Mumbling “excuse me” over and over, Maren tried to squeeze through the crowd without spilling her drink.
This is not fun, she thought.
But then she reminded herself that being home alone in her pajamas with a good book, her dog Camper at her feet, wouldn’t be preferable. Because while one evening like that might be nice, it could lead to endless days and nights of loneliness if she didn’t make an effort to have someone new in her life.
As Maren approached her destination she took a deep breath, put on a smile and was about to introduce herself when a statuesque blonde in a low-cut silver dress appeared, placed her hand on Marciulionas’ arm and said something to him in what Maren assumed was Lithuanian. The woman’s mouth was turned down, her brow furrowed. Definitely not a party face. Marciulionas said something to the other man, then he and the woman abruptly left.
The woman might be the retired basketball player’s lover or his sister, it was unclear. But the point of it for Maren was that Marciulionas, god-like on the court when she was a child, was gone. And he hadn’t so much as glanced in Maren’s direction before leaving. She felt her self-esteem plummeting through the oak floor she stood on, then shooting beneath the estate’s concrete foundation before coming to rest somewhere close to halfway to hell. She eyed her silver shoes, wondering if she clicked the heels three times and repeated “there’s no place like home” whether she might wake up in her own bed.
Then Maren felt the gaze of the second man. His look wasn’t flirtatious. He appeared to know he wasn’t what she had come for. She smiled tentatively and gave a small shrug as if to say, it is what it is. He reached out his hand to shake hers, then noticed her near-empty glass.
“Could I get you a drink? I’m Alibi. It’s nice to meet you.”
With effort, she tried to stay present for this man who was willing to speak to her, the one who hadn’t left with another woman. Then she became aware again of the partygoers on all sides. “Thank you, but I think getting to the bar would require hand-to-hand combat.”
He laughed, it was a pleasant, low, rumbling sound.
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” she said, then blushed as she realized that was pick-up line number one, at least old school it was. She didn’t know what people said to one another in these situations now.
“It’s possible.” Alibi said, but offered no insight into how they might have met.
“Do you work in the capitol? I’m a lobbyist, so I’m there most days.”
“I’m sorry, it’s so loud. Did you say you lobby?”
“Yes. “She took a step closer to him so that he could hear, then stepped back, suddenly self-conscious in her strapless dress.
He took a sip of his drink, which looked like ice water, although Maren supposed it could be eight ounces of vodka over ice. “I don’t get to the capitol often. I spend most of my time in South Sacramento.”
South Sac included the tougher parts of town. Maren noticed again the man’s muscular build. Putting the two together she realized who he was. Alibi Morning Sun, Chief Homicide Detective for the Sacramento Police Department. Maren had read a profile on him in the Sunday paper a few months back that reported that Alibi’s mother selected the name because her baby son’s birth provided her husband with an alibi for a murder charge.
“Who did you say you lobby for?” Alibi asked.
“It’s Ecobabe. We specialize in environmentally friendly toys and games. A portion of profits is used to promote laws to protect children’s health and safety.”
Alibi motioned that he still couldn’t hear her well, then guided Maren with one hand lightly on her arm towards an open spot against the wall. The two of them just fit between two large ficus plants, decked out for the season with silver ornaments and tiny white lights.
They talked about the rain and whether it would last, why Maren hadn’t become a practicing lawyer after law school, and finally music—Maren liked everything but classical, Alibi was a symphony man.
She wasn’t sure what she’d expected a homicide chief to be like. Glum, grave, angry? Alibi Morning Sun seemed none of those. He also was available—or at least he lived alone, he’d made that clear. His look had grown on her. Thick, black, straight hair that hung to his shoulders, deep brown eyes, strength apparent in his hands and in the way he carried himself. When he asked for her number, she gladly complied.
Maren watched Alibi tapping away on his phone and assumed he was entering her number into his contacts when a minute later her phone pinged. An incoming text from an unknown number with a Sacramento area code.
Does this count as a first date?
She looked up to see him smiling, but his dark eyes were serious.
“Well? Does it count?” he asked.
Unfortunately, rather than feeling happy that she’d found what she’d hoped for this evening—the possibility of romance—Alibi’s use of the word “date” in his message seemed to set off some kind of warning system for Maren.
She remembered the trajectory of her two-year relationship with Garrick. It seemed to her that it started in a similar fashion. Fun. Respectful. Then morphed into white-hot passion before collapsing under the weight of Garrick’s cheating and cruelty.
In fact, it struck Maren that her judgment had been so poor with respect to Garrick that she couldn’t possibly trust how she felt about Alibi in such a short time now. Then her stomach rumbled. She’d noticed several buffet stations when she came in, heavy with silver trays. She wasn’t sure she could eat anything without splitting the seams on her tightly fitted dress, but she was willing to try. And she reasoned that leaving the secluded spot might slow down the blind chemistry that seemed to be drawing her and Alibi inexorably together. If nothing else, food would buffer the effects of the champagne she’d drunk so quickly, and she could see if he still appeared attractive to her then.
“Are you hungry?” she asked him.
“Ravenous.” She felt his eyes move from her face to her breasts, then to the hem of her dress against her thighs, giving his answer a second meaning.
