The Bigtime Series (Bigtime superhero series, e-bundle)

by Jennifer Estep

  “What are you doing?” Bobby asked.

  “Eating dinner,” I replied, spearing a carrot. “While I still can.”

  Chapter Five

  The next morning, I went down to the gym for my daily workout and flipped the TV mounted on the wall to SNN. Sure enough, Debonair robbing Berkley was the major news story of the day. The tanned anchor sent the continuing coverage out to Kelly Caleb, SNN’s star reporter and Grace’s granddaughter. Kelly stood outside the closed gates to Berkley’s mansion. She flashed the camera her trademark, toothy smile and launched into a recap of last night’s events.

  “Well, Jim, it seems even the richest man in Bigtime isn’t safe from crime. Bigtime police were called out to the home of whiskey billionaire Berkley Brighton around nine o’clock last night. Debonair, one of the city’s most notorious thieves, broke into Berkley’s home and removed a painting worth almost three million dollars. Brighton’s home is one of several Debonair has allegedly robbed in recent years...”

  While Kelly recapped Debonair’s life of crime, SNN showed a photo montage of the thief, including still shots from his video game, Debonair Deluxe. A panoramic scan of his action figures sitting on the shelves at the department store, Oodles o’ Stuff. Even some footage of him accepting an award from the Slaves for Superhero Sex group. He looked the same in every single photo. Black hair. Blue eyes. Self-confident smirk.

  I listened to the report with half an ear, my thoughts turning back to Debonair. I didn’t know why I was thinking about him again. He was just another super-something-or-other. Strong. Devious. Sexy.

  I sighed. So sexy. Too bad he felt the need to go prancing around in head-to-toe leather. Because if there was one thing I would never, ever do, it was date a superhero. Or pseudo superhero. Or whatever Debonair thought he was, other than a lousy thief.

  Kelly pitched her segment back to the anchor sitting in the SNN studio.

  “…so Kelly, how will this affect plans for the Whimsical Wonders benefit, set for Saturday night at the Bigtime Museum of Modern Art? I understand Berkley Brighton was going to donate several items to be displayed as part of a special exhibition. Is he worried about security at the museum? Especially since his own house was victimized?”

  My hair frizzed out to I-stuck-my-finger-in-a-light-socket proportions. Static electricity gathered around me. And my fingers itched so badly I felt like there were bugs crawling on them. I tightened my grip on the handles of the elliptical trainer.

  But my jinx wouldn’t let me be.

  Blue-and-white sparks flew out from my palms, and a few of them landed on the control panel of the elliptical trainer. The machine started shrieking. Gears whined. Lights flashed. Smoke spewed up from the top. And then the device abruptly stopped, almost throwing me off.

  I stumbled away, but the destruction continued. Bolts flew out of their joints. Screws popped loose. Even the paint flaked off the handlebars. Thirty seconds later, the once-sturdy elliptical trainer collapsed in on itself, reduced to the sum of its parts, as it were.

  I put my hands on my hips, slumped over, and tried to get my emotions in check. Breathe. Breathe. I needed to just breathe…

  I exhaled, grimacing all the while, and not because I’d just reduced another thousand-dollar piece of gym equipment to scrap metal. We didn’t need this sort of bad publicity, especially this close to the benefit. If people thought the museum wasn’t safe, they wouldn’t loan out their items. The special exhibition would be canceled, and the museum would have to return the money it had made from advance ticket sales. The benefit would flop, and it would be all my fault. Sometimes, it just didn’t pay to get out of bed in the morning.

  On the TV screen, Kelly nodded to the anchor and gripped her microphone a little tighter. “Well, Jim, I spoke with Berkley’s wife, Joanne James. She said Berkley isn’t worried about security at his home or at the museum. He considers this to be a fluke and nothing more. In fact, he’s decided to donate even more items to the museum to show his good faith.”

  I could have wept. “Bless you, Joanne. Bless you.”

  Eventually, SNN moved on to the other stories of the day, including a brief blurb about the man Swifte had taken to the hospital. He was expected to make a full recovery. Good for him.

