One Murder More, page 4
A desk facing the far wall of her office was saddled with an old computer. A framed picture next to it showed Noel sitting in the hot tub under the big oak tree in her backyard, the top of his thin chest and shoulders barely visible above the bubbles, his hat still on. Camper was in the background of the shot, caught in the act as the big dog deftly stole a sandwich off Noel’s plate.
The office walls were bracketed by bookcases filled with child health and injury prevention reports, a few novels, and an entire shelf devoted to outdated textbooks—evidence of Maren’s winding educational path. First undergrad in economics, then training as a high school art teacher followed by a degree in forensic psychology with the intention of working with teens at a local halfway house. And finally, after she came to Ecobabe, a night school law degree so she could better understand “legalese,” the twisted verbiage of proposed laws and existing statutes.
A lifelong student by nature, Maren thought about going back to school some days, but the heavy volumes were a solid reminder of sleepless nights spent studying that made her think better of it.
There were no windows in the room, an unfortunate side effect of the landlord having divided the building’s original floor plan into many smaller units. A print of a lush, tropical forest scene on one wall and a mirror over her desk facing it let Maren experience what it would be like to be able to see outside—at least if her office had been in Costa Rica.
When she opened the door today there was one addition. Rose-colored orchids in a large glass vase filled the room with the unusual scent of toasted coconut. Maren was surprised to find her first thought was of the handsome Senator Alec Joben, with whom she had shared underwater trauma and gunshots. Not that he would have a reason . . .
The card nestled among the greenery identified the sender as Liza Booth-Henry, Simone Booth’s daughter and the mother of Zane and Zoey Booth-Henry. Liza and her husband John were inviting Maren to dinner Sunday to thank her in person. There was a phone number and email address. Maren repositioned several of the flowers before sitting down in a tall desk chair of soft beige leather, the only extravagance in the small office.
Maren took in the beauty and rich fragrance of the bouquet, touched by the outpouring of gratitude from the family of the young children she had helped to save. But she was also shaken by the physical reminder of the loss suffered that day and wasn’t sure she could face Zane’s soulful eyes, which had seemed to blame Maren for not getting his grandma out alive. Plus, Sunday dinners were reserved for Noel. They made it a weekly family ritual, having been left to create their own. And then there was Tamara’s death—Maren kept seeing the young woman’s body, the blood on the floor, on Tamara’s jacket, and on the sofa cushions. It didn’t put Maren in the mood for small talk and socializing. She wondered if she would feel at all better when the police found the murderer.
She punched in the code on her office phone. The electronic voice informed her she had three messages. She hit Speaker so she could go through her email while she listened. Top of the queue was “Urgent: Investments!!” sent from senrabyllit@talk.com—an unknown address. Undoubtedly a scam, Maren thought, hitting Delete without opening it. She felt bad for those who might be taken in, including low-income elderly individuals who relied on their retirement to live.
The first voice mail was from a coalition partner on the cell phone bill—the leader of a Girl Scout troop that lost two of its young members in a cell-phone-related crash. The second was a representative of the California District of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The academy had undertaken a public service campaign against texting while driving and teen cell phone use and was supporting Rickman’s cell phone bill.
Maren wrote a brief note to her assistant, Evie, asking her to contact both the Girl Scouts and the pediatric organization to confirm their expert witnesses would be available to testify at the upcoming Senate Health Committee hearing. She had just finished typing when the third voicemail commenced, and a confident male voice got her attention.
“Maren. My office. Eleven a.m. Let Delilah know if you need another time. Extension 4682 will get you the back line.”
That call took him fifteen seconds, Maren thought. Fifteen seconds to close a fifteen-year gap.
Maren often saw Governor Raymond Fernandez in passing at meetings in the capitol and, of course, on the news. But hearing him on her voicemail took her back to being a volunteer on his first campaign for office, when she was besotted with love for him and certain he felt the same way.
