One Murder More, page 19
Something is decidedly not right, Maren thought. Why the sudden intense discomfort? What would it matter to Breed if they had the name or the intern’s placement wrong?
Maren concluded he must be lying—she saw no other explanation for his body language and his inability to speak. She waited for a moment, then decided to give Breed a way out, even if it was through enough rope to hang himself.
“There must be so many people in and out of your office,” Maren said. “Perhaps a description would help?”
Breed still didn’t look up.
“She’s short, heavyset, with black hair,” Maren said.
“Thick glasses,” Polly added, clearly understanding Maren’s tactic and joining in. “A little homely, to be sure, pity that. But a hard worker . . .”
Maren thought Polly might have overdone it.
Councilman Breed swallowed hard. He looked at the two expectant women across from him. He saw no malice in their expressions, just friendly curiosity.
“Yes. Of course,” he finally agreed. “That was a busy time for me. I wasn’t in the office much. Out helping constituents. But, of course. I remember her now.” A bit of his bluster returned. “Tamara Barnes. Yes, of course.”
Polly smiled at Maren. Maren smiled at Polly. The councilman smiled at them both.
“Now, back to this bill,” he said. “I’m not sure our folks up here will go for that kind of government interference. And since Jimmy MacVale wasn’t seriously hurt . . .”
Polly and Maren walked to Maren’s car in silence.
It wasn’t until they were inside the Beetle and under way that they agreed Vance Breed’s willingness to embrace the existence of a short, heavy, black-haired Tamara Barnes could mean only one thing.
Clearly, the esteemed councilman had never met the real Tamara at all.
CHAPTER 27
Maren’s GPS failed to take into account preparations on the main street of Flax for the farmers market, which blocked access to several side streets, one of which was the direct route to the Ridgeway Bed and Breakfast where Polly and Maren had reserved a room for the night.
Polly suggested they take the nearest right turn open to them to get around the outdoor market’s street closures. “Ridgeway Lane—there it is.” Polly pointed just as Maren passed it.
There was no traffic on the narrow, tree-lined residential street, so Maren opted for slowly backing up instead of trying an illegal U-turn. Looking over her shoulder for clearance she suddenly hit the brake, stopped reversing, and pulled up to park along the curb.
“Come on,” Maren said, grabbing her satchel from the backseat. She looked both ways, saw no approaching cars, and crossed the street.
“This isn’t our—” Polly started to protest.
But Maren was already standing in front of a large, pale-blue Victorian-style home that dominated the block, set back from the street. A winding walkway of paving stones led from the road to the front door. On either side were expanses of deep-green lawn. No need for sprinklers in this part of the state. Two tall pine trees bordered the home.
But what had caught Maren’s attention was not the architecture or the landscaping. It was the three pregnant women in their teens or at most early twenties sipping from steaming mugs of tea or perhaps cocoa, and the two others nearby, also pregnant, entertaining a toddler. Five young—very young—pregnant women.
There it was, in front of her. The reason Tamara Barnes might have needed six months away from prying eyes at the capitol.
Maren smiled at the young women as she passed them on a beeline to the entrance to the house.
Polly hurried to catch up.
The woman who answered the door was eighty if she was a day, and Maren wouldn’t have been surprised to find she was in her nineties.
“May I help you ladies?”
Her dress was appropriate for the Victorian-era home—deep-blue satin with a black lace collar and heavy black belt. Its only nod to modernity was the length, ending just below her knees rather than reaching the floor. Her silver-gray hair was neatly coiffed, swept back from her forehead above whisper-pale-blue eyes.
“We’re here to inquire about a former resident. We have a friend, a colleague who stayed at . . .” Maren glanced at the inconspicuous brass nameplate to the right of the door. “Here, at the Farmer Home for Catholic Women. About four years ago. We were hoping we could speak with you about her.”
The sound of the toddler’s giggles could be heard from across the lawn as one of the women showed the child how to play patty-cake with his small mittened hands.
