The check arrived, and I scooped it up.
“One of the perks of working for ATAC,” I said. “They pay for all the food.”
On her way back to the Olympic Arena, Nancy dropped George, Joe, and me at the hotel where Vijay was staying. Joe grabbed a cab, while George and I took in Vijay’s fancy digs. The hotel was one of those huge ultramodern buildings, all glass and chrome. It rose like a shiny steel needle up above the city, higher than any of the surrounding buildings.
“Yes?” said the clerk, in that way that was perfectly polite, yet still somehow managed to convey that he felt that we two children should not be here unescorted.
“Frank Hardy here to see Vijay Patel,” I told him.
“Oh, yes,” he smiled, his manner suddenly changing. “Allow me to call Mr. Patel.”
There was a quiet phone exchange, and then he turned back to us.
“Go right up. The last elevator on the left goes directly to the penthouse suite.”
As we walked away, George whispered to me.
“Did he say ‘penthouse’? What gives?”
I shrugged my shoulders. I hadn’t seen Vijay’s hotel room yet.
The last elevator turned out to be a clear glass box finished in brass that went up the outside of the hotel, giving us an incredible view of the city.
“Wow!” was all George or I could say.
The elevator opened up directly into his apartment. It was like a giant greenhouse floating above LA. It felt like you were outside, only without the wind or smog or rain. Plus, there were some real comfortable couches and a ton of audio equipment, computer monitors, and televisions.
“How come you got the sweet digs?” I asked. “This place is off the hook!”
“Necessary,” Vijay said. “With all the smog in this city, I need a line of sight on both the Olympic Arena and Scott’s house if the transmissions are going to come through clear. This is the only place in all of LA that met my requirements. Oh, and you should check out the private garden up above. It’s suh-weet!”
“This setup is incredible!” George was looking at the computers. “You’ve got live feeds coming in from nine different cameras. And is that a gait recognition set up?”
“Yup. So it can alert me whenever Scott is onscreen, or whenever a new person it hasn’t seen before is in Scott’s house.”
“What’s gait recognition?” I asked. It was a rare moment when I was the least geeky person in the room.
“It’s software that tries to recognize people by how they walk,” said Vijay.
“I heard it’s pretty easy to throw off,” said George.
“Yeah—you can’t depend on it, but it can be helpful.”
Vijay had got a pretty good view of almost every room in Scott’s house. Ditto the arena, though there were a few blind spots there—the place was just too big to blanket it with recorders. And some areas we couldn’t get into, like the women’s lockers rooms. Otherwise, we totally could have seen who slipped the note into Lexi’s locker.
“What’s with the static?” I asked. A few of the screens were fuzzy, or had lines running through them.
“There’s a little signal interference—buildings or smog or television transmissions, I don’t know. This was the best I could get. Anyway. You didn’t just come here to check out my sweet pad, so whatcha got for me?”
I dropped the disk into his hands and explained the situation.
“Intriguing,” Vijay said. “Maybe Scott isn’t the good little athlete he seems like?”
“I think someone faked the recording, but I can’t be sure.”
“Let’s check it out!”
Vijay popped the CD into one of his computers. Scott’s voice began booming through the apartment. It was so loud it was almost painful.
“Sorry!” Vijay said, as he hurried to turn the sound down. “I was listening to some ragga earlier—it always helps me when I’m coding.”
He listened to Scott’s voice for a second.
“Sounds legit,” he said. “But let’s find out.”
Vijay pulled up a new program that broke the sound file into waves.
“Total fake,” he said.
“How can you tell?” I asked.
“See here?” Vijay pointed to the screen. “This wave represents Scott’s voice. See how it’s all broken up and choppy, not smooth? That means it was pieced together from a whole bunch of other recordings. Someone created this sentence, using words Scott had actually spoken, but stitching them together to make a whole new sentence.”
George let out a low whistle. “Whoever did this has some pretty sophisticated tech!”
Vijay nodded. “This is not your hobbyist’s setup. This is the real deal.
“I wonder… ,” said Vijay. He hopped up and started rummaging through a pile of discs. He selected one and popped it into another laptop.
“Yep!” he said, triumphantly.
“What?” asked George, excited.
“This CD is a threatening video that was sent to Scott. It’s all footage of him in various places.”
“Right,” I said. “Joe told us about that.”
“Well, if you compare the files, it looks like these discs were made using the same computer programs. I think Scott’s angered some geek, somewhere.”
“That would go along with the robotic snakes,” I murmured. Now we were getting somewhere!
George’s phone gave a quick beep, the sound of a text message coming in. She fished it out of her pocket.
“Oh no!” she yelled.
“What?” I asked.
“Look!”
George passed the phone to me. The screen read:
@ hospital w/ Lexi.
CHAPTER 7
INTERVIEWING THE ENEMY
JOE
After Nancy dropped me off, I went to flag down a taxi. But after Nancy’s sweet ride, the idea of being stuck in a smelly, dirty taxi seemed horrible. Luckily, right at that moment one of the big double-decker tourist buses swung by. I’d always wanted to ride on the top of one, and I figured it would help me learn the layout of the city, which could be useful if, like, we ended up in a car chase or something. You never know what might happen when you’re a superspy.