Not an uncomplicated memory. Even setting aside the fact that he was married, it would have been nothing short of nuclear to add a relationship with a woman twenty years younger to Ray Fernandez’s résumé, and a white woman at that, in a city heavy with Latino voters excited to have one of their own represent them in the legislature.
So Maren and Ray had looked and lusted and sparingly touched in private moments until the day Martha Santera Lucinda Fernandez, Ray’s childhood sweetheart and wife, saw them together, took stock, and demanded that Ray tell Maren to resign.
There had been rumors since of similar affronts to the Fernandez marriage, all with younger women. At first, Maren had hoped Ray’s attraction to her had been unique, and that recent stories were the product of the idle gossip that follows every handsome man and woman in elected office. But as Maren got some distance from Ray, she decided what occurred between them so many years ago wasn’t love—at least not for him.
Maren would have liked to thank Martha Fernandez for pulling the plug on the budding affair and putting her off married men for good. But she figured that expression of gratitude would not be well received by California’s first lady.
CHAPTER 6
During his brief time in Africa, former governor Jack Caries learned that a monsoon meant heavy wind coming from one direction. It was defined by its single-mindedness. Despite what most westerners thought, a monsoon might not bring rain.
But five days of nonstop downpour, rendering roads unusable and work on construction impossible, surely merits some special name, Caries grumbled to himself as he paced the length of his suite at the Castle Royal Hotel in Mombasa, Kenya. While standard rooms were furnished with modest iron-frame double or twin beds, a desk with a TV, and a single chair, Jack’s suite was specially equipped for his longer stay. It also took into account his status as a visiting dignitary, an American politician.
The bed frame was a heavy black-red mahogany, the mattress dressed in a tufted golden spread topped with six pillows cased in royal purple with gold and green tassels. The sitting area featured a rattan couch and two matching chairs, all with colorful pillows. A well-stocked dark-wood bar with two stools graced one wall.
It had been three months since Jack Caries stepped down as governor of California and saw Raymond Fernandez inaugurated as his successor. It had shocked the public and angered Democratic leadership when Caries, a shoo-in for reelection with record-high approval ratings, had chosen not to run for a second term and to work instead with a nonprofit to establish schools in Africa.
Jack moved first to Nairobi, then on to Mombasa, the oldest city in East Africa. Located on an island connected to the Kenyan mainland by ferries and bridges, Mombasa was bursting with a million inhabitants, many of whom lived in slums right outside the city.
Nearly year-round hot and humid weather punctuated by an ungodly rainy season gave added armor to Mombasa’s entrenched poverty, impossible to penetrate without a determination and resources that most men and women lacked. But not Jack Caries—when he set his mind to something, washed-out roads and the rotting stench of months of uncollected garbage weren’t going to stop him.
Two of the planned primary schools had been built, but the third sat unfinished in the torrential downpour.
Caries poured a drink—straight rum, no ice—and contemplated going down to the hotel casino. But he figured been there, done that. And HIV was rampant in Mombasa. Even condoms didn’t make sex feel safe, taking the shine off hooking up with ready female company. Plus, Jack no longer found casual liaisons satisfying. He wanted the chance to put public office behind him, do meaningful work, and find Ms. Right.
He sipped his drink, shoulders slumped as though the deluge outside were directly pummeling him despite the solid walls of his suite. The alcohol did little to help—Caries’s real drug of choice was music, or to be specific, jazz. When in office Jack had worked with the California legislature to establish an annual jazz competition for middle school and high school students. He planned to continue to attend the auditions and to have lunch with the young winners each year.
Unfortunately, tonight’s transmission from local Capital FM radio at 98.4 was mostly static, though at odd moments the keystrokes of Aaron Rimbui, a Kenyan jazz pianist, did break through. Rimbui had suffered severe burns in a childhood accident and said faith drove his beats. Although dramatic when the piece flowed intact, the intermittent chords were not enough to calm Jack. He physically ached to feel the Southern California sunshine and see the palm trees. The only water he wanted to hear was in the form of waves on the Pacific Ocean rhythmically striking the white sands of Malibu. He had fallen in love with Los Angeles the first day he moved there from New York.
