Alien in the House

was still basically a mess. I went to her and gave her a hug. “Thank you so much. We cleaned up, so I don’t think anyone will know I was upstairs barfing my guts out. Well, other than the police. But you know what I mean.”
    She nodded. “Your clearance arrived. After the police,” she added. “I’m so sorry you had to witness this. If your husband’s clearances had been done right away, you all would have been upstairs.”
    “That’s true.” I hugged her again. “But then you’d have had to go through that alone, so, even though I got sick, I’m glad we were here to help you.”
    “You’re so sweet, thank you. Your young men have been so helpful, especially Vance.” Vance was with the Brewers and the boys. She gave him a little wave. He waved back and blew her a kiss.
    Irene was younger than Mom but older than me for sure. I didn’t call her as Vance’s type. And she didn’t seem to be taking this sexually. True to his own hype, there appeared to be more to Vance than met the eye.
    The paramedics declared the death a heart attack. No one mentioned anything about marks on the victim’s neck. The police told us all we were free to go. Which was good. Because I wanted to go. But I had one last question for Irene.
    “Who finally cleared us to go up?”
    “Oh, Representative Brewer solved it. He called someone in Homeland Security and they basically had a fit that you’d been waiting so long.”
    “Cliff Goodman?”
    “Yes! He was outraged you’d been kept waiting. I believe he’s going to be investigating what happened.”
    “That’s nice.” It was. It hadn’t even occurred to me to call Cliff to see if he could help with this. Well, at least Brewer had had the foresight.
    My phone rang. “Excuse me.” Pulled it out. “Hello?”
    “Kitty, it’s Cliff. Are you and Jeff alright?”
    “Yeah. Thanks for clearing us to get into our offices.”
    “No problem, that was unreal, bureaucracy in action, but that’s not why I’m calling. Ed said that someone had been hurt.”
    “No, someone’s dead. Representative Juvonic.”
    “I don’t really know him, but that’s awful news.”
    “We don’t know him either, and now we never will. The paramedics say he had a heart attack.”
    Filled Cliff in on what had happened before I’d gotten “sick,” leaving out any mention of a potential sniper, me seeing Juvonic touch his neck right before he went down, my suspicions that Juvonic had been murdered, or the fact that Jeff and I had just rifled through a lot of other people’s offices. Chuckie trusted Cliff so I trusted Cliff, but there was no reason to bring anyone else into my theories right now, especially someone who might not like the idea that we’d gone through those offices without any official sanction.
    However, the rest of it, including the number of times we were told we couldn’t go to Jeff’s office, I gave him in Technicolor detail. “So, now I don’t know what we should do.”
    “You know, you have a couple hours before Jeff gets sworn in. Why don’t you guys just go somewhere and relax? The work can wait, and it’s not like Jeff’s going to get caught up today anyway. You’ve had a hell of a couple of days, Kitty. Take a break and get a breather.”
    “The Brewers did want to go to lunch.”
    “See? Do it.”
    “You want to join us?”
    “I’d love to. Unfortunately, I can’t. But I’ll see you at the ceremony.”
    “Sounds good. And, Cliff, thanks. We’ll worry about Jeff’s office later.”
    “Good plan.”
    We hung up and I joined the others. “Cliff says we should stop trying to be responsible and just have lunch and hang out before the swearing-in ceremony.”
    Nathalie nodded. “Just think, if I’d convinced you to play hooky earlier, you’d have missed all this.”
    “We’ll never say no again,” Jeff said with a short laugh.
    “We need somewhere we can seat a lot of people,” I added.
    “Not to worry,” Nathalie said as she linked her arm through mine. “I know a perfect place.”



CHAPTER 54
    O LIVER CHOSE TO STAY at Rayburn to get all the details for his now front-page story. Everyone else decided getting out of here was a great plan.
    Despite my being almost pathologically against the idea of walking outside, unprotected in the streets, the Brewers were all for it. So it was either go along or tell them why I wanted to remain safely inside.
    We went along, Len in the lead, Kyle bringing up the rear, with me trying to