“She what?” I asked. “Out of all those people, she won?”
“Jewell Maffini won the Mystery Shopper grand prize. Twenty-five thousand in cash.” No Hair didn’t seem happy for her. “And you missed it.” Or with me.
I opened my mouth to defend myself but he stopped me by holding up a huge paw. “I’m pushing the pause button on her,” he said, “until we find her.”
He slapped a picture of Peyton Reynolds in the middle of the round, glass-topped conference table. We all took a seat, and Fantasy added a file containing our painfully thin background report. No Hair looked at me. “Don’t say it.”
I zipped my lips.
“What’d you get out of Bianca?” No Hair asked.
“Brace yourselves.”
Fantasy grabbed the edges of the table with both hands.
“Bianca thinks Mr. Sanders is having an affair with Peyton. And that’s what all the shooting was about.”
After five minutes of total stunned silence as they contemplated the improbable possibility, No Hair cleared his throat. “What else?”
“Nothing else,” I said. “She wasn’t in the mood to talk.” Not that I had been in the mood to listen.
“Make your calls,” No Hair said. “Cancel whatever you have going. Inform your loved ones. We’re staying on this until we find this girl.” He slid the assistant’s photograph closer to us. “My best guess is that she ran,” No Hair tapped the picture, “because there’s nothing up there other than her fingerprints. Not a shred of evidence that she took a bullet.” He leaned back in his chair. “So she ran. You two figure out where, why, and how the cameras missed it. Get back up there with Bianca.” (He lobbed that one at me.) “Get her to tell you exactly what happened, and find that seventh round.”
“Is he?” I asked.
“Is who what, Davis?”
“Is Mr. Sanders having an affair with the assistant?”
No Hair took a deep noisy breath. “That’s none of our business.”
And that was our cue to scoot. Fantasy and I began gathering our things, minding our own bee’s wax, making a run for it, when No Hair stopped us. “One more thing.”
I hate it when No Hair says those words.
“Davis.”
I hate it when he says that word, too.
“Is it true Thatch caught you?”
Fantasy dropped her purse and her jaw. “No!”
I dropped back into my chair. “It really wasn’t that big a deal.”
“Matthew Thatcher?” Fantasy asked. “Mr. Microphone?”
“I don’t know that he caught me so much as he was holding me when I came to.”
“Whatever,” Fantasy said. “What’d he smell like?”
I turned to No Hair. “How do you even know about that?”
“First,” he shook a finger, “I know everything, and don’t forget it. Second, he called.”
“You?”
“He called Richard,” No Hair said. “It got routed to me.”
“Why would he call Mr. Sanders?” I asked. “To tell him someone fainted at the slot tournament?”
“No,” No Hair said, “he called because he couldn’t find the someone who’d fainted at the slot tournament.”
“Why was he looking for me?”
“I don’t know, Davis.” No Hair laced his big fingers across his barrel chest and tipped his chair back. “Why would he be looking for you?”
“Mr. Microphone is a notorious boy-slut,” Fantasy said. “He likes you, Davis! He wants to play doctor with you!”
“Oh, poo.” I could feel my face turning red.
“That is why he called.”
What?
“He looked you up.”
“How and why,” I asked, “did he look me up?”
“He called your room to check on you,” No Hair kept going, “then called here because there wasn’t a marketing portfolio set up on you, which he found odd.” He took a beady-eyed swat at Fantasy, who was in charge of base-covering when it came to aliases.
“How and why,” I asked, “does he have computer clearance for marketing portfolios?”
“I found it odd, too,” he spoke directly to Fantasy, “that there was no marketing portfolio.”
“Oh, brother,” Fantasy said. “Don’t turn this into a federal offense on my part, No Hair. You’re the one who sprang all this on us. There were probably ten new players in the tournament whose portfolios weren’t complete. We’ll just call her a new player and leave it at that.”
