by Robin Spano
“Pretty much. Yuppies have built this town up into their very own clapboard paradise, but when you have nature as pure as this, it’s gonna draw the free loving, free-thinking crowd, too. If that’s what you mean by 1970.”
Clare rolled her eyes. She couldn’t help it.
“You’re not into free love or free thought?”
“Of course I am. But I don’t need to create a lifestyle around it.”
Chopper scratched his chin, which had a couple days’ stubble. “The acid I have is beautiful. It will stone you and make you see clear at the same time. You working today?”
“No.”
“Let’s drop after breakfast. Day-tripping is sick.” Chopper checked his watch. “As we’re coming down, we can grab the last gondola to the top of Whistler or Blackcomb. We’ll be sober enough by then, shredding won’t be dangerous — but the drug will still be tingly enough in our system to make for a sick ride.”
It did sound fun — in a world where there wasn’t a killer. But Clare had to get to Amanda’s place so they could listen to the recording from the bar. She eyed her ski jacket on the hook by the door, with the memory stick hidden inside. She couldn’t believe she’d made such a stupid move, leaving such a damning piece of evidence unguarded overnight.
Chopper pulled two plates from the cupboard and started dishing his steaming faux-omelette onto them. “Lucy, how come you’re not on Facebook?”
Clare’s eyes focused on the plate of food Chopper set in front of her. It was a good question. Bert had been talking about creating a database of social media identities to add depth to their cover roles. The problem was that if a suspicious person started to explore the friends and family, they’d quickly find a group of people who only existed in ether. The other option was making all the cover identities friends with each other, but that was even more dangerous — once one identity was made, it would be easy to identify all the rest as bogus. So for now, no Facebook.
“I think social media is stupid,” Clare said. “It’s for narcissists and people with something to sell. Are you on Facebook?”
Chopper laughed. “Yeah, I am. Enjoy your breakfast.”
Clare took a bite. It was delicious, but something about Chopper’s question had made her nervous. She pushed her plate away. “Sorry — I’m not really a breakfast person. The coffee’s great, though.”
THIRTY-FOUR
WADE
Wade pushed his ugly black boots through the fresh snow that had fallen overnight. Tourists were frolicking through the village like it was fabulous, knocking each other over and tossing snowballs like kids. Did they not have real world problems? But no, of course they didn’t — they had the money to play in Canada’s most expensive outdoor playground.
In his pocket, his phone rang. Wade fished it out and answered.
A young male voice. “Is this Wade Harrison?”
Another collection agent, no doubt. How they kept getting his cell number, Wade had no clue.
“I’m sorry,” Wade said. “You must have the wrong number.”
“I’m looking for the owner of a bar called Avalanche.”
“Definitely the wrong number.” Wade ducked to avoid a snowball — which cleared him by several feet, but he glared at the group of kids who threw it, because that wasn’t the point.
“Look, I’m sure you’ve been getting hammered with phone calls since your waitress died. But this isn’t like other interviews. I want to know why Sacha died.”
“Sacha who?”
“Sacha Westlake. Even if this were a wrong number, you must have heard about her death.”
“Right,” Wade said. “The Whistler suicide.”
“Okay, well, I obviously have the wrong number. I guess I’ll go try to find the real Wade Harrison, so I can try to help him save his bar.”
Wade pulled the phone away from his ear, glanced at the screen. The caller’s number was blocked. “Who are you?”
“Call me an interested party. I got a tip-off that your landlords are about to foreclose.”
“From who?”
“Sorry . . . are you or aren’t you Wade Harrison?”
Fuck this guy. He was almost definitely a collection agent for one of Wade’s maxed-out, unpaid credit cards. There was no low those assholes wouldn’t sink to. But what if he was for real? “I’m Wade.”
A chuckle. “That’s what I thought.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m a reporter. But before you hang up, I really do want to help save your bar. And find Sacha’s killer.”
Wade sighed. “Sacha killed herself.”
“Was that because she was in love with you?”
Fuck. “Can you identify yourself please? Who do you write for?”
“It must have been horrible for her. Young girl, away from home, in love with someone she can’t have. You had no plans to leave your wife, right? Still don’t?”
Wade didn’t have anything to say. And yet he couldn’t hang up.
“What was Georgia doing, the afternoon Sacha died?”
“She was at work. In Vancouver.” Wade at least knew the answer to that.
“Hm. Well, for her sake, I hope she was in meetings. Or somewhere people remember having seen her.”
“My wife is not a killer.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t breathe a word. About your affair, I mean.”
Before Wade could think of a smart way to deny the charge, he had to scoot around yet another pack of rowdy twentysomethings decked out in the latest Lycra fashions. They were blocking nearly half of the wide cobblestone pathway, with no concern for people who might have to be somewhere.
The caller must have taken Wade’s silence for affirmation, because he said, “What I type, on the other hand . . . that depends upon how forthcoming you are about other things.”
“Like what?”
