Free Lies Lovers Tell by Zuri Day

and a separate vanity area, Maya once again paused and looked around with her best detective eye. As with the bed, the bathroom looked untouched, the towels hanging as pristinely as they had the day before. Clearly, Sam Walters had spent the night elsewhere.
    “Interesting,” Maya said as she slowly made her way around the bathroom area. She idly touched the few, generic toiletries, ran her hand along the dry marble basin. Waddling Walters with a woman? Maya smiled, trying to imagine the geeky, conservative stuffed-shirt Brit getting his swerve on. But she’d never thought of it before, of Sam Walters seeing someone while here on business. Maybe this was a noteworthy development—Sam Walters, supposedly new on the scene in Los Angeles, having personal, romantic ties.
    Maya replaced the towels and methodically wiped down the basin. All the while her mind raced. Who would someone like Sam Walters be involved with? Where would he meet her? Maya’s heartbeat quickened with the intuitive knowledge that she was onto something. But what?
    Maya heard Cecilia coming up the stairs and realized she’d probably taken too long to make a bed and change out towels in an already pristine room. She grabbed the old linens and headed toward the door. Just as she was about to exit, a slip of paper caught her eye. She grabbed it quickly, just as Cecilia rounded the hall.
    “I’m ready to wash these,” Martha said, deftly sliding the paper into her pants pocket. Cecilia simply nodded and continued down the hall to one of three guest bedrooms.
    Maya quickly finished the washing and within the hour was headed toward the bus stop. She couldn’t wait to lose Martha. Her head itched under the hot, tight wig cap, her eyes hurt from looking through lens as thick as cola bottles, and her back hurt from trying to scrunch down the fiery spirit that was Maya Jamison into the insecure entity named Martha Jones. Maya rubbed her neck to ease the tension there, praying the bus wouldn’t be late. The faster and farther she got from Pacific Avenue and Sam’s Playa Del Rey home, the more she could relax.
    As soon as Maya got seated on the Metro 115, she whipped off the thick glasses, opening and closing her eyes in an attempt to regain clear vision. I really need to quit wearing these things , she thought as her vision stabilized. Even though she tried as much as possible not to actually look through them, it wasn’t always possible. Maya didn’t want to damage her twenty-twenty vision behind this charade.
    She plugged in her iPod, pulled out the BlackBerry she finally felt safe enough to carry with her to Sam’s house, and settled in for the twenty minutes that was part one of her bus trip. Although she checked her e-mail partly to ward off detractors, she didn’t really need to. It was amazing how differently she was treated in her housekeeper getup. Maya wasn’t vain, but she was used to getting her share of looks and flirts. But aside from a toothless, homeless man and an overeager dog trying to turn her leg into a humping post at the bus stop, Maya hadn’t received so much as a head nod. She was a bit surprised that it mattered, but had to admit, it did. Even homely housekeepers needed love.
    Nearing her stop, Maya placed her BlackBerry in her purse and stood up. She placed her hand in her pocket and felt the paper she’d forgotten about. The tension she’d rubbed away earlier returned with a vengeance when she looked down on the paper and saw the last thing she expected to find written there…her phone number.
    Maya was so rattled she missed her stop and had to walk back a block to catch her connection. When it arrived, it was a jam-packed bus. Just as well. Maya wasn’t in the frame of mind to resume checking e-mails on her BlackBerry; especially since one of them had been from Ester, reporting on yet another of Jade’s undermining schemes. Maya had something for Jade’s “a” later, but there was another level of madness she needed