The Columbus Code (2 page)

Winters stopped listening and stifled a groan. Ben had been ten years old when he joined the Service and back then it was cute when his kid brother bragged about his status and talked about it nonstop when they were together. Now it bordered on obnoxious. No, actually it had gone beyond obnoxious, especially since Ben had decided to follow in his footsteps.

Winters got to his feet and gave Ben a halfhearted hug.

“You hear anything?” Ben asked.

“About what?”

“About my challenging that last set of interviews.”

Winters feigned a yawn and squeezed past him. The room had gotten smaller since they were kids. “No, I haven't, and nobody would tell me anything anyway.”

“I was hoping you'd know something.”

Winters stopped, hand on the doorknob, and turned toward him. “Ben. Brother. We came here to bury our mother and all you can think about is your job interviews?”

“No, man, I'm thinkin' about Mom, but—”

“Give it a rest,” Winters said. He pried the door open, then walked down the hall to the bathroom. It was pointless to add that during Ben's endless stay with him in San Francisco, Ben had bombed the
preliminary interviews because he went into them acting as if he were already an agent packing heat. His rejection was a done deal, but there was no convincing Ben of that.

When Winters returned to the bedroom, Ben was sitting on the edge of the bed, studying a family photo taken on the day Winters graduated high school—back when Ben was two. He was now looking more like a guy who had just lost his mother.

“I never felt like I knew her as well as you did,” he said. To his credit, his voice was thick and soft.

Winters leaned against the dresser. “I think we knew two different Moms. She changed a lot after Pop died. And how old were you when that happened? Five?”

Ben gave a glum nod. “She was all into the past. Last couple of years I lived here she spent more time in the attic than she did down here.”

Winters shuddered involuntarily. Ben made it sound as if the feisty, food-pushing mother he knew had turned into something out of one of filmmaker Brian De Palma's psychological thrillers. “What do you say we celebrate her in her best days?” he said.

Ben wiped his nose with the side of his hand and nodded. His eyes were already mischievous again. “Hey, did you get grayer since I was out there?”

Winters ran a hand over the hair he knew was turning more salt-and-pepper daily and glanced over at his brother. “Did you lose more of yours?”

Ben had their father's receding hairline, though he was far from bald. He reached out for Winters' midsection. “Is that a little soft spot there? What happened to your six-pack?”

Winters' face was impassive, but the comment struck home. If
they didn't let him get back to work soon he was going to lose his edge. “I hope you brought a suit,” he said, changing the subject.

“Oh, yeah. Hugo Boss, brother. Mom would be proud.”

No, Winters thought, she would tell him he was a moron for spending money he didn't have. “Put it on,” he said instead. “We need to get there early.”

“Hey, is Maria here?”

Why didn't he just push all of Winters' buttons? Were they that obvious? “She's meeting us at the church,” Winters said. “And she'll beat us there if you don't get a move on.”

Winters was lying, of course, though it seemed Ben didn't notice. He knew Maria would wait until the last possible moment to show up. And not because she didn't love her grandmother.

Maria Winters looked up through a panel of thick hair and glared at her assistant. “What are you
doing?”
she asked.

Austin wafted a lanky arm toward the door—again—and said, “I'm trying to get you out of here, ma'am.”

“Do
not
call me ‘ma'am,'” she said, though she knew it was useless. He was not only from Mississippi, but he loved to needle her. “I want to finish this travel stuff,” she continued. “I'm barely going to get back before we leave for Barcelona.”

His eyes narrowed, making his already thin face look even skinnier. Spikes of hair the color of bran completed the effect: Austin looked as if he were about to levitate to the ceiling with her briefcase in his hand.

“I can finish the travel stuff. It's my job to finish the travel stuff. You shouldn't even be touching the travel stuff.” Austin set the red briefcase on the desk and tapped it. “You're just stalling.”

Maria dragged her fingers through the loose curls that would droop the minute she hit the sidewalk. It had been drizzling in DC all morning and probably was in Maryland too. Why did it always rain the day of a funeral? Couldn't people be buried when the ground was dry?

“Seriously,” Austin said.

She looked at Austin again. For a twenty-three-year-old guy, he was pretty sensitive. She'd wondered more than once why he was working in a high-pressure law firm when he should be doing grief counseling or something. He'd been counseling her ever since Friday when she'd received the news about
Abuela
right here in this room.

“You need closure,” he said now.

“I know. What I don't need is my family.”

“But they probably need you.”

“I doubt that very seriously. What they need is the opposite of me.”

“Whatever. I already called you a cab. You have just enough time to make your train.” Austin's hazel eyes softened. “You can do this. You know you can.”

