Hotel No Tell Page 21

  I shrugged. At some point, I would tell my friends and family about my new lethal accessory, but this didn’t strike me as the right time.

  Dover strode out of their bedroom, his eyes searching the crowd. He wore a button-down over a T-shirt and khakis.

  “Does he pay someone to look that good in regular clothes?” I asked Mercedes.

  “He used to, but now the home visits by the stylist are limited to red carpet nights.”

  Dover gave a few quick pats to passing shoulders but visibly relaxed when he spotted his wife. He threaded his way over to us and enveloped me in a bear hug, then slung his arm around Mercedes. The two of them were absurdly tall and gorgeous, and the fact that they were different colors made them even more ridiculous: Not only are we kind, stunning, talented, and rich, but we’re interracial, too. Nobody should have that many bases covered.

  “Zeph! I’m so glad you made it. Macy thought you might be working late. She told us you’re working undercover. So cool.”

  I choked on plain air. “No! I mean, yes, but please don’t say anything! She wasn’t supposed to say … I wasn’t even supposed to tell her, but …”

  “But she’s so pathetic when she decides she’s cursed, you feel like you have to toss her a bone,” Mercedes finished. “Your secret’s safe. Right, Dove? No screenplays out of this?”

  He held up his hands. “I leave writing to the writers. Hey, did you bring Gregory? Merce said you guys might get back together. I wish you would—I miss him.”

  Dover, in my opinion, still needed a little work in the normal conversation department. After years of being surrounded by toadies, he often didn’t vet his comments before they departed his lips. Luckily, Lucy charged over to us, glee flowing freely from every pore. Her eyes and cheeks were bright, and she looked like her old, pre-Hillsville self. I was glad to see her holding a plate piled high with food.

  “This is so great!” she squealed.

  “You’d be happy if we took you to the West Fourth Street station at rush hour and let you sit on the platform.”

  “I know, I know,” she conceded, “but this. This is just. Soooo …”

  “Great?” Mercedes offered.

  “I get into Grand Central and I …” She hunched her shoulders up and then let them down generously. “Don’t you ever stand on those glam steps and look down at the clock and the bustle and all the lives and feel …” She spread her fingers as if listening to an aria.

  “Like Mussolini?” I suggested.

  Lucy was undeterred. “God, I miss this view,” she breathed. “I miss it so much. I miss the traffic. I miss the subways. I miss homeless people. I miss the river.”

  “You guys live in the Hudson Valley,” Dover reminded her.

  “Yeah, but you have to drive to see the river. You have to drive to see everything. You have to drive to go for a walk. Don’t get me started.”

  “Too late,” Mercedes mused.

  “No, I am not going to whine tonight. I promise. I’m enjoying the present. Immensely.” She beamed, then turned to me suddenly. “Hey, Zeph, Macy said you’re undercover! That is so cool! What’s the case about?”

  A few minutes later, I found my loose-lipped friend deep in conversation with a four-foot-tall woman. I tapped Macy on the shoulder, near bursting with irritation that she was fine.

  “Hi, sweetie!” She gave me a quick tight squeeze, all evidence of the weekend’s drama apparently having vaporized. “Zeph, this is Madge. Madge, this is my friend Zephyr Zuckerman.”

  “Hey, that’s almost as funny as Madge the midget. What were my parents thinking, right?” Madge chortled comfortably.

  “Uh,” I said.

  “Madge met Dover on the set of Death and Renovation. She works as a stand-in for child actors; isn’t that fascinating? Kids can’t work long hours, so she gets paid to stand there while they figure out lighting and stuff. She makes a living at it!” Macy shook her head with satisfaction.

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s. I’m. That’s so interesting.”

  “Better than being bowled,” Madge agreed, popping a mini-goat-cheese-and-sweet-potato galette into her brightly lipsticked mouth.

  “Madge, can I borrow Macy for a second? I need her to help me with something.”

  I pulled the redheaded chatterbox into the kitchen, just in time to hear one of the waitstaff say to another, “I could never be a drag queen—waaaay too much work and time. Plus there’s all the ass-waxing.”

