what. I don’t want you doing anything on the side. I don’t want a permanent relationship, but while we’re together, I do want it exclusive. I’d be scared to death if you did it. I know I should say okay, I hereby grant you a free one. You have it coming and you deserve it. Sorry you can’t have it. Sound selfish?”
For a moment they stared at each other.
“Yes?” she said. She waited for him to flash his engaging grin. The classic one she’d fallen for at the start. That grin always got her.
Finally, there it was. The grin. He said, “I guess I’d better try harder with you.”
“That goes for me too.”
They both laughed.
Then he said, “An exclusive relationship is fine with me. I just want you to stick around for a while...if not longer.”
“Exclusive as long as we are together. No other promises. I’ll be finishing law school and starting my law career. That’s a major passage for me. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen afterward. However, I do hope we’ll be together.”
He pulled her close and gave her a lingering kiss.
“Here’s a toast, Chip. To us.”
They clinked glasses and sipped in silence for several minutes. Then they laughed at the same time.
“You’re now free to get into more trouble.”
“Right now I just want to bask in a wave of peace and calm. And spend my time between my law books and you. And only you.”
“And you...need to be careful when messing around with ‘just sex.’”
“You’re right, and I’ve learned from observing Freddy. You must also watch out for the passion. It can lie quietly inside you waiting until someone rouses it from sleep. Then beware.” She stared down at her drink, idly moving the ice around with the celery stalk. “Then it awakens with a roar, demanding to take control.”
“Sandy, where are you? Where is all this passion talk coming from?”
“Oh...you said sex is dynamite...so is passion.” She had recovered from her private reminiscence. “Sometimes you’re the dynamite and sometimes you’re the fuse.”
“Which am I?”
“Chip, you are definitely one great burning fuse and I’m the dynamite. Around you, I’m combustible. You can set me off anytime.”
He drained his glass in one gulp, stood, and reached for her hands. She stood facing him and he placed his hands on her upper arms and drew her closer. She tilted her head back slightly as he kissed her neck then softly on her lips. While holding the kiss he ran his hands over her back. He felt the curve of her waist for a moment and then pushed his hands on down under her pajamas until he was grasping her buttocks. He pulled her tightly against him almost lifting her. Then he broke the kiss long enough to lift her up completely.
Chapter Thirty-three
Three months had passed. It was April. Spring according to the calendar, but spring doesn’t linger in Florida. Already summer if you believed the thermometer. Sandy Reid had finished her law degree from FAU and studied quietly in her own apartment for the July bar exam. She managed to find time for regular sleepovers with Chip.
Martin Bronner had invited Sandy for dinner, one evening, at his home with his father. He prepared a quite acceptable Coquille Saint-Jacques. The next day the three took an enjoyable trip to the Sarasota Music Festival on Florida’s west coast.
The outcome of Nita Bank’s lawsuit, now in the hands of the judge, was progressing favorably. The resulting buzz had generated a few new clients for Martin. He tried to devote some time to the book he had started writing on the subject of what if Lincoln hadn’t been assassinated.
The latest email from Jamie explained she loved the fishing trip in the Georgia Mountains with her daddy: “...glad I didn’t catch anything because I don’t like seeing the poor little fish die on my hook. Love, Jamie. Daddy says hello.”
Jerry Kagan had suffered a mild stroke, but was recuperating nicely. He had received a lucrative offer from a developer for the building that had housed his law office for fifty years. He teased saying he could retire for good if Sandy would just keep herself out of the next murder in a small Florida town.
Was it strange that Freddy Kidde was still on her mind? Public interest in the Privado Beach episode had faded to zero after State Attorney Moran declared the investigation showed no wrongdoing whatsoever on the part of the congressman. Did Kidde fade away as well?
Sandy had immersed herself in his fascinating story as he was telling it. The once prominent congressman casually encountering a stranded young woman in a convenience store. The stranger had targeted him as a safe, malleable man, but he made the decision to give her a ride. As she listened, Sandy had been annoyed with his pompous manner as he was aloof and judgmental. Then Sandy thought it comical when the hitchhiker revealed she stripped for a living and he then assumed with arrogance that she would be available to him.
It was obvious to Sandy that his fascination became obsessive as he projected Betty Jo’s acceptance of him. But did she encourage him in order to torture him, as he believed, because of deep-rooted issues she had with men? In any case, only after his passion was uncontrollable had he realized she was beyond his reach. By then it was too late; he couldn’t let go.
As upsetting as it was to him personally, Sandy didn’t feel that the obsession was necessarily disabling. It could have been merely another of those haunting preoccupations that secretly demonize the mind of millions. No worse than the demons ordinary people have always lived with. Except, in his case, there was a dramatic final stroke. His misdirected passion was exposed when he failed to report her death.
Now Sandy wondered what happened to poor old Freddy. Did he blame Betty Jo, himself, or just plain bad luck for what happened? She wanted an ending to the story.
She wasn’t certain if he’d take her phone call. Perhaps he blamed her for bringing his world crashing down. She wasn’t certain if he still lived down in Jensen Beach, or if his phone number still worked. She knew she had to try.
After his answering machine message, he heard her voice, picked up, and said hello. He sounded weak, “I’ve been screening my calls, Miss Reid. Only people with nasty comments, death threats, or sick jokes phone me now.”
“I never realized there were necrophilia jokes,” she said. “I felt compelled to call you, Freddy. I’m not sure why. I guess because I was involved and still haven’t processed it all.” For some reason the curtain wasn’t closed in her mind.
“Glad you did. May I call you Sandy again?”
“I read a series of articles about you in the New York Times, about a month ago. How they forced you to resign your seat in the House of Representatives, forced out of Congress. That had to hurt.”
“I’m still mentioned in the press, thankfully less frequently now. It remains torture. I still cringe as I turn each newspaper page, wondering if my name will be mentioned. My colleagues in DC turned their backs on me. The House Ethics Committee, made it too uncomfortable for me to stay. I once knew everyone who mattered. Everyone liked me. Now I’m inconsequential. You don’t want to be caught with a dead woman.”
“Being innocent is often never enough,” she said into the phone.
“Ellen left me, you know. Can’t blame her for that. No relative will acknowledge me.”
“I imagine accepting an suspected necrophiliac might push the limit for some families.”
“And outside the family as well,” he said. “My secretary broke the sound barrier getting out of here. Didn’t stop to clean out her desk or take her precious plant. We belong to several civic associations. Have always supported a multitude of charities, the museum, the symphony. They don’t call even for donations anymore. I went over to the club only once. My family built that club and now I’m persona non grata. I knew they were laughing at me. Everyone is against me it seems. Suspicion and rumors will always be there. A lifetime of work gone. My name will always be linked to necrophilia—a word I’d never even thought of before in my entire life.”
“I don't think one word can describe a man’s life.”
“Perhaps, but everything I’ve accomplished will now carry that footnote. Humiliated and ruined
