Bare Girl

by Bella Forrest

  Why does everyone keep saying that? Erin thought, annoyed.

  “Is something wrong?” Sergio asked, looking at her sharply.

  “No, I mean, it’s just surprising,” Erin said, pulling out her phone and taking a photo of the business card before