“The microphone guy shouldn’t have access to player information.” Could anyone even hear me?
“That’ll work this time,” No Hair said to Fantasy, “but these little details—” after that, it was blah, blah, blah, and yada, yada, yada. I didn’t hear another word until “—so I gave him your number.”
“You what?” I shot straight up.
“Davis. The guy asked for your number. I told him I’d look into it and get back with him, and I had two choices: Tell him who you are or give him a contact number. I gave him a contact number.”
“What number?”
No Hair reached into his jacket, pulled out a burn phone and tossed it to me. “This one. And he’s called you twice. And it sounds like he does want to play doctor, or something, with you.” No Hair snickered.
“You listened to the messages?” I was offended. “My private messages?”
Fantasy was clapping with glee. She was, like the rest of Harrison County, including Mr. Sanders, a huge Matthew Thatcher fan.
“What am I supposed to tell Bradley Cole?” I demanded.
“He knows you have a job to do, Davis,” No Hair said. “No one’s asking you to sleep with the guy.”
Just then, the burn phone rang. I tossed it through the air hot-potato style. It landed on the floor in the middle of the room. We all stared at it as it sang its ring song.
“Answer the phone, Davis,” No Hair barked. “And find that girl.”
SIX
There were two ways into the Sanders’ residence: the private elevator, which spilled you out at a security desk and you had to have your blood typed to take another step, or the super-duper-rocket private elevator from behind Mr. Sanders’ office that spilled you out in the middle of their home, but your surname had to be Sanders to ride it up. There was a third way, via the helicopter pad on the roof, but climbing up the side of the building, then rappelling over the edge to crash through a thick pane of hurricane-friendly glass was time consuming.
I avoided the 30th floor with all my might, but some days there was no getting around it. My choices were the security desk, which meant a disguise and a fairy tale, scale the side of the building (too hot for that today), or get Bianca to grant me a ride on the family elevator, which meant getting her on the phone. Most of the time she ignored my calls, but miraculously, twice in a row, yesterday and today, she answered, and agreed to beam me up. She communicated this by hanging up before I finished speaking.
Making my way there, I listened to the message from a sleepy-sounding Matthew Thatcher. I will say this, a large part of his star power stems from his intoxicating voice. If he ever lost his emcee job, he could get a job leaving people seductive messages. “I tried reaching you twice last night and struck out both times, so I thought I’d try you early. This is Thatch, your friendly knight in shining armor, and I want to see how you’re doing. I’ve had beautiful women swoon at the sight of me before (oh, brother), but not as beautiful as you.” He left instructions to meet him for dinner tonight in the Bellissimo’s private dining room, then gave me directions. I knew exactly where it was, because I’d served dinner there before. (Shrimp and grits, orange-avocado salad, strawberries in Chantilly cream. Wearing a little boy’s tuxedo. No kidding.) Thatch didn’t ask i
f I wanted to have dinner or if I were available for dinner. It was more edict than invitation.
I didn’t swoon at the sight of him. I just swooned. For no reason whatsoever. Random swooning.
Bianca was stretched out on a velvet sofa, her wounded foot airborne, and in her usual good mood. (Not). And she greeted me with her usual hospitality. Make that hostility. Most days, she didn’t speak, but cut her eyes in my general direction as if to ask, What? Most days I gave it right back to her, today with a sharp inhale. You’re the one who shot yourself in the foot, Bianca, not me.
I was, today, and all other days, eternally weary of her attitude.
“You know, Bianca? You’re a bitch.”
(I did not say that.)
“Hello, Mrs. Sanders.”
(That’s what I said.)
She looked up, batting a manicured hand through the air, dismissing me.
“How’s your foot?” I asked politely.
Just then, smelling fresh blood, her little dogs came in for the kill. Sidestepping them, which is to say hopping like a bunny until they settled down, I started my business so I could finish my business. “Mrs. Sanders,” hop-hop, “we need to find Peyton.”
