“OK,” Jane said, either ignoring or not seeing Dr. Hastings’s disapproval as she hit a button on her laptop. The lights dimmed and a screen dropped from the ceiling. “This is Laura Daniels, the wife of the U.S. ambassador to Thailand, and a childhood friend of Mrs. Merrivel.”
Jane displayed a picture of a woman about Mrs. Merrivel’s age. Her hair was an unrealistic blond and she wore a news anchor’s professional smile.
“Mrs. Daniels has made a lifelong commitment to charitable works, particularly focusing on women’s health and education. Our charity foundation has worked with her on several occasions, and she is currently planning the first annual South East Asian Women’s Health Conference, to be held next week in Bangkok.”
“Give the woman a gold star,” Val said.
“This is Lawan Chinnawat,” Jane said, ignoring Val. “Based out of Thailand, Lawan has been one of the loudest voices protesting the sex trade that flourishes throughout Asia. She’s also funded her own free health clinic in the red light district, and she works with the scholarship fund started by Laura Daniels to place the children of prostitutes in boarding schools. The hope being that with an education or a skill, these children will break the cycle of prostitution, violence, and drug abuse.”
“Give her two gold stars,” Val said, and this time Jane shot her a dirty look. “I mean, great, they’re wonderful people,” Val continued. “But why are we here? I assume there’s a problem? Cut to the chase, Jane.”
“Lawan is missing,” said Jane.
“What do you mean ‘missing’?” Val asked. “I mean there’s ‘stepped out for a romantic getaway without telling anyone’ missing, and then there’s ‘blood all over the kitchen floor’ missing. Which is it?”
“That is what we are here to ascertain,” said Dr. Hastings. “I believe we will have Laura Daniels on the line shortly”—she looked at Jane, who nodded—“and then we can ask her. Personally, I wouldn’t have bothered to call you in on this matter, but Miranda was most insistent.”
Nikki hadn’t grown up with Nell’s backhanded compliments and veiled insults without learning a thing or two about barbed comments. At the very least, she knew when one was aimed at her.
“Connection has been made. Video feed commencing now,” Jane said.
The screen flickered, and then a slightly off-color version of Laura Daniels appeared.
“Oh,” she said, and the picture stabilized into more lifelike colors. “Oh,” said the woman again. “Oh, there you are. Am I doing this right? I’m not sure I’m doing this right.”
“You’re coming through loud and clear, Mrs. Daniels,” said Jane reassuringly. “You’re speaking to Dr. Hastings, Valerie Robinson, and Nikki Lanier.”
“And of course you must be Jane. Call me Laura,” the woman said, smiling warmly. “And thank you all so much for taking the time to talk to me.”
Laura was clearly practiced at the social niceties of making gracious speeches, but she also very clearly meant it. Nikki was withholding final judgment, but upon her first impression, she liked Laura Daniels.
“We are always gratified to help a friend of Mrs. Merrivel’s,” Dr. Hastings said with a wintery smile, “but perhaps in the interests of time we should proceed expeditiously.”
Nikki glanced at Jane, wondering if anyone else had noticed the expensive vocabulary being thrown around. Jane dropped the tiniest wink, and Nikki covered her mouth with her hand to hide a smile.
“Oh, of course,” said Laura. “I understand that you’re very busy, but honestly, I wouldn’t have contacted you if I didn’t think it was an absolute necessity.”
“Please tell us your problem,” said Dr. Hastings.
“My friend Lawan Chinnawat, you may have heard of her . . .”
“We’ve seen her profile,” said Dr. Hastings, cutting her off.
“Oh. Yes, well, she has a lot of political enemies, you know. It’s practically not safe for her and her daughter—Lindawati, so precious; she’s at boarding school now—to walk by themselves.” Nikki was amused by Laura’s grandmotherly interjection about Lawan’s daughter, but she could see that Dr. Hastings wasn’t.
