Murder in Foggy Bottom Read Free Page B

mom and dad live there.”
    “Playing the bachelor game for a few days, huh, Harry?”
    “Yeah.” He laughed.
    “Nothing like a trusting wife.”
    The comment nettled Harry but he didn’t respond. The idea of ever cheating on Hope had always been anathema to him. As far as he was concerned, he’d gotten lucky when he met and managed to woo Hope Martin into becoming Mrs. Harry Syms. And there were the girls. A man would be a fool to do anything to jeopardize a family like that.
    A fool like him, he thought. One extra drink at the Chicago convention that impaired judgment, falling into that silly eye-gazing game with the stunning brunette attorney, full, red lips and lush figure, liking that she laughed at everything he said, enjoying touches on his arm and back. Another drink. Ending up in her hotel room. The mad, frantic shedding of clothes and the twisted sheets and the rapid rush and pleasure of it, followed immediately by a vision of Hope and the kids at home and what would happen if she found out and was this worth it and how can I make it go away and pretend it never happened and . . .
    He was lucky Hope hadn’t walked out with the kids when, weeks later, that woman, whose name was Kay and whom he had been ignoring, called and demanded she speak with him. When his wife pressed her for identification, the lawyer shouted, “I’m the woman who slept with your husband in Chicago. Put him on!”
    Real-life
Fatal Attraction.
Not much attraction left, possibly fatal.
    When Harry came home from work that evening, Hope confronted him. “She’s demented,” Harry said initially. But Hope’s questions persisted, and Harry said, “Just a drunken fling. Stupid. God, I’m sorry. Believe me, it’ll never happen again.”
    “So, where are we, Harry?” someone at the White Plains meeting asked.
    “What?” Harry said. “Oh, sorry. My mind was somewhere else.” He pulled a thick file folder from the briefcase at his feet. “What say we get down to business? Be due diligent and all that.”
    Hope Syms, too, was having similar thoughts about her marriage and family as the plane climbed. It passed low over cars on Highway 684 and continued in a westerly direction, its course dictated by air traffic control. The highway fell behind and the aircraft crossed the shoreline of Rye Lake. Beyond it was a larger body of water, the Kensico Reservoir.
    Below, fisherman Al Lester’s reverie was interrupted by the sound of the Dash 8’s fully throttled engines. He looked up as the aircraft banked and passed directly above his canoe, its left wing dipping as though tossing a greeting. Lester mumbled something less welcoming in return. He continued to watch as the plane reached the far end of the lake and maintained its climb attitude over a vast, undeveloped wooded area to the south of the reservoir. He returned his attention to his fishing line, giving it a few jerks to prompt the lure into a seductive jiggling action. Then, he took a final look up at the Dash 8. What he saw stunned him, froze him, caused his hands to involuntarily shoot up to his face. The fishing rod flew out of the canoe, and his favorite fishing hat, with dozens of hooks and lures dangling from its crown, went into the water.
    The sight had such a potent impact on him that he thought for a moment it might have been an apparition
—
hoped
it was—a special effect from one of those damnable action-packed movies or video games popular with young people. The plane’s silver, sleek profile split apart. A vivid orange ball erupted where the left wing joined the fuselage, and the faint sound of an explosion reached Lester’s ears a second later. The fisherman watched as the wing separated from the aircraft and began a slow, topsy-turvy descent to earth, followed by the rest of the plane, silently twisting and turning against the blue sky, the only sound the breeze on Rye Lake and the beating of Lester’s heart. He saw other things falling, too, smaller things—