Murder in the White House (Capital Crimes Book 1) by Margaret Truman

place with some company.”
    “When did he say that?”
    “Oh, he said it two or three times in the last two weeks.”
    “Was he serious?”
    “Yes. I thought so.”
    Ron turned to another thought. “You say he was generous. In spirit? Materially?”
    “Both ways. I have some lovely gifts I’ll remember him by.”
    “Expensive gifts?”
    “I think so.”
    “Could you give me a list?”
    “Must I?”
    “I’ll need it,” Ron said firmly. He stood. “I’ll try to protect your reputation. I’ll need the list, and there will be more questions—”
    “When they find my fingerprints…?”
    “I’m sure they already have. And when they report to me, I will keep it confidential that you lived part-time in the Secretary of State’s apartment—if I can.”
    ***
    Ron recalled now a weekend at Shangri-La. (Eisenhower had changed the name to Camp David, and Webster had changed it back again.) It was during the second summer of the Administration. Webster never retreated to Shangri-La to brood, or for intense meetings with his inner circle; he went there to relax in the company of people he liked. It had been a well-noted measure of Ron’s relationship with the First Family that he was invited to the weekend mini-vacations in the Maryland mountains. Blaine was invited too. Gimbel was not.
    This was in August. It had been intolerably hot and damp in Washington ever since June. The government had slowed down, literally, because of the heat, the sweat, the fatigue. At Shangri-La it was hot, but here the heat was at least drier, and windy; and drinking long cool drinks in the shade of the trees, the presidential party could loosen some and regain a sense of perspective.
    President Webster was no athlete. He swam lazily in the cool water of the big pool, but he kept away fromthe tennis courts, from the volleyball games, from the joggers on the trails through the woods. No dedicated walker like Truman, or frantic jogger like Carter. Ron did the same. The sweaty camaraderie of the locker room was alien territory to him. He swam, sat by the pool, sipped gin-and-tonics, and caught some needed shut-eye.
    Blaine jogged. Blaine played tennis. Blaine encouraged Lynne to do likewise. She played a decent game of tennis; he was too old to beat her. Catherine Webster also played tennis, but she was no competition for Blaine.
    Blaine had brought with him to Shangri-La this particular weekend a young woman, an associate professor of far eastern history at Northwestern University. She had been his student a few years previously. An attractive, golden-tanned blonde, she would have been a beauty except for being somewhat overweight. Ostensibly she was spending the weekend with Blaine to brief him on some recent developments in Taiwanese party politics. In fact, she was sleeping with him, slipping from her cottage to his after midnight and slipping back at dawn, pretending that no one knew. She was overwhelmed by the good fortune—actually, Blaine’s good favor—that had brought her to Shangri-La to spend a weekend in the company of the President of the United States. She was conspicuously and—as Lynne put it—disgustingly grateful.
    “Another touch, professor?” the President said to her. Her name was Barbara Galena, but the President had begun to call her “professor” immediately after being introduced to her on Friday afternoon. She was already slurring her words and suppressing giggles with difficulty,and it seemed to amuse him to offer her another drink.
    “Thank you, Mr. President, I believe I will… just a small one, though…” She looked at him over the tops of her sunglasses and grinned. She wore a bright red maillot swimsuit, stretched tight over her generous figure; and when she got up from her lounge chair to accept another Bloody Mary from the President, parts of her noticeably shifted inside the tight thin fabric.
    Catherine Webster, also in a maillot—hers violet—watched the President serve the drink and