  “And speaking of Swifte, we go back out live to Kelly Caleb, who’s managed to catch up with the speedy superhero. Or rather, he’s caught up with her,” Jim said.

  Kelly popped back up on the screen. A white, almost silver blur ran circles around her before abruptly stopping. The cameraman swung his lens to the right and zoomed in on Swifte, who leaned one arm on Kelly’s shoulder and smiled.

  I flipped off the TV. I didn’t want to hear the superhero blather on about his latest rescue. I didn’t want to think about any superheroes or ubervillains.

  Especially not Debonair.

  My hair poofed out again. Somehow, my extra-arch support, non-skid sneakers slid out from under me, and I tumbled to the ground, almost whacking my head on the side of the ruined elliptical trainer.

  Even though pain flooded my body, I knew nothing was broken. I never broke anything when I fell or stumbled or slipped, except dishes. Heck, I hadn’t even gotten a concussion when a piano had rolled off its dais and slammed me into the makeup counter at Oodles o’ Stuff two months ago. What I would have tomorrow, though, would be lots of nasty-colored bruises. They’d replace the ones from last week that were just fading away.

  I sighed into the carpet. I tried to shrug off my disasters as best I could, to be as upbeat as possible. But first, dinner with Fiona and Chief Newman. Spilling my goodies in front of the trick-or-treaters. My run-in with Debonair. The bad press about the upcoming benefit. Dropping every bit of food I tried to put in my mouth. It was only Monday, but I’d already had enough bad luck to last most people for an entire year.

  Unfortunately, I had a feeling it was only going to get worse.

  My jinx was rather predictable that way.

  * * *

  I spent the next few days working nonstop on the Whimsical Wonders benefit. The committee had made a lot of progress during our last meeting, but there were still a thousand little details to see to in order to make sure the event went off without a hitch. Not to mention the fact I had to repair the damage done by Debonair and his visit to Berkley’s mansion. Why, oh why couldn’t he have waited until after the benefit to rob Berkley? It would have made my life so much easier.

  Speaking of Debonair, I had the strangest feeling the thief was following me around. More than once, I thought I heard that distinctive pop! that signaled his arrival or smelled his sexy, smoky scent. But whenever I looked for him, he was nowhere to be seen.

  In the end, I decided my imagination was playing tricks on me. Debonair wasn’t interested in me. I certainly had no interest in him. None at all. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself. Surely, if I repeated it enough times, I could pretend it was really true.

  So, I carried on with the benefit work. I met with the staff at Quicke’s to review seating arrangements. Locked down the bachelor lineup. Double-checked the security setup at the museum. Called all the bigwigs and assured them their priceless art objects would be perfectly safe. The list went on and on.

  I had plenty of time to devote to the benefit, since I was taking a two-month sabbatical from Bulluci Industries, where I oversaw our fashion and houseware lines. With my father’s death and Johnny’s engagement and all the other changes in my life, I needed a break. Some time off to figure things out. That was the perk of working for the family company—I could hand things off to Johnny and Grandfather for a few weeks. It wasn’t that I was unhappy with work, but I felt there was more I could be doing with my life than designing dresses for the rich and infamous. Like maybe be a different kind of artist.

  A museum-quality artist.

  I’d loved drawing and painting from the first time I picked up a brush, but sketching portraits was my specialty. Over the years, I’d drawn countless pictures of Bo
bby, Johnny, and James. Movie stars. My favorite authors. People I passed on the street. I even used to do superheroes, back in my younger, more foolish days.

  Secretly, I longed to have my works hang next to the other masterpieces inside the Bigtime Museum of Modern Art. But it was a dream I kept to myself. I didn’t know if I had the talent to be a real artist. It was a completely different sort of skill set than designing clothes. Fiona would disagree with me, of course, but anybody with a needle and thread could sew, however poorly. Not everybody who picked up a pencil could draw with it.

  Besides, the one time I’d attempted to break into the art world, I hadn’t exactly been greeted with open arms. Heartbreak was more like it.

  “Hey, you! You with the vase! Do NOT drop that unless you want me to use your head as a bowling ball!”