“She’s always getting threats and things,” continued Laura, “but ordinarily she just takes her precautions and things are fine. But lately things have been . . . tense. Tenser than usual. Since the coup in 2006, speech isn’t as free as it used to be. Activists like Lawan are targets. Not that Lawan takes any notice of that—although, really, I wish she would. Recently, I asked her to be the keynote speaker at my conference. I wish I hadn’t; it probably put her too much in the limelight, but no one else is as well versed in the difficulties facing women in Thailand and Asia right now.”
“Mrs. Daniels,” interrupted Dr. Hastings again, “is there a point to any of this?”
“I’m getting there,” said Laura, looking slightly irritated. “I’m just trying to explain what Lawan has been working on, and that things have been tense for the last few months.”
“Noted,” said Dr. Hastings. “When did Lawan actually disappear?”
“Ten days ago. I went to her house, and she was on the phone arguing in Thai, and she looked upset, like she had been crying. Lawan said everything was fine, but the next day she was gone. The house is empty. She won’t answer her phone. I don’t even know if she’s alive!” Laura dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “I’m so worried! And the conference is next week. What am I supposed to do?”
“Don’t worry,” said Nikki impulsively, wanting to stop Laura’s tears. “I promise we will do everything we can to find her.”
Laura lifted her face out of the tissue with a glowing smile. Across the table, Dr. Hastings tapped her fingernails on the lacquered surface of the conference table in a steady cadence.
“Oh, thank you!” beamed Laura. “I’m at my wit’s end! Miranda was right, you Carrie Mae ladies are the best!”
“We’re just the tops,” Val said, giving Nikki a disgusted look.
“Give us a gold star?” asked Nikki, with a weak smile.
“Mmph,” snorted Dr. Hastings, sounding irritated. “I’ll tell you what, Mrs. Daniels, Val and Nikki will fly to Thailand and meet with you. Hopefully, they will be able to turn up something, but, really, I’m afraid I can only allocate one week for this kind of investigation.”
“Oh, of course,” Laura agreed eagerly. “I totally understand. Anything you can do to help will be very much appreciated. I’m just glad to have professionals on the case!”
“Of course,” said Dr. Hastings. “Thank you for calling. We’ll be in touch.” She nodded at Jane, who shut off the feed and began to mutter instructions into her headset.
“Nicole,” said Dr. Hastings, “perhaps we should clarify the chain of command and the decision-making process. We do not simply promise people that we will solve everything for them! This is clearly a matter for the Thai police. Flying one of my top agents to Thailand for a week is a waste of resources.”
“I thought we were already committed to helping her,” Nikki said, sinking in her chair.
“You are a novice. We’re not paying you to think,” said Dr. Hastings. “Valerie, I’m sorry to be sending you on a wild goose chase, but it appears that others have spoken for us.”
“Don’t they always?” Val said, stacking her papers into the folder and giving it a sharp thwack on the table. “I’m used to it.” She smiled at Dr. Hastings, stretching her lips to the fullest, and Nikki thought that Val probably had a double meaning in her statement, but Dr. Hastings didn’t appear to notice.
Thank you for coming in, ladies.” Dr. Hastings stood up and nodded her dismissal at them. “As usual, please be careful.”
“I’m always careful,” said Val dryly, standing herself and stretching.
“If I were that careful with my birth control, I’d be pregnant,” Jane mumbled from behind the computer.
“Jane!” snapped Dr. Hastings. “That is not appropriate for a meeting.”
“Yes, Dr. Hasti
ngs,” Jane said meekly, stepping back into her place.
CALIFORNIA XIV
Wonderland:
White Square
“You and your big mouth,” Val said bitterly as they entered the elevator. “Do you know how hot it is in Thailand right now?”
“No,” said Nikki, still smarting from Dr. Hastings’s tongue lashing.
“It’s hot,” Val said, jabbing the button for B2. “Damn hot. Really, really hot. Baboon ass sweat hot.”
“I’m really sorry,” said Nikki. “I thought, since she was calling, that we already going to help.” What she really meant was that she hadn’t realized that an organization committed to “helping women everywhere” might possibly turn down someone like Laura Daniels.
“Yeah, probably,” Val said with a shrug. “But it’s always better to let the boss think she’s making the decisions, ya know?”
“Got it,” said Nikki glumly.
