by Lee Hollis
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Sandra cleared her throat and said, “That’s impossible.”
“I’m afraid it’s true. I saw him—”
Sandra abruptly cut her off. “It wasn’t him.”
Maya slowly reached down and picked up her phone. She punched in her code and then swiped until she found the photo that she had taken the night before. She set the phone down on the table with the screen facing up so Sandra could look at the picture. She stared at it and then pushed the phone back toward Maya.
“You can hardly see the man’s face in that photo. That could be anyone.”
“I know it’s a bad photo. But I saw him with my own eyes, Sandra. It was the senator.”
“It can’t be.”
Sandra looked away, refusing to make further eye contact with Maya.
“Sandra . . .”
“Stephen was in DC last night. He called me from his apartment on K Street and again this morning before heading into a committee meeting at the Capitol.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. The man you saw last night with Georgina Callis is not my husband, but I appreciate you trying to warn me . . . or protect me. . . . Frankly I don’t know what you were trying to do. . . .”
“I just thought you should know.”
“Well, thank you,” she said brusquely, checking her watch. “I forgot I promised to take Jack to get his haircut downtown. I really should be going.”
“I understand,” Maya said with an apologetic smile.
“It was nice seeing you,” Sandra said before abruptly jumping up and rushing out the door.
Maya watched Sandra run to her car, her hand over her head in a vain attempt to protect her hair from the buckets of rain that were now pouring down from the sky.
The waitress arrived with the bread pudding with a heaping scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. “Where’d she go?”
“She left.”
The waitress dropped the plate of bread pudding down in front of Maya. “You want it?”
“Sure, why not?” Maya said, picking up a spoon and cutting into it. That could have gone so much better. Maya wanted to kick herself for not handling it more sensitively. But in the end, there was only so much she could do, especially if Sandra refused to face the truth.
Because one thing was certain. The man Maya had seen on Georgina Callis’s doorstep was definitely Senator Stephen Wallage from the great state of Maine.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Sandra pulled her car into the driveway. She was relieved that the days of reporters camping out on her lawn were mercifully over. At least for now. But she knew the reality of being married to a public figure, and there was no guarantee that they would not flock to her house again at a moment’s notice at the slightest whiff of further scandal.
She was happy to be home, especially after nearly sideswiping a city bus when she blew through a stop sign because her mind was so preoccupied. Luckily the bus driver swerved fast enough to avoid a collision but couldn’t resist flipping her the finger as he pulled over at his next stop to pick up some waiting passengers huddled together in the rain.
Sandra tried getting a grip on herself before heading into the house. She had been deeply disturbed by what Maya had told her. Of course her first reaction would be to deny it, that’s what her role as a senator’s wife was supposed to be. The ultimate denier. “No, you obviously don’t know my husband,” or “My husband would never do that.” She had all the lines down cold from her nearly two decades of experience.
However, in the past few years, it had become a little more difficult to believe them.
But this one she was fairly sure about. Stephen was in DC. She had spoken to him just this morning. He could not have been anywhere near Georgina Callis’s house last night. And that picture Maya had served up as proof? Yes, the man resembled Stephen closely, but it was so dark, and honestly, how many men with the right height and hair color could be out there in the world? She wasn’t going to automatically assume Stephen was up to his old tricks again. The least she could do was give him the benefit of the doubt.
Sandra got out of her car, shut the door, clicked the alarm on her remote, and walked up to the front door. When she entered the foyer, she could hear laughing coming from the living room. She hung her bag on the coatrack in the corner as Jack and Ryan argued over who was more of an expert at some video game. And then she heard a third voice playing referee, and her heart nearly stopped.
She slowly made her way around the corner to see Stephen nestled on the couch between his two sons, as they nudged each other, frantically pressing buttons on their Nintendo controller pads while playing a game, all their eyes glued to the mounted TV on the wall above the fireplace.
“No!” Jack cried.
“Dude, you’re so going down! I own you!” Ryan said triumphantly.
Stephen finally tore his eyes away from the TV after noticing Sandra.
“Hi, babe . . . ,” Stephen said, grinning. “I’m losing badly. I’m a terrible Dragon Slayer, or Dragon Hunter, or what is this one again?”
Jack sighed. “Dragon Ball FighterZ.”
“Yeah, that. Apparently I suck at it,” he said, chuckling.
Sandra tried keeping her cool and spoke softly. “What are you doing here?”
“Senate recessed early after Kramer did a little legal maneuvering and blocked a filibuster so we could take a floor vote on the farm bill,” he said. “So I caught the first flight that had room for me.”
“When did you get in?”
“Midday, around three, I think,” he said, shrugging.
“I was here when he got home,” Jack said. “He took me to get my haircut. You like?”
It was practically a buzz cut. Jack hated any hair getting into his eyes when he played football, so he kept it close-cropped for most of the season.
“I was supposed to drive you,” Sandra said evenly.
“Yeah, I meant to text you that Dad was here so you didn’t have to,” Jack said, oblivious to his mother’s rigid tone. “Luckily Sam was able to squeeze me in a little earlier.”