The woman looked from Maren to Polly. Her eyes narrowed, though her mouth remained soft and sympathetic. “I can’t share information about residents. It’s our policy.”
“We understand,” Polly said, “but these are special circumstances.”
“They always are, dear.” The woman smiled slightly as she moved to close the open door.
“Our friend, Tamara Barnes, has died,” Maren said. “She was murdered.”
The woman pressed one palm flat on her chest, her knees wavered, and her mouth dropped open.
It was confirmation that she had known Tamara, yes, but Maren was afraid she might also have given her a heart attack. She moved quickly, putting her arm around the woman’s tiny waist to support her as she helped her to a love seat inside the entry hall, coats and umbrellas hanging on hooks beside it.
The woman took several long, deep breaths, waving Maren and Polly off with her hands. “I’m all right. Please, find Gena.”
Polly headed down the hall, glancing into doorways as she called for Gena. She returned with a young woman in jeans and a clean blue T-shirt who was wiping her hands on a dishtowel. When Gena saw the older woman, she rushed to her side and started to speak, but was interrupted.
“I’m quite all right, Gena. Please, bring us tea in the parlor.”
Of course, there’s a parlor, Maren thought, the crisis apparently over.
Polly, Maren, and Mrs. Farmer walked slowly to a side room with elegant red-striped wallpaper, several high-backed chairs, and a piano with a padded bench.
Gena stayed with them, a step behind, until she had settled Mrs. Farmer comfortably in an armchair and covered her legs with a soft afghan throw. She glared at Maren and Polly as she left to prepare the tea, accurately attributing blame for the incident to them.
Mrs. Farmer’s eyes were filled with tears. “Tamara. Such a lovely girl. And her baby, so beautiful. A gift from God, even if it was in the most awful of circumstances. Tamara was with us six months, you know. We all loved her.”
Maren didn’t like the characterization of a baby born out of wedlock as in “awful circumstances”, but she acknowledged that Mrs. Farmer had a right to that opinion. In any case, the woman seemed intent on doing good rather than judging people for it.
“She’d gone through so much already.” Mrs. Farmer hugged herself. “Violence must have followed her like a dark cloud.” She shook her head. “I thought it was behind her. I thought she said he had left.” Mrs. Farmer wrung her hands, turning a small diamond wedding ring on her finger around as she spoke. Her voice was tremulous, barely audible. “When a man does that to a girl . . . when he takes her like that. Without her consent, leaving her carrying a child. Who knows what else he might do to her?” She shivered. “What he might do to anyone?”
MAREN WAS QUIET AS she and Polly drove the short distance to the Ridgeway Bed and Breakfast, this time with no unscheduled stops. There were still missing pieces, to be sure, but some things had become clear. Tamara left Sacramento because she was pregnant—she came to Mrs. Farmer’s to have a baby. To have Bethany. The resemblance, the hair color, Tamara’s locket with the initials BC. It seemed altogether too much to be a coincidence. But why did Tamara choose Flax? That appeared to have been engineered by Senator Rickman. And how on earth did Bethany end up with Sal Castro as her adoptive mother? Maren refused to believe Noel could have known about the connection since she was certain if he did, he wouldn’t have hidden it from her, at least not after Tamara was murdered.
That night, while Polly slept in the four-poster bed, Maren sat at the small writing desk in a corner of her room, laptop open. She was able to find very little on the Farmer Home. Notice of a few fund-raisers. It was registered publicly as a non-profit.
Then Maren realized there was one place she might be able to get more information—one person she could ask.
“YOU SURE YOU WOULDN’T like coffee?” Hannah’s high-pitched voice filled the small waiting area of Rorie Rickman’s office suite. Now that Hannah and Maren had eaten together (or more accurately, Maren had eaten and Hannah had looked at the food), Hannah treated Maren with something approximating warmth, although the young woman couldn’t quite get all the way there.
“No, thank you, Hannah,” Maren said.
