A Farewell to Legs: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,51
out of my chair. “Wow!” I said. “Do you do windows, too?”
Steph stepped back to admire her work. “If you get to it quickly,” she said, “there won’t be any mark at all.”
“And since you knew my family was coming tonight, you had plenty of club soda lying around.”
She stopped, and looked at me strangely. “Actually,” she said, “it was for Louis. He used to drink that stuff like it was going out of style. I haven’t gotten out of the habit yet, I guess.”
Stephanie looked at her a moment. “So am I, Leah. So am I.”
It turned out Stephanie did have Cartoon Network, so we stayed for a few hours after dinner. The kids went inside to discover the delights of Cow and Chicken, while we talked in Steph’s living room. Steph and I decided on a time for me to interview her sons on Saturday.
Finally, though, we packed up the brood, still complaining about having to leave while Scooby-Doo was on (on Cartoon Network, Scooby-Doo is always on), and found our way back to the hotel. It was late, so we packed the kids off to bed (although both of us harbored suspicions they’d search for Cartoon Network on their bedroom TV) and then retreated to our own bedroom. It was hard to believe we’d awakened this morning at home in New Jersey.
I lay down on the bed, and reached for my overnight bag on the floor. Abby was getting herself cleaned up in the bathroom, and I could see her through the open door, taking off makeup. I found the script in my bag, and pulled it out.
“I brought some reading material for you,” I called to her.
She walked out of the bathroom and looked, saw the script. Abby smiled. “You know,” she said, “it’s awfully late, and I’m tired.”
“You always read before bed.”
“Yes, but what I’m saying is, I can either read some of the script, or. . .”
“Or?”
She walked to her bag and started to rummage through it. “Or, I can put on that nightgown you picked out. Now, which one will it be?”
I am so weak.
Chapter
Five
It had taken a good deal of maneuvering to get me an interview with Madeline Crosby. After all, it was Legs Gibson’s rumor-mongering that had kept her off the Supreme Court, so she was-n’t likely to acquiesce to a plea from Stephanie. And if Crosby had even heard of Snapdragon, it was likely to have been in the context of the odd classical music review they might run to fill space between the headbangers and the rappers.
So, I had had to rely on Mitch Davis, over at USA Today, to pave the way. Davis, after much grousing about “giving aid and comfort to the enemy,” had made a couple of phone calls and advised me never to call him about this story again. Spoil-sport.
Crosby maintained a home office in, of all places, the Watergate complex, on the assumption that lightning never strikes twice in the same place, I guess. I was buzzed in on Saturday morning while Abby and the kids were out looking at Archie Bunker’s chair and the Fonz’s jacket at the Museum of Cool Stuff From Television. That Smithsonian is really a fun place.
In her mid-fifties, Madeline Crosby was not (forgive me, Madeline!) a beautiful woman. But she had a face so full of wisdom and wit, and eyes with just the right hint of sparkle, that it never occurred to me she was anything but lovely.
She had been an up-and-comer out of the John Marshall School of Law in Chicago, class of 1970. A year clerking for Justice Thurgood Marshall didn’t hurt, and by the late 1980s, Crosby was too strong a candidate for the Federal bench to be denied. It wasn’t until the mid-90’s, when she was nominated to the Supreme Court, that the allegations of an abortion—a legal abortion, it should be noted—were made, not terribly surreptitiously, by Legs Gibson. Her nomination was scuttled within a week, although the abortion issue was never directly cited. Everyone knew Legs’ news leak had done the job it had set out to do—it kept Madeline Crosby from being a terrific Supreme Court justice, because her point of view wasn’t far enough to the right.
Crosby gave me a curious, but not interested, glance as I walked into her office. She was reading a document on