low key as county commissioners conducted the official canvass of last Tuesday’s election returns.”

  The video switched to a prerecorded scene inside the commission’s hearing room. Alice Snyder’s mouth moved silently while the reporter’s voiceover continued. “With only eighteen challenged ballots up for grabs here, the results from all of the county and legislative races remained unchanged. But the presidential campaign of Senator Melanie Wilson garnered a net increase of three votes, raising her supporters’ hopes that similar results elsewhere might swing West Virginia’s five electoral votes into the Senator’s camp and ensure her election.”

  Rikki smiled and softly clapped her hands. Her mother’s attention remained fixed on the television.

  “What do you have to say about these results, Senator?” the reporter asked, directing her microphone toward Jack McCallen’s face.

  “Well, it really wasn’t surprising, Melissa. Senator Wilson carried Pleasants County on Tuesday night and she picked up a few more votes here today. But historically, canvasses don’t change an election’s results because challenged ballots tend to break along the same percentages as the initial returns. So we expect Governor Royal to pick up additional votes in the counties where he ran strongest – like Kanawha, Putnam, Berkeley and Jefferson – with the final result being the same as it was on Tuesday night.”

  As Jack finished his statement, Rikki’s face briefly appeared onscreen as she walked across the room behind him. “There you are!” her mother exclaimed, reaching over to pat her left forearm. “You look so beautiful and … professional, honey. Your father would have been so proud of you.”

  Rikki looked at her mom and grinned, but said nothing. Even though he had been gone almost fifteen years, she still missed her dad immensely. Nothing in the world had bucked up her spirits like hearing Dr. G tell one of his engaging stories or let out a heartfelt laugh, and his death from cancer at the age of fifty-two continued to strike Rikki as exceedingly unfair.

  Lost in her own thoughts, Rikki missed the end of the report from Pleasants County. “Meanwhile,” the anchor continued. “Another area native is continuing to make headlines around the world through his work on Governor Royal’s presidential campaign. For more on this story, we go to Brad Billingsley down in Madison. Brad…”

  An immaculately dressed black man appeared on-screen with a microphone in his hand. “That’s right, Emily. The proceedings here in Boone County were far more contentious than those Melissa covered. There are 112 challenged ballots at stake here, and it looks like every one of them will be intensely scrutinized and hotly debated by the lawyers representing the two presidential candidates. And coordinating the efforts of Governor Royal’s team on the ground here in Madison was none other than Saint Marys’ own Dave Anderson.”

  Rikki’s stomach dropped as she heard his name. Her mother’s smile vanished, and she glanced over at Rikki, gauging her reaction.

  The station began broadcasting images from inside Boone County’s impressive, cavernous old courtroom. Standing behind three lawyers with his arms crossed, Dave closely followed the arguments unfolding before him as the reporter continued speaking over the video feed. “The salutatorian of his class at Pleasants County High School, Anderson has been a prominent advisor to Governor Royal for years, and he’s leading the campaign’s post-election efforts in West Virginia. Today, he was here in Madison monitoring the canvass in this crucial county with a colorful history of creative electioneering.”

  Rikki bit her lip and stared at the screen, studying Dave’s face. Pa
rt of her wished he had grown prematurely old and grotesquely fat. Maybe balding with a bad comb over, too. But he looked fit and trim in his dark blue pinstriped suit, his broad shoulders filling it out nicely. His dark brown hair was streaked with gray, but his eyes still burned with an intensity she knew she would never forget.

  “So how are things looking, Mr. Anderson?” the reporter asked in a prerecorded interview. The open-domed, golden belvedere of Boone County’s courthouse hovered over Dave’s left shoulder.

  Dave smiled and arched his left eyebrow. “Well, we’ve been tradin’ punches pretty good in there,” he said in his mountain twang. “Governor Royal is still standin’ tall right now, but it’s only about the third round. Ask me again in a few weeks.”

  Rikki briefly cracked a grin despite herself. Noting her reaction, Madhani smiled, too.

  “So how does it feel to be back in West Virginia?” the reporter asked.

  Dave paused, looking thoughtful for a moment, and then his smile widened slightly. “You know, I grew up in Pleasants County and some of the most important people in my life still live there. I’m deeply honored to have the privilege of workin’ for a man like Governor Royal, but West Virginia will always be home to me, and it feels good to be home again.” Then Dave emitted a quick, loud chuckle. “The next time I come home, though, I hope it’s under less stressful circumstances.”

  The interview ended, and a live shot of the reporter standing in front of the dingy white limestone courthouse returned to the screen. “The canvass will continue here in Boone County tomorrow morning at nine. From Madison, this is Brad Billingsley reporting.”

  The newscast kept rolling, but Rikki remained silent. After a few awkward moments, her mother broke the silence. “I saw David’s mother at the store on Wednesday. She said he had asked how your election went and told her to congratulate you for him.”

  Rikki’s eyes flamed but her voice was cold. “Tell Ellen I said, ‘Hi,’ the next time you see her.”