Val laughed. “Don’t worry so much. Lillian wasn’t going to like you anyway.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s very liberating,” Val said. “It’s not like she can like you any less. Now you can be as big of a bitch as you want.”
“I guess,” said Nikki, unconvinced. “What’s in the basement?” she asked, hoping to change the subject.
“Fun stuff,” said Val.
The elevator sank ten floors and stopped, but didn’t open. As before, Val appeared unperturbed by this and opened up the emergency phone panel. She lifted the red phone to her ear and said, “’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”
“‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son!’” said Nikki, and Val gave her a blank stare.
“Oh. Yeah, the poetry,” she said, just when Nikki had reached the point of crawling under a rock. “One of the techies said that coming down here was a little like falling down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland: nothing is what it appears to be. So some joker makes all the passwords poems from Alice in Wonderland.”
“Through the Looking Glass,” Nikki corrected.
“What?” asked Val, stepping off the elevator and into a long cement hallway. The cement had been painted a cheerful shade of lavender on the bottom half of the hallway, but it didn’t particularly cheer things up.
“Through the Looking Glass,” said Nikki, her mind mostly preoccupied by wishing the lavender weren’t so bright. “It’s the second Alice book and it’s the one ‘The Jabberwocky’ comes out of. She falls down the rabbit hole in the first book.”
“True,” said Rachel White, as she walked down the hallway toward them. Her kinky blond curls fluffed away from her head in a profuse tangle as dense as her thoughts seemed to be. Given the setting, Nikki was reminded of Alice’s White Queen. “But we feel Wonderland encompasses both books, and we therefore need not limit ourselves to one.”
“Show-off,” Val muttered at Nikki, but with a twinkle in her eye.
“Sorry,” answered Nikki with a self-deprecating smile. “It’s just that the poem is an excellent example of the way our brains can comprehend correct grammar without understanding the words. One of my classes used it as an example all the time. I guess I’m a little overly familiar with it.”
“What do you mean?” asked Rachel, and she beckoned them to follow her, moving down the hallway at an amble.
Another woman in a lab coat passed by carrying something under a sheet, and Rachel stopped to poke at it a bit before sending the other woman on her way. Then she looked at Val and Nikki as if she couldn’t quite remember why they were there.
“‘The Jabberwocky.’ Understanding grammar without real words. Expound,” she blurted out, and Nikki blinked, unprepared for the pop quiz.
“Well, the poem itself is grammatical. I mean that our brains comprehend it and can answer questions about it. What were the toves? They were slithy. Where were they? In the wabe. What were the toves doing? They were gyre-ing and gimble-ing. But the words themselves are gibberish. It’s an example of the fact that, for linguistic purposes, syntax and sense don’t need each other.” Nikki stopped, even more embarrassed than before, feeling the beginning of a blush coming on. “Sorry again. I graduated in linguistics. My mother keeps telling me not to talk about it, in case I accidentally bore someone to death.”
“No,” Rachel said, stopping in front of a door. “It’s interesting. I never really thought about it. What exactly do linguists do?” She put her palm up to a flat panel beside the door, and a small bar of light appeared and ran the length of her hand and back. The door popped open.
“Now, that’s something I’d like to know. What exactly do you do?” asked Val with sudden verve.
“Well, broadly speaking, linguists study how the brain forms language and how language evolves in context with culture. This particular linguist, on the other hand, works for Carrie Mae.”
Rachel smiled in empathy.
“It’s hard to get work in your field sometimes. I was working for a forestry company as a lab assistant for two years before I started working here. And believe me, that was about two years too long.”
They had entered what was either a laboratory or a rummage sale. What appeared to be ordinary household items sat among computers, delicate soldering irons, oddly shaped tools, and huge magnifying lenses. Rachel led Nikki and Val down the length of the cubicle and through another door. The room had been subdivided in a way that vaguely reminded Nikki of the shooting range at the ranch. Each cement room was shielded from the main hall by a thick piece of glass. As they passed, several people hurried out of one of the rooms.
“It’s the vacuum cleaner,” one of them said, bobbing excitedly up and down before Rachel.