“LA History and Mystery Tour! Get on in,” said the driver.
“Are you going to—”
“We go everywhere there is to go in this city. City of Angels, City of Demons. You don’t want to miss this, kid.”
I got in. I figured I could use the GPS on my phone to tell me when we were close to Elisa’s house, and I could hop out then. Besides, I was only going to be in LA once, so I needed to make the most of it! And since Frank was getting to hang out with George, I deserved to have some fun too.
Looking out over the city, it was easy to see why so many people were drawn to LA. There were models everywhere! Or at least, people who looked like models. In a city full of stars and wannabe stars, it was hard to tell the difference. But despite the smog and the dirt, LA did seem to have a feeling of excitement and money and adventure. Anyone, it seemed, could be the next big thing, even the guy on the corner selling gyros and schwarma from a cart.
The driver talked like a ringleader at a circus, a real showman. He rattled off stories and facts left and right. Maybe he would be the next big thing.
“And right here, folks, right here on this very street, right outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, is the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Here we have the footprints, handprints, and sometimes cigar prints of some of Hollywood’s biggest legends, from Groucho Marx and Joan Crawford to Jim Carrey and Emma Watson. They say you don’t know a person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes—well, here you can walk a mile in the footprints of the stars!”
I was only half-listening to him, however. I spent most of the time doing some research on my phone. Elisa, it turns out, had been a PR professional before she had become Scott’s manager. She’d actually started her own high-profile celebrity agency, which she’d closed to work
for Scott. It was her work that had made Scott the household name that he’d become. And a little more than a year later, he’d fired her. No wonder she was PO’d. And boy, did she show it. The tabloids from the time were filled with screaming matches between the two of them. She’d threatened him repeatedly—and even slashed his tires one night!
Since then, she’d put a lot of her time—and her PR connections—into smearing his name. A little more searching brought up a series of tell-all interviews about him on a celebrity blog called Stalker. It looked like Scott wasn’t the only one she was gossiping about. In some of the interviews, she’d branched out to dishing the dirt on other big athletes she’d met during her time with him. Including Lexi, who she called both “uptight” and “stupid.” It seemed her main project now was shopping around an unauthorized biography of Scott, entitled Waterlogged: My Life with the Selfish Teenager Who Became America’s Darling. She’d also released some “secret footage” of Scott to the media. Most of it was America’s Funniest Home Videos type of stuff: him messing up, tripping into the pool, hitting his head while swimming, etc. But at least one of the tapes was of him having a total meltdown because his training area was a mess. It definitely made him look bad—and crazy. Like the tape that was played at the reception earlier. And given her PR and Internet savvy, it wouldn’t be surprising if she knew her way around tech stuff.
Finally, my phone beeped to let me know that we were near Elisa’s house, in a neighborhood known as Silver Lake. It was one of the supertrendy, hip areas of the city. There were people in tight jeans and big sunglasses everywhere, with hair that reminded me of the biker gang we’d faced last week. I didn’t find a lake anywhere, but I did see quite a few pools. I could get used to this city, I decided. I hopped out and headed to the address ATAC had given me, taking notes on Elisa the whole way.
Suspect Profile
Name: Elisa von Meter
Hometown: Los Angeles, California
Occupation: Professional gossip
Physical description: Five-six; long, curly red hair; heart-shaped
face; athletic. In a city of models, she holds her own
on the pretty scale.
Suspected of: Sending death threats to Scott Trevor. Filming
him in his sleep. Sabotaging his public appearances.
And maybe, now, going after Lexi, too.
Motive: Everyone wants to see the golden boy fail—and then read
about it after. Scott losing at the Olympics could be the best
possible ending for her new book.
Suspicious behavior: She’s already shown that she’d been filming
Scott in secret all along. She’s threatened him in public before.
Maybe now she’s upping the ante.
I let out a low whistle. She sounded like a real piece of work. This was going to be a tough interview. I mentally psyched myself up as I walked along the path to her little corner bungalow. It was classic California style: two small palm trees out front, red tile roof, large garden in the back.
I barely had a chance to knock on the door before it was flung open—but only about two inches. One fierce green eye peaked out through below the safety chain.
“What? I don’t want any.”
The door started to close.
“Ms. von Meter?” I yelled.
The door paused. Then I heard a quick intake of breath. The door shut the rest of the way.
“Darn,” I said. This was going to be tough.
Then, to my surprise, the door opened the rest of the way. Behind it stood Lexi.
Or, no, not Lexi—just a woman who looked a lot like her. Same hair, same build, same heart-shaped face. But this woman’s green eyes were in constant, angry motion, as though she were scanning the horizon for an attack.
“You,” she said. “You’re his new personal assistant. Joe…”
She pulled a small spiral-bound notebook from her back pocket and flipped to a page, seemingly at random. “Hardy. Joe Hardy. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
She gave me a smile that was meant, I thought, to be friendly. Instead, it was the kind of smile a wolf gave a rabbit.