  Abby’s sharp voice pulled me back to reality. It was Friday, the day before the benefit, and we stood in the new wing of the Bigtime Museum of Modern Art. The two of us, along with Hannah, were overseeing the installation of the pieces for the Whimsical Wonders exhibition, while Grace and Joanne had headed over to Quicke’s to make sure everything was coming together at the restaurant.

  The burly guy who Abby had just admonished wrapped his whole beefy hand around the Ming vase he’d been carrying, instead of just sticking his fingers in the top of it. Abby nodded her approval and checked off something on her enormous clipboard. The event planner wore her usual getup today—cargo pants, a camisole, and a flannel shirt.

  And the vest.

  No matter how fancy or simple the party, Abby always wore a khaki, mesh vest to any event she planned. It reminded me of something a fisherman would wear, although with more pockets and zippers and hidden compartments. Pens, highlighters, note pads, a water bottle, a stun gun. That was just the stuff I could see hanging off the front. Abby had more supplies stuffed in the inner pockets, and the vest had to weigh ten pounds if it weighed an ounce. She could probably survive in the wilderness for a month with all the gear she had crammed into that thing.

  I’d dressed down today, wearing my favorite pair of jeans and a blue-striped Oxford shirt. Hannah was a different story. Instead of jeans or khakis, she sported a wraparound silk top and pencil-skirt in a deep burgundy color. Gold sparkled around her neck and her fingers, and she looked as put-together and polished as ever. Hannah stood off in a corner, shooting looks at the art and murmuring into her cell phone.

  My eyes drifted over the rest of the wing, which had opened a month ago. The area, done in white, flecked marble like the rest of the building, rose seven stories into the air and was three times as wide. The first floor featured a vast, open space with black granite benches set in front of particularly significant or popular pieces. Greek-style columns marked recesses in the walls that people could wander through and examine rotating exhibits. Three scalloped archways allowed access to the other, older parts of the museum, while stairs set in the corners led up to the upper floors. Each story sported a wraparound balcony that overlooked the main exhibition space. Diamond-shaped panes of glass crisscrossed with silver solidium beams comprised the pointed ceiling far above. Natural light filtered in through the glass and let people see the art as it really was. Clean white. Bits of color in the marble. Smooth curves. Round, soft edges. No matter how many times I visited the museum, I never tired of it. The architecture itself was a work of art, along with the paintings on the walls.

  “Will you look at that?”

  Abby stabbed her pen at two guys up on ladders in one corner of the room. A large, rather gaudy picture of Elvis hung between them. Painted on velvet, of course. That had been one of Joanne’s donations. If it had been anyone else, I would have told them to keep Elvis away from the light of day, where he belonged. Forever.

  But I couldn’t exactly inform Joanne that velvet Elvis wasn’t whimsical or wonderful. After all, she was sort of an aunt to me. Not to mention the richest woman in the city.

  “I’ve told those guys at least five times the painting of Elvis goes on the left wall, not the right. Idiots. I’m surrounded by idiots,” Abby muttered.

  The event planner stomped off to go make some more of the movers cry. I shook my head, glad I wasn’t in the line of fire. And Fiona thought I was wound too tightly. She needed to spend some quality time with Abby, who morphed into Ms. Hyde the second she stepped into the museum. I didn’t know what was wrong with the event planner, but every single thing had annoyed her today, from the smell of the cleaning supplies used in the museum to the glare of the lights overhead. Abby even complained the movers made too much noise walking around—even though they wore thick coveralls that just barely whispered together.

  Footsteps sounded on the smooth marble floor, and Arthur Anders appeared in one of the wide arches. He was a thin man who always wore a brown plaid jacket and corduroy pants. Half-moon glasses perched on the end of his nose, and he sported a small goatee. Arthur was the museum curator and sort of a mentor to me. He also worked as a professor at Bigtime University, and I’d taken many of his classes. The man knew more about art than anyone else in the city. Even now, several years removed from college, his discerning eye and expertise still awed me.

  “It’s coming along nicely, Bella. Very nicely,” Arthur said, taking in the items already on display.

