The Raven's Assignment

“Damn,” she said, closing the sandwich once more and putting it back down on the desk.

“Something wrong?” Bettyann entered the office and put some papers down on Samantha’s desk, then deposited her rounded rump there as well.

“Nothing I’d want the media alerted for,” Samantha said, and watched as Bettyann blushed to the roots of her dyed blond hair.

“What…what does that mean?” the secretary asked, looking so guilty Samantha was surprised to not see the woman’s hand stuck wrist-deep in a cookie jar.

“It means, Bettyann, that someone was here yesterday, asking questions about me, and you answered them.”

“I did? What did I say?”

Samantha shook her head. Some things just weren’t worth the effort. “Nothing, forget it.”

“No, really,” Bettyann said, standing up once more, and leaning her hands on the desktop. “Did I say something I shouldn’t have said? And who did I say it to?”

“I’m not sure. Some secretary. Do you remember someone asking questions about me?”

Bettyann shook her head. “No. I do remember someone—a woman—coming in here yesterday, asking questions about everyone. You know, run-of-the-mill gossip. What it’s like to work here, how are the bosses—stuff like that. I thought she was thinking of applying for the job we advertised last week. You know, sort of feeling us out without actually handing us a résumé? Why? Was it a reporter? Oh, cripes, Samantha, please tell me it wasn’t a reporter.”

“It wasn’t a reporter,” Samantha assured her. “Still, Bettyann, in the future, please try not to be so helpful to strangers, okay?”

“No, not okay. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m really, really sorry.”

“I know. But we’re getting closer and closer to New Hampshire, Bettyann, and the magnifying glass is being applied everywhere, including this office. I’ve been working on a memo directed to all staff, concerning questions that may come into the office. A sort of protocol to follow. I should have done it sooner.”

Bettyann grinned. “Oh, good, it’s your fault. I knew it wasn’t my fault.”

“Spoken like a true politician. Get out of here,” Samantha said on a laugh, and watched as Bettyann, hips exaggeratedly wiggling, left the office.

Once the secretary was gone, Samantha rewrapped her half-eaten sandwich and shoved it back into the navy-blue thermal bag she’d brought from home. Maybe she’d be hungry later, although she doubted it.

After Jesse Colton showed up, and looked at the papers locked in her bottom drawer? Maybe then she’d eat. Or she’d never be able to eat again.

Three hours later, while considering designs for a new series of campaign buttons, Samantha looked up at a knock on her opened office door.

She put down the buttons and stood up, then walked around the desk to give the well-dressed brunette a hug. “Aunt Joan, what brings you to the salt mines?”

Mrs. Mark Phillips bestowed an air kiss on Samantha, then stepped back to look around the cluttered office. “Oh, my. Time to get the bulldozers in here again, my dear,” she said as Samantha quickly moved a stack of files from the only other chair and motioned for the senator’s wife to sit down.

Joan Phillips was in her early fifties, but good genes and even better plastic surgery had her looking like a well-preserved forty. Or less.

Dark hair, marvelous blue eyes, skin the consistency of cream. A figure that flattered her designer suits. Jewels glittering on her hands and at her throat and ears, but discreetly, and half of them heirlooms that whispered rather than screamed “old money.” A cultured voice, the ability to look adoringly at her husband as he made the same stump speech for the fiftieth time.

In short, Joan Phillips was the perfect candidate’s wife.

Joan bent down and picked up the “Calm Day Across America” advertisement proposal Samantha had fashioned into an airplane and soared across the office…which was about as far as she thought it should go.

“Is this an editorial comment, or were you just playing?” the senator’s wife asked, unfolding the makeshift airplane and reading the copy.

Samantha smiled. “I’ll let you decide after you read it, okay?”

“Well, that must have taken at least two seconds of thought,” Joan Phillips said after a moment, and then she refolded the page, sent it soaring toward the most distant corner of the room. “Did they come up with anything better than that, I most sincerely hope?”

“I’ve narrowed it down to two, yes, and I’ll send those over for you and the senator to make the final decision. Or would you like to see them now?”

“No, no, not now. There’s plenty of time for that when Mark and I are alone. I don’t want to make up my mind without his input.”

“Okay,” Samantha said, wishing she didn’t feel so nervous. Clumsy. All those bad things she always felt when in the presence of the neatly put-together Mrs. Mark Phillips.

It had always been that way, since she’d been a child. Uncle Mark was a doll, a peach. And his wife was lovely, ambitious. Very, very perfect.

Samantha always felt as if her own hair had to be messy and tangled, her blouse missing a button, her panty hose laddered with runs, whenever she was in Joan’s presence. The woman didn’t mean to make Samantha, or anyone, feel uncomfortable, but that perfection of hers could be intimidating to those who had to deal with her day to day in any official capacity.

To the public, she was just perfect. Pretty, friendly, articulate…even hip.

“Um…so…what does bring you down here, Aunt Joan?” Samantha asked when the silence became uncomfortable. For her, not for Joan. Joan was never uncomfortable.

“Well, dear, to tell you the truth, I just came to use the postal machine for some correspondence your uncle Mark and I want sent out. Is that what it’s called? A postal machine? You know, that machine that marks envelopes with postage so that there’s no need for stamps?”

“Close enough,” Samantha said with a smile. “Would you like me to arrange to have one purchased for your home office? It would be more convenient for you.”

“No, that’s all right. I’m just as happy for an excuse to come see you and all our eager volunteers, dear. Besides, I have an appointment to have my nails done in a half hour.” She reached into the lizard-skin briefcase she’d carried into the room with her and pulled out several flat, brown envelopes. “I’ll just have someone stamp the postage on these and then I’ll be out of your way.”

