“So who should do most of the talking?” Jason asked as they quickly walked down the sidewalk two days later. He peered apprehensively at the steel façade of the swank art deco restaurant and frowned.
In five minutes, they were scheduled to meet Daniel Forester, Dupré’s former life-long friend, for drinks. Phil had suddenly come down with a twenty-four-hour flu bug and couldn’t attend the important meeting. He had sent Jason instead.
To keep an eye on me, I assume, Keisha thought tersely.
She had done her prep work before coming this evening. She knew Forester was a local real estate mogul who had come from old money, like Dupré. She knew the names of his three children and four ex-wives. She knew where he lived (Chantilly, Virginia) and even what his house looked like (a 5,800-square-foot colonial with an adjacent guesthouse). But she still felt uneasy, as if she wasn’t prepared for what was about to happen today. Perhaps it was because Forester still had not given any hint of the big secret he would reveal, or maybe it was because she didn’t know why he suddenly had an axe to grind when it came to Dupré.
No, that’s not it, Keisha thought. She was uneasy because her mother was angry at her; even worse, she was “disappointed”, as she had told Keisha on the phone the night before. She said she was disappointed that her daughter would play the dirty game of politics and purposely try to destroy someone else’s reputation. She said she was disappointed that Keisha cared more about her job than the privacy of another human being. When Keisha tried to explain herself, her mother cut her off. “Just tell me, are you still going to that meeting tomorrow, Keisha?” her mother questioned. When Keisha said yes, her mother hung up on her, shocking her once again.
Lena’s condemnation weighed heavy on her. So much so that—despite the fear of angering Phil—she had seriously contemplated not showing up at the restaurant today. She had even sat in her car for a good ten minutes, debating over whether she should just leave the restaurant’s parking lot and go home. But in the end, her sense of duty outweighed her sense of guilt.
“I’ve never done anything like this before, Keisha,” Jay now admitted as they paused by the restaurant’s glass doors. “Maybe you should talk first.”
“I’m a virgin at this, too, Jay,” Keisha muttered, blowing warm air onto her gloved hands, which were numb either because of the biting cold or her frayed nerves. “I’d be just as awkward as you at this.”
“I still say you talk first,” he insisted.
Keisha glared at him in response.
“Well, rock, paper, scissors then?” he whined.
“Are you serious?” she asked.
Jason clinched his hands and sighed. “Okay, fine. Let’s just go in then. I guess we’ll just…play it by ear.”
They both nodded and took a deep breath. Jason held the restaurant door open for her and they immediately walked over to the hostess who stood behind a marble counter.
“Seating for two?” she asked perkily.
Jay loudly cleared his throat. “Uh, no. Actually, we’re meeting someone, thank you. I believe he’s already here.”
The brunette slowly nodded and extended her hand toward the tables. “Go right ahead.”
They slowly made their way across the restaurant to the table where Forester now sat. He was portly, with a sprinkling of freckles along his nose that stood out against his wrinkled jowls. The hair along his temples was graying, and the hair on his forehead had long ago receded and left only a few stray strands clinging to his scalp. He wore a white starched shirt, gray slacks, and penny loafers and currently seemed to be nursing what looked like a scotch on the rocks.
Keisha pasted on an award-winning smile as they neared his table, deciding if she was going to do this, she would do it well.
She stepped forward first to Forester and extended her hand. “Mr. Forester?”
“Yes,” he rumbled in a heavy baritone as he looked up absently.
“Keisha Reynolds, sir. It’s pleasure to meet you.”
His eyes widened. “Pleasure to meet you, too,” he replied as he shook her hand firmly. The words were kind but there was no warmth in his voice.
“And this is Jason Wheeler, Phil Levine’s assistant,” she said as she turned to Jason.
Jason eagerly shook Forester’s hand. “Unfortunately, Mr. Levine has fallen ill and won’t be able to be here, Mr. Forester,” Jason said. “But we are fully capable of handling this ourselves, sir.”
Forester glanced up at Jason warily. “I should hope so,” he said dryly. The older man leaned back in his chair as they lowered themselves into two of the three empty seats at the table.
“I half expected to find you guys wearing dark sunglasses, fedoras, and trench coats, considering all the intrigue,” he said with a dry smile and a chuckle before tossing back his drink. “The fake name I gave to the hostess,” he continued with another chuckle. “I feel like I’m in the CIA.”
