Kiss My Lips , livre ebook

Title Page
KISS MY LIPS
A Freddie Huntsman investigation
Book 3
By
Bernard Veale



Publisher Information
Kiss My Lips
Published in 2011 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.
Copyright © Bernard Veale
The right of Bernard Veale to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.



Introduction
Freddie Huntsman is now the Executive assistant of Governor Bradford Bronson who is top of the polls for President of the United States. The incumbent president died in office and the Vice President is acting president and intends to get himself elected to office by hook or by crook. He sees Freddie as the Governor’s biggest asset and is determined to either bribe him with high office to get him to change sides or to frame him for various crimes to discredit him. Freddie manages to stay ahead of the game but gets embroiled in the ‘Mack the Knife’ serial murders while juggling his new girlfriend Julienne Light with Jadi Benton, his ex-lover, who is handling the ‘Mack the Knife’ case. Everything comes to a dramatic end when Freddie faces off with the ‘Mack the Knife’ killer.
This novel is a work of fiction. Fact is secondary to imagination. No character herein may be compared to anyone notwithstanding any coincidental similarity in name, description or characteristics.



Chapter One
I could see that the Vice President of the United States was angry. He was pacing up and down and almost foaming at the mouth.
“Who the hell does Bradford Bronson think he is? He is the jumped-up governor of a single state and he acts as if he were the crown prince!”
“The party is backing him, Art. The polls say that he has an unassailable lead.”
“I can read the damned press, Damon! They’ve been wrong before! This is my shot at the brass ring and I’m taking it. I’ll turn this around. In six months time no-one is going to remember his name.”
“He’s got a lot of money behind him, Art. You are going to have to pull some very fancy rabbits out of a hat to outshine him unless he drops dead like the president just did.”
“There’s dead like the president and there is politically dead, Damon. I’m going to kill Bronson politically dead before we get to an election.”
“How are you going to do that, Art? His backers are going to protect him like he was the Mona Lisa.”
“Find out what his weaknesses are Damon. That’s your top priority. I want to know what we can use against him.”
“Well, he likes beautiful women. He has been married to three and each of them was a knockout.”
“How did his wives die? Maybe he got rid of the first two so that he could get the current one?”
“No chance there, Art. That guy Huntsman proved that his first wife was killed by his second wife and the second was killed by kidnappers. That’s part of Bronson’s public appeal. Everyone feels sorry for the guy.”
“What about a link between the kidnappers and Bronson?”
“I don’t think so. The kidnapper had a good go at his kids and that Huntsman guy stopped him. I can’t see Bronson hiring the guy that kidnapped his kid to kill his wife. You’d have to have some rock solid proof for that.”
“Okay, so we’ll have to frame him. What if he was implicated in killing the Democratic front-runner?”
“Roman Mitford? He’s going to give Bronson a run for his money. You won’t be able to get near that one.”
“It doesn’t have to succeed; just an attempt on him will do as long as we can pin it onto Bronson.”
“I’ll look into it and get back to you, Art.”
“That’s what I pay you for, Damon. Make it quick.”
I pulled back behind the pillar and tucked my field glasses into my inner pocket as they began to walk toward me. They had about two hundred yards to walk so I had plenty of time to slip back into the conference room and take my chair alongside Governor Bradford Bronson.
This was a conference of the Grand Old Party arising out of the recently death of the incumbent president. The President had been ailing for some time and had been contemplating resigning when he died peacefully in his bed.
Arthur Rixon, the Vice President, was chairing the meeting in the hope that he could sway the party faithful to endorse his candidacy as the Republican candidate but his chances of beating Roman Mitford were generally regarded as poor. Roman Mitford was a very popular and well-known movie star who had, since his retirement from movies, gained a seat in the senate and was renowned for his rabble-rousing orations.
The Republican senators favored Bradford Bronson for two good reasons. The first was that he was way ahead in the polls, which was a very good reason indeed and the second was that he was adequately self-financed as well as having an extremely strong inflow of campaign contributions from the public.
My name is Freddie Huntsman and I work as Governor Bronson’s security chief, investigator and general adviser. He is old enough to be my father but for some reason he trusts me and values my advice. This is probably because I have one special skill which has helped me in past instances when I have solved some very tricky situations for the Governor going back to when he was the Mayor.
My special skill is that I am able to read lips because when I was a boy I was deaf for five years until surgical intervention restored my hearing. In that five years of total loss of hearing, I got by with lip-reading and became unusually adept at it.
I can stand well out of hearing range and understand what is being said and with the very fine field glasses that I possess, I can extend the distance to close to three hundred yards.
I had given it some thought and in future I would not be watching Arthur Rixon. He was too clever to do anything that would make him criminally liable without having a strong level of deniability. He was going to claim that Damon Tenebre acted without his knowledge if any of this plot came to light. Tenebre was known to be something of a loose-cannon.
I excused myself once again and called State Agent Godfrey Jayville Porter, known as Jeejay. He was in charge of the State Investigation Department. I told him what I had learned from the Rixon-Tenebre conversation.
“Have you been doing another of your eavesdropping exercises, Freddie? How do you get that close to the Vice President? He must be surrounded by Secret Service Agents now that the President is dead.”
“I’m regarded as a colleague by the Secret Service.” I said non-committally.
“So what do you want me to do?” Jeejay asked.
“Keep Tenebre under surveillance until we know what he plans to do. Normally I would also warn Roman Mitford but I don’t want to risk scaring Tenebre off. Mitford is just going to have to take his chances.”
“Wow! That doesn’t sound like the Freddie Huntsman that I know. What if Tenebre moves quickly and creams Mitford?”
“It isn’t going to be as easy as that, Jeejay. Mitford has plenty of security around him and don’t forget that it has to look as if it were planned by Governor Bronson. Tenebre has quite a lot of organizing to do before he can pull this off.”
I returned to the Governor’s side. He had not noticed that I was missing; he was too busy making a point to the meeting. I do not know what the point was but it seemed to go down exceptionally well with the delegates. They gave him a standing ovation.
The meeting broke up with several delegates rushing up to make themselves known to the Governor. He took it in his stride and even managed to remember each one’s name, using it liberally as he replied to each.
“I think that went rather well, Freddie. What do you think?” He said complacently.
“I wasn’t around through all of it, sir. I unearthed something really interesting. I can’t tell you here in case we are overheard but I’ll tell you about it in the car.”
Our car pulled up almost as soon as we stepped out of the building. I made sure that the Governor was safely seated before I followed him and sat on the small flap-seat facing him.
“Governor, you are going to have to watch Arthur Rixon.” I told him quietly, just in case anyone could hear us.
“Of course, Freddie, I know that. He really hopes that the GOP will back him in the election but it won’t. He doesn’t have a very good reputation and he is well below Roman Mitford in the polls.”
“He has plans to solve both those difficulties, sir. He intends to assassinate Mitford and frame you for it. The problem for us is that you could have the strongest alibi in the world but no one will believe that you didn’t order the killing because you have so much to gain from it. He has left Damon Tenebre to do the planning so I’m going to have Tenebre watched continually.”
“What do you want me to do, my boy?”
“Nothing sir; just make sure that you don’t give Rixon any opportunities that he could use to frame you. Stay away from any woman that isn’t your wife and avoid beautiful young men. Those are the sorts of traps that a man like Rixon is likely to spring. He won’t just leave everything in Tenebre’s hands. He is an opportunist and if he sees something that he could smear you with, he will use it.”
“Okay, I hear you. I will have to tell Janine that she has to stay by my side. She keeps wanting to go back home a