“Oh, I’ll do that,” Samantha said, coming around the desk to take the envelopes from the woman.

“Really? Goodness, we don’t pay you enough, dear. Thank you.”

Samantha’s heart was pounding as she accepted the envelopes.

And that’s what they were. Envelopes, just envelopes. Four brown envelopes, the size needed to slip a typewritten page inside without folding it. Didn’t all envelopes look alike? Of course they did.

Samantha put them on the desk behind her, then sort of blocked them with her body as she asked, “Is the president still deciding whether or not he’ll be able to attend the fund-raiser next week?”

Joan rolled her eyes. “You know him, always trying to be the center of attention. Will he, won’t he? I told your uncle Mark to announce that some Broadway cast, or one of those popular boy bands, or somebody like that would be there to perform. Entertainers always mean more media coverage. That would get Jackson to the affair, you could count on that, humming ‘Hail To the Chief’ to himself all the way.”

“The whole world would want to be there if we could get that sort of entertainment, Aunt Joan. Even the opposition. But this isn’t going to be that big a do, you know. Just two hundred of Uncle Mark’s closest friends and supporters. Individuals. Nothing corporate. Nothing to excite or upset anyone. We’re just getting our feet wet.”

“Nonsense, Samantha. Your uncle has been raising funds on a daily basis for all of his three terms in the Senate. It’s what has to be done. Only two hundred people? He doesn’t need something small to get his feet wet. We’re in fund-raising up to our ears, and have been since the beginning. You know as well as I that money for this presidential bid has been collecting in the proper accounts for almost two years. How else are we able to underpay you so badly, hmm? Now, who do you have for entertainment?”

“I’m…um…I’m still considering several options,” Samantha said, desperately running through the file cabinet in her brain, wondering who she could call at the last moment, because she had not booked any entertainment.

“Well, good, then it’s not to worry, is it?” Joan said, getting to her feet in one fluid, graceful movement. “I must be off, I’m afraid. A stop at the salon, and then we have a dinner with several members of the party’s California Primary Committee tonight at seven. We all know a candidate, to be viable, has to carry California. Have to plan ahead, right?”

“Definitely, and we’re already polling well there, I’m happy to say,” Samantha agreed, following Joan Phillips out of the office and through the central room that was loud with ringing telephones, clicking computer keys and the general babble of any office. “I’ll…I’ll be sure to get those envelopes in the mail for you, Aunt Joan. You said they were from both you and Uncle Mark?”

“Did I? Oh, yes, of course. Although we all know that, to your uncle, we’re all errand boys, happy to do his bidding. Mine, his, ours, what does it matter? We must send out mail by the ton. Maybe I will take you up on that offer of one of those postal machines, dear. Except then I wouldn’t get to see you so often, now, would I?”

With another exchange of air kisses, Joan Phillips was gone, and Samantha, after heaving a relieved sigh, was heading back into her office, carefully closing and locking the door behind her.

She spent the next two hours with a phone pressed to her ear, trying to round up some sort of entertainment that would follow the thousand-dollar-a-plate fund-raiser. As she dialed, then was put on hold, she pushed the envelopes Joan had left around her desktop with the eraser tip of a pencil.

She wanted to keep her distance, just in case one of them tried to bite her.

No return address, not on any of the envelopes. Just like the envelope locked in her bottom drawer. Computer-printed address labels, and all the addresses post office boxes, again just like the envelope locked in her bottom drawer.

Could she open the envelopes? Was that legal? There weren’t any stamps on them yet, so it wasn’t as if she’d be tampering with the U.S. mail.

Technically.

But it would be a breach of trust. Uncle Mark’s trust in her. Her trust in him.

After two long, frustrating hours, Samantha had wrangled a gratis appearance at the fund-raiser out of a popular female country-music trio, promising their agent that the media coverage would be “substantial.” Three very pretty girls; talented, and they wore skimpy costumes. That alone ought to make that thousand-dollar-a-plate rubber chicken go down easier.

But she still didn’t know what to do with the envelopes. Five of them now. Fairly bulky.

No wonder her aunt Joan, known to be tight with a penny so she could spend lots of dollars, hadn’t wanted to trust licking the correct amount of stamps. With only a post office box address, and no return address, the envelopes would end up in the dead letter office if the postage wasn’t sufficient.

So much more efficient to use the postal machine in the campaign office.

Except that, Samantha knew, as a senator, Uncle Mark could send out all the official mail he wanted via his office, and at no charge.

So this wasn’t official mail. Without the return address, it probably wasn’t campaign literature, either.

So what was in these other envelopes? More of what she’d found in the first one?

It was that last thought, the one that had been nagging at her all afternoon, that had Samantha unlocking the bottom drawer and sliding the four envelopes into it, on top of the first envelope.

Jesse checked his watch for the second time in as many minutes. Was he already too late? He should have known he wouldn’t get out of the office at a reasonable hour. Reasonable, in his line of work, meant anywhere between six and eight. Face it, reasonable quitting times, for those working in the West Wing, were a joke.

It was now almost nine, and he had chosen to jog over to Phillips’s campaign headquarters rather than take his car and spend another twenty minutes hunting up a parking space.

He stopped outside the office building and looked up. Second floor. Yes, there were still lights on, which meant that Samantha was there, waiting for him.

Probably with her lovely slim, coral-tipped fingers drawn up into fists. Pacing, cursing him, second-guessing herself for having contacted him in the first place.

No matter what, he was pretty certain he wasn’t going to be greeted as if he’d brought the flowers of May along with him. Not when she was so nervous about whatever the hell she thought was so important about the mail she’d discovered.

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