First Lady by Michael Malone Page A

she had to take her niece Danielle to the Mavis Mahar concert.”
    Cuddy smiled. “I know, Zeke. I got all twenty of Nancy’s messages.”
    I looked at my watch. The Mavis concert must have started. I wondered what song the Irish star was singing at Haver Field right now. And how she looked. And whether she’d sobered up since she’d told me she was filled with music and wanted me to stay at the Tucson to hear her song.
    Five minutes later, on the crimson dais, Cuddy bent his head so Governor Andy Brookside, whom he intensely disliked, could place around his neck the wide silk ribbon, Carolina blue, that held the gold Raleigh medallion. Andy then read out the plaque praising “Captain Cuthbert Randall Mangum, Chief of Police, Hillston, North Carolina,” for his nationally acclaimed law enforcement department, and he talked a little about all Cuddy’s achievements (United States Army Purple Heart and Bronze Star, Ph.D., LL.D.), and Cuddy thanked him and everyone applauded. It was true that Cuddy had passed a miserable nineteenth birthday in a flak-dodging helicopter while Army medics pumped blood and morphine into him. It was true he had an honorary degree from his alma mater as well as a Ph.D. from Haver University that had taken him years of night classes to acquire. But it was not true that his name was “Cuthbert.” While Cuthbert is what most people assumed his name was, actually his mother, a country woman, had told the nurse in the maternity ward her baby’s name was “Cudberth” and she had proudly called him Cudberth all her life.
    After the brief ceremony ended, the special guests trooped into shuttle buses to be ferried half a block away to the Governor’s Mansion for dinner in the State Dining Room. Among the few of us who insisted on walking, Cuddy strolled ahead with Carl Yarborough, talking of strategies to deal with Hillston’s sanitation workers. I think Cuddy and the mayor cared more about the well-being of Hillston than they did about anything else in their lives, and I suspect Carl’s wife Dina, following along beside them, thought so too. Thinner and much lighter than her stout husband, Dina had startling green eyes and a short Afro that was almost blonde. She and I were distantly related but had never talked about it. We were chatting about a community play we were both in when Zeke loped over and pulled me aside. Nancy had just called him from Haver Field. Mavis Mahar, scheduled to follow her warm-up act at nine o’clock, hadn’t shown up. It was now 9:40 and her band The Easter Rising was still on stage without their lead singer. The band was very good, but they were not what forty-seven thousand fans had come to see. Nancy told Zeke that when she’d run into Sheriff Homer Louge and asked if he wanted reinforcements from HPD, he’d told her, “No thanks, honey,” as if she were a waitress asking about a refill. She was concerned about security at the stadium.
    I agreed with Zeke that it was best not to mention the concert to Cuddy now. The university police were working with the county sheriff’s people and had already told HPD they didn’t need our help. “Let the Stooges handle it,” I said. (At HPD we called Sheriff Louge “Stooge,” and his deputies “the Stooges.”) Zeke was fretting. “But if this Mavis situation…. You know how the Chief likes to stay on top of everything.”
    I shrugged. “She’s been late before. Wasn’t she late last night too?”
    â€œI guess.” Zeke said Nancy’s niece Danielle would be heartsick if she missed Mavis. “I’ll tell you this, I read where Marilyn Monroe entertained the troops in Korea with a 103-degree fever. The old timers had a sense of responsibility, not like these young stars today.” (Zeke was twenty-seven.)
    I said that actually Marilyn Monroe was late all the time.
    â€œBut she