A waiter stepped forward and asked if Keisha or Jason would like to see a menu. She shook her head and ordered just a glass of white wine. Jason did the same.
Jason leaned forward. “Mr. Forester, all this ‘intrigue’ is simply for protection, sir. We didn’t want to put you in a …a…” Jason looked up in the air, as if he was searching there for the right word. “…a compromising situation, shall we say. We understand you are very old friends and have a close relationship with Congressman Dupré.”
“Not anymore,” Forester proclaimed as he took a quick gulp from his glass. “Don’t worry. When the axe falls, I want Vincent to know who did it to him,” he said with an icy smile that sent a chill down Keisha’s spine. “Plaster it on a wall for all I care.”
Keisha frowned, biting back the question, “So revenge is your motivation for talking to us?”
“What Vincent did to me with that whole land deal was inexcusable, unforgivable!” he suddenly boomed. “Do you two know how much money I had invested in that deal?”
He paused as if they would answer, but in fact they had no idea what he was talking about.
“I needed his support on that congressional committee and he just left me swinging in the wind,” he said, waving his hand for illustration. “He said he had to do it…but I don’t buy that for one second. He’s goddamned Congressman Vincent Dupré, for Chrissake! Minority Whip of the House! He can do anything he goddamn wants!” Forester spat. “He hurt my ambitions, now I plan to hurt his. He plans to become president one day, you know.” He smiled. “Fat chance at that when this comes out!”
“When what comes out, Mr. Forester?” she asked, hoping to steer him back to the subject at hand. There was something about this guy that made her queasy. The less time she spent around him, the better.
Keisha watched as Forester leaned back in his chair again, staring at her across the table. He took another gulp from his glass, sucking an ice cube as he did so. “Oh, it’s good,” he said before loudly crunching on the cube of ice. “Believe me. But I warn you that you have to confirm what I’m saying first, before you take it to the press. I can tell you only what I know. You’ll have to track her down if you want to find out for sure.”
Jason frowned. “Track who down?”
“The mother of his child,” Forester said impatiently, waving to the waiter to get him another drink.
Now both Keisha and Jason frowned.
“Not Sara Dupré,” Forester elaborated. “The one before that. The one he didn’t marry.”
Jason slowly shook his head. “Dupré has another child?”
“Yes, illegitimate. Bastards are what they called them back in my day!” Forester boomed, making Keisha’s and Jason’s eyes widen in shock. “No one would guess it of Vincent Dupré. Not Mr. Family Values,” he said sarcastically. “Look, I can say with 90 percent certainty that he has some other son or daughter running around out there, but, like I said,” he murmured with a shrug, “you’ll have to track her down to know for sure. I can’t remember her name. The last time I saw her was many, many years ago. Back in the late ’70s. I believe it was at a hotel in Philadelphia.”
Keisha pursed her lips. The only clue he had was she was last seen walking around Philly more than thirty years ago? Great, Keisha thought flippantly. She had been right to be wary of the information Forester had to share. This is like looking for a needle in a haystack, she thought. They’d probably have a better chance of finding Jimmy Hoffa than they would of finding this woman.
Keisha and Jason exchanged a look: his was of disappointment, hers said, “I figured this would happen.”
Ever the good employee, Jason pressed forward. “Well, can you…can you tell us anything else about her, Mr. Forester?” he persisted. “About their relationship? Maybe talking about it could help us or help jog your memory.”
Forester gave a long sigh before closing his eyes. “She was short and black,” he blurted out.
Keisha gazed at Forester in shock. Black? She leaned forward eagerly. This was definitely getting interesting.
“She had dark skin and she was a dancer...I think,” he continued. “They lived in D.C. together for a year or two when he was younger, back when he had loose morals. But I could tell from early on that the relationship was doomed.”
“Why?” Keisha asked.
“Well, besides the black thing, they didn’t exactly run in the same circles, if you know what I mean,” Forester said as the waiter placed wine glasses in front of Keisha and Jason. “Vincent comes from a family that’s very wealthy and highly respected, and here was this…this …nobody,” Forester said with a disgusted curl to his lips. “She was this little black girl, and I mean girl. She was barely eighteen years old. She had no money and no family to speak of. She barely graduated from high school,” he remarked. “All she had going for her was a pretty face, and that will only carry you so far. She was severely in over her head,” Forester declared.