  So I pulled her into Mercedes and Dover’s carpeted, dimly lighted bedroom, where the mound of coats was now almost shoulder height.

  “Why did you tell everyone I’m undercover?” I fumed.

  “I didn’t tell everyone.”

  “Oh, don’t even.”

  “You’re the one who wanted me to get my mind off Rudy,” she defended herself.

  “Yes, I wanted to get your mind off the dead dermatologist, but not at the expense of my personal safety!” I shouted.

  Macy’s ginger eyebrows shot into tiny arrows of concern. “Your safety? Is someone trying to hurt you?”

  “Actually, yes.” It sounded ridiculous, but it was true. “So please, please stop telling people, okay? I’ll tell you everything once the case is over.”

  “I’m sorry, Zeph,” she whispered. “I didn’t know.”

  “I know you didn’t.” I glanced at the clock on one of the bedside tables. “I only came to make sure you weren’t New Hampshire–bound. I have to get back to the office.”

  “Well, now you’re scaring me.”

  “I’m fine, Mace, but this case is picking up steam and I need to finish it.” Or start it. Something.

  Her eyes suddenly went wide.

  “What’s wrong?” I glanced behind me, but no one was there.

  She shook her head.

  “What?” I insisted.

  “Are you …? Is that …?” She pointed to my hip, where my sweater had fallen open to reveal the gun’s leather case.

  “I’m outta here.”

  “Oh, stay, Zephyr. I swear I won’t breathe a word. I won’t ask. About anything. C’mon, eat something, listen to some speeches, and then you can go back to being hunted.”

  As it turned out, I did fall prey to someone five minutes after leaving the bedroom, but—for the moment, anyway—it wasn’t Jeremy Wedge or Paulina. It was a woman named Sycamore Dawnsart. Sycamore was a vacant-eyed, silicone-lipped, plunging-necklined woman in towering black leather boots, who was too young to have hair so decimated by platinum dye. Sycamore was an honest-to-God, modern-day wet nurse, and as I stood cornered against a portrait of Rostropovich with only my plate of asparagus-and-quince gnocchi to defend me, she told me all about her profession, which she found endlessly fascinating.

  “I started doing it for my sister, who had to start chemo while she was pregnant. It was sooo sad, but she’s fine and the baby’s fine—her name is Breuckelen, spelled the Old Dutch way—but she couldn’t nurse. So I got a breast pump and got myself to lactate. It really wasn’t that hard. And oh. My. God. You cannot believe how many calories you burn breast-feeding. I eat cheeseburgers every day and I still look like this.” She gestured to her figure, apparently the universal symbol for the perfect waistline.

  “It is awesome. I eat whatever I want and I make great money, even though I still charge only half of what formula costs.” If this was her elevator pitch, she was in the wrong building. “I pump three times a day, during Good Day, Oprah, and Idol. I thought it would make my boobs huge, but I guess that’s just in the beginning. They’re actually a little smaller than they used to be, but I have my tricks. And when I give it up, I’ll have plenty of money for a boob job. Also, you’d think it would be free birth control, but really it’s not. My cousin got pregnant while she was breast-feeding, so I started using my diaphragm again.”

  I looked over her shoulder in desperation, telepathically willing Dover to start the speeches.

  “You cannot believe how many actresses use my services
,” Sycamore continued, tilting her head to catch my eye again. “They want the best for their kids, right, but they, A, can’t take the time to breast-feed and, B, they don’t want the stretch marks.” She paused for a nanosecond of what was probably her deepest soul-searching. “I’m a little bummed about the stretch marks, but like I said—”

  “You’ll have the boob job,” I finished, wondering whether the much-touted benefits of breast milk to developing brains held up under these particular circumstances. Nothing less than an angel from heaven, Lucy pounced on me.

  “Zephyr!” she shrieked.

  “Will you excuse us?” I said to Sycamore, who was starting to talk again. “She needs me.” I dug my fingers into Lucy’s arm and pulled her clear across the apartment, barreling through a cozy conversation between Reese and Drew.