“My next article is going to be ‘A Day in the Life.’ I want to recreate a typical day in Sacha’s Whistler experience.” The reporter’s voice seemed accented — maybe French or Spanish.
Wade arrived at Avalanche. He dug his keys from his pocket with one hand and let himself in. He went to press his alarm code into the pad by the door, and stopped — the monitoring company had canceled his account the previous week for non-payment.
“What was Sacha like in bed?” the reporter asked. “I swear, this is just between you and me.”
Wade grabbed a glass from behind the bar and poured himself a thick finger of vodka before taking his coat off. “What do you think? She was phenomenal.” He shouldn’t be talking like this — and certainly not to the press. But short of seeing Sacha — holding her, feeling her — talking about her was all Wade wanted to do.
“How was she involved in the money you were laundering?”
Shit. “I think someone has been sadly misinforming you.”
“Okay. So it’s fine for your wife to read that you were sleeping with your waitress?”
“Jesus fucking Christ. Who are you already?”
“My name is Lorenzo Barilla. I have a blog you may be familiar with.”
THIRTY-FIVE
MARTHA
Ted smoothed his pressed white shirtsleeve and picked up his pen. The campaign office was buzzing with activity, but the energy was subdued. Which Martha didn’t blame anyone for — if she were a staffer on this campaign, she’d be scurrying in dazed confusion, too.
“Is that a Mont Blanc?” Martha couldn’t remember having seen the pen in Ted’s hand before.
“I didn’t think it was very presidential for your assistant to be writing with a Bic.”
Martha lowered her voice so she wasn’t lambasting Ted in front of the others. “Did that come out of campaign funds?”
“No — constituency funds. Should I spend my own money on office supplies?”
&
nbsp; “Change the books. I’ll write a personal check and the pen belongs to you. Call it a birthday present.”
“My birthday’s in September.”
“Do you care? It’s a free pen.”
An intern arrived with coffees. “Chai latte for Senator Westlake . . . um, was it dark roast with milk for you, Ted?”
Martha thanked the young woman for her coffee and gave her a big smile. She liked this office — an open white space with lots of dark hardwood — in the West Eighties, ten blocks from her brownstone. It felt companionable, working alongside her team.
“It was blond roast with cream.” Ted was glaring at the intern.
“Oh.” The girl laughed nervously. “Sorry. Same difference, right?”
“Not even close. Did you get your own order right?”
“Um. Yeah, because I was there.”
Ted shook his head. “Well, at least you’re free labor. You get what you pay for, right?”
The girl chewed her lip. “Um. I’m really sorry. I’ll listen better next time.”
She wandered off, two blond braids trailing behind her.
“Ted, what was that?” Martha hissed. It had taken all of Martha’s restraint not to call Ted out in front of the intern. “That girl is volunteering her time to help my campaign. We should treat her with nothing but gratitude.”
“Sorry,” Ted said. “If you worked here more often, you’d understand.”
Martha raised her eyebrows.
“She’s just . . . frustrating. Only listens halfway.” Ted leaned forward in his chair. “The FBI called. I’m afraid there’s some difficult news.”
“What difficult news?” Ted should know she loathed preamble.
Ted’s knuckles were white around his new pen. “There’s a note. From Sacha.”
Martha moved her lips but couldn’t speak, at first. “A . . . note.”
“A suicide note.”
Martha set her latte down, afraid it would slip out of her hand. “What does she say?”
“They won’t let me read it. But they’ve analyzed the handwriting. It’s hers.”
Martha’s stomach was churning; she found herself wishing for mint tea. But if she asked for some now, her campaign team would worry — it was way too out of character. Maybe there were some soda crackers around, or some plain white bread . . . She said, “Sacha must have known she was about to be murdered.”
Ted reached across and touched Martha’s hand. Martha jerked hers away.
She opened her eyes. “She must have known, someone must have forced her to write it, because Sacha didn’t kill herself. You agree, right?”
Ted took a long breath in. “Do you want some more time off?”
“If I take any more time off, I might as well hand the nomination to Kearnes. I want to hammer out my platform, as planned.” Actually, Martha wanted to crawl into a hole with Jules and every letter Sacha had ever mailed from summer camp, every finger painting she’d created in preschool. “I need to push forward.”
Ted slid a piece of paper across the desk. “Here are some more detailed talking points I’ve been working on. I’ve taken the research of Zedillo and a few others and Americanized the language so it will hopefully appeal to everyone with a brain. The trouble is . . .” Ted looked around.
“The trouble is, most voters don’t have a brain.” Martha finished his sentence.
Ted smirked. “Yeah.”
“I think I have to get savvy with this new media. I’m going to need the support of the younger generation.”
“You mean social media? Facebook and Twitter?”
“And, uh . . . a blog?”
“You have a blog. Christy and Melissa run it.”
“Great. Will it work if I start writing posts?”
“All the posts?”
“I don’t know. How often do we post?”