“I asked him at the time, ‘Vincent, what do you think you’re doing with this girl? Have you completely lost your mind?’ And he said, ‘I can’t help it, Bill. I love her.’ He was always a hopeless romantic. Idiot,” Forester spat. “I remember when he decided to bring her to one of his parents’ dinner parties so he could introduce her to everyone. His parents were barely speaking to him by then. I warned him against it. You have to understand,” he explained. “People didn’t necessarily object to the relationship. Plenty of Southern men…gentlemen, if you will…keep young ladies like her on the side.”
You mean like Strom Thurmond? Keisha thought with disgust.
“But you don’t flaunt it! You don’t throw it up in everyone’s face!” Foster slowly shook his head. “But Vincent wouldn’t listen. So he brings her to the dinner party and she shows up in this gigantic afro, these big platform shoes, and this cheap little sundress. She was so out of her element! I think it took her ten minutes to figure out which fork to use.” He cruelly chuckled again.
Can we go easy with the insults, buddy? Keisha thought.
“Needless to say, Mrs. Jacqueline Dupré was not amused.” He slowly shook his head. “And later she let her son and his new girlfriend know it. I would say that was the beginning of the end for them. But when that girl got pregnant, that was the finale.”
“So Dupré’s managed to keep his child a secret for all these years?” Jason said with awe. “I’m surprised no one’s discovered it by now.”
Keisha stared at Jason. He of all people should know how easy it was to keep secrets. Besides Keisha, only a few people in their campaign knew Jason was gay.
“Well, it wasn’t exactly a secret,” Forester replied. “I don’t think he’s trying to hide the child. I don’t think Dupré even knows she had a baby. When he found out she was pregnant, he tried to do the noble thing. Like an idiot, he asked her to marry him. But she told him no, thank God. She was going to have an abortion instead. I wasn’t surprised. Who knows how many abortions she may have had before,” Forester quipped. He had more of his drink. “They had this big blow-up and went their separate ways. But I ran into her during a business trip in Philadelphia.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Believe it or not, she was one of the maids cleaning at the hotel where I stayed. I wasn’t sure at first if it was her because she was just so…so big,” he said, motioning to his plump stomach. “She had always been a tiny thing, but this woman had to be about seven or eight months pregnant at the time. I second guessed myself because I remembered Vincent saying that she had gotten an abortion. But after looking at her for a bit I knew it was her walking down the hallway with that cleaning cart. I could tell it was her by the face and of course, she was still wearing the locket he had given her,” he said casually.
Keisha narrowed her eyes. “A locket?”
“Yes, a silver locket with roses engraved on the front with a pearl embedded at the center. It was one of a kind—a family heirloom. His grandmother got it from her mother. The old gal had it made in Paris at the turn of the century, from what I was told. And it wasn’t cheap. I was surprised his ex-girlfriend hadn’t pawned it by then,” he said derisively as he drank from his glass.
Keisha reached instinctively for the locket hidden beneath her suit jacket—a tarnished silver locket with roses engraved on the front with a pearl embedded at the center. Was that why Dupré had seemed so shocked all those months ago to see her wearing it? Was that why he had asked her where she had gotten it? Maybe he had mistaken her locket for the antique locket he had given his lover all those years ago.
Keisha frowned. She was starting to feel pity for Vincent Dupré, and that wasn’t the emotion she wanted to have right now. Sure, letting the world know that he had lived with a woman—a black woman at that—before marriage and possibly had an out-of-wedlock child with her could destroy his Christian image and sink him with the right-wingers, but the story didn’t seem as straightforward as all that. He had tried to marry her. He had fallen in love with her against his parents’ and society’s wishes. The sight of Keisha’s locket had drawn an extreme reaction from him thirty years after the fact, showing that his emotions for this woman must still be strong—much like the emotions Keisha’s mother still felt for her deceased father. Maybe Dupré and my mother should set up a support group, Keisha thought flippantly. Again she pressed her hand against the locket that she loved so much. She suddenly blinked, taken aback by a thought that had bubbled to the surface. Forester’s words had started to create a pattern that she found disturbing.
She was short. She had dark skin and she was a dancer.