“We don’t need to do anything,” Bianca said. “You need to find her, and I need a new assistant,” Bianca said. “I am in my very hour of need, and without help.”
No telling what she needed. A Q-Tip, maybe. Or a page turned in a magazine.
“Has she, by any chance, tried to contact you?” I asked.
She gave me another non-verbal response. This one I easily translated, No, you imbecile.
I didn’t think so. “I’ll need to see her desk,” I said. “Her work area.”
“Help yourself.” Bianca reached for her long, skinny cigarettes.
I waited. And waited. “Where is Peyton’s office, Mrs. Sanders?”
She lit, then took a long drag of cigarette. “I’m not sure.”
After a treasure hunt through the service area of the penthouse, I found Peyton’s office, which was more like Peyton’s closet. It was behind a produce humidifier room that was behind a pantry, and there was some unrecognizable produce in the glassed-in humidifier. Seriously. Foot-long tentacle-looking things, bulbous purple things the size of soccer balls, and bunches of green things that looked more like weeds than anything else. Who eats this stuff? The whole kitchen reminded me of the Disney movie, Ratatouille, which my niece Riley and I have watched ninety-nine times. Speaking of rats, this would make an excellent storage space for Bianca’s little furry canine rodents, Gianna and Ghita. I made my way past kumquats and giant onions with thick green stalks as big around and long as my arm, to double-louvered doors. I pulled them open, and found Peyton’s workspace.
I sat in her chair, pulled gloves out of my pocket, snapped them on, and started digging. After an hour of sifting through Bianca’s shoe receipts (found one for Christian Louboutin coyote fur boots—price tag $4,900), I had nothing but a headache. In a last-ditch effort to find anything—ticket stub, gum-wrapper, ten-dollar bill—I pulled the desk drawers all the way out to see if anything might be wedged between or taped under. I was force-feeding them back into their slots when something stuck against the back frame of the desk caught my eye. I looked like a pretzel, I’m sure, stretching for it. I finally connected with a corner and pulled it out. I recognized it immediately. It was a wedding invitation to the Mystery Shopper slot tournament I’d been kicked out of. It was addressed to Jewell Maffini, One God’s Boulevard, Beehive, Alabama.
Well, I’ll be dipped.
* * *
I would have made up something or another to get out of going to dinner with Thatch the Great, had it not been for the fact that my boyfriend was in Las Vegas with Mary Ha-Ha the Lawyer. That, and I was hungry. The distance I covered from Peyton’s office up near heaven to mine and Fantasy’s down near hell, if horizontal, would probably cross a state line. I keyed myself, then poked my head in the door of control central.
“Whatcha got?” I asked Fantasy.
She looked up. “Not much.” Peyton Reynolds’ face was on the left sides of four computer screens, with flashing images zipping by on the rights. “I’m running her picture through every database in cyberspace, and so far haven’t turned up a thing. This girl doesn’t even drive a car.”
“Check Beehive, Alabama.”
“Beehive? As in the little old lady who lives in a church, Beehive, who won the tournament?”
“The very same.”
“Seriously?”
I dropped the Mystery Shopper invitation on the desk in front of her. “Found this in Peyton’s desk.”
“Jewell Maffini,” Fantasy read. “This is way more than a coincidence.”
“I agree,” I said. “See if you can find anything on Peyton in Beehive while I get dressed for dinner.”
“Dinner who? Where? Why?”
“Matthew Thatcher,” I said.
“Can I go?”
“No.” I turned for the closet.
“Why is Beehive one word when Pine Apple is two?” Fantasy shouted at my back.
“I have no idea!”
I grabbed a dress, shoes, earrings, blue contacts, a push-up bra, a bag, and was almost out the door when I remembered that I had to be a medium-spice brunette. I pulled my red hair up, twisted it, twisted it more, stuck four hundred bobby pins in it, covered my face and clothes with a towel, and yelled across the bullpen to Fantasy. “Can you come spray my hair for me?”
