Tail Spin

night?”
    “Me? All right, I suppose I am a suspect. Trust me, I don’t need a calendar. That night is burned into my memory forever. I was to have dinner with Susan Wentworth—she works over in the GAO. But we didn’t go, I can’t remember the reason. So I don’t have an alibi for the night of Senator Abbott’s death.” He looked down at his watch. “I must brief Senator Jankel. He needs my input before he votes.” He rose, didn’t offer to shake hands. He said to Rachael, “I hope you think long and hard about this, Rachael. Very hard.”
    Rachael didn’t say anything. Jack thought she looked sad, and very tired.
    Outside Senator Jankel’s office, Jack said, “I expected you to tell him someone was trying to kill you, but you didn’t.”
    “To be honest, I didn’t see the point. He is very bright, Jack, and very smooth. His word against mine, and what good would it do? And he knows that.” She shrugged. “I don’t blame him, not really. He was only trying to clean up the mess; he didn’t create it.”
    Jack said, “He’s also a liar.”
    “Yes, he is.”
    Jack said, “Do you think he murdered your father?”
    Rachael paused on the sidewalk in front of the Hart Senate Office Building and raised her face to the warm sun. She said, “Bottom line, who would hire him on Capitol Hill if it was known he helped my father cover up that accident? Oh, I don’t know. My head hurts.”

THIRTY-FOUR
    When Savich called Congresswoman McManus’s office, a staffer told him she wouldn’t be in today, and that was all. It was no problem discovering McManus’s home address. They drove straight to her house in Tenleytown, past the business district along Wisconsin Avenue to Upton Street. “No warning?” Sherlock asked. Savich shook his head. “Nope.”
    “I would assume she’s a very busy woman. I hope she’s home and not off at some function.”
    Dolores McManus was home. Her secretary, Nicole Merril, brought down her thick dark raised eyebrow when Savich identified them, then she led them to the congresswoman’s home office in the back of the good-sized redbrick Georgian house set back from the busy street, surrounded by oak and maple trees. She knocked once, lightly, then ushered them into a room that wasn’t all that large, but it was beautiful, covered with bookshelves, even a ladder to reach the ones on top, heavy dark furniture you could sink into, too warm for Sherlock’s taste.
    Nicole Merril said, “Congresswoman McManus, forgive the interruption. This is Agent Savich and Agent Sherlock from the FBI, here to see you about a Dr. Timothy MacLean.”
    As an intro, it did the trick. Savich saw McManus’s hands fall off her computer keyboard and he’d swear she nearly rose straight out of her chair before she got herself together.
    Then she straightened to her full height, and stood tall and still, facing them. In person, Congresswoman Dolores McManus was magnificent and well-dressed, standing close to six feet tall, with a sturdy, solid build and an amazing face, all angles and hollows, and deep lines seamed along the sides of her mouth. That mouth was opening right now, and Savich knew to his heels this woman loved to mix it up, no matter who or what the subject. Maybe he’d cheer her on if he agreed with her politics; at least he would if she hadn’t paid some yahoo thug from Savannah to murder her trucker husband.
    He looked into those dark eyes, saw both guilt and knowledge. He knew she’d done it. She’d thought about it carefully, gone through a dozen pros and cons, a dozen scenarios, then planned it meticulously, probably scared the spit out of the guy she hired to kill Mr. McManus.
    He’d really like to have seen her with Timothy in the room, but of course there was no way she would have agreed to such an arrangement. If she was the one who tried to kill MacLean and indeed killed his tennis partner, Arthur Dolan, did she somehow manage to get out of Washington unnoticed and make the attempts herself, or did she hire someone like she did with her husband?
    “Congresswoman,” he said, striding forward, his hand out, giving her an engaging smile. “Thank you for seeing us.”
    McManus shook their hands, gave them both a quick up-and-down look, offered them water, which they both refused, and said, “Agents. Let me say, this is unexpected. Nicole said you are from the FBI?”
    “That’s right, ma’am.” Sherlock gave her a sunny smile. “We would appreciate your