“I know. I will.”

“What do you think Senator Leeds’s main campaigning issues will be?” Alice asked.

Jake turned toward her. “I really don’t have the faintest idea.”

“It’s too late for him to preempt the MHD issue from Tomlinson,” Cardwell mused. “He’ll probably stay away from anything dealing with energy.”

“Then we ought to hammer him about it,” said Jake.

Cardwell nodded. Looking past him, Jake saw Glynis dancing with Younger. On an impulse, he asked, “Lev, would you mind if I asked your wife to dance with me?”

Cardwell’s owl-gray eyes widened for an instant, then he turned to Alice and smiled at her. “Can I trust you with a younger man, dear?”

Alice giggled and got to her feet. Jake led her out onto the floor, wondering why he was doing this.

As they swung into the Latino beat of the music, Alice said, “You know, Lev was very upset about Arlan’s suicide.”

Tensing, Jake replied, “The police in Vernon claim that Mrs. Sinclair was suffering from terminal cancer.”

“Really?”

He shook his head. “She didn’t look like a cancer patient when I saw her.”

“Ah, you never know, Jake. Some people look healthy even though they’re dying inside.”

Suddenly the music cut off in mid-beat. Jake looked up at the bandstand, then at the giant TV screen hanging to one side of it.

Harmon Dant was standing before a battery of microphones, cameras clicking and whirring at him. Despite his attempts to smile, Dant looked bitterly unhappy, his plump cheeks sagging, his eyes baggy.

He cleared his throat noisily, then leaned toward the microphones slightly as he began, “We fought the good fight, and I want to thank every one of you who fought it with me. We haven’t really been defeated, only delayed.”

Applause and cheers rang from the TV speakers.

Dant continued, “I want to congratulate Frank Tomlinson on his winning this primary. He had a lot more resources on his side than we did, and that’s what counted.”

He paused, and for a moment Jake thought the man might break into tears. But then Dant continued, “Despite tonight’s disappointment, we will continue to battle for the things we believe in: less government interference in our lives, lower taxes, an end to murdering the unborn…”

“He’s not going to offer his support to Tomlinson,” said Leverett Cardwell. Jake hadn’t noticed Lev’s coming onto the dance floor to stand beside his wife.

“Some support,” Jake sniffed. “It’s not much past eleven o’clock and he’s conceding the election.”

Cardwell raised his eyebrows, then said, “Well, at least with Arlan Sinclair out of the picture you can get support from the people actually running the MHD program.”

Jake nodded, realizing that Lev was right. Bob Rogers and Tim Younger had no qualms about backing Tomlinson.

Now that Arlan Sinclair was, as Lev put it, out of the way.