| |
Sean’s car wasn’t out front when Maren left the next morning.
His classic 1982 gold Camaro would have been tough to miss.
She figured he went home to change before work, not that anyone would notice. She hoped he was feeling better.
Ecobabe’s offices were only a mile from her home, a comfortable walk—six blocks up Twenty-Second Street and two blocks over on K Street. Tucked between a vegan restaurant and a folk art store and across the street from a park where the homeless camped, it was a classic urban workplace. Maren didn’t get to spend much time there since most of her work was done in the statehouse with lawmakers and their staff, but this morning she needed distance from the majestic white building where Tamara Barnes’s death had occurred, and where Maren was likely now doubly famous for finding bodies underwater and on dry ground.
The Ecobabe headquarters, where six full-time employees and two interns toiled loyally away, was less than two thousand square feet in size. Besides Maren, design and innovations director Dimitri Wong and sales and marketing VP Clay Zimbardo rounded out the senior staff. Each had a small office in the back. The main room was shared by administrative support, sales staff, and interns. When he wasn’t traveling, Ecobabe CEO Martin Bogut worked from a home office. The design and production of new toys and games was also done offsite.
Evie Allen, Maren’s assistant, was overweight according to doctors’ charts but undeniably gorgeous to everyone who met her. Loose ringlets of white-blonde hair ended just below her ears, and sparkling blue-gray irises under thick dark lashes resulted in what could only be described as bedroom eyes. Evie’s brows went up when her boss came in, and she looked about to speak, but Maren waved her off and kept walking toward her small private office at the end of the hall.
Maren didn’t want to be rude, but she couldn’t start this new day with another round of “Yes, it was awful” and “Yes, I’m sure I want to be at work.” She was acutely aware that despite the supportive words she’d conveyed to Senator Rickman, the cell phone bill’s passage would take what was known in Sacramento as “a heavy lift.” Plus, it’s not like she was riding a wave of victories at Ecobabe—while plenty of factors had contributed to the death of the “Household Hazardous Waste” proposal (not the least of which might have been its unappealing name), Maren had been in charge of the failed legislative strategy.
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.