President's Girlfriend 06 - The Sins of the Fathers (22 page)

Christian
looked at her.
 
“What about you, La?” he
asked.
 
“How are you doing?
 
I never would have dreamed Senator McKenzie,
I mean Vice President McKenzie---”

“Call him
Crader,” LaLa insisted.
 
“You’ve earned
the right.”

Christian
smiled.
 
Forget the First Lady.
 
If he had a woman like
Lala?
 
Now that would be paradise
to him.
 
“What I’m saying is that I never
thought he would cheat on you.
 
He seems
to love you so much.”

“I don’t
know about all of that, but yeah, it was kind of shocking to me, too.
 
Especially now that a baby
may be involved.”
 
She shook her
head.
 
“I don’t know, Chris, I just wish.
. .”

“What?”

LaLa smiled,
looked at her friend.
 
“I just wish
Crader was more like you.”

She’d never
know how wonderful that made Christian feel.
 
“Then he wouldn’t be Crader, now would he?” he said, to shield his
delight, and they both smiled.

But he knew
exactly what she meant.
 
Because he
wished Jade was more like LaLa, too.
 
He,
in fact, secretly wished he’d never met Jade, and had been blessed to marry
LaLa instead.

After a
quiet, hand in hand walk across the grounds, Dutch and Gina ended up in the
Jacqueline Kennedy Garden.
 
They walked
along the perfectly manicured shrubbery until they were seated under the
archway of the pergola, across from each other, at a small patio table.
 
They were both formally dressed, he in his
business suit and she in her pantsuit, creating a startling contrast to the
relaxed greenery of the garden.
 

And Dutch
told her all about that weekend in Vegas.

“I know it
happened years before we were ever even dating, our first encounter
notwithstanding, but I wanted you to know.
 
Just in case there were photos out there, or videotape.”

Gina stared
at her husband.
 
He was usually a
straight shooter, but this time she felt as if she was missing something.
 
“Why would it get in the papers?” she asked
him.
 
“You and Crader had sex with this
Elvelyn person, but it happened twelve years ago when neither one of you were
married or even engaged to anybody.
 
Crader hooked back up with her, yeah, but you didn’t.
 
Right?”
Gina asked
this to be sure.
 
Crader had stunned her
with the way he so callously hurt LaLa.
 
It had kind of rocked her faith for a hot second.

“Right,”
Dutch assured her.
 
“It was just that
weekend for me.”

“Then why
would it be news?”

“Because Max was there too.
 
And he may have taken
pictures, or videotaped it even.”

“But I’m
still not following you.
 
All it’ll show
is you with some female during your womanizing days.
 
The entire country knows that Dutch Harber
used to be a player.
 
Wham Bam Harber,
remember?
 
I still don’t see how any of
this would be news.
 
Videotape
or no videotape.”

This was the
part Dutch had dreaded.
 
“But the tape
may also show,” he said slowly, carefully, “me, Crader, and Elvelyn.
 
Together.”
 
He said this and looked at Gina.
 
Gina was sharp.
 
She’d get it.

And she
did.
 
Immediately.
 
“ A
ménage e trois?”
she asked him.

Dutch could
already see the disappointment in her eyes.
 
“Yes,” he said.

“You and
Crader screwed that girl together?”

Dutch
exhaled.
 
“Yes,” he said again.

Gina was
disappointed.
 
No doubt about it.
 
She always thought of Dutch as the good guy,
as sort of the honorable rake when he was a player.
 
Which, she knew, was
nonsense.
 
There was nothing
honorable about slinging it all over town.
 
But that was always how she viewed him.
 
She even viewed him that way when they had their one-night stand in
Miami Beach, years before they hooked back up permanently.

“Disappointed?”
Dutch decided to ask her.

“Yes,
actually,” she replied honestly.

“Why?” he
asked her, although he already had a pretty good idea.
 
But he needed to hear it from her.

Gina folded
her hand over her other hand, with both resting on the table.
 
Dutch glanced down at her small hands, at
that big diamond ring he had given to her, and then he looked back into her
big, sincere eyes.
 
“I thought you would
have had more respect for women than to do something like that,” she said.

Bam
, there it was, Dutch thought.
 
That was the reason he hesitated in sharing
this part of his past with Gina.
 
It
would knock him off of that pedestal she had, rightly or wrongly, placed him
on.

“I
understand your disappointment,” he admitted, “but it was consensual.
 
She wanted it too or she wouldn’t have been
there.”

“But maybe
that was why her sister was accusing you of being the father of Elvelyn’s
baby.
   
Maybe Elvelyn had told her
sister about that weekend in Vegas, and then told her about her affair with
Crader.
 
Maybe the sister got them mixed
up, or maybe she conveniently mixed them up.”

“Why would
she do that?”

“Because
you’ll get attention if the baby’s father is the vice president of the United
States.
 
Yes, you’re
get
some attention.
 
