“Why did you call?”
She didn’t reply. Instead, she gazed at our drinks for a few moments, and then at the walls of the booth and finally at me. She was dressed in silk and cashmere; a long, charcoal-colored wool coat hung on the hook next to the booth. She looked like she had never wanted for anything, but that was merely a carefully cultivated illusion. I knew her when she worked the camera counter at Walgreen’s to put herself through school.
“What is it, Zee?”
“Probably nothing. It’s just—It just makes me so angry.”
“What does?”
“I heard that you do favors for people.”
“Sometimes. For friends.”
“Am I a friend?”
“You know you are.”
“Perhaps you can do a favor for me—for old time’s sake.”
“Sure.”
“Be careful. You haven’t heard what it is yet.”
“Doesn’t matter. If I can help you, I will—for old time’s sake.”
Her voice was serious, yet her mouth formed a smile that was almost giddy, as if she had gone some time without hearing good news. Lindsey reached into her bag and brought out an 8? by 11 sheet of white paper folded twice and slid it across the table to me. I unfolded it. It was a hard copy of an e-mail. It read:
John Allen Barrett murdered his high school sweetheart, Elizabeth Rogers, in Victoria, Minnesota, and the police covered it up so he could become a basketball hero. If he runs for the U.S. Senate, I will expose him to the world.
“Whoa,” I said.
“It’s a lie.” She spoke the word like she had just discovered its meaning. “A big lie.”
“I should hope so.”
I examined the e-mail more closely. It was unsigned. The gobbledygook in the “from” field was unpronounceable. It had been addressed to Lindsey Bauer and sent at 6:57 P.M. Friday, three days earlier. The subject line was empty.
“Lindsey Bauer,” I said.
“It was sent to my dot-com account,” Lindsey said. “I have a dot-gov address through the state, but this was sent to my private e-mail address.”
“How many people have your private address?”
“I don’t know. Not many.”
I folded the paper and slid it across the table to her. “What do you want me to do?”
She slid it back. “This is political, I know it is. Someone is trying to mess with Jack through me, and I want to know who.”
“You want to know who sent the e-mail?”
“Exactly.”
“That’s it?”
“Can you do it?”
“Sure, but . . .” I gestured toward the heavyset man near the door. “Why not use your own people?”
“Because then it becomes public record. My e-mails through the state, all of Jack’s e-mails—that’s public record. You can get copies through the Freedom of Information Act. But what’s sent to me personally, that’s private.”
“Unless you make it public.”
“It could be that’s what all this is about. It would make a nice headline, wouldn’t it: First Lady Asks Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, ‘Is the Governor a Murderer?’ ”
She smiled slightly, and in that moment I knew she was hiding something. I didn’t know why I knew, yet I did. Probably it was because I had seen her smile often when she was younger and I recognized that it wasn’t the same. All of my internal alarm systems fired at once. The noise was so loud in my head I was amazed that everyone in the restaurant wasn’t diving for the door.
“What the e-mail says, is it true?”
Her eyes were sharp, but not angry, as she considered the question.
“Of course it’s not true.”
“Because that would have been my first question.”
“It’s an outrageous lie.”
“Not who sent it, but if it’s true.”
“I’m sure that’s exactly what the writer wants you to ask.”
“Have you spoken to the governor about it?”
“Certainly not.”
“Does he even know about the e-mail?”
“He has enough to worry about without this nonsense.”
The alarm bells just kept getting louder and louder. I felt sweat on my forehead and trickling down my back. I considered removing my bomber jacket, decided to leave it on.
“Was the e-mail sent to anyone else? To the governor?”
“I don’t know. If Jack received one, he didn’t tell me.”
“Why send it to you?”
“To drive a wedge between us.”
“Between you and the governor.”
“Yes.”
“If that was the case, why accuse the governor of murder? Why not just say he’s sleeping with one of his assistants?”
“If I knew who sent the e-mail, maybe then I’d know the answer to that, too.”
She had me there.
“Is Jack running for the Senate?”
“People have been asking him about it, only he hasn’t decided, yet. That’s confidential, by the way.”