“Oooh, wait a minute,” she said to Val and Nikki. “I want to see this.” Rachel took her hands out of the deep pockets of her lab coat and clapped them enthusiastically.
They all paused to watch an upright vacuum cleaner standing alone in the middle of the room. It was plugged into the wall and running. Someone was wearing an entire bomb suit and pressing buttons on the handle. After carefully pressing the last button, Bomb Suit waddled to the door and hastily exited. The vacuum continued to run for exactly forty-five seconds, and then exploded in a flurry of shrapnel. Nikki jumped back, nearly tripping over Val, but the glass between them remained in one piece.
“Not bad,” Rachel said.
“We were hoping to get more flame,” said Bomb Suit, taking off her helmet. The others nodded.
“Hmm, well, add some more incendiary mediums and try again.” Rachel smiled at Nikki and Val, and then started, as if remembering that they were there for a purpose. “This way. Sorry for stopping, but we’re working on a whole line of cleaning products and we’re hoping the vacuum cleaner will be the flagship, so to speak.”
“Of course,” Val said calmly, and Nikki began to think that maybe the nameless techie had been entirely accurate in calling this place Wonderland. Any minute now, Rachel White would surely turn into a sheep.
“So, the two of you are off to Thailand?” Rachel asked brightly, and Val spared a bitter look in Nikki’s direction.
“Word travels fast,” she said.
Rachel nodded. “Jane e-mailed me a minute ago. I’ve set up your usual gear, Val, but what does Nikki want?” She stopped walking abruptly, and Nikki nearly ran into her.
“Sorry.”
“No, my fault. It is Nikki, isn’t it? I didn’t mess that up?”
“Uh, yes,” answered Nikki. “I mean no. I mean yes, my name is Nikki.”
“Oh good,” answered Rachel, and she continued on at her quick pace. “Did you know,” she asked without looking backward, and clearly jumping to the next subject in her head, “that women apologize more than men?”
“Uh, no,” said Nikki, looking at Val, who shrugged and shook her head.
“It’s true. And women are more likely to apologize for spatial invasions or for talk offenses, i.e., when we feel we were inconvenient. Like
when you bumped into me.”
“I didn’t mean to be a space invader,” Nikki said, and tried to ignore Val’s smothered laugh.
“That’s exactly my point!” said Rachel triumphantly. “It was my fault, but you apologized because you felt you had imposed on my space! Interesting, no?”
“Uh, yes?” Nikki tried, and Rachel nodded encouragingly.
“So what kind of gear do you want?” she asked, changing subjects again.
“I’m not really sure,” answered Nikki, glancing at Val for guidance or at least a clue. “What are my options?”
“Well, guns you’ll get in country. That’s just easier. But everything else we’ll issue here. What kinds of activities do you think you will be engaging in?”
Nikki looked at Val again. She wasn’t sure which was more strange: the question itself or the way in which it was phrased. It sounded so formal.
“Why don’t we just set her up with the complete package? She can personalize next time,” Val said, much to Nikki’s relief.
“Great!” said Rachel brightly. She turned to Nikki. “I’ve got your measurements and color chart. So I’ll just pull everything to your specifications, and you’ll be on your way.”
“Oh good,” said Nikki faintly. It was hard not to like Rachel, but like the original White Queen, she did have a way of keeping a conversation off-balance.
“I’m really glad you’re going for the whole rig,” Rachel said as they entered the lab. She ducked into a supply closet and continued speaking, her voice echoing from the metal interior of the small room. “It’s important to go out properly equipped. Val never wants to take the whole thing, and then she always comes back to borrow things.”
“I always bring them back.”
“Just not in the same condition,” Rachel answered tartly, reappearing with a huge makeup case.
It was a box nearly two feet square and looked like something Nikki’s grandmother would have owned. With folding doors and extending shelves and a multitude of tiny compartments, it was a Transformer for girls. Its pale purple exterior and a pearlescent sheen were accented by gold handles, art deco styling, and the ubiquitous Carrie Mae butterfly on the lid.
Bulletproof Mascara: A Novel Page 14