But you’ll get far more
attention if the father of that child is the president.”

“Ah,” Dutch
said, understanding Gina’s thought process.
 
“Right.
 
Agreed.”

“So do you
think this sister has Max’s tape?”

“We don’t
even know if there is a tape.”

“You don’t?”

“No.”

“So what
does Max have to do with this then?
 
You
think he’s working with the sister?”

“We don’t
know that either.”
 
Then Dutch pulled out
the newspaper clipping, now encased in plastic, and handed it to Gina.
 
She began to check it out.
 
“Allison received this clipping in the mail,”
Dutch told her.

“This is the
write up about the plane crash that killed Elvelyn and her husband.”

“Right.
 
Crader’s people have been in touch with
Elvelyn’s sister, this Stephanie Mitchell, and she says she never sent that
clipping to Allison.
 
And it makes
sense.
 
That clipping was sent to
Allison’s home, not to her office.
 
It
would seem there would be some personal knowledge for somebody to send a
clipping like that to Allison’s home.
 
The sister did admit, however, that she received a phone call from a
reporter who said a former White House aide had told him about the president
and her sister, and did she care to comment.”

“That was
why those two reporters from the Associated Press and Reuters started asking
you all of those questions at your press conference?”

“Right.
 
Stephanie Mitchell must have thought that her
sister was fooling with me rather than Crader, and she told those reporters so.”

“Or she
chose to put it out there like that,” Gina suggested.
 
“Like I said, the
president
cheating
on the First Lady and having a child out of wedlock packs more
of a punch than the vice president doing the same thing to his wife.”

“Right.”

“So you think
Max sent Ally this clipping?”
 
Gina asked
this as she placed back on her glasses and started reading every word of the
newspaper article.
 
She was a trained
attorney who practiced law for many years before she married Dutch.
 
She knew how to sniff out clues.

“We’re
trying to find Max now,” Dutch said as she read.
 
“We figure he was the former White House aide
who tipped off the reporters, there’s no doubt in our mind about that.
 
But the only reason we could come up with for
that tip-off, and sending us that clipping, was because he has pictures or
video.”

Gina looked
up at Dutch, a stunned look in her eyes.

“What?” he
asked.

“When did
you say that Vegas weekend occurred?
 
Twelve years ago?”

“In 2000, yes.
 
That’s right.
 
Why?”

Gina stared
at her husband.
 
“Are you sure?”

“I’m
certain.
 
It was the millennium, the year
2000.
 
There was all of that talk about
the Y2K computer bug and how the world would be plunged into chaos at the turn
of the century.
 
And we attended the
congressional committee meeting in early January of that year, just after the
new year
.
 
I remember
it well.
 
Why, Gina?”

“Max wanted
you and Crader to see this clipping all right, but not because of any videotape
of you guys having sex with a woman.”

Dutch’s
heart began to pound.
 
“What have you
found?
 
What is it?”

“Max wanted
you to see this clipping because of the age.”

Dutch
frowned.
 
“What age?”

“Elvelyn’s age.”

Dutch
frowned.
 
“What are you talking about?”

“Her age, Dutch!
 
According to this article, she
was twenty-eight years old when she died in that plane crash.
 
That would mean she right around sixteen when
y’all had her twelve years ago.”

Dutch’s
heart plunged through his shoe.
 
He
snatched the article from Gina.
 
Searched
and searched and then saw it for
himself
.
 
How could they have missed it?
 
He looked back up at his wife.
 
“
Good
Lord
,” he said.
 
Looked back at her
age in that article, looked back at his wife.
 
Statutory rape, he thought.
 
He
and Crader committed statutory rape?

“How did you
meet her?” Gina
asked,
her attorney background out in
force right now.

“I didn’t,”
Dutch said frowningly, attempting to remember that long ago weekend.
 
“She was selected.”

“Who
selected her?
 
Who set it all up?”

Dutch didn’t
have to even think about it.
 
“Max,” he
said, it all coming together clearly now.
 
“Max said she was a college student he knew.
 
Max handled the whole thing.”

Gina’s heart
plunged too.
 
Max Brennan was
beyond a
loose cannon.
 
Max Brennan gave snakes a bad name.
 

“We’ve got
to find Max,” she made clear.
 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The following week and Gina’s birthday celebration was being
held in the festively decorated Rose Garden.
 
Many staffers and their families, along with Gina’s numerous friends
from Newark, were hobnobbing together to the sweet sounds of Motown.
 
From Marvin Gaye to the Temptations to Martha
and the Vandellas, every song was a delightful old school rhythm and
blues.
 

Everybody
were laughing, talking and waiting for the president and First Lady to make
their appearance.
 
LaLa and Christian
were mainly hanging together, while Marcus and Sam seemed to be in deep
conversation.
 
Christian and LaLa joked
that they had never seen Sam when she wasn’t in deep conversation, so it didn’t
surprise them.