The announcement of his candidacy for the Democratic bid for the governor’s spot went off without a hitch. Well-wishers, flacks, hangers-on, and party honchos had all crowded the ballroom, and oh how the liquor flowed.
The Democratic hordes ate all the free food, drank all the free booze, and left, along with reporters from the Telegraph and the rest of the local news media. Which was worse? Demo party flacks or journos? Who ate the most free food? That was a toughie, C.C. decided. Lay out a plate of sandwiches and you could put money on journos and party hacks to appear out of nowhere.
Hell…who cared? It was all business-expensed anyway.
Once C.C. was in the Mansion, he’d be able to throw any soiree he wanted, and the already-bloated state budget would pick up the tab. The state budget was so fat, none of it mattered anyway.
Eugene himself had made a brief appearance, wearing those damn aviator sunglasses again, even in the darkened ballroom. He spoke only a few words of congratulations as Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” pulsated so loudly C.C. could hardly make out what Eugene was saying.
Whatever it was, it was something warm and supportive, C.C. was sure.
Before melting back into the crowded room, Eugene clapped C.C. on the back and spoke directly into his ear, saying something about C.C. deserving not only the governor’s bid, but one hell of a celebration.
C.C. planned to do just that as soon as he could lose his wife, Betty, up from Dooley County since the afternoon before on one of her rare trips up to the big Sin City.
He had to hand it to her, though. Betty had stood by him dutifully throughout the onstage regalia. She actually looked damn fine, decked out in a navy blue long-sleeved suit, hair back in a ’do courtesy of her beautician at Cut and Curl back home in Dooley.
The memory of another woman intruded as he thought wistfully of Tina. He had noticed that woman at the party tonight, in her mid-thirties and wearing a low-cut red dress. What a rack that one had.
Suddenly, the red dress stirred up surprising thoughts of romance that broke through C.C.’s hazy buzz.
Should he wrestle his way out of the easy chair and go try with Betty? For old times’ sake? Just to see what would happen?
It had been nearly four years since he’d last attempted such a thing. The rebuff was still fresh in his mind. Betty could be a cold, cold woman when she wanted to. It was after a bitter breakup after a brief affair C.C. had with a former court reporter, Janice. When he couldn’t “commit,” Janice had dumped him. He was sure Betty never knew about Janice, but the fact that his own wife rejected him when he needed her the most still hurt C.C. deeply.
Thank God Tina came into his life.
He started humming “their” song, “Freebird.”
He hadn’t seen her in nearly two weeks, and missing the club was making him cranky and antsy. To hell with it-after a stop at Phipps Plaza for some power shopping tomorrow, Betty would be long gone. Praise the Lord.
His first order of business once he got to the Mansion would be to re-examine the damn Hope Scholarship.
Currently, all Georgia Lottery proceeds, repeat all proceeds, went to education. That was just wrong. The state was sitting on a pile of money and it was all going to education. Whose idiot idea was that anyway?
Reform. That would be his platform! Genius!
Oh how he wished he could write that down so this thought wouldn’t just evaporate in a few hours the way so many of his breakthroughs did…but he had no idea where he could get a pencil.
Kicked back there in the leather chair, C.C.’s mind wandered, and surveying the world around him, he happened to spot his own shoes.
They were absolutely stunning. Italian leather, shined to a sheen. Who did that? he wondered. Made his shoes so shiny? Someone. Whoever did the laundry.
What a night. C.C. dozed.
49
St. Simons Island, Georgia
M ONDAY. MORNING. EARLY.
Something stirred in the morning quiet.
Virginia Gunn awakened and rolled over, twisting herself in the sheets, resisting the urge to open her eyes.
Something woke her up…hadn’t it?
Everything was silent in the house, upstairs and down…so what was it she just heard? Was it anything? In the still of her bedroom, the only sound was the waves outside, lapping up against the thin strip of beach beyond her house.
She rolled over again, yawning.
As she tried to fall back to sleep, her thoughts naturally drifted to the pressing problem at hand.
Time was of the essence…there were millions riding on the Palmetto high-rises, and she knew it. She did some digging around at the County Clerk’s Office and discovered the possible moneyman was Floyd Eugene, a cutthroat…a political majordomo out of Atlanta. Property in surrounding blocks had changed hands during the past two years, and Virginia smelled a rat.
Her raids on his property were costing him money. How much longer until payback came around? She’d have to-
A loud thump suddenly ripped the silence.
Immediately, the old wooden beach house was filled with an intense storm of barking from a pack of hysterical wiener dogs…her wiener dogs.
Obviously, the newspaper boy had driven up and stepped through the gate of the high wooden fence surrounding her yard to sling the morning paper, rolled and rubber-banded, at the front door. The boy’s bull’s-eye hit in the center of the front door sparked the usual fear of deadly attack among the wieners and, in an effort to protect everything they lived for, i.e., Virginia, the house, the doggie treats in the kitchen, they commenced to throw themselves violently at the door in the entrance hall.
“Shut up, damn it…shut UP!” she screamed into the empty space in her bedroom, not bothering to roll over off her stomach, much less trudge out to the top of the stairs and yell down at them.
She could see them in her mind’s eye right now, a snarling, furry mass at the foot of the front door, barking their lungs out at the tiny slit of light between the base of the door and the hardwood floor…prepared to maul to death their would-be attacker.
The sharp reprimand she screamed out didn’t make a dent. It just bounced off the bedroom walls and disappeared into the carpet, while the barking continued at the same fevered pitch.
The newsboy would have been toast if Virginia hadn’t locked the doggie chute at the bottom of the front door last night.
Opening one eye only, she looked over to see the digital clock display. It was only 7:15 a.m. What the hell. They’d never let her sleep now, and the furious barking had woken up the birds, all housed in elaborate cages in the dining room.
Claudine the parrot was squawking full blast and attacking the little row of bells Virginia had attached directly beside her water bowl…a distraction… something for the bird to play with. Quietly. Delicately. In a manner befitting a beautiful bird…a beautiful tropical bird that Virginia had paid good money for in order to spring her from a pet store in Baxley, Georgia. What the hell was the bird doing? Tearing the bells out of the cage with her bare claws?
Then came the last straw.
The phone began to ring.
She still refused to move. It was too early. She lay on her stomach, face to the side underneath a pillow, counting. She silently counted fourteen rings.
In Virginia’s mind, fourteen rings at this hour amounted to stalking. Any idiot would know that after four to five rings, either the callee wasn’t at home or obviously didn’t want to be bothered. Hello! Didn’t anybody have any damn manners on this Island?
At last, the phone went quiet, the barking subsided, the bells on the bird cages were stilled…peace.