Good dog.
“I cannot believe I’m here,” Nasty said. “Have you two eaten anything?”
“Not really.”
Nasty turned to Joanie. “Give us a chance to talk. Maybe go find some food?”
“Do you have any food?” Joanie asked me.
“I have a box of Cheez-It crackers in my office.”
“I love Cheez-Its!” Joanie said. She jumped up and headed down the hallway, leaving me alone with the enemy. Rocky followed Joanie.
Bad dog.
After Joanie disappeared, Nasty turned back to me. “This is unbelievable. If I didn’t believe it would bite me in the ass, I’d film you and use it for blackmail. Perfect Madison, who never colors outside of the lines, is drunk on,” she picked up the empty bottle, “a five-dollar bottle of Pinot Noir.”
“What’s your damage, Heather?” I said.
“Just when I thought things couldn’t get any better. Damn those anti-surveillance laws.”
“I don’t remember inviting you.” I said. (slurred). Nasty sat down on the pink sofa, crossed her legs, and draped her arms over the sofa back on either side. “Why are you here?” I demanded.
She pointed to the chair opposite the sofa. “Sit. Listen. I’m only going to say this once.”
I purposely chose to sit on the beanbag chair instead, and then struggled to establish some form of dignity in the goofy lime green vinyl blob. “You have something to say? Say it.”
“I’m trying to.” She pulled her arms in from the sofa back and leaned forward. “I’m not sleeping with Tex.”
“Don’t lie to me. I was in his bedroom. I saw the note you left on his nightstand.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I thought he hired you to paint his spare room. Why were you on the second floor in the first place?”
“Wojo ran through my paint and took off. I ran after him, up the stairs and into the bedroom.”
She smiled, and then her smile turned into a laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“Wojciehowitcz. That dog is going to cause more trouble for Tex than a whole room full of ex-girlfriends.”
“I don’t follow.”
“You did. Yesterday. And that’s why I’m here.”
I sat back against the beanbag chair and tried to make sense of Nasty’s cryptic conversation. There was a very small possibility that the wine was making it hard for me to focus. I would have paid good money for one of Jane Strong’s never-ending cups of takeout coffee.
“The note you left on Tex’s nightstand said something about ‘thanks for last night’ and it totally being worth it. You wrote it with lipstick.” Details of the note were tattooed on my brain. I did not mention the X or the O above her signature.
“Tex’s computers were hacked. He asked me if I could do anything about it and I said I’d bump another job if he paid a surcharge. He did. Now I can buy that Louis Vuitton handbag I’ve had my eye on.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You mean the police department was hacked. You left here to do some work for the city. That was them, right?”
“The police department’s computers went down because of the virus, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Tex was hacked. Personally. Same virus that hit you. I’ve made a boatload of money in the past two days. I wish I could find the hacker and thank him.”
“Him? Isn’t it sexist to assume the hacker is a man?”
“Most hackers are men.”
“You’re not a man.”
“I’m not most hackers.”
We were silent for a moment. Joanie reappeared. She had a folded newspaper under her arm and a TV tray of Cheez-It crackers, sliced Saucisson D’Arles, and a couple of Greek yogurts. It was an odd assortment, but considering I’d had half a bottle of wine on an empty stomach, I wasn’t complaining. If I remembered any of this in the morning, though, I’d up my grocery game the next time I went shopping.
Joanie set down the tray, handed me the newspaper, and picked up the tray. I unfolded the newspaper and separated out the obituaries, and then opened the rest of the paper at the bifold and spread the pages on top of the coffee table. We’d picnicked in the showroom before and this had proven to be a good system. After covering the table surface, I leaned back and switched on the ball lamp that dangled over our table. Just as Joanie was setting the tray onto the table, I noticed a page of the newspaper that looked different than the rest.
“Hold it!” I said. Joanie jumped. A couple of Cheez-It crackers fell off her tray and onto the floor. Rocky left the sofa and ate them like they’d been intended for him all along. He looked up at Joanie expectantly. Joanie looked at me. Nasty looked at me.
And I looked at the newspaper spread out on the table.
In general, newsprint has a look about it. Column sizes, article fonts, the occasional ad to fill space. Graphically, the density of words on a page gave it a patterned quality. It’s why Joanie had a whole bookcase filled with items that had been decoupaged with newsprint. As a material, it was both cheap and easy to use, which made it a cornerstone of the trash-to-treasure look. But the page I stared at was none of the above. It was largely empty, with an open letter printed in a font so big it could have been used above the fold on an eye chart.
Dear Residents of Dallas,
The design public is deeply troubled by the death of Jane Strong, leader of the modern design aesthetic revival movement in our downtown district. Her loss will be felt throughout the community. As a gesture of respect, my company plans to dedicate our entry in the VIP competition to her memory.
Jane, may you rest in peace.
The note was signed Sterling Webster, Founder & CEO, SterlingCo.
“That man is a disgrace to the profession,” Joanie said. “He’s blatantly taking advantage of Jane’s death to get attention for his building. I can’t believe he’s stupid enough to try something like that.” She picked up a pink velvet pillow from the end of the display and tossed it onto the floor, and then set up camp on top of it.