Jack’s intention had been to break into films with the help of a mid-level Hollywood producer, an old friend of his dad’s. But with his JFK good looks and charm he ended up in politics instead—another kind of acting, Jack recalled.
A soft tapping sounded at the door to his suite. Jack rose and opened it to find a petite hotel maid barely taller than her large wheeled cart stacked with towels and supplies. She looked young, not yet out of her teens. Her ebony skin blended into her black uniform. Her white collar seemed somehow out of place.
“Turn-down service, mister?” she asked, then corrected herself. “Mister Governor. Turn-down service, sir?” Clearly, she had been coached to handle him as a VIP.
He nodded, and she withdrew a small silver tray with chocolates from a lower shelf of the cart. She moved quickly to set the tray on the table next to the bed, then efficiently folded back the blankets and plumped the pillows. She was halfway to the door to leave when she stopped.
“There is better music, Mister Governor,” she said.
Jack had forgotten the mostly static playing in the background. “Yes,” he laughed, “I imagine there is.”
She raised an eyebrow and frowned. He felt reprimanded for having implied that a lack of music might be a laughing matter. Crossing briskly to the radio, the young woman turned the dial and a classical station at once filled the room with clear tones. She listened keenly for a moment, her head tilted to one side, and then seemed to remember where she was and left.
Despite the company of the Kenyan orchestra via the airwaves, his suite felt emptier to Jack now than before she had arrived.
More rain outside. It was endless.
Santa Fe might do, Jack considered, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the distance, and clean, crisp air without an ounce of humidity.
But more than a stable climate, Jack Caries wanted his money. Luxury in Mombasa wasn’t close to luxury stateside. He dreamt of soft leather furniture, state-of-the-art electronics, and bricks and mortar built into a house that would be his forever. He and his sister would never want for anything. Something that early in their lives would have seemed impossible.
He had expected to be home by now, but his business manager kept putting him off. And Jack had to agree it was smart to be abroad—far from the public eye—when the final, multimillion-dollar deal went through. Still, he wanted details, to understand the persistent delays. But the last message on his investments had been two days ago. It had said only “Sale in process, hold tight.”
CHAPTER 7
Not a fan of the gym, Maren designed her workout regimen to consist of walking most everywhere, supplemented by time at the pool and track when she could fit it in. Even though yesterday the police had delivered her VW from the scene of the accident to her home, she’d followed her usual routine and left it parked in her driveway this morning. But she regretted being on foot leaving her office, since being late for a meeting with the governor might mean no meeting at all. The time reserved would evaporate if a gap of minutes between appointments meant someone else could be wedged in.
As Maren race walked from her office to the capitol building, she tried Sean’s cell. No answer. She called his work. Hannah Smart, the receptionist at Senator Rickman’s office, said Sean hadn’t come in or called.
“Isn’t it just so awful what happened to Ms. Barnes?” Hannah said, her voice high and childlike. “I mean, we must have been among the last people to see her alive. I remember she was wearing that beautiful cream suit—I think it was a Marc Jacobs design. She was always so elegantly turned out. The rest of us didn’t know how she could afford it.”
Hannah clearly wanted to talk about anything having to do with Tamara, now the hottest topic in the capitol. Maren got off the phone as quickly as she could.
Moments later she entered the anteroom of the Horseshoe, the insiders’ name for the U-shaped suite of offices on the first floor of the capitol building that housed California’s governor and his entourage. Maren was out of breath, but on time. The waiting area, furnished in state-funded spartan style, featured four nondescript chairs and a drab blue sofa arranged tightly around a square coffee table. The receptionist, Delilah Wade—late twenties, blonde and buxom—was seated at a small desk in the corner. Maren introduced herself and offered a business card. Delilah reviewed it, then announced loudly to the empty chamber, “Governor Fernandez will see you now.”
