The Hive, page 27
“You wouldn’t,” Heather said.
“Try me. I’m only looking for quid pro quo here, Heather. Not a complete annihilation of your career.”
“I see.”
Heather knew that favors were traded like baseball cards in the Senate, that senators often had oblique reasons for favoring one committee over another. What Marnie was asking—no, demanding—was within Heather’s reach, so long as she reciprocated when the time came. Still, considering it now as she returned to the bar, she felt shaky and thought a healthy pour of Scotch would calm her nerves.
She’d done what she had believed was necessary all those years ago, and there was no way of minimizing it in a world that fed off of others’ misfortunes. She had a target on her back.
Once Heather had her place at the end of the bar and her nightcap before her, she turned on her laptop. She’d fought the urge to look at the basis of Marnie’s threat. It was foolish, she knew. By not looking at it, however, it seemed less real. Stupid reasoning, she knew. So, no more playing games with herself, as she logged on to YouTube. She’d always suspected it was there. Everything old and new found its way onto the site.
Sometimes there was a convergence of the two.
If people found out about what she’d done, everything they thought about her would vanish. Not only would she be forced to resign, she’d be an instant pariah. She’d lose her husband’s unyielding loyalty. Her children would no longer boast who their mother was.
She’d be lucky to get a seat on a second-tier city council.
Heather watched the video and drank her Scotch in gulps. The image was of poor quality, a VHS tape that might have languished in someone’s garage, just waiting to be uploaded.
Yellow crime-scene tape stretched across the beach where Calista had been found by the tourists on their Y2K tour of national parks. Heather kept the sound low, and she watched the lieutenant and tribal police as they worked the area in search of evidence. A fly landed on the lens, and Heather watched it until it moved to the left of the frame.
And there she was, where the fly had been, mixed in with young people who’d gotten off their shifts at the inn to check out what was happening. Everyone was straining to get an eyeful. Heather was twenty years younger, although either good DNA or the Spellman Farms products she’d used had kept her in remarkable shape since then.
That was a problem. There was no real change in her appearance. She looked youthful. Same hairstyle. Same figure. Some would say it’s a nice problem to have, but not Heather. She’d done everything she could to wipe the past from her life. Yet none of it mattered now.
She was, as Marnie threatened, on that recording.
And she was readily identifiable as she drank in the lurid commotion attending the discovery of this tragic young woman’s corpse on what should’ve been a desolate stretch of nowhere beach.
She could hear viewers—friends, constituents, and most annoyingly, the rail-thin right-wing pundit who sucked in controversy like others breathe.
“Wait—rewind. Isn’t that Heather Jarred, the congresswoman? I mean, she’s younger, but . . . that’s her. God, look at the look on her face. That is intense! Is she crying? What in the hell is she doing there with those slacker kids? She’s teed up to be senator, isn’t she?”
Her heart hammering, Heather drew the curtain on that horrific scene. She thought to call Greta and remind her of their promise. She was drunk by then and didn’t have her old friend’s number, anyway. She found her way back upstairs and stretched out next to her snoring husband. She folded herself into the bedding and lay still, eyes open, scared that everything she’d ever wanted was caught in a mix of limbo and jeopardy, both tugging at her. She waited for the light to dim on her phone and closed her eyes.
Heather knew she had to do something. Everything was within her grasp. She was the heir apparent to a Senate seat that would not likely shift again in her lifetime. Senators were lifers. They clung to their positions because they craved being at the seat of power. They never let go.
This was her time.
Yet it was another time, now two decades gone, that her mind returned to, as it so often did during her darkest nights, when even the possibility of sleep was too fantastic to imagine.
Heather kept her eyes on the television in the break room at Whatcom Memorial. The local TV station, KVOS, was reporting on the arrest of Reed Sullivan for the murder of his wife.
“Sullivan had made several trips to Lummi Island in the weeks running up to the murder of his estranged wife. Calista Sullivan was employed on the island at Spellman Farms.”
B-roll images of the body recovery were next.
“The victim was found on the west side of the island by beachcombers a month ago.”
More background video, this time of the farm.
“Charging papers say that Marnie Spellman reported that she feared that Calista Sullivan was being stalked by her former husband. She told investigators that Calista had said her husband was very controlling and had visited the farm on at least two occasions and made threats.”
Heather looked up when Greta joined her.
“Wow,” Greta said. “This is seriously messed up.”
Heather nodded. “We can’t say anything, Greta.”
Greta looked at her. “What do you mean? A man’s been arrested for something he didn’t do. He never stalked her at the farm. Marnie made that up.”
“We don’t know that.”
Greta looked at Heather like she was crazy. “We do. We know he’s innocent. We were there.”
Heather fidgeted with a Styrofoam cup, pulling at its edges until pieces fell onto the table. “We didn’t see anything,” she said. “We don’t know what really happened.”
Greta whispered as another nurse came into the break room. “We do know that he didn’t do it. And we know what we did.”