Just then, Senator Rickman arrived wearing a white doctor’s coat, a stethoscope around her neck and a briefcase in one hand, returning from her afternoon volunteering in a low-income children’s clinic in West Sacramento. Her eyebrows rose when she saw Maren. They didn’t have an appointment. She inclined her head toward her inner office as she kept walking, which Maren took as an invitation.
Removing her medical coat and reaching for a red blazer hanging on the back of her chair, Rickman slipped her arms into it. “What is it? No problems on the bill, I hope?”
“No.” Maren shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. “I was wondering if you might help me understand something about Tamara. Tamara Barnes.”
The senator frowned. “I can try.” She gestured to Maren to sit in one of the chairs across from the desk as she came around to sit in the other.
“I went to Flax yesterday,” Maren said. “To meet with Councilman Vance Breed. I thought he might be able to help us get Senator Schmoley’s vote.”
Rickman folded her hands on her lap.
“My friend Polly Gray went with me. We decided to make a brief getaway of the drive, to stay overnight.” Maren felt herself sweating under her silk jacket, her shoulders tensing. “Polly runs the Fellows Program. She asked the councilman for feedback regarding Tamara’s internship in his office.”
“I see,” Rickman said. She stood and walked to the window in her office. The early evening Sacramento sky was cloudless, the blue deepening as the sun set. In a posture Maren did not remember seeing her in before, the senator wrapped her arms tightly around herself. She continued to look out the window away from Maren as she spoke. “And you found that Tamara never actually worked there.” Rickman’s tone was even.
“Yes.”
Maren knew there was no point now in being anything other than transparent about what she’d learned in Flax. “After that, I went to Mrs. Farmer’s place. Her home for Catholic girls. I know about the baby. About Tamara’s stay there.”
Rickman sighed. She relaxed her arms and turned back toward Maren. “So you didn’t really go up to Flax to get Schmoley’s vote on the cell phone bill?”
“No.”
“Good.” When she turned back to face Maren, Rickman had the smallest of smiles on her face. “I was wondering what kind of crazy fool lobbyist I was working with who wouldn’t know to pick up the phone instead of driving across the state for one vote.” She returned to the chair next to Maren and sat down. “It sounds to me like you know everything there is to know.”
Maren had trouble getting the question out. “The father?”
“I don’t believe that’s for me to disclose.” Rickman paused. “I’m not saying I know, but if I did I wouldn’t tell you.”
She heard the senator’s refusal to answer, but couldn’t stop herself. “Is it Sean?”
Rickman’s features became hard and cold, her mouth set. She appeared to be appraising Maren carefully before she spoke again. “Tamara’s...situation . . . there is nothing more personal. To carry a child, to give it away at birth. This may be the hardest decision a young woman can make.” Rickman stood and picked up her briefcase. “I know because I was in that situation myself.”
Maren felt her jaw drop, then closed it quickly.
“I was very young and involved with an older man, a prominent politician.” Rickman moved toward the door. “I didn’t tell him about the baby.” She took a deep breath. “I stayed at Wilma’s—Mrs. Farmer’s home. Later, many years ago, one of her largest donors moved from Flax to Sacramento and joined the board of my church. Tamara attends services there, too. I mean, she attended services.” Rickman shifted her briefcase to her other hand. “Our church sponsored an annual fundraiser for the Farmer Home. Tamara worked at the fundraiser as a volunteer. She heard the speeches. She knew all about the Farmer Home and its services in Flax. When Tamara found out she was pregnant and contacted Mrs. Farmer, the first call Wilma Farmer made was to me. Everyone who stays at her home must have a character reference. Wilma is very careful about the environment for the girls—the young women—and their children.”
Maren had so many questions. She tried to choose carefully among them.
“Do all of the women who stay at Mrs. Farmer’s give their babies up for adoption? Some looked like they had older children.”
“Every baby that is born at Mrs. Farmer’s is welcomed with love. Where they live after that, who will be their family—that varies.”
“How do they place the babies? The ones who don’t stay with their mothers?” Maren pictured Bethany and Sal Castro, desperate to find the connection.