I ran into her during a business trip in Philadelphia.
And now the locket; he had described the locket her mother had given her almost perfectly.
Keisha’s eyes widened and her stomach plummeted as a wave of awareness suddenly swept over her. No, she thought with shock as she slowly shook her head. No, don’t even think about it. That is not possible. These are all just coincidences. Your father died a long time ago. But she couldn’t help thinking it. She couldn’t help asking herself. Why did her mother have so much in common with the woman Forester described? Why had Keisha never been able to find out anything about her father? Why had her mother been so angry when she mentioned that Forester planned to reveal Dupré’s secret?
There is no way in hell that Vincent Dupré is my father!
Are you sure about that, a nagging voice inside her head asked in return. Are you really sure?
“Jason,” Keisha said quickly, “maybe you should pop out and let Phil know what we found out. Keep him updated.”
Jason frowned. “You want me to do it now?”
“Why not?” she persisted. “I’m sure he’s waiting for one of us to call. His Bluetooth probably hasn’t left his ear for hours.”
Jason gazed at her for several seconds before slowly nodding his head. “You’re right,” he said. “If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Forester, I’ll be right back.”
Forester nodded as Jason rose from the table.
Keisha watched and waited until Jason was out of earshot before she turned back to face the older man. “Mr. Forester, I think we’re going to need a little more help here,” she said slowly, “if we’re really going to track down the woman you were talking about.”
He rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Young lady, I told you all that I know! I can’t—”
“Her name,” Keisha continued, cutting him off, “you really can’t remember it?”
He thought for several seconds before slowly shaking his head. “I’m sorry, but like I told you before, I just cannot recall.”
“Was her first name…Lena?”
She watched as he looked up in the air and squinted. She sat with bated breath, silently willing him to deny it. Please say ‘no’, please, she thought.
“Lena,” he murmured. “Lena…Lena…actually, that does sound familiar. I believe that could be…” He pursed his lips. “Now that I think of it…,” he tilted his head, “…It was Lena and something with an R. Raymond…Reginald,” he muttered. “It was something like that.” He frowned. “How did you know her name was Lena?”
This is not possible, Keisha thought with panic. She closed her eyes, wanting to break down into tears, to drop her face into her hands and sob, but she couldn’t. She needed to know the truth. She had to ask Forester one more question and Jason would probably return soon. She didn’t have much time to ask it.
“Mr. Forester, I want to show you something,” she said as she quickly opened the buttons of her jacket, making him raise his eyebrows in surprise. “I want you to have a look at this,” she said as she pulled her locket out of her shirt, holding it toward him. “Does this at all look like the locket that Dupré gave to his girlfriend back then, before they broke up?”
Forester gazed at the silver piece and slowly reached out to touch it. “Where did you get that?” he whispered, transfixed.
She quickly shook her head. “Never mind that!” she almost shouted. “Just please, please tell me if it looks like the locket?” she pleaded. “Do you think it’s the same one?”
Forester’s frown intensified. He leaned back in his chair and studied her carefully. “Young lady, I believe I’ve said enough. You seem to know a lot more about the story than you’re letting on. You knew her name and here you are with Vincent’s locket. This is all very…very suspicious to me,” he said. “It’s very…disturbing.”
“It’s very disturbing to me, too, Mr. Forester,” she said quietly, feeling as if the world was spinning around her. “You have no idea how much.”
“Well, I’m back,” Jason suddenly piped as he sat back in the chair beside her. “And you were right, Keisha, Phil was elated to hear the news. He wants to start tracking this woman down ASAP. He wants you to call him when you get the chance.”
Keisha quickly shook her head. “I have to go, Jason,” she said as she rose from the table and gathered her purse and her coat. “I can’t…I can’t stay here.”
Jason frowned up at her while Forester gazed at her angrily. “Wh-what do you mean you can’t stay?”
“Tell Phil that I’ll talk to him tomorrow,” she said hurriedly over her shoulder.
“Keisha! Keisha, where are you going?”
She ignored him as she made her way across the crowded restaurant, feeling her whole body tremble.
“You have a good afternoon, ma’am,” the hostess said merrily as Keisha pushed open the glass door and nearly ran into a couple as she walked quickly toward the parking lot. She knew instantly where she needed to go—if only she could stop shaking long enough to get there.