She couldn’t help it, she didn’t mind.
They had taken only a few steps into the crowd when Alibi stopped and again pulled his phone from his pocket. He listened, said a few words, then gave Maren an apologetic look as he headed back to their spot by the wall where he could hear the caller. She mimed the act of using a fork and pointed towards the opposite side of the room, indicating she would hunt and gather for both of them.
But Maren discovered that securing food was not an easily attainable goal. Although she hadn’t yet seen Senator Stanton, a majority of the other 119 California legislators and an equal number of their staff seemed to be at the party. Plus, there were lobbyists. So many lobbyists…every few steps Maren was waylaid by a colleague with a cheery greeting or a tale of woe about a sponsored bill that didn’t get out of committee.
The event increasingly felt more like work than play. Maren decided to delay her mission to locate food and see if she could find a bathroom. Two glasses of champagne on top of two cups of tea before leaving home were taking their toll.
She was navigating with some difficulty through the crowd when she nearly knocked over Beth Connors, an elementary school teacher in her mid- twenties with whom Maren had worked on education bills in the Capitol, becoming friends in the process.
Beth’s thin form seemed to have been swallowed up by an oversized red and green Christmas-themed sweater and a voluminous sparkly red skirt. She had either missed or ignored the evening’s dress code. Beth teetered on red high heels—Maren could see she wasn’t the only one who would have benefited from training wheels to manage her evening footwear.
Maren reached out a hand to steady Beth and found her sweater damp to the touch, she was shivering. “Are you ok? It must be raining hard now. Did you just get here?”
Beth glanced over her shoulder. When she turned back her eyes were soft with tears, her mouth tight. “I shouldn’t have come…I…”
Beth left last fall to earn a masters in education in Texas. But with the tree trimmed and the stockings hung in her small Houston apartment, two-year-old Carissa was struck by a high fever. The toddler suffered two weeks of unrelenting illness before succumbing to complications of the flu. Not ebola, not meningitis—garden-variety flu. An act of God, the Texas pastor had said.
Afterwards Beth went home to Sacramento, but took a leave from teaching. She couldn’t bear being around children. She found a sales job at Macy’s and spent much of her free time on Facebook, rearranging and reposting photos of the day Carissa was born, of Carissa’s first steps, of Carissa holding her favorite toy. Each image held the promise of a future that never happened.
“Why don’t we sit?” Maren asked, still an arm on Beth as she scanned the room for an empty couch or chairs. Beth broke free, openly sobbing, as she pushed her way towards the front entrance. Maren tried to follow, but the gaps Beth made through the groups of revelers closed quickly in her wake. When Maren lost sight of her altogether she texted her—there was no point in trying to speak on the phone over the holiday banter and music.
I’ll meet you out front
A moment later, Maren’s phone vibrated.
No, don’t. I’m ok. I’m going home.
Maren didn’t want Beth leaving alone when she was so upset, but she knew her friend would be gone before she could get to her.
Let’s talk tomorrow. No response.
Maren felt warm, and with both hands lifted her hair off the back of her neck. The beginnings of a headache crept across her temples. A bathroom break had even greater appeal now, she wanted to splash cool water on her face.
A hallway to the left seemed a good place to start. En route, Maren passed large glass French doors leading to the darkened back of the estate. Rainfall obscured the view of what she imagined must be palatial grounds to match the scope and opulence of the Senator’s home. At the end of the hall, a closed door bore a tasteful sign: “Powder Room”. She was about to try the handle when she heard first a woman’s voice, then a man’s, followed by sounds of passion that in her experience more commonly emanated from a bedroom than a bathroom.
The hallway branched off to the right where she could see what appeared to be a small library or den. She figured she could wait there. Maren wanted distance from the lovers’ soundtrack and to find a place to sit down before her three-inch heels hobbled her for life.
It was a comforting space. Floor-to-ceiling mahogany shelves packed with books of all genres, plush armchairs alongside polished wood tables, several with Tiffany reading lamps—the modern aesthetic of the main house abandoned for an escape into dark tones and lush textures. A sliding glass door looked out onto a gated courtyard, thick with colorful native flowers and plants.
Muffled music and laughter emanated from the main room, but the sound of rain in the background seemed to have stopped. Maren walked to the sliding door to get a better look and to her surprise found it open, nearly an inch. Sliding it the rest of the way, she stepped outside. A sliver of moon peeked from behind still-thick clouds. She could smell lavender and mint in the clean night air.
Maren wasn’t sure of the appropriate amount of time to give the couple to consummate, but she thought 15 minutes seemed fair. It wasn’t like they could settle in for the night—someone else in search of a bathroom was bound to stumble upon them, sooner or later.
A tall wooden gate at the back of the courtyard was ajar. Maren was curious what the rest of the property looked like. When she pushed against it the top of the gate scraped against branches of an acacia tree, causing heavy clusters of yellow flowers to shake and in the process giving Maren a good soaking, she let out a yelp. Then she looked down and saw that the form-fitting fabric of her dress was now sufficiently transparent to give her decent odds in a wet T-shirt contest. She wondered how long it would take to dry, and how she might get her coat back for cover without parading her new look—which had gone from sexy to slutty—in front of other guests. She decided to go around the side of the house so she could come back in the front entrance, within a few feet of the coat check. She forced the gate the rest of the way open and stepped through.