“There are different avenues, but most often through a network of churches affiliated with the home. A couple in one of the congregations might want a child, they attend a fundraiser, then an informal application is made.”
A couple, Maren thought. Or a single woman. She remembered noticing the gold cross that Sal wore with her work uniform the night she came to see Noel. It shouldn’t be hard to find from Noel whether Sal attends church. And whether that church is in the network that supports Mrs. Farmer’s home.
Rickman’s voice was strained as she eyed the door. “You know I’m considering a run for governor next year. If I do, my history will come out. You uncovered Tamara’s secret. Someone will uncover mine. I told people I trusted at the time.” She turned back and her eyes locked on Maren’s. “Just as I’m telling you now.”
Maren nodded.
“I don’t know who else you may have spoken to about what happened to Tamara—the choice she made—or who you might be planning to tell. But please think carefully before you share the secret of a woman who can no longer protect herself or her child. A child that she cared enough about to bring safely into this world.”
CHAPTER 28
Marilyn heard the siren before she saw the black-and-white in her rearview mirror. She pulled over to the shoulder.
“License and registration.”
Officer Ernesto Landry watched the driver as she reached for her purse, which was perched in the backseat on an empty child safety seat. Twenty, maybe twenty-two, he figured. Pretty. Although the shellacked platinum hair and heavy eyeliner didn’t help. Marilyn Monroe with an edge.
The male passenger was closer to thirty, with curly dark hair and tan skin—ethnicity hard to figure. We’re all mutts, thought Landry, who was a quarter English, a quarter Scottish, and half Portuguese.
The passenger opened the glove box slowly, like he knew not to spook a cop. Landry registered it. Might be something to that. But he dismissed the suspicious feeling, chiding himself. Ever since his buddy got shot on a routine traffic stop a month back, Landry didn’t view anything as innocent. Ernesto knew he’d have to move past that or he’d have another ulcer.
“Your left taillight is out. Texas plates—you here visiting?”
“We’re moving here,” she answered politely.
Seems sober enough.
The male passenger smiled, a little too broadly.
Landry handed the driver a citation for the broken light. “Be sure to take care of this or the fine will run into some money.” He looked at her Texas driver’s license a second time before returning it. It matched the vehicle registration—Marilyn Lewis. He’d put a fiver on Marilyn not being her given name.
As Officer Landry drove away, Billy stuffed the ticket in the glove box.
“Jerk!”
“Doing his job, babe,” Marilyn said, smiling before easing back into traffic. “I can’t wait to see her. Do you think she looks like you?”
Billy had only seen the kid once, when he had shown up to get money from Sal that first year. He had no idea before that visit that there was a baby and hadn’t cared when he found out.
“You said she had red hair, but she could have your eyes. I don’t care what she looks like. I just can’t wait to hold her.”
So happy, Billy thought, and we don’t even have the kid yet.
Marilyn told Billy shortly after they met that she couldn’t get pregnant. Fine with him, made it easier when they were having sex, everywhere, all the time. They hadn’t slowed down, either. Marilyn seemed to like it as much as he did as long as he didn’t do the rough stuff. She liked to be treated like a lady. Fair enough, she’d been raised that way—ritzy Houston royalty. So Billy went elsewhere. A few bucks did it in the right—or make that the wrong—parts of town. No need for her to know. Really, the only problem with Marilyn that Billy could see was she didn’t just want sex, she wanted a baby.
Man, did she want a baby.
When Marilyn found out Billy had a kid being raised by his sister, there was no stopping her. She had gotten a second job, saved money for this move, even bought the damn car seat. And she was counting on Billy to make her dreams of motherhood happen. It was a pain. He still wasn’t sure what the big deal was with a kid, but Billy knew he had gotten lucky with Marilyn, and he wasn’t going to screw it up. Much better than when he was with that uptight Catholic girl back in Sacramento.
That one had wanted it too, Billy recalled. The prim and proper ones always do. No matter what they say, before or after.