  People had donated a little bit of everything, from elaborate crystal candlesticks and animal figurines to antique, miniature cars to old-fashioned dolls to Faberge eggs to a painting of the mountains in Ashland. The gleam of gold. The red fabric of the dolls’ dresses. The luster of the dishes. The objects decorated the room with a rainbow of colors and shapes. Everything was classy but fun, just the way I’d intended it to be. Art wasn’t just about O’Keefes and Whistlers and Pollocks. To me, anything well crafted with loving care was art.

  Well, anything except velvet Elvises.

  “Thank you. But I couldn’t have done it all without the others, especially Hannah and Joanne. They’re the ones who convinced people to donate such wonderful, interesting items.”

  “I still can’t believe you got Berkley Brighton to show the Star Sapphire,” Arthur said, his eyes going to the gem. “That was quite a coup, Bella.”

  I shrugged. “Berkley is a family friend and Joanne’s husband. It really wasn’t that difficult.”

  The sapphire was the first thing we’d put into the room this morning—in the very center, of course. The gem, cut into an oval bigger than my fist, rested on three curved, silver tines. Thanks to the maintenance workers positioning the lights just so, the sapphire cast out hundreds of rays of cool, blue light that reached into the farthest corners of the open area. The display dazzled me, even if the stone rested behind four inches of bulletproof, shatterproof glass rigged with more alarms than a fire truck. Berkley hadn’t gotten to be one of the wealthiest men in the world by taking chances with his treasures, and I wasn’t about to take any with his most prized possession.

  “Still, we’ve had more excitement about this exhibit than any we’ve had in a long time,” Arthur said. “You’ve done a wonderful job.”

  “Don’t congratulate me just yet,” I warned. “There’s still plenty that could go wrong.”

  Like Debonair or someone else breaking in and stealing Berkley’s sapphire. That was my main, paranoid fear, although the museum staff and I had done everything in our power to prevent that from happening. Added more patrolling guards. Increased the number of cameras in the room. Blanketed the entire wing with alarms and lasers and every other conceivable security device. Arthur had even called upon the Fearless Five to be on standby during the exhibit to apprehend any would-be thieves. One panicked phone call or tripped alarm, and the superheroes would be on their way to the museum.

  Then, of course, there was my other fear—that I’d have a colossal bout of bad luck during the benefit and bring every single display tumbling down like dominoes. Even now, the static gathered around me, ready to strike.

  “Oh, nonsense, Bella. What’s the wors
t that could happen?” Arthur asked.

  My hair began its daily climb upward. I just grimaced.

  * * *

  We didn’t finish installing the exhibition until almost midnight. We would have been done a lot sooner, but my power kept flaring up at the most inopportune times. Like when one of heavy, overhead light fixtures I was staring at decided to break free from the wall and plummet to the ground—missing my head by about six inches.

  Or when we ordered dinner from Quicke’s. I’d taken the box of food from the delivery guy and started up the museum steps. I got all the way to the top before my power pulsed. The box exploded, and its contents slid through my hands, tumbling down the stairs. Every single one of the lids popped off the takeout containers. Salads, pasta, burgers, fries, sodas, milkshakes. It wasn’t pretty. I might have been willing to eat off the kitchen floor at home, but there was no way I was scraping up anything off these steps and putting it in my mouth.

  But, on the bright side, as I scrambled around cleaning up the mess, a gust of wind blew by—and plastered a pair of hundred-dollar bills to my forehead. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, and I snagged the money before it could blow away again. The C-notes were more than enough to pay for another order of food from Quicke’s. I even got fifteen bucks back in change—until I managed to drop it down the subway vent outside the museum. Easy come, easy go.

  But my luck didn’t bother me too much. Well, no more than usual. I was just grateful nobody dropped or broke any of the exhibit pieces.

  And I’d actually had another bit of good luck today, besides the money. No matter how hard the museum staff tried, they just couldn’t seem to hang Joanne’s hideous painting of Elvis. Something untoward happened every time they attempted it. One of the workers would lose his grip on the side of the painting and drop it. Or it would fall off the wall by itself. Or one of the strings anchoring it to the ceiling would snap. Finally, even Arthur gave up and put Elvis back in storage for safekeeping.