Delilah rose regally, revealing an Amazonian stature in proper proportion to her ample breasts. Her jade-green, tightly fitted silk suit somehow defied wrinkles. She walked briskly the few steps to a narrow door opposite her desk. As she reached for the handle, she nearly collided with a mousy-looking woman with large glasses who was weighed down by a colossal stack of folders.
“Wallis, watch where you’re going. The governor is expecting us.”
The woman scuttled quickly past, trying to avoid further reprimand.
“Really, we have protocol here,” Delilah said, towering over her target, who was now hunched over and looked like she would fold into a ball and roll away if she could. Wallis managed only to nod sheepishly, her eyes squeezed closed as though a glimpse of the angry goddess might prove fatal, converting flesh to stone.
Delilah turned to Maren, not bothering to lower her voice. “She’s helping out in the first lady’s office. Temporary,” she added, in a tone one might use to describe a bug that had crawled in under the window screen.
Delilah’s attention diverted, Wallis exited into the main capitol hallway through the door Maren had come through. Maren wondered if Wallis was the woman’s first name or last, and whether she would ever return.
Recovering her excessive poise, Delilah tried the corner door again, this time successfully. She shepherded Maren through an oversized meeting room that housed a massive conference table and enough executive-style chairs to seat thirty. On the left were sliding glass doors leading to an Astro-turfed courtyard dotted with cheap, white, plastic patio furniture. When Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was in office, he’d enclosed the outdoor seating with fabric panels to create a private smoking tent at his own expense where he and fellow politicos could enjoy their cigars. The tent had come down when Schwarzenegger left—the space looked abandoned and uninviting.
They passed through another door. The rapid tap of Delilah’s shiny black heels and the clanging of her multiple bracelets echoed down the hallway. They finally arrived at a small, wood-paneled room with books floor to ceiling and several deep and comfortable armchairs. After indicating a warming pot of coffee in the corner, Delilah left, executing a stylish turn that would do credit to a Versace runway show.
Maren took a breath and perused the shelves—Dickens’ Great Expectations, Obama’s Dreams from My Father, Ted Kennedy’s autobiography, and several Spanish-language novels that showed Raymond Fernandez’s personal touch.
“You may borrow any you like. Although you’ve probably read them all.”
Maren turned at the familiar voice. Medium height with black hair and a strong patrician face, Ray Fernandez didn’t so much enter a room as claim it. He still had his thick mustache, which bucked the clean-shaven look favored by most elected males.
Closing the space between them in seconds, Fernandez abruptly pulled Maren toward him as though to draw her into a passionate embrace, but instead barely grazed her cheek with an almost-kiss, then quickly released her.
Maren glared at him. Not the time, not the place, and what the hell?
Ray Fernandez caught the look, smiled, then seated himself in a leather armchair. Maren remained standing, not certain whether she wanted the relative height advantage or was preparing to flee.
“So . . . ,” Ray said, looking slowly from the crown of Maren’s thick mane of hair down to her red boots and not missing anything in between.
This is your meeting, Maren thought, waiting him out. “The girl, Tamara Barnes . . . ,” he began.
“Woman,” Maren said without thinking.
“Yes, woman,” he said, smiling even more broadly. Although not often corrected now that he was governor, it appeared to amuse him. “I understand from the police you were there when Ms. Barnes made a comment about me.” Again, he waited. An unnatural pause.
Maren wasn’t ready to respond. She knew Ray. If he wanted something, he was good at waiting. It had almost worked on her years ago, his patience, those smiles. If his wife hadn’t walked in on them . . .
But Maren had gotten better at waiting, too. She seated herself in a red velvet chair.
“I gather she referred to something upsetting?” he asked.
“Yes, she said you and she had done something awful.”