“Come in.”
She put her hand on my arm and virtually yanked me inside. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as hard as I thought.
She half-guided, half-threw me down on a couch in her living room. Before I could get a word in edgewise, Elisa had pulled a tape recorder out of another of her pockets.
“It’s August Fourth, 2010. The time is four p.m. This is Elisa von Meter interviewing Joe Hardy, personal assistant to one Scott Trevor. Location of interview is my living room.”
Seems like Elisa wanted to interview me as much as I wanted to interview her. Maybe I could use this to my advantage.
“So, Mr. Hardy, what’s it like working for the notoriously OCD Scott Trevor? Unpleasant? Horrible? Or just merely painful?
She waited expectantly, her digital recorder pointing directly at my face. Thank God she had a digital recorder, I thought, as I slipped my hand into my pocket and punched a quick activation code into my special ATAC-issued phone. This trick wouldn’t work on an old-school tape recorder, but the activation code I had just keyed in would scramble any file a digital recorder tried to create. We were officially “off the record.” But there was no point in telling Elisa that—not yet, anyway. It was time to bargain.
“I won’t talk on tape,” I said.
“Joe—can I call you Joe? Let’s be reasonable. You came here because you want something from me. I want something from you. I see no reason why we can’t help each other out. I can even give you a pseudonym for the book.”
I pretended to think about it. “Promise you won’t use my real name?”
“Of course.”
“Okay,” I said. “Scott’s pretty tough to work for. He’s constantly asking me to clean and move things around. Everything has to be just perfect or he goes totally crazy on me.”
Elisa cackled and did a little dance in her seat. She was eating this up.
“That’s actually kind of why I came to see you.”
“Tell me more,” she said.
“Well, it’s just—how did you deal with it? I mean, most of the time, it’s okay, but recently, with all the threats he’s been getting, he’s just gotten more and more crazy.” I wanted her to tip her hand. If I could get her talking about the threats, maybe she’d let something slip. At least I’d be able to tell if she knew something, even if I couldn’t get her to reveal it.
“There have been more threats?” she said. She sounded upset.
I nodded.
“This is not good, Joe. Scott has got to be in peak condition. This is the most important week of his life. You’ve got to help him get through this.” She was on her feet now, pacing. “Scott has never been able to deal with stress well. Really drives him crazy—he’ll stop sleeping. Watch out for that. Make sure he sleeps. Got it? Make sure.”
This was not the reaction I expected. It was almost like she was… helping me.
“But don’t you want Scott to lose?”
She let out a single bark of a laugh.
“What, are you kidding me? He is my cash cow. If he wins at the Olympics, if he breaks the record for most gold medals by a single athlete, my book is golden. I’m set. Everyone wants to hear the juicy gossip behind the scenes of the winner. But no one buys books about losers.”
She had a point. She might be mean and amoral, but when it came to this, her best interest was Scott’s best interest.
“But what about all that secret footage of him you released? Wasn’t that going to throw him off his game too?”
“That? That was months ago. I was angry then. Besides, that was right when he dumped me for that little tramp he’s with now.”
Dumped her? That was something Scott hadn’t mentioned. He’d been shifty about exactly why he’d let Elisa go, but this might explain a few things.
“Now, I’m thinking clearly. Besides, th
at was just to show him I was serious. And it wasn’t even my idea in the first pla—”
She seemed to catch herself. Darn, I thought, just as things were about to get interesting. She laughed again, a more human sound this time.
“Oops. Don’t need to have that on tape.”
She hit the back button, probably intending to tape over the last few seconds of the conversation. But when she hit play to find her place, all that came out was static. I had a feeling my interview was about to be over.
“What the heck?” she said. Even though I wished I could get more information out of her, I couldn’t keep a smile from playing across my lips. Elisa noticed.
“You did this, didn’t you? You’re jamming my recorder. You smarmy little brat.”
For all that she was much shorter than me, Elisa towered above me on the couch, five-feet-six-inches of pure fury. I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Sorry about that, Elisa. But you’ve been real helpful.” I stood up and started to walk to the door.
“Get out of my house!” she screamed at my back.
“You’re the best,” I yelled over my shoulder. “Let’s do lunch! Have your people call my people!” I swung the door shut behind me. A second later, something exploded against the back of it. Judging from the sound of the impact, it was her digital recorder.
Unless she was the world’s best actress, Elisa didn’t seem to be behind the death threats. But she did know how to use recorders and other technical equipment, which still kept her in the running in my mind. Maybe she was working with someone else—after all, she’d mentioned the secret footage not being her idea. I needed to get more information from her, but after that episode, there was no way she was going to talk to me again.
Maybe Nancy could talk to her? Woman to woman? I didn’t know quite how that sort of thing worked—I imagined there were sleepovers and hair-braiding involved. But if it worked, I was ready to ask Nancy to try it.
My phone buzzed. Speaking of Nancy, it was a text message from her:
“@ hospital w/ Lexi.”
Gold Medal Murder Page 5