I agreed with Joanie that the stunt was in poor taste, but I didn’t believe for a second that someone had struck Sterling Webster with the stupid stick. This felt less like an opportunistic business move than an act of diversion.
I kept my eyes on the newspaper and read it four separate times. Sterling hadn’t said that Jane was murdered. He hadn’t said her body was found at the DIDI offices. He’d kept the letter short and sweet, and to anybody not plugged into the news, it would sound like her death, though unexpected, was part of the cycle of life. Sterling had chosen these words carefully.
Too carefully, in my opinion.
“I thought you were collaborating with Jane Strong,” Nasty said, interrupting my train of thought.
“How’d you know that?”
She tossed her hair behind her shoulder. “I saw something about it when I was on your computer this morning.”
I didn’t doubt that Nasty had looked at my files while removing the virus from my computer. And I’d been so thankful for her help, despite our past animosity, that I hadn’t given it much thought. She owned a security company. What was she going to lift from me? The top ten colors used for design in 1958?
But Nasty knew things she shouldn’t know. She knew about the email from Jane. And now she knew we were supposed to collaborate on a design for the VIP competition—a collaboration that not only hadn’t happened, but wouldn’t have happened, even if the falling out had never taken place. Nasty was feeling out the situation for her own personal benefit. I just couldn’t tell what it was she was hoping to gain.
“Jane and I talked about submitting a co-design, but in the end, my application was strictly from Mad for Mod. That’s not the same as what Sterling Webster did. This letter was written after Jane was murdered. He is using her death for his benefit.”
“But that doesn’t
mean he’s wrong, does it?”
It was the second time in one night that Nasty made me see that the thing I was angry about wasn’t what I was making it out to be. I tapped the newspaper page. “This doesn’t seem sleazy to you?”
She shrugged. “It’s totally sleazy.”
“And he’s going to win. You know that, right? That letter just swayed the judges in his favor. I can design the best apartment complex in the state and it’s going to pale in comparison to that.”
“Do you have a history with Sterling Webster?” Nasty asked.
I shook my head. “He’s a glorified house flipper. He buys buildings cheap, demolishes or guts the place, and brings in a team to put a no-personality structure in its place. Sleek and modern, million-dollar jobs. He used to be based in San Antonio but opened a satellite office here last year. As far as I’m concerned, this town isn’t big enough for the both of us.” Accursed Pinot Noir. Now I sounded like Yosemite Sam. “No,” I added. “our paths have never crossed.”
“That seems odd,” she said.
“It’s not. Our work isn’t about us, it’s about the building or, in my case, the room. It’s only recently that I expanded the scope of what Mad for Mod does with the Sweet Dreams pajama factory. That building gave me wider exposure, and because the DIDI committee was impressed, they invited me to submit to the VIP competition.”
“And that was Jane’s doing?”
“Pretty much.”
“You’re saying if Jane hadn’t persuaded you to enter, this competition might have gone to Sterling Webster all along.”
“It’s possible,” I said. “You’re driving at something. Forgive me for not being at the top of my game,” I said, cutting my eyes away from her to the empty Blendo glasses on the table, “but I can’t help feeling like you know more than you should know.”
Nasty pulled out her cell phone and tapped the screen a few times. “A whole bunch of businesses got hit with that virus today, so I got to see a whole bunch of hard drives.”
I leaned forward. “Sterling Webster was hit too?”
“No, he wasn’t. But someone else we both know was, and I think you’ll find what I discovered to be very interesting.”
She handed me her phone. It took me a moment to realize I was looking at a copy of the VIP competition application. It took another moment to realize it was the application for Sterling Webster’s building in the Arts District of downtown Dallas.
“If Sterling wasn’t hacked, then how did you find this?”
“Keep reading, Madison. I’ll let you get this one yourself.”
I looked back at the application, using my fingers on the small screen to blow it up and move the image around for better clarity. The pixilation distorted the document, but when I saw the names of the investors in Sterling Webster’s building, I gasped.
Now I knew why Tex wouldn’t talk to me about the VIP competition. According to the picture Nasty had taken of Sterling Webster’s application, Tex was one of his investors. Tex was on the opposing team.
FOURTEEN
“Where did you get this?” I asked Nasty.
“Where do you think?”
I was silent for a moment. I held up her phone and tipped it side to side. “Does Tex know you know this?”
“No.”
“Why tell me? We’re not exactly friends.”
“You ever hear the expression ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’?”
“Sure.”
“It’s something like that.”
Nasty was being mysterious on purpose. It wasn’t out of character for her to bait me or to use me for her own hidden agenda. In this case, I didn’t know who her enemy was. It didn’t really matter. I’d been mad at Tex earlier today because of Nasty, and now it turned out I was mad at him because of something Nasty told me. It was getting slightly hard to keep track of the reasons for my anger. The anger itself seemed to be self-renewing.
