me a break,” I scoffed. “Brooke’s personal reputation is so bad it’s even made the San Francisco papers. If voters liked Fitzgerald so much he’d have a huge lead on Brooke, but as it stands now he’s never been ahead by more than three points, which is within the margin of error for most of those polls. Brooke may be more liberal than what the people of Contra Costa are used to, but they’re more comfortable with her love of labor unions than they are with Fitzgerald’s hatred of contraceptives. Based on his positions he should be losing this race. The only way he’s going to win is if Brooke self-destructs, which she seems to be doing,”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say she’s self-destructing,” Rick mumbled.
“I would,” Johnny said. “You’d have to be pretty self-destructive to marry that broccoli guy! You do know she’s married to the guy who wrote Broccoli for Life. Can you imagine how much gas he must have? I know, I know, it’s a gross thing to think about, but it’s funny since—”
“She was arrested for drunk driving at seventeen,” I said, completely ignoring Johnny and holding up my fingers to count off Brooke’s faux pas. “When pressed, she admitted to taking all sorts of drugs in college, she had an abortion at the tail end of her first trimester when she was in her early thirties, and a former coworker from her private-sector days is claiming that she slept with her boss in exchange for promotions and raises. Furthermore, we know that she cheated on her previous husband at least two times. This woman makes Clinton look like a poster boy for moral behavior. And now there are accusations that she cheated on her taxes and broke one of the fifty million rules regarding campaign fund-raising. But no one knew any of that stuff before she announced her run for Congress. Now, look me in the eye and tell me that Fitzgerald didn’t hire Eugene to dig that information up so it could be leaked to the media.”
Rick swallowed hard and evaded my obvious attempts at eye contact. “Brooke’s problems have helped our camp,” he said begrudgingly, “but that has nothing to do with Eugene or what he did for the campaign.”
Just then a large group of waiters materialized carrying a huge piece of chocolate cake and singing a perfectly harmonized version of “Happy Birthday.”
“You guys did this for me?” Johnny asked. “This is great! Isn’t this great?”
No, it wasn’t great. Rick was lying to me; I was sure of it, which meant that I was right about the dirt-digging stuff. Some of the accusations floating around about Brooke were so bad that if anyone was able to prove them she would most likely lose her freedom right along with the election. If Eugene had been able to prove that she had done something really awful she might have felt the need to shut him up quickly. Ruthless political ambition mixed with a healthy dose of survival instinct. It was a dangerous combination. And one that scared me, a lot.
The rest of the evening passed without any more revelations. Johnny continued his pathetic attempts to flirt with me and Rick and Mary Ann became more and more enamored. We eventually parted ways after Mary Ann and Rick exchanged numbers. I gave my number to Johnny as well, but only because he said he might be able to convince Maggie Gallagher to agree to an interview. All I wanted to do was go home, curl up in front of the television. But any hope I had of achieving a state of calm went out the window when I saw Anatoly sitting on my doorstep.
“You lied to me,” he snapped.
“How is that possible?” I quibbled. “I haven’t been talking to you.”
“You spoke to me for five minutes the other day, which is apparently all the time you needed. Did it ever occur to you that the reason I wasn’t ready to commit was because you were so rarely honest with me?”
I blinked in surprise. “That’s the reason?”
“No, but if it was it would have been a logical one.”
“I think I hate you.”
Anatoly’s mouth turned up slightly at the corners. “Another lie.”
“Why are you here?”
“Your friend Melanie O’Reilly called me.”
“What! Why?” The pounding in my temples increased in force. “How the hell did she even get your number?”
“I’m listed in the phone book under private detectives. That is my vocation if you recall.”
“Yes I recall,” I emphasized the last word to underscore my feelings about his condescension, “but Melanie doesn’t need a private detective. She has me.”
Anatoly lifted his eyebrow. “Explain to me how this is helpful.”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’ve been gathering information for her!”
Anatoly took a step forward and put a hand on each one of my arms. “I know I’ve said this before, but since you never listen I’ll say it again. You are not a detective. You are a writer. You have no business running around the city trying to solve murders.”
“I’m not trying to solve a murder. I’m just doing a little research.” I unlocked the door to my building and tried to close it in Anatoly’s face, but he was too quick for me and scooted into the lobby.
“I’m not in the mood for this, Anatoly,” I snapped. “If you want to talk to me you call me. You do not get to just show up at my place unannounced.”
“I called your home and cell. You didn’t pick up.”
“Bullshit.” I reached into my purse and fished for my cell phone. “I’ve had this on all day and you didn’t…oh.” I looked at the words “one missed call” printed across the screen of my Nokia. The restaurant had been a little noisy. “So you phoned,” I grumbled. “You still shouldn’t have come over without talking to me first.”
“We can talk now,” he said. “Melanie told me that Flynn Fitzgerald hired Eugene to get the goods on Anne Brooke.”
Melanie told him that? “Tell me something I don’t know.”
He crossed his arms and leaned his back against the wall of mailboxes. “I think there’s a chance Eugene’s death might be politically motivated.”
“Really?” I tried to swallow my panic. Hearing that idea vocalized by someone else gave it a validity that I didn’t want it to have.
“Melanie offered me a significant sum of money to look into Eugene’s death. She said she wanted to hire me before but you told her I was unavailable.”
“You aren’t available…at least not emotionally.”
“I’m going to take the case,” Anatoly said.
“You are?” Maybe this was a good thing after all. He was forcing the issue of my talking to him, anyway, so now I could give him the information I had collected so far and start focusing on my next book. And if I did have to talk to him, this was the way to do it, in my lobby while he was being too obnoxious to be attractive.
“But I’m going to tell her I have one condition,” he continued. “I don’t want you involved in the case at all. You are not to question people or research Eugene O’Reilly’s death in any way.”
I blinked in disbelief. “Excuse me? What gives you the
