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Mississippi home, would be surrounded. Her last glimpse of the reporters, caught from over her shoulder as she and Quinlan jumped into his Buick, had found them scattering in all directions as they ran for their cars. They would be hot on her heels already. If they couldn’t find her, and she devoutly hoped they could not, they would head for Sedgely. Beautiful Sedgely, with its antebellum mansion, driveway lined with oaks bearded with Spanish moss, and genteel stone fence that wouldn’t keep out an enterprising six-year-old much less a rabid horde of newspeople, was probably even now under siege.
    “I’d better warn Dorothy.” Ronnie picked up the cell phone on the console with a glance at him. “May I?”
    “Help yourself. Dorothy?”
    “Lewis’s mother. She’s at Sedgely.” She punched in the number as she spoke.
    “Oh, yes. Grandma.”
    Selma, Sedgely’s longtime housekeeper, answered on the second ring. Ronnie held up a hand to shush Quinlan.
    “Selma, this is Mrs. Lewis. Is Mrs. Honneker in?”
    “No’m, she’s not.”
    Ronnie supposed that Dorothy was at one of her numerous ladies’ luncheons, which was just as well. She would rather Selma be the one to break this kind of news to her disapproving mother-in-law.
    “Can you get in touch with her? Did she leave a number where she can be reached?”
    “She’s at Miz Cherry’s.”
    Honoria Cherry was one of Dorothy’s oldest friends. Like the Honnekers, the Cherrys were old tobacco money. They owned the neighboring estate of Waveland.
    “Selma, listen: Would you call her over there, please, and tell her that a woman threw paint on me at the fair, I’m not hurt, and the press will be descending on Sedgely. I don’t want her to be caught by surprise.”
    “Tell her to say she doesn’t know anything about it if she’s asked,” Quinlan instructed while Selma talked in Ronnie’s other ear. “Tell her to tell Grandma that too.”
    “Selma says that reporters have already started to call, and there’s a strange car parked opposite the rear entrance. It’s empty, though,” Ronnie said to Quinlan, covering the mouthpiece with her hand.
    “Probably a reporter sneaking around, hoping to get a quick picture or a quote. Tell her what I said. She don’t know mithin’ about mithin’.”
    Ronnie repeated his words into the receiver, assured Selma that she was all right, and hung up.
    “Now for Lewis,” she said with a grimace, and punched in the number of his cell phone. When a disembodied voice said he couldn’t be reached, she was relieved. Lewis was going to be less than happy about this latest turn of events.
    “The Bell South customer is not available at this time,” she said to Quinlan, mimicking the prim tones of the recording, and dialed Lewis’s office in Washington. She gave the news to Moira Adams, his administrative assistant, requesting that it be passed on to Lewis when they located him. Duty done, she hung upand replaced the phone on the console. “Now what? I can’t go home.”
    “I thought I’d take you home with me.” That deep, too-southern voice was starting to grow on her, though as a general rule Ronnie wasn’t a fan of southern accents. Probably because Lewis adopted one whenever he crossed into Mississippi airspace and discarded it the minute he was winging toward Washington again. During the winter months, which they spent in their Georgetown row house, his southern origins were hardly detectable in his voice.
    As a consequence, she supposed, that slow, slurring drawl always sounded artificial to her.
    “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Ronnie objected. “Think what the papers could do with that. ‘Senator’s Wife Hides Out in Home of Political Consultant,’ or something. They’d end up making it sound like they’d caught me red-handed in a love nest.”
    She felt, and sounded, bitter. His expression as he glanced at her remained tranquil.
    “I have an apartment in Jackson, and you’re right, it