“‘Can' is one thing,” Maria said. “‘Want to' is another.” She stood and took her spring trench coat from him, then picked up the briefcase. “Promise you'll finish this?”

“If you don't go I'm going to cause a scene.”

Maria couldn't stifle a smile, though it faded as soon as she stepped into the hall and plowed headlong into Bill Snowden. She didn't have time for one of Snowden's monologues, but you didn't put off the boss. Not this one, anyway.

“Where are you off to?” he asked, dark eyebrows tending toward each other. Maria was sure the man had them waxed.

“My grandmother's funeral.” Maria backed toward the elevator as she added, “I sent you an e-mail.”

“Oh, right,” he said as he nodded. “Sorry for your loss.”

Uh-huh. There was no “sorry” in Snowden's dark eyes. The striking contrast with his very-white hair should have made him handsome, but Maria never found cold men attractive.

“Well, here, take this with you.” Snowden thrust a sheaf of papers into her hands. “Final details for the Catalonia meeting. You'll go straight there when you land in Barcelona, so take some Ambien or something for the flight. You'll want to sleep on the way over.”

Maria bit off an
As if
and nodded, still making her way backward to the elevator. She also forced herself not to say,
You couldn't have sent me this by e-mail?
She didn't have to look at the pages to know that most, if not all, of it was handwritten in his inimitable scrawl—in pencil, no less. That was why she went to law school and was hired on at this prestigious firm at age twenty-five—so she could decipher her boss' handwriting like a 1940s stenographer.

“See you in Spain,” he said as she stepped onto the elevator.

The doors closed, squeezing him out of sight. “Bye-bye,” she whispered.

Yeah
, she sighed to herself,
sometimes it is, as Austin would say, “wa-a-a-ay hard” to be professional
.

The closer the MARC train drew to the stop, the less Maria wanted to think about going to
Abuela
's house without her there. She had always been there—before and after the event by which Maria marked everything. Her mom's death.
Abuela
had been a constant—the summers when Maria went there to stay
after
—the Christmases the whole family spent there
before
. The house would still smell like paprika and saffron. Abuela had been making paella for a church supper the last time Maria talked to her. Maybe her smell would still be there too. Dove soap. Jergens lotion. Downy. But without her there, it would only taunt—Maria knew that.

And then there would be her father . . .

Him she couldn't think about or she'd head straight back to DC. Maria's fingers shook with anger even now as she opened her briefcase and pulled out the papers Snowden had given her. But as her eyes scanned the pages, her mind turned to work and very quickly her body relaxed.

Maria's firm, Gump, Snowden and Meir, represented Catalonia Financial, an international corporation with headquarters in Barcelona, Spain. Catalonia was currently acquiring Belgium Continental and wanted Snowden there to finalize the deal. Snowden never went anywhere without a full entourage, and he'd asked Maria to be part of it this time. It was her first overseas trip since she joined the firm in December, fresh out of law school, and even though his invitation had been last minute it still seemed like one of those only-happens-once things—until she lost
Abuela
.

“You're doing so well!”
Abuela
said to her on Easter weekend when she'd heard about the trip. They'd spent the weekend coloring eggs and eating ham and putting lilies on the grave of
Abuelo
, the grandfather Maria never knew.
Abuela
had taken Maria's face in both hands and said exactly what Maria knew she would say. “Your mama would be so proud.”

Fourteen years after the fact and they were still crying.
Abuela
had always grieved as if Maria's mother, Anne, was her own daughter. She definitely grieved more than Dad had . . .

Maria blinked away the blur in her eyes and went back to the notes. Emilio Tejada, president and CEO of Catalonia Financial, would conduct the meeting himself and she would have to take notes rather than record the session. “Tejada's a tough bird, set in his ways,” Snowden had written.

She couldn't think about “tough old birds” right now either. That
was how her Uncle David referred to
Abuela
. Everything was leading back to her.

Maria's mind continued to wander and finally she crammed the papers into her briefcase, then sat quietly watching the raindrops stream sideways on the window of the racing train. She almost knew more about
Abuela
than she did about herself. Her father had even suggested during their stilted phone conversation that she should give the eulogy.

Was he the most insensitive creature ever to inhabit the planet? Maybe he didn't know that this was the first funeral she would attend since that awful September day when they buried Mom.

Or maybe he didn't know her at all.

Saint Peter's Episcopal Church was a ponderous old place that had changed as little as Winters' mother had in the years since he had been an acolyte there. He had carried the cross up the aisle nearly every Sunday because he was the only teenager left in the parish. The congregation had consisted largely of octogenarians back then, mixed with the few faithful younger people like Olivia Winters who were devoted to the denomination. He couldn't imagine what was still holding it together.