“No!” Fantasy shouted back. “I’ve got something in here!”
I did a quickie on my hair, holding my breath. I checked the back with a mirror, sprayed a spot I’d missed, then scurried across the bullpen to control central.
Fantasy rotated the computer screen my way. “Check this out.” It was Peyton Reynolds, the missing assistant, both on the right and left of the screen.
“Well, how about that.” I stepped into my shoes. “Where’d you find her?”
“Beehive High School alumni database,” Fantasy said. “And that’s not all. Take a look at her name.”
I leaned in and read Peyton Beecher Maffini, Class of 1998. “The little old lady and the missing assistant are related.”
“By marriage.”
We said it together. “Road trip.”
* * *
The best thing about dinner with Mr. Microphone was the food. Delicious.
Another great thing was my outfit. I was a fashionista below my medium-spice updo. I was Armani business-casual in a herringbone jersey dress, a little on the short side. It had a very scooped neck, a banded waist, and cap sleeves. I looked like I’d been poured into it. Lots of shoe: black, block-heeled pumps that took me from five-two to five-six. Also Armani. Pewter satchel bag. Target.
A not-so-great thing about dinner, and I found this out quickly, I was dining with the President of the Crazy for Thatch Club; the guy was beyond egomaniacal. I didn’t have to worry about my cover story, explain why I’d fainted, or divulge any details I might need to remember later, because he didn’t ask. All I had to do was make sure I didn’t have spinach in my teeth, and even at that, I’m not so sure he’d have noticed. Come to think of it, there was no spinach, so the whole thing was no challenge whatsoever, unless you count staying awake.
From the moment I sat down, he began answering questions I didn’t ask. How he got his job and how shocked the professionals (“flown in from major media markets coast to coast”) he beat out for it were. How difficult it was in the beginning, because he didn’t start out with a staff feeding his earpiece with the proper pronunciation of the crazy gamblers’ names that he had to call out. (“I don’t know what people are thinking when they’re naming their kids. How do they even come up with some of this stuff? I mean, look at my name”—huge pause�
�“Matthew Thatcher. Say it. No, really. Try it on. See how it rolls off? A strong, masculine, solid name. Easy without being common.”) How difficult a time he had keeping a low profile and private life with his celebrity status. (“The last time I went to the mall, I was mobbed.” Chuckle, chuckle at the memory. “My assistant takes care of all that now.”) No, he can’t rig anything so that it’s my name pulled out of the hat for this or that. (“Now, there are other ways I can guarantee you’ll win.” Wink, wink, wink.) (Gag, gag, gag.)
I got a very few words in edgewise. “I hear you’re from Alabama.”
He weighed his response, trying to decide whether or not he was going to admit it.
“My family has strong French roots.”
Not.
And he had strong auburn roots. His fluffy chestnut hair was straight out of a bottle. Or a spray can, like me. I wouldn’t bet on it, but I strongly suspected Mr. Smokey-Eyed Thatcher knew his way around an eyeliner pencil too. Or maybe his assistant takes care of all that now. I couldn’t help but compare him, and all other men, to Bradley Cole, as he was the bar. Bradley Cole would stand at the mirror smudging on eyeliner in about one gazillion gazillion years.
The last of the china was whisked away, and, out of nowhere, a man showed up.
Thatch half stood. “Laura Kasden, Rodney Whitehead.”
What? Who? I was used to the alias thing, and I sure hoped I was the Laura Kasden at this gig and not the Rodney Whitehead.
“Rodney is my publicist,” Thatch said to me, which made me Laura. Whew. “And I hope you won’t mind a photo op.”
I minded it very much. No Hair would have a cow and blame me.
“I’ll make sure you get a signed copy,” Thatch assured me.
“Scoot in a hair, Miss Kasden, if you don’t mind.” That was Rodney.
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