After her shift, Heather went home to her apartment on Donovan Avenue in the Fairhaven historic district south of Bellingham. She stayed planted in her car for an extra few minutes as another news broadcast reported Reed Sullivan was already at the Whatcom County Jail, pending arraignment the next day.
She felt as though she was going to throw up.
Calista’s ex-husband was an innocent man, raising two little boys.
This was so wrong. Everything was spinning out of control, and in her mind, there was nothing she could do about it.
Marnie had admonished the members of the Hive to toe the party line.
“Reed was a stalker. Calista was fearful. She told us. We don’t know where she went. We can only guess.”
Heather turned off the ignition and went inside, hurrying to the toilet.
CHAPTER 56
Monday, August 26, 2019
Seattle, Washington
Heather Jarred made a face when her communications officer informed her that there was a local reporter who’d been asking for an interview.
“You know the locals,” Stephanie said with an exaggerated eye roll.
Heather considered local media the worst. She could handle CNN or even Fox. They only skimmed the surface to fill gaps in programming with anything that resembled news. The locals were another thing altogether. Puff pieces were no longer their mainstay; they’d figured out that more persuasive journalism promoting a point of view was what earned viewers. Clicks. Likes. Comments. It was, Heather thought, harder and harder to just fudge your way through the questions. Being smart and noncommittal had gone by the wayside.
This one was even worse.
A college student who was too green to embrace the rules of conventional media.
“She’s called seven times. Texted. Posted on Instagram a picture of a broken clock, tagging you.”
“Okay, fine,” Heather said. “Young people are the future.”
Stephanie gave her a look, and for good reason. She’d just delivered a hackneyed sound bite to someone who knew better.
“Inspiring,” Stephanie said. “Would a sit-down tomorrow at three work for you?” She already knew it would. She was the kind of assistant who knew when her boss needed a bowel movement.
“Fine. Tomorrow. Fifteen minutes only.”
Sarah Baker wore a black blazer and dark-dyed jeans. She put her long, dark hair up with a chunky wooden clip. Around her neck, she wore a pendant with a heart-shaped stone, amethyst.
Heather remarked on it when she greeted the college reporter in her downtown campaign office.
“My birthstone,” Sarah said. “My aunt gave it to me when I went off to Western.” She held it out to let the admirer have a closer look.
“It’s beautiful,” Heather said, fully aware that taking up this much time during the start of an interview with a hard stop in fifteen minutes was a proven method to ensure staying on message. She offered juice, coffee, water, and made some small talk.
Again, to fill the time.
“I’m doing a profile,” Sarah said.
“Wonderful. What would you like to know? My position on climate change has rankled my Republican opponent.”
“I know,” Sarah said as she took a seat across from Heather’s immaculate mahogany desk. “Just about everything rankles him.”
Heather laughed. “I guess it does.”
“I want to talk to you about your time up in Whatcom County.”
“That was a while ago, Sarah. What would you like to know?” she repeated.
Heather looked at the clock on her desk. Seven minutes to go.
“Specifically,” Sarah said, “I’m curious about your work at Spellman Farms.”
Heather always knew this would come up sometime. She and Stephanie had planned for it. Role-played how to answer. She knew that denial was a trap. Never deny. Always deflect.
She gave her canned response.
“Oh, that was such a small part of my time up there. My work as a nurse at the hospital was really more formative in terms of what I’m doing now. Health care has always been my passion.”
Sarah, however, was no pushover. “Spellman Farms ties into that, doesn’t it? Marnie Spellman’s whole empire was built on helping women to have happier, fuller lives.”
“It was a cosmetics company, Sarah,” Heather said, her tone a little cooler. “It wasn’t founded on helping anyone be healthier. I don’t know much about what Marnie Spellman believed.”
“You were close.”
“That’s overstating things. I knew her, yes. Not well.”
Sarah looked surprised. “Really? I must have been given some bad intel.”
“That happens.”
“I don’t know why Ms. Spellman would lie to me,” Sarah said.
The clock said two more minutes.
A career, Heather knew, could be ended in ten seconds.
“I don’t, either.”
“Are you two still in touch? I mean, casually, like at the homelessness summit?”
“We chatted briefly, yes.”
One minute.
“Did you talk about Calista Sullivan?”
“Not at all,” Heather said, feigning puzzlement.
Ten seconds.
Stephanie breezed in.
Thank God.
“Your next appointment is here, Congresswoman.”
Heather shot up and extended her hand. “I wish we had more time, Sarah.”
Sarah tightened her lips. Her eyes flashed a blend of anger and annoyance.
“Me, too,” she said. “I’ll keep knocking on doors. Just like you, I’m a determined woman.”
Stephanie escorted the reporter out, and Heather slumped into her chair.
Marnie was an invisible vapor, always present, undetected until it was too late. Heather hadn’t lied to the student reporter—well, not in any substantive way—although she’d wanted to. She took a deep breath, so deep that she nearly coughed. She let the air out. It was possible that Sarah really didn’t know anything at all—that she was just fishing. The election was weeks away. She wondered if Marnie could be so stupid as to send a mere girl to do her bidding.
