“This is good to know,” Cooper said, looking excited. “It means Gary Hall is definitely staying someplace in the city, a place with a full kitchen, so that narrows down the number of hotels it could be. He could even have a lease, which we could trace—”

“Goddammit, Cartwright,” Detective Canavan yelled. “Take me off speakerphone! You know how much I hate that.”

Cooper picked up the phone, and the two men started talking. That’s when I decided it was time to go to work, so I could do what I’m about to go into my office to do now.

“You know what,” I say to Jamie. “I’ll type up a Persona Non Grata—”

“Wait,” Jamie says. “A PNG? So they know who did it? They figured it out? Because Gavin still feels really bad he couldn’t describe the guy all that well—”

“We’re not completely sure,” I say carefully. “But we think we have a lead. And tell Gavin not to worry. The guy’s not really all that memorable.”

Unless, of course, you happen to have married him. Then you may not only remember him, you may never be able to get rid of him.

Jamie heaves a shudder. “I bet I’d remember him,” she says.

I’m hoping that, with my efforts, Jamie never has a chance to test her theory.

Chapter 20

I look down at my handiwork after I’ve pulled it from the office printer. Is it too much, I wonder? Gary hasn’t, after all, been convicted of murder. Maybe I should have written “suspected of assault with a deadly weapon and murder.”

On the other hand, we’re down to forty campers. Gary Hall’s managed to kill one crew member and rid us of ten campers in a twenty-four-hour period.

Screw it, I decide. I’m hanging this memo at the front desk, and the security desk as well. The photo—blown up from the one printed off the website of Tania’s high school—isn’t very clear, but it’s all I’ve got. I’ll make enough copies to distribute one to each of the RAs, the desk attendants, and the mail forwarders, and even to the basketball team. No reason everyone shouldn’t be put on alert.

Maybe not the campers, though. Don’t want to start a panic.

Except in the people who need it. Time to place a wake-up call. I sit down at my desk and take out my cell phone.

“Hello?” The voice on the other end of the phone sounds only half awake.

“Hi, Jordan,” I say more cheerfully than I actually feel. “May I please speak to Tania?”

“Tania?” I can picture Jordan in his enormous circular bed—why circular? He’d never been able to offer an adequate explanation—with its gray silk sheets. “She’s asleep. Heather, is that you? Why are you calling here so early? It’s like . . .”—there’s a pause as he looks for a clock—“ . . . ten.”

“I know,” I say. “And I’m sorry. But Tania and I made plans to have a girls’ day out, and I just wanted to let her know that—”

“Heather?” Tania picks up on the other line. She sounds wide awake, but I’m certain Jordan wasn’t lying. She’s always reminded me a little of a cat, so I’m not surprised she’s capable of becoming wide awake at a split second’s notice. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I say. “I was calling about that plan we made to go shopping today at that new store in SoHo, Gary Hall—”

“You guys are going shopping?” Jordan says, his voice doubly amplified because he hasn’t hung up the phone on his side of the bed and is also lying beside Tania, who is on the extension a few feet away from him. “How come you didn’t tell me?”

“Jordan,” Tania says. “Hang up the phone.”

“But I want to go to Gary Hall. It sounds cool.”

“Jordan,” Tania says again, her tone deadly. “Hang up the phone.”

There’s a click, and then Tania says, her voice a little breathless, as if she’s been moving rapidly—probably to shut herself into their master bathroom—“What do you want, Heather?”

“I just thought you’d want to know,” I say, “that ten of your campers moved out last night. Ten girls lost the opportunity to become empowered through music, like it says on the Tania Trace Rock Camp brochure, all because you’re too frightened of Gary to stand up to him.”

“I did stand up to him,” Tania hisses. There’s an echo-y quality to her voice. She’s definitely in a bathroom. “And it got someone killed. It’s all they were talking about on the news last night after we got home. And there was a message from Jordan’s dad saying that they might have to cancel filming. So I can understand why all the parents are upset. Maybe it’s best that we—”

“Tania,” I say. “Did you know that I walked into Fischer Hall this morning to find it filled with flowers and cards and balloons from your fans? So many of them, we don’t even have the space to put them all. And they aren’t from Gary. They’re from your real fans. The fans who love you and want nothing from you but for you to go on performing and helping them forget their own problems with your beautiful voice.”

God, I think to myself. I’m good at this. Maybe I should change my major and become a publicist instead of an international crime-solver . . .

“Yeah?” Tania says, sounding tired. “Well, for me to do that I have to figure out a way to handle my own problems. Listen, Heather, I’ve decided. I’m just going to send him the money. I’m going to pay him what he wants and maybe he’ll stop. Maybe he’ll finally go away.”

“No, Tania,” I say to her. “That’s the worst thing you could do. Before he was asking for ten thousand a month. Now it’s twenty. What amount is going to be enough? A hundred thousand? Two hundred? When is he going to stop?”

“That’s fine,” Tania says, sounding like she’s about to cry. “Two hundred thousand is fine. Two million. What do I care? I have the money. I have nothing but money. What I don’t have is peace of mind that when I walk out my door he’s not going to be there with a gun, trying to shoot me—”

“Why would he try to shoot you, Tania?” I ask her. “You’re his only source of income.”

“He tried to poison me, didn’t he?” she asks.

Tags: Meg Cabot Heather Wells Romance
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