Eleventh Hour

Nicola took a step back. She was nearly against the fireplace now. She felt the heat of the flames against her back. She said, “Cleo wrote that she doesn’t want me to die. She wrote that I should run, just like she did. She didn’t want to die either.”

“This is utterly ridiculous.” He looked dazed, as if he couldn’t quite grasp what she was saying, and all through it, he was staring at those pages in her hand. “Let me see that goddamned letter.”

“No, you’ll destroy it and the journal pages. I can’t allow you to do that.”

“All right, all right. Listen to me. I didn’t kill anyone-not my mother, not Melissa, not anyone. That’s just insane.” Still he stared at those sheets of paper, his pupils sharp black points of light, his face as white as his beautifully laundered shirt. “You’ve got to let me see that letter. It can’t be from Cleo. She loved me, she wouldn’t say such things.”

“She left because you wanted to kill her and because she realized you were insane with jealousy. You believed she was unfaithful to you.”

“She left me to be with Tod Gambol, everyone knows that. Listen, Nicola, let’s sit down and talk this over. We can start at the begi

“I’m going to the police, John. I suppose I wanted to confront you with the letter, hear what you had to say. I really hoped that I’d believe you-”

“Dammit, then listen to me,” he said, but still he was staring at that letter. “Give me a chance. I had nothing to do with my mother’s death. I was sixteen years old, for God’s sake. She was an alcoholic, Nicola, and the decision at the time was that she ran her car off the road because she was drunk. As for Melissa, by God I loved her, and she slept with Elliott-the bastard has always wanted what I have-but I didn’t kill her. I simply broke it off with her. It was a damned accident, it had to be. The letter and the journal-it’s got to be a forgery. Give me the letter, Nicola, let me examine it.”

“No. I think I’ll give it to the police, let them figure it out.”

“It would ruin me politically, Nicola, you must know that. Do you despise me so much that you want me to have to resign from the Senate? Spend my days being hounded by the press? I didn’t do anything, dammit! You can’t simply read a letter, some stupid pages from a make-believe journal, from God knows whom, and decide I’m a murderer, accuse me of killing my own mother? I was only sixteen! A boy doesn’t murder his own mother!”

She said very quietly, “The boy does if he’s a psychopath.”

“A psychopath? Good God, Nicola, this is beyond ridiculous. Listen to me. You must realize how impossible this all is. You can’t go to the police.” He drew himself up, becoming the patrician gentleman, tall, slender, elegant, and he was angry, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. He looked from her to the letter, the pages still clutched in her right hand. He said softly, “You’re not going anywhere, you stupid little ingrate. Just look what I’ve done for you-Jesus, I was going to marry you, make you one of the most sought-after women in America. You’re young, beautiful, intelligent, a college professor, and not left-wing, which was a big relief, let me tell you. With you at my side, with my coaching you, showing you what to do, we could have had just about everything, maybe even the White House. What is wrong with you, Nicola?”

“I don’t want to die, John, I really don’t. Were you driving that car, wearing that ski mask, trying to run me down?”

“The cretin who wrote you that letter, he’s trying to turn you against me. Why can’t you believe that? None of this is true. A drunk nearly hit you, nothing more than that.”

“And the food poisoning, John? Was that all an accident, too?”

“Of course it was! Just call up the doctor and ask him again. That damned letter isn’t from Cleo!”

“Why not? How can you be so sure that Cleo didn’t write me? She wants to protect me, save me from you. You did want to kill her, didn’t you, John? Did you really believe she was being unfaithful to you, or was that just a ruse, or some sort of sick fantasy?”

“I’m not sick, Nicola,” he said, his voice shaking with rage. She was suddenly afraid, very afraid. She eased her hand into her jacket pocket, felt the grip of her pistol.

“The truth is that the bitch was sleeping with Tod Gambol, my trusted senior aide for eight fucking years! He had the gall to sleep with my wife! They would go out to motels during the day when I was in Washington, or even when I was in Chicago and in meetings. I have the motel receipts. I’m the wronged one here, not Cleo. Dammit, you knew that, everybody knew that. Don’t you remember how sorry you felt for me? You cried, I remember that. As for Elliott Benson, I don’t know if she slept with him, it doesn’t matter. And now you believe this insanity just because someone who hates me wrote you a letter, scribbled a confession. God, Nicola, that’s just stupid.”

“John, I told you. Cleo wrote that she never slept around on you, that she has no idea where Tod Gambol is, but she thinks he might be dead.”

He said very quietly, “Nicola, why would you believe this letter when you’ve known me for four years now? I’ve always been kind and considerate to you, to everyone around me. Have you ever seen me lose my temper? Have you ever heard anything remotely this bad about me? Anything about my ever sleeping around on Cleo?”

“Then why didn’t you tell me about your mother? About your dead fiancee?”

“Why the hell would I? They were very painful times for me, and no one’s business. Maybe, after we were married, I’d have told you about them. I don’t know.”

“It’s true that I always felt safe around you because no one ever even hinted that you played around like many of the other men in Congress, hitting on young women.”

He faced her, palms spread out, and his voice softened, deepened, “Please, let’s sit down and discuss this like two people who are pla

“I realize if I take these journal pages to the police that you and all your spin doctors could just claim I was a nutcase and wasn’t it so sad, and everyone would probably believe it. If only she’d sent me the original journal pages and not copies, then maybe I’d have a chance, but not with these.”

She paused. He said nothing.

“But I don’t want to see you again.”

Without warning, he ran at her, his hands in front of him, his fingers curved. Oh God. She whipped the Smith amp; Wesson out of her pocket, but he was on her, grabbing for the letter. He ripped it out of her hand, leaped back, panting hard. He stared down at the pages before he shredded each one. When he was done, he bunched the paper into a ball and threw it into the flames. He said, both his face and voice triumphant, “That’s what your letter deserves.”

His hands were still fists, the fingers curved inward. She would have been very afraid if she hadn’t had her gun. She was shaking as she said, “I’m leaving now, John. Stay away from me.”

She came awake that night at the sound of a noise. It was more than just a condo creak, more than just the night sounds she always heard when she was lying in bed alone, with nothing to do but listen.

She thought of Cleo Rothman’s letter, now destroyed, about that car with the accelerator jammed down coming straight at her, about the food poisoning that could have put her in her grave. She thought of John coming toward her, destroying that letter.

There was absolutely no doubt in her mind that he’d wanted to kill her. But there was no proof, not a single whisper of anything to show the police.