A moment later, modesty and fashion choices were the farthest things from Maren’s mind. There was a horrific scream, a siren wail of terror unlike anything she’d ever heard as Senator Michelle Stanton staggered out of a gravel-lined bed of tall plants 20 feet from where Maren stood. The senator was barefoot, her floor-length gown torn at the bottom, her dark hair matted against her head, mascara running down both cheeks. She stopped screaming, but her eyes grew wide as she pointed at Maren.
“You…how could you?” the Senator shrieked. “You killed Santa!”
It seemed early to Maren for the party to have gotten this out of hand. True, Senator Stanton might have started drinking in the afternoon, although Maren was pretty sure seeing dead Santas was more likely to have resulted from hallucinogenic use. But since Stanton had come out as transgender, every aspect of her behavior was under a microscope and there was never any suggestion of drugs.
Maren took a few steps towards Stanton, hoping to calm the senator somehow, when what she saw through a gap in the tall plants stopped her in her tracks.
A man’s body lay half in and half out of the swimming pool. On his back, his lower torso was in shallow water on the pool’s steps, his head and shoulders resting on the concrete deck. The light blue costume he wore was stained on the front with what appeared to be blood. He stared, unblinking, at the night sky. Maren had no doubt that he was dead.
Her heart was racing, she felt dangerously close to passing out. She took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. But she knew no amount of measured breathing was going to calm the panic overtaking her. Because as soon as she had glimpsed the man’s face she knew she might as well find Detective Alibi Morning Sun, hold out her wrists and let him cuff her. The man lying there, the one evidently intended to cheer partygoers with his imitation of a blue-suited Santa, was Johnny Jameson, head of the government’s Health-for-All initiative. A man who only a week ago 30 people had witnessed Maren threaten to kill.
A young, uniformed police officer stood at attention just inside the door to the library, staring at a spot well above Maren’s head. It appeared that making eye contact with her was not sanctioned in whatever rulebook he was following.
Maren felt sick to her stomach. She was seated in one of the large chairs, hugging herself, covering her chest. She asked to use the bathroom, having failed to accomplish that earlier. Her voice sounded small and far away to her. The cop removed a walkie-talkie from his belt and within minutes a woman officer arrived.
Maren’s first attempt to get out of the chair was unsuccessful. Her legs trembled, then threatened to buckle underneath her.
It felt strange to be standing outside the small bathroom again, although this time the door was open, the couple long gone. The officer waited in the hallway while Maren executed the difficult task of inching her damp, tight dress up and her panties down in order to pee. As she washed and dried her trembling hands she dropped the small bar of soap, then the hand towel. Control of her motor skills seemed to have been impaired by the double blows of seeing a dead man and being accused of his murder.
Maren’s escort dropped her back at the library. The young male cop was gone, Alibi Morning Sun paced the room. “Sit,” he told her, motioning to an armchair. His mouth was grim, his voice flat. He took the chair across from her.
Maren felt tears starting at the corner of her eyes. She wiped them away as quickly as she could. Whatever had passed between them earlier that night, it was clear she wasn’t going to be able to collapse into Alibi Morning Sun’s arms for comfort.
He started speaking as soon as she sat dow
n. “This estate is fully fenced, front to back, with a modern security system, including cameras and alarms.”
That made sense to Maren. Senator Stanton’s celebrity status undoubtedly made privacy difficult to obtain. She also remembered reading that the Senator received threats after coming out as transgender.
“We haven’t found any breach of the system,” Alibi said, “so it seems unlikely that someone got to Mr. Jameson from outside. Not impossible, but it means we’re focusing our investigation on people permitted access to the estate during the time in question—guests and staff.” Although Alibi didn’t say it, Maren knew she had a special status on that list since Senator Stanton had publicly accused her of the crime.
Alibi tapped his phone to open a note-taking app, then asked Maren to describe her actions since arriving at the party, being as specific as she could.
Maren prepared carefully for testimony in the capitol. She knew from experience that when she didn’t she had a tendency to go off on tangents. But since the “prove you didn’t kill someone” presentation she was about to give hadn’t been booked in advance, she fell back on what she learned in law school as advice to witnesses of any kind.
Stick to the facts.
“I arrived alone. I had a glass, no, it was two glasses of champagne. We met. You and I…” She hesitated, then decided additional description of her interaction with Alibi wasn’t needed. “I left to find dinner, but couldn’t make it through the crowd to the buffet. I looked for a bathroom…”
Her sentence tailed off, incomplete, as she experienced a full-body chill and a bout of dizziness. She closed her eyes to keep the room from spinning and involuntarily pictured Alibi removing his jacket, wrapping it around her, telling her she would be okay.
“What happened next?” he said.
When she opened her eyes, Alibi’s expression appeared unfeeling, his mouth a straight line. Removing his jacket to comfort her seemed the last thing on his mind.
Tinsel and Temptation Page 18