  “Thank you,” I breathed. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  Lucy didn’t seem to notice or mind that I had probably left fingerprints on her flesh. She was actually bouncing, rocking up and down on the balls of her feet. “Look at this,” she crowed. “Look.” She shoved her phone in front of my face. I held her wrist to steady the message she wanted me to read:

 

  It took me a long moment to shift from Sycamore the wet nurse to Lenore and Maxwell’s adventures on the high seas.

  “Can you believe it? Do you think it’s really true?” Her face held the look of wonder that true believers assumed when they spotted the Virgin Mary taking shape in an oak tree or tea leaves or toothpaste residue.

  “You haven’t called him back yet?” I asked, shocked.

  She waved her hand at me. “Oh, I’ll call him, I’ll call him in a minute, but, really, what could I possibly do, right here, right now? Plus”—an explosive laugh burst from between her lips—“I should probably give myself a moment to practice … sounding … worried.” The pressure built until she was doubled over, convulsing with laughter, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Macy and Mercedes found us.

  “What’s wrong with her? What happened?!”

  Lucy was in no shape to speak, but when I tried, I found myself happily infected by her hysteria. “It’s … Lenore.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “No!” I yelped, starting to snort. “She’s been hijacked … by … PIRATES!”

  In the end, Dover had to herd the four of us hyenas back into the bedroom because, even in that apartment full of people who made a living out of creating spectacle, we were making too much of one ourselves. And because Lucy was still unable to stop laughing, Dover put in a quick call to Leonard on her behalf. Two U.S. carriers and a fleet of Republic of Seychelles coast guard cutters were already engaged in hostage negotiations with the Somali pirates. The media had caught wind of the story, and so there was, in fact, absolutely nothing Lucy could do but eat, drink, and lose herself in the proximity of so much celebrity.

  “Let’s start the speeches,” said Dover.

  “Amen!” cheered Lucy. Dover looked at her disapprovingly. “Oh, Dover,” she said, casually putting her tiny arm across his broad back. Four fingers of scotch could not have made her more uninhibited. “Really, if you knew her, you’d understand.”

  The moment the crowd had settled on couches and rugs and bar stools to listen to the speech by a novice director who’d been nominated for his documentary on tiramisu—he’d sampled more than a thousand different versions in an espresso-dusted journey of self-discovery—my cellphone buzzed. I darted into the bedroom to answer it.

  “Hi, Pippa.”

  “You’re not at the office.”

  “I took a break,” I admitted.

  “Good. You needed one. Any progress?”

  “None.” I was too tired to sugarcoat.

  “Where are you?” she asked as a round of applause and cheers filtered through the door.

  I hesitated. “I stopped by a friend’s party.”

  “Zephyr, I’m not joking when I tell you I want to know your every move. You will not get hurt on my watch.”

  For a strange moment, I thought she was talking about my love life, and the memory of my cheek fitting perfectly into Gregory’s smooth, sweet-smelling neck nearly leveled me.

  “Sorry, sorry. I’m on Perry Street, all the way at the river.”

  “Text the address to Tommy, right?”

  “I will. Sorry.”

  “Zephyr, just stay there. There’s nothing else we can do tonight.”

  My throat closed with the pressure of impending failure.

  “No, I’m going back,” I insisted.

  “Let’s talk in an hour. Stay there until then. Try to enjoy yourself.” She hung up, never one to go in for the finer points of phone etiquette.

  I returned to my spot in front of a couch and leaned back against Macy’s knees. I tried to listen to the speeches, but my mind kept drifting back to the case. I was sure that, based on Samantha’s bank records, not to mention her verbal confession to me, we had enough to subpoena at least some of Summa’s financial records, but it wasn’t enough. We were all wary of moving too hastily, of letting some other part of the puzzle get away.

  Ben Plank got up and gave a seven-minute-long accolade to everyone who had worked on When the Cows Came Home, from the AHA set inspector who’d ensured the bovine cast remained blissful to the production accountants. Everyone in the room hooted and cheered Ben’s inclusiveness, normally precluded by the parameters of live broadcasts.