Heather pulled herself together and hoped it all would blow over before it destroyed what she knew was rightfully hers.
Hope was, she knew, for voters and the foolish.
Stephanie Haight fit her name; at least, many in the Seattle office of Heather Jarred for US Senate thought so. Stephanie ran the campaign like a navy ship, a trait that might have been owing to the fact that she’d been brought up near the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
As she wove her way past volunteers working the late-evening phones to her windowless warren of an office, her phone rang. She looked down, picked up the pace, and answered as she shut the door behind her.
It was her husband.
“Why are you calling, Albert? Did you not understand what I said?”
“Hey. I care about you.”
“Are you really going back to that? That was a mistake. And by any measure, you’re becoming a bigger problem with each call.”
“I could give it to the press.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“Why is that?”
“Because there’d be nothing in it for you.”
“Revenge.”
“For what? You dumped me, remember?”
“You’d like to think that, Stephanie, but you’re wrong. I left you because you were going to dump me the next morning. I saw your list of things to do.”
“That’s silly.”
“I will tell.”
“Why?”
“Money.”
“That can’t happen. We’re in the middle of a campaign. You’ll have to back off and leave it be until after the election.”
“I don’t know. What if your girl loses?”
“She won’t. She’s born for this. America needs her.”
“So grandiose, Stephanie. Your tongue must be Kool-Aid green by now.”
Stephanie thought about what she might say or do to make her point. Nothing. At least, there was nothing she could say. Words didn’t have any impact on Albert Haight. He saw them as obstacles to dodge or bounce from his head like a soccer ball. To the gut. To where it hurts.
“Don’t do this,” she said finally. “You will ruin everything.”
“I love you.”
Albert Haight had loved Stephanie at one point, yet as he saw his wife pulled ever deeper into the Heather Jarred universe, it became plain that he had little hope of seeing that affection reciprocated from her side of the galaxy.
Too cold there to support life.
He went outside into the warm night and sat down, the phone, now silent, still in his hand. The stars were out. Rare in Seattle, but there they were, dimly winking. Stephanie had receded from his life like a drifting satellite. He could pinpoint moments, although he could not perceive the velocity of their separation. Just how it happened and what he’d be able to do about it.
One pinpointed moment had been his discovery of the photograph.
It was late when she’d come home and thrown her purse, a black Kate Spade, on the table by the front door. She was exhausted and looked like hell.
“Glass of wine?” he asked.
She shuffled past him and threw herself on the couch. “Thanks, honey,” she mumbled.
That’s how they were before Heather. He was sweetheart or honey. Now he was just another aide to the aide, a nobody married to the communications officer for the next US senator from Washington State. Deal with it, he told himself. Revel in it. Other husbands surely did. They must. Then he wondered how many of the key female staffers in the Senate had husbands. Pretty all-consuming job, if the campaign was any indication. Being a senator’s top aide probably made being a congresswoman’s right hand seem like being VP of the PTA. Hell, did the women senators even have husbands? They must. He couldn’t picture Elizabeth’s husband, or Amy’s or Kirsten’s. Were they shunted off to the side to play golf? Or maybe just boarded in stables out in the Virginia countryside?
“Can you get my purse, babe?” she asked as he handed her a wineglass full of a nearly black Syrah.
Albert returned to the foyer, picked up the purse by a single strap, and opened it on one side, sending the contents to the floor.
Crap!
As quickly as he could, Albert started to scoop the contents back inside. There was an envelope among the makeup, keys, and confetti of business cards. Later, when Albert thought of it, he couldn’t come up with any legitimate reason why he did what he did. Mindless curiosity. Suspicion seemed dark and wasn’t a feeling he’d have until much, much later.
He opened the envelope addressed to Heather with a return address belonging to Sarah Baker, a name he didn’t know. Inside was an old photograph, black and white, and clear as could be.
It was taken at night, and it showed two women lifting a heavy, unwieldy object into the back of a pickup truck with SPELLMAN FARMS painted on a side panel. Strange. He put on his reading glasses to get a better view. He recognized one of the women as Heather Jarred. The other was unfamiliar.
The object was a body. It appeared to be a woman’s body. A thin arm dangled.
He returned to the sofa and held out the photo.
“What is it?” he asked.
Stephanie had on her media face, a combination of a poker player and a person hard of hearing. “I don’t know, Albert,” she said.
“That’s Heather, and what is she doing?”
Stephanie tucked the image into the envelope, then back into her purse.
“Photoshop prank by some hater,” she said. “We get fakes all the time.”
Liar.
Later that night, Albert heard his wife talking in the bathroom. Odd, he thought, because the line of light that would show under the closed door was absent.
Stephanie was taking her call in the dark.
For the most part, he couldn’t hear what she was saying, except for the repetition of his name, which came from his wife’s lips with disdain and frustration.
The next morning, while his wife was in the shower, Albert retrieved the photo from her purse. He carried it to the kitchen, where the light was better, and made a duplicate of it with his cell phone camera.