“What’s for dinner?” Ryan asked, dropping his controller down on the glass-top coffee table. “I’m starving.”
“I haven’t really thought about it. I have enough in the kitchen, so I can whip up something that you’ll eat,” Sandra said.
Stephen suddenly noticed that something was bothering her and stood up and crossed to her, enveloping her in a hug. “Forget it. I’ll take us out. You deserve a night off from slaving in the kitchen.”
Sandra stared at him. “I’m not sure if I’m up for going out.”
“Come on, Mom,” Ryan wailed. “By the time you change and figure out what to make, it’s going to be after eight o’clock, and I don’t think I can make it that long!”
She didn’t want to go out. She was too tired to keep a fake smile on and pretend nothing was wrong. She just wanted to slap together a few sandwiches for them, feign a headache, and disappear upstairs to bed.
But it was three to one.
She had already lost the vote.
“Okay, how about that new Indian place?” Sandra offered. “I hear their coconut curry is to die for.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Stephen said, kissing her on the cheek. “Let me just go change my shirt.”
He bounded up the stairs.
Sandra turned to her sons. “Be ready in five minutes. I don’t want to be out late.”
“Can I call Vanessa and have her come join us?” Ryan asked as he headed for the stairs.
“No,” Sandra answered.
Ryan stopped in his tracks. “What?”
“Let’s just keep it to the four of us tonight,” she said.
“Why?”
She didn’t want to tell him that Vanessa’s presence would only remind her of Maya and what she had told her today, but she couldn’t do that, so she had to come up with something else. “I’m just tired, that’s
all. You can have her over later this week. I’ll make something nice.”
“Fine,” Ryan huffed as he stomped up the stairs, annoyed.
Jack disappeared into the downstairs bathroom off the foyer to check himself out in the mirror as he was prone to do.
Sandra marched up to the master bedroom, where she found Stephen, shirtless, rifling through his row of casual button-down shirts that hung on his side of the walk-in closet.
He didn’t notice her at first.
She marveled at how handsome she still found him to be.
No wonder he got 58 percent of the female vote in his last election.
“Did Ryan tell you all about opening night?”
“Yes, he did. A smash hit, according to just about everyone!”
“You would have loved it. He’s a star in the making. He stole the show.”
“As I would expect him to do,” Stephen said, selecting a striped polo and slipping it on his broad shoulders.
“Georgina did a fantastic job directing,” she said quietly.
He was looking down, tucking the shirt into his pants. “Who?”
“Georgina Callis. The drama teacher at the high school. I’m sure you remember her.”
“Oh, right,” Stephen said, turning to her and smiling.
He didn’t even blink.
My God, Sandra thought. I never realized it before. He is so good at lying.
It came so easy to him.
And that’s what she found the most disturbing.
How effortlessly he could look her in the eye and lie to her. It had to be what made him such a successful politician.
Sandra had become adept at pretending. It was how she was going to get through this dinner and not burst into tears. She was very good at putting on a mask when she had to, and now it was again one of those times because she was not quite ready to confront her husband.
Not yet.
However, one thing was crystal clear in her mind. Stephen did not catch the first available flight home today. He was already home in Portland last night. At Georgina Callis’s house.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Maya was happy to hear that Frances’s baby daddy, Coach Vinnie Cooper, had decided to move into her apartment right before Frances gave birth. She liked Vinnie, he seemed like a solid guy and a source of emotional support for the sometimes volatile and moody Frances. Maya had even agreed to help Vinnie move his stuff in early the following morning since she didn’t want Frances lifting any heavy boxes in her present condition, or more to the point, to stop her from lifting any heavy boxes, since Frances stubbornly believed she was capable of doing anything, eight months pregnant be damned.
Vinnie had recruited a substitute to fill in for him in his classes but planned on being done and back at the high school in time for football practice after school. Maya showed up with doughnuts and coffee, and Vinnie excitedly munched on a delicious-looking one with cream filling and chocolate smeared on top.
Frances, meanwhile, busily sifted through some of his sports memorabilia in the back of his rented U-Haul truck, nixing a giant oil painting of Joe Namath from the 1970s he wanted to hang in their bedroom as well as a giant flower vase made in the shape of a Michigan Wolverines helmet. She used the excuse of having very little extra room in her small one-bedroom apartment, but Maya could tell the real reason Frances told Vinnie to take them directly to his recently rented storage unit was because she found them infinitely tacky.
Once the task of actually moving the Frances-approved items from the truck into the apartment began, Frances stood on the curb supervising while Maya and Vinnie carried the items to the lobby and up the stairs to the second-floor walk-up. After dropping off the first load, they turned to head back down to the U-Haul.
“What’s happening with the Maisie Portman case?” Vinnie asked casually.
“You don’t know? I’m surprised Frances hasn’t been keeping you in the loop,” Maya remarked.
“No, she doesn’t really talk about it much.”
“We’ve been following a few leads, but so far, we haven’t got much. I feel bad for our client, Maisie’s sister. She wants answers.”