  Even if we assumed that Paulina and Jeremy were business partners gone sour, I thought, as Meryl Streep charmed the pants off everyone with a speech that veered from witty to poignant and back again for her role as Eleanor of Aquitaine in the musical Plantagenets!, there was something about the Summa Institute itself that was weird. It was just so … tiny. Its website was so unrevealing. There was a lack of bustle that was eerie: The phone hadn’t rung once while I was there. I shifted, recrossed my legs. Not exactly the stuff of search warrants.

  Lucy was sitting beside me, whispering animatedly to a rapt Julianne Moore. I strained to listen. She was telling her about her social work, regaling her with stories of meth addicts in Bed-Stuy and speaking in the present tense. For the moment, her life in Hillsville had never happened, and even if the stories she was telling weren’t currently true, they were accomplishing the same thing her idly threatened affair would have: They were making her feel worthy again.

  “Luce,” I whispered as Meryl sat down and Dover prepared to introduce the next nominee. She brushed me off without even turning her head. “Luce,” I whispered again.

  “What?” She whirled around, irritated.

  “Where did you get your eggs?”

  She widened her eyes and tilted her head as if to say, Do you not see who I’m chatting with?

  “Are you kidding me?” she choked out.

  “No. Where’d you get them?”

  “I used to go to the Union Square farmers’ market; now I go to Stop and Shop.” She turned back to her conversation but added over shoulder, “I still get the cage-free.”

  I tapped her again.

  “Would you excuse me?” she said to Julianne. Julie. “I’m sorry my friend is so rude.” She glared at me.

  “I meant the eggs that made your children.”

  She looked confused, and then her whole face went round. “Zephyr, are you thinking of going solo?! Or are you and Gregory getting back together? You’re going to join me in my misery? Wait, why do you need eggs at all? Oh, Zeph, you’re having trouble getting pregnant, like I did!”

  “Calm down, schadenfreude. No to all of the above. Just tell me the name of the place.”

  “You’re not trying to get pregnant?”

  “The name, Luce.”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “Recherché.”

  My eyes grew tight with the beginning of tunnel vision. I swallowed hard.

  “What?”

  “Recherché.” She tried to turn
her back on me with finality, but I pulled her to her feet. She smiled apologetically to the freckled thespian, who smiled back in confusion. “What the—Zephyr, stop.”

  I yanked Lucy toward the bedroom, my brain ricocheting around my skull.

  Recherché. Rechurch. It’s how I would have pronounced it, too, had I not been the beneficiary of four years of otherwise useless French. Tommy O. could take his mockery of my private-school pedigree and shove it in his soda bread: This entire case might hinge on an accent aigu.

  In the bedroom, the waiter who was averse to applying depilatories to the farthest reaches of his anatomy was locked in an embrace with the director of an animated film about Karl Rove. I pulled Lucy into the bathroom.

  “Why do you think they tiled it with this black marble?” Lucy said as I locked the door behind us. “I can always see up my own dress in here. Very unlike Merce.”

  “Lucy.”

  She crossed her arms, still annoyed about her interrupted conversation.

  “You’re sure it was called Recherché?”

  “Are you insane? Of course I’m sure.”

  “How much did you pay?”

  “Zephyr!”

  “Lucy, please. I know what brand of dental floss you use. I know you can’t go to bed unless your shoes are all facing the same direction. For God’s sake, you’ve even told me how much Leonard earns, so why won’t you tell me this?”

  She fingered one of the hand towels hanging from a silver ring. “I don’t remember exactly.”

  “Bullshit.”

  She blushed. “Zephyr, it’s embarrassing. Why do you want to know? And why right now?”

  “Please, Luce, I’ll explain, I promise. Just tell me.”

  “Two hundred,” she mumbled.

  “Thousand?” I said, breaking all vows to play it cool. “Two hundred thousand dollars?”

  “They’re excellent donors,” she said defensively, turning the faucet on and off. “They’re all Ivy League graduates and some of them are even—”

  “Rhodes scholars?”

  She looked scared. “How did you—”

  “Why, Luce? I’m not being judgmental,” I promised her, putting my hand over hers to stop the flow of water. “I need to know why you would go there when other places charge, what, twenty?”