House Rivals by Mike Lawson Page B

said.
    â€œYes. It won’t do any good.”
    They spent the night at a Holiday Inn Express in Great Falls. ­DeMarco was thinking about buying stock in the outfit.
    The next morning—the day after seeing Janet Tyler in Great Falls—Sarah and DeMarco were on the road again, off to see the next two people on Sarah’s list: a man in Billings, Montana, and a woman in Rapid City, South Dakota. Both people had served in their state legislatures but were no longer in office.
    Only one memorable thing happened on this leg of their journey—or at least it was something DeMarco would remember for a long time to come. They were traveling southeast on Highway 87, along the eastern perimeter of the Lewis and Clark National Forest. DeMarco was driving and enjoying the scenery while Sarah was looking at her iPad. DeMarco figured she was investigating something online related to natural gas or Leonard Curtis, when she suddenly let out what he could only describe as a peal of joyful, girlish laughter.
    â€œWhat’s so funny?” he asked.
    She laughed again and said, “One of my girlfriends sent me this YouTube clip of this kitten swatting this big dog on the snout. The dog, it’s a huge St. Bernard, comes close to this little kitten and the kitten smacks it on the nose and the dog blinks a couple of times and backs up, then he comes close to the kitten again, and the kitten smacks him on the nose again. It’s hilarious!”
    DeMarco didn’t say anything for a moment, then said, “You need to do that more often.”
    â€œWhat?” Sarah said.
    â€œLaugh like that,” DeMarco said.
    But that was the only memorable thing that happened. The man who Sarah had planned to see in Billings wasn’t home; they learned from a neighbor that he’d left unexpectedly the night before to go see a brother who’d had a heart attack. The woman in Rapid City refused to talk with Sarah, slamming the door in her face the way Judge Parker in Minot had. By the time they reached the duplex where Sarah lived, she looked like someone had killed her puppy and ate it while she watched.
    â€œI gotta regroup,” she told DeMarco as they pulled up in front of her duplex. “I think you had a good idea about running down whoever’s acting as Curtis’s middleman and I have to think more about how to find him. And you need to call John Mahoney and convince him to get the FBI involved.”
    She’d said this—about getting the FBI involved—maybe sixty times as they’d been making a trip that covered three states and almost fifteen hundred miles. He liked the kid, but she was starting to drive him bonkers and he was relieved when she got out of the car.
    Marjorie was sitting in the family room, watching a stupid zombie movie with Dick and the boys. Dick was sulking as she’d just about ripped his head off when she got home because the kitchen was a disaster: unwashed dishes, food all over the counter, mustard spilled onto the floor, the milk just sitting there spoiling. So she had a right to get angry, but she probably shouldn’t have called him names. Maybe she’d make it up to him by giving him a blow job tonight, something she considered the ultimate sacrifice for marital harmony.
    She wasn’t really watching the movie, either. She was stewing about her partner. Bill Logan was turning into a drunk. The day after he returned from Denver, he went out to lunch and came back to the office two hours later, completely shit-faced. Maybe after Murdock dealt with Johnson he’d get back on track. She sure as hell hoped so because things couldn’t go on the way they were.
    As for Johnson, she still hadn’t gotten back from wherever she’d been. And because Heckler lost her when he ran out of gas, Marjorie still had no idea who’d she’d gone to see. All Gordy could tell from the spyware planted in her cell phone was that she made what