“You think maybe the police are right that Maisie hung herself?”
“They would like nothing more than a closed case, but based on what I saw at the scene, and my own gut feeling, I don’t think it was anything close to a suicide.”
“Yeah, Maisie loved messing with people too much to want to end her own life early,” Vinnie cracked.
This stopped Maya. “What do you mean by that?”
Vinnie thought about what to say. “She was kind of miserable to be around.”
“That’s what I’ve been hearing. Did you personally have any run-ins with her?”
“Not just me. Everybody at the school did.”
“What happened between you two?”
“Promise me you won’t say anything to Frances.”
That was an odd request. But Maya was too curious at this point to argue. “I promise.”
They were back outside now, where Frances waited for them. She had dug out another item from the truck and was holding a Freddie Freeman Atlanta Braves autographed baseball sealed inside a glass case.
“You can keep this in the apartment, just not in the living room,” Frances said.
“Got it.” Vinnie smiled, resigned to keeping her happy.
Maya lifted a plastic bin of baseball cards, and Vinnie grabbed a gym bag full of clothes and his signed baseball, and the two of them marched back toward the building. Once Frances was out of earshot, they continued their conversation.
“A few years ago, after Maisie started working at the school, she asked me out on a date. It was long before I had even met Frances, let alone started dating her.”
“So why be secretive about it?”
“Come on, Maya. We both know Frances can be insanely jealous.”
“That’s an understatement,” Maya said, laughing.
“Anyway, we went out a couple of times, nothing serious, mind you—a dinner in the Old Port, a Red Sox game in Boston, but after a few weeks, it was obvious we didn’t have any chemistry, so I stopped calling her.”
Maya was getting a little winded carrying the plastic bin full of cards up the stairs to the apartment. “Did she get stalkery after that?”
“No, not really. She sent me an email asking if she did or said anything wrong, but I told her I wasn’t feeling it and that maybe it would be best if we just stayed friends.”
They finally reached the apartment, and Maya dropped the bin down on top of the kitchen table and stopped to catch her breath.
Vinnie set the gym bag down and took his signed baseball in the glass case into the bedroom. When he returned, he was using a towel to wipe the sweat off his brow. “I thought that was the end of it, but that’s when things started getting weird.”
“Weird how?”
“Well, she started acting really cool toward me, refusing to make eye contact during staff meetings, making cracks about my weight in front of my students. I was a little heavier before I met Frances, and Maisie bought me a gym membership for my birthday,” Vinnie said, chuckling.
“Was that it?”
“No. Then she took it up a notch. We’d be in budget meetings and she would advocate cutting money designated for the athletic department. She even went after my salary, saying it was disproportionate to my contribution to the school. I mean, it was like she had a real vendetta. Luckily Hicks put the kibosh on her proposals. But that just made her madder. There were a couple of kids I cut from the team for blowing off practice too many times, and one of them was African American, so Maisie started a whispering campaign that I was some kind of racist. It was crazy, man!”
“She really had it out for you.”
“All because I broke up with her. After an internal review, the school board decided I was not some kind of white supremacist and dropped the whole matter. But then she started that Dirty Laundry site, a
nd stories started popping up again that I was seen going to Klan meetings on the weekends. It was completely nuts!”
“So you knew Maisie was behind the Dirty Laundry site?”
“I didn’t have any proof, but yeah, I had my suspicions.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to Principal Hicks?”
“Because, frankly, she was out of her mind, and I didn’t want to find myself in her crosshairs again. I figured eventually she’d get bored writing lies about me and move on to someone else. By then, I was dating Frances and I was happy, and I just didn’t want to stoke the fire, you know what I mean?”
Maya nodded.
Still, in the back of her mind, Vinnie had just confessed to a motive for getting rid of this thorn in his side for the past three years.
“Vinnie, I have to ask, where were you the night Maisie was found hanging in the office?”
Suddenly a voice from behind interrupted them. “What are you doing?”
Maya and Vinnie spun around to see Frances hovering in the doorway to the apartment.
“Nothing,” Vinnie said guiltily.
Frances studied them for a few moments and then said, “Vinnie, why don’t you go back down for another load. I want to talk to Maya.”
Vinnie, not in the mood to quibble with his girlfriend’s wishes, dashed out the door in a flash.
“What are you doing?” Frances asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you interrogating my boyfriend?”
“I’m not interrogating him. We were just talking.”
“That’s not what it sounded like to me. If I hadn’t had to come up here to use the bathroom, which I’m doing about forty times a day at this point, I wouldn’t have caught you.”
“Caught me? You make it sound like I’m doing something bad.”
Frances glared at Maya, her eyes wild with fury. “You’re treating my boyfriend like he’s some kind of murder suspect.”
She was right.
In Maya’s mind, everyone was guilty until proven innocent. And sometimes Maya could be like a dog with a bone until she learned the whole unvarnished truth. Maybe she had crossed a line with Vinnie by asking him where he was the night Maisie was killed.