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“I see.”
Her eyes were like mirrors of his conscience gazing at him through her glasses. “But I resigned. I hadn’t seen or heard from Spence for more than year—since I left Washington. Then the day after you came to my house, he showed up.”
“Coincidence?”
“No. He came to see me because he either guessed or knew that you’d been there, asking me questions about Vanessa.”
“What did you tell him? About me, I mean.”
Gray knew why she’d asked—she wanted to know if he’d boasted of his latest sexual conquest to his buddy. His hand where she’d bit him was throbbing like a son of a bitch. Seconds after they met, she’d slapped him. In some regards, this Barrie Travis was gutsy and bold. But right now she looked extremely vulnerable, and hell, her dog had just been killed, so although it was a perfect opportunity to embarrass her again, he declined.
“I told Spence that you’d come snooping, that you had this harebrained notion that Vanessa had killed her baby and passed it off as SIDS.”
“You told him that?” she exclaimed. “No wonder they incinerated my house.”
“If I had denied knowing anything about it, he would have seen straight through the lie, so I had to play along. But I knew immediately that you were on to something. Why else would Spence have been nervous enough to come to Wyoming and check out what I knew?”
“You’re absolutely certain that was the purpose of his visit?”
“Yeah,” he said. “There was a commercial airline tic
ket in his breast pocket, round-trip from Washington to Jackson Hole.”
“So?”
“So, Spence told me he was on an errand to Seattle for the President. On any errand like that, he would have taken a government plane. Plus, the ticket had been issued in a phony name. Then, in Jackson Hole, he rented a car under another assumed name. He had no intention of going to Seattle. No, Miss Travis, his was not a social call. Your story poses an extreme threat to the administration, and they’ll do whatever it takes to keep it from getting out.”
“My God,” she whispered, raising bloodless fingers to her lips. “It’s just beginning to sink in. I was right. That baby did not die of SIDS.”
“When did you first suspect that?” She was staring into space. “Miss Travis?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, rubbing her temples. “Hearing my hypothesis from someone else makes it real. The implications are staggering—and terrifying.”
“Especially to the man occupying the White House. Talk me through it,” Gray said. “When did you first suspect that something was wrong?”
“Vanessa called me out of the blue and asked me to meet her. It was immediately apparent to me that she was holding herself together by sheer willpower.”
He listened raptly as Barrie told him everything that had happened after that initial meeting and explained the steps she’d taken to produce the TV series.
“I saw it—the segment with Vanessa.”
“The Vanessa Merritt I interviewed on camera was totally different from the abjectly miserable woman I’d been with weeks before.”
“Not all that surprising,” he told her. “Vanessa is manic-depressive.”
He watched her full lips open in astonishment. “Are you sure? When was she diagnosed?”
“A long time ago. Shortly after they married, I believe.”
Clearly, Barrie was flabbergasted. “How could they keep that under wraps for all these years?”
“Because she’s well treated for it and carefully monitored. Her manic episodes made her an excellent campaigner. She was always up. Always on. Of course she’s on lithium to regulate the mood swings, so they’re apparent only to someone who knows her well. She takes antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs, too. When she’s on her medication, she functions well. One truthful thing Spence said was that the baby’s death has thrown her off balance. The minute I saw her on TV, I knew that something was drastically wrong,” he concluded.
“So you know her very well.”
He dodged that missile by saying, “I know David even better.”
“You actually believe he and his top aide are responsible for blowing up my house?”
