“We need to swing over to Hollywood Cemetery.” Governor Feuer glanced at his watch again. “We’ll have to make it quick.”

“Whatever you say, sir.”

“Lelia,” the governor said into the phone. “Consider it done.”

“Oh, you’re so wonderful!”

“I’m not, really,” he wearily replied as he thought of his mother’s birthday again.

Lelia Ehrhart returned the portable phone to its charger inside her completely equipped gym on the third floor of her brick mansion behind wrought-iron gates on West Cary Street. Her brow was damp, her arms quivering from working latissimus dorsi, rhomboids, trapezius, triceps, deltoids and pectoralis on the incline, chest and shoulder presses, and the lat pulldown, and the low row, just before the governor had returned her phone call.

“When now?” she cheerfully asked her trainer, Lonnie Fort.

“Seated row,” he said.

“No most rowing. I simply can never.” She sipped Evian and dabbed her face with a towel. “I think we’ve got to all those muscles, Lonnie. I really don’t like working it out this early, anyway. My entire system’s in the state of shock. It’s like getting out of bed and jumping on the Arctic Ocean. And I’m not a little bit penguin,” she said in a cute voice. “Nothing cold-natured with me.”

“I’m sorry we had to meet so early, Mrs. Ehrhart.”

“Not your fault, not in the smallest. I forgot you had a damn dental appointed.”

Lonnie studied the circuit Ehrhart was supposed to complete this morning, recording the number of reps and their weights.

“Thanks for fitting me on,” she said. “But it wasn’t very nice that Bull to scheduled you at the same time of nine A.M. in the morning when we always do this. Of course, he has so much people working for him. He probably knew nothing to remember about it since others always do for him so he doesn’t.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Mrs. Ehrhart.”

The son of a bitch. She thought of her wealthy dentist husband with all his radio ads and strip mall offices and sycophantic employees. He’d had affairs with three dental hygienists that she knew of, and although the number most likely far exceeded that, what difference did it make? Lelia Ehrhart would never forgive him for the first one.

“So tell to me, Lonnie, will Bull go to crown all your teeths like he does all everybody else’s?” Ehrhart asked her trainer, who was so beautifully constructed she wanted to trace her fingers and tongue over every inch of him.

“He says he can give me a Hollywood smile,” Lonnie answered.

“Ha! He says this always to everyone.”

“I don’t know. His hygienists sure have pretty smiles. They told me he crowned all their teeth.”

Just the word hygienist pierced Ehrhart like a foil.

“But I don’t know,” Lonnie said again.

“Don’t do it! No!” Ehrhart told him. “One time it’s done there’s no to undone it and it’s permanently. Bull’s grinded up all the teeths in the city, Lonnie.”

“Well, he’s sure made a good living,” said Lonnie.