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Clete merely stared at him for several moments. “Hand me that brandy bottle.” David complied, although Clete looked ready to clobber him with the crystal decanter. Clete took two swallows from it. “You’re telling me she was pregnant?”

“She was then. She had the kid a few weeks ago. A boy.”

“He’s yours?”

“How the hell do I know?” David cried, raising his voice for the first time. “It’s possible, but it’s just as possible that he could belong to a dozen other men. She claimed he was mine.”

“Was? Past tense?”

“She started bugging me to come see the baby, insisting he was mine. I was afraid that if I didn’t do it, she’d do something really crazy.

“So I went over there tonight to give her some money. I t

hought that was the least I could do. But… but she was beyond reason, Clete. She threw the money in my face, said I couldn’t buy my way out of my responsibility to her, said she’d settle for nothing less than marriage.”

Every word was like another strike of the hammer, nailing shut the coffin of David Merritt’s political future. Clete now feared he himself might lose his supper on his late wife’s prized oriental rug.

“I told her straight out that marriage was not an option,” David said. “I told her that I was already engaged to someone else, to a woman I love.”

He paused and glanced at Clete. “I realize I haven’t formally proposed to Vanessa, and I don’t intend to until she’s finished college, but she knows how much I love her. It’s been more or less understood that—”

“Get on with it,” Clete rudely interrupted. “What happened when you told this tramp there’d be no marriage?”

“She went berserk.” David sat down again and covered his face with his hands for a few moments. Finally, he lowered his hands and clasped them loosely between his knees. “She was using a dresser drawer for a crib. I guess her shouting had scared the baby. Anyway, he was screaming, and that seemed to drive her over the edge. She said she wasn’t going to be stuck with a kid to raise alone, and then, she… she wrapped her hands around his neck and started choking him. I tried to pry her hands away, but I couldn’t. She strangled him.”

“Jesus Christ!” Clete gasped. “She killed him?”

David nodded. “I couldn’t believe it. One minute he was crying, and the next, he was silent. Dead.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“She didn’t give me a chance,” he cried. “The bitch attacked me. That’s where I got all these scratches. She came at me like a wildcat. I had to protect myself. We scuffled. She lost her balance and fell against the corner of a built-in table. It must’ve fractured her skull. There’s blood all over the place. She’s dead.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, but the tears couldn’t be contained. He began to sob. Shoulders shaking, he cried like a baby. “One mistake. One mistake, and now all you’ve done for me, all we’ve worked toward, is ruined. And Vanessa. Jesus,” he blubbered. “What will Vanessa think of me? How will this affect our future together?”

Clete had spent too much time and care cultivating David Merritt for the presidency to throw it away because of a girl who wouldn’t be missed and a baby who never should have been born. If all they had to consider were the political consequences of David’s misdeeds, Clete would have cleaned up the mess to protect his investment.

But by bringing Vanessa into it, David ensured Clete’s swift intervention. He wasn’t about to let his daughter’s heart be broken by learning that the man she had adored for years and hoped to marry had impregnated some piece of white trash and then accidentally killed her.

In the grand scheme of things, Becky Sturgis and her baby didn’t amount to much, while David Malcomb Merritt was destined for greatness. One of these days he would wield more power than any other individual in the world. Why should all his potential be sacrificed to one error? Why should Vanessa’s hopes and dreams be denied when she was blameless? Innocent of any wrongdoing, she would be the one to suffer most.

No way in hell would Clete let that happen.

“Okay, boy, pull yourself together.” He approached David and gave his back a hearty whack. “Get a shower. Have another brandy. Go to bed. Say nothing about this to anyone. Ever.”

David looked up at him, his expression bleak. “You mean—”

“I’ll take care of it,” Clete said.

David rose unsteadily. “I can’t ask you to do that, Clete. Two people are dead. How are you going to—”

“Let me worry about the particulars.” He poked David in the chest with his stubby index finger. “My job is to make the problem disappear. Your job is to clean up your act. You understand, boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No more indiscriminate screwing around. When you gotta get off, you go to a professional for a nice blow job and send me the bill.”

“Yes, sir.”