“Daily. Sometimes every other day.”
“Maybe I could write the post once or twice a week. Can I sign it as me, so voters know when I’m speaking to them directly?”
“Uh, yeah. I think so.”
“Good. Make it happen. Something else has been nagging me.” Martha wasn’t sure how to broach this, but there had been something in Ted’s voice the night before, when he’d refused to accept her resignation. And something in the way he had just spoken to the intern. “What are your goals, Ted?”
“At the moment, to win this election.”
“And after that?”
“To work for you in the White House.”
“Do you want to be a political assistant forever? Do you want to run for office yourself one day?”
Ted pinged a finger against his white paper cup. He walked a few feet to the small fridge and returned with a Red Bull. “Why are you asking?”
“Because I worry about you.”
“You do?” Ted’s voice was small, like he didn’t quite believe that. He opened his Red Bull and took a long glug.
“Of course. Everything you do, professionally, is for me. And since you work more hours than most people are even awake, I’m guessing most of what you do in your life is for me. That can’t be good for you.”
“It’s what I want.”
“Why?”
Ted shuffled his hands. “You’ll think I’m lame.”
Martha did her best not to groan. “Go ahead.”
“You . . . well . . . you remind me of my mom. You know she’s gone, right? She died when I was four. When my dad gets drinking, he tells me about how when they were younger, like in their early twenties, my mom used to go to every protest she could find. Sometimes she even helped organize them. He always says that she could have been president.”
Martha didn’t understand the connection. Her own youth was filled with respectable dresses and trying to act old before her time. Rallies and protests were what the Young Democrats did. “How, uh . . . do you see us as similar?”
“She was idealistic,” Ted said, “in this super-practical way.”
That sounded more like Sacha than Martha. Martha wished she hadn’t brought the question up, but she could hardly drop it now. “I’m sorry, Ted. How did your mother die?”
Ted glanced around the office and lowered his voice even further. “She was bipolar. She jumped off the Queensborough Bridge after phoning my dad to tell him she knew how to fly.”
Ah. Martha hoped she didn’t remind Ted too much of his mother. “I’m sorry. That must have been horrible.”
Ted nodded, glanced down at his pen.
“What are your own goals, though? Separate from mine. It’s easier to handle setbacks — like me dropping out of this race, if I choose to — if you have a vision of where you want to go.”
“I want to be president,” Ted said, with a staccato punch in his voice.
Martha was a bit blown back by his answer. “That’s fabulous. Why?”
“Because . . . you know what, screw that. It’s stupid.”
Martha wasn’t sure of the right thing to say, so she said, “If we win this, I’d love to make use of your ambition.”
“You would? How?”
“You’re excellent at policy.” Martha fingered the page of sound bites Ted had given her. “I’d be glad to give you an office, a role of your own. Maybe on this drug committee. Or something else if you prefer.”
“For real?”
“Absolutely. For now, though, let’s win this election.” She glanced around the office, which seemed to have picked up some energy since she’d been sitting there. “Can you point me to someone here who can give me our campaign’s Twitter details? I’d like to start doing some of my own tweeting, as well as blogging.”
Ted laughed.
“I’m serious.”
“I know. I wish Sacha could have seen this new you.”
An
d Martha wished Ted would shut up about Sacha. But she said, “I wish that, too.”
THIRTY-SIX
CLARE
Clare had her legs crossed on Amanda’s couch, earphones plugged into her laptop. It was strange, listening to Chopper’s voice talking to Richie. Strange but interesting.
When the recording was finished, she ripped out her earbuds and looked at Amanda. “This is bad.”
“How bad?” Amanda was grating carrots at the kitchen island. “What’s on the recording?”
“You want to listen, or you want highlights?”
“Highlights now; I’ll listen later.”
“Richie and Chopper paid to find the name of the undercover cop.”
Amanda set her carrots down.
“They seem confident my name is on the way. Though they’re still saying he, even to each other, so that’s something.”
“I think your identity’s safe.” Amanda started grating again. “My strong guess is that they’ll run against a dead end.”
“Your strong guess? Is that what you’ll say at my funeral?”
Amanda smiled. “Clare, don’t be dramatic.”
“Chopper and Jana have both independently asked me if I’m a cop. Jana directly, Chopper indirectly. He wanted to know why I’m not on Facebook.”
“Sure, because you’re a newcomer.”
“I might be able to deflect their suspicion. I can prove to them I’m not a cop by dropping acid.”
“Good one. Because it will be true — if you drop acid, you’ll no longer be a cop. At least not on my watch.”
“Has the handwriting analysis come back on the suicide note yet?”
“Yes,” Amanda said. “It’s a match.”
“So Sacha killed herself.”
“Looks that way.”
“Can I read the note?”
Amanda shook her head. “Remember your job is to gather, not analyze.”
Clare smiled as sweetly as she could when she said, “So if Sacha killed herself, there’s no killer on the prowl. I guess you won’t be needing my services.”