“Whatever your reasons, thank you for letting me know. I was encouraged to enter the competition, but I knew going in that my chances were a longshot. To be honest, just getting Mad for Mod listed on the press release as one of the participating design firms is a big boost to my visibility.”
Joanie snored loudly, and then rolled over with her back to the table. I waited a few seconds to see if she’d wake back up. She didn’t.
“How does a competition like this work?” Nasty asked, tearing my attention from Joanie’s back. “Seems like an uneven playing field.”
I thought for a second before answering Nasty’s question, not because I didn’t trust her, but because she was right. It was something Jane and I had talked about when we were friends. The boys’ club feeling of many of Dallas’s institutions and how we’d both come up against barriers before working out our own strategies to succeed.
For me, it was less a feminist battle than a course correction after establishing a small start-up decorating business when I first moved from Pennsylvania to Texas. For Jane, who’d spent years under the thumb of some of the most prolific designers in the state, it was an instinct to get back at the men who had kept her designing floor plan after floor plan lacking in originality. I’d always laughed when she went on a tangent about McMansions, writing her rants off as a way for her to disengage from her former life. But she’d been right. Whether we designed as a team or on our own, we were two women with more imagination than budget who believed we could hold our own against some of the most established talent in the state.
“The DIDI offices announced the contest last month. There’s a tight application window. First step is to fill out their online application with credentials, upload photos from your portfolio, basically let them know what you’re capable of pulling off. That allowed the organization to see how many entrants there would be and plan their promotional push accordingly. Remember, this isn’t all about the work. It’s about getting recognition on a national scale.”
“What does ‘DD’ stand for?”
“Design in Dallas Initiative. It’s a movement to shine a spotlight on the design talent in Dallas. To qualify, you have to have an office within the Dallas postal codes: 75201 to 75260.”
“Does Sterling Webster?”
“Sure. He has offices throughout Texas.” Nasty took a breath to speak and I cut her off. “There were guidelines for entry. Maximum square footage, maximum investment by the designer. Meaning I can’t dump a hundred thousand dollars into a property, but if I collaborated with five designers, we could each dump twenty-thousand dollars into it to have a hundred-thousand-dollar entry.”
“You didn’t know about this, did you?” she asked, shaking her phone. It had to be a rhetorical question. My reaction had said pretty much everything.
“I was surprised that Tex knew about the VIP competition. At least now I know why he knows about it. But now that he has a financial stake in the outcome as a silent partner of Sterling Webster, if he gets involved in the case—if he discusses it at all—he’ll likely get his partner disqualified. Ooooh, this is good! It means his hands are tied.”
“I didn’t figure bondage to be your thing.”
“You know what I meant.” I jumped up and paced around the showroom. “It makes sense now. Sterling wanted to put more money into his design than he was allowed so he hoodwinked local investors. At least one that we know about—”
Nasty grinned unexpectedly. “I love that you just said Tex got hoodwinked.” She tapped the screen of her phone. “Will you say that again while I record it?”
“No.” I kept pacing. “Webster doesn’t need to win. He already has a bigger reputation than the rest of us. So, what would he get from this?”
Joanie lifted her head from the pink pillow on the floor. “If it’s not money or fame, then it’s love. That’s what makes the world go around.” I stared at Joanie. She laid her head back down and tapped the
floor to get Rocky’s attention. He padded over to her and flopped down on the floor. She draped her arm over his body and fell back asleep.
“She’s right, you know,” Nasty said. “Money, fame, and love are the three big motivators in life.”
“Give me your phone again,” I said. Nasty stared at me. I held my hand out, palm side up, and curled my fingers repeatedly. “I’ll give it back.”
She pressed her thumb down to unlock it. “What do you want to know?”
“Find me a picture of Sterling Webster.”
“Why?”
“Don’t do it, then. I’ll pull him up on my own computer.” I stepped over Joanie and headed to the hallway.
“Madison, wait.” I turned around and Nasty held out her phone. “Here he is.”
I took the phone and looked at the picture, and as recognition hit, I felt the blood rush to my face and extremities. I knew this man. I knew him because just yesterday he’d met me at my apartment building in answer to a call to his office.
Sterling Webster, the house flipper and direct competitor for the VIP, had tried to pass himself off as the realtor, Kip Bledsoe.
FIFTEEN
I stared at Nasty’s phone, not fully processing what this could mean. As possibilities danced into and out of my mind, I looked up and caught Nasty’s eyes. “This man told me his name was Kip Bledsoe.”
“The realtor?” Nasty asked. She took back her phone and tapped the screen and then handed it back to me. “That’s Kip Bledsoe.”
The man on the screen now was less pretty boy and more ex-football player. He had a short crew cut, and his neck was as thick as his head. His success in realty must have been driven by a need for custom made suits.
I handed her phone back to her. “I needed an apartment complex to use for my entry. I called Kip because he manages a lot of mid-century buildings around town. Today, I saw his name on my old building. I called him to see if I could buy it and he came out to meet me.”
“Except he didn’t come out to meet you. Sterling Webster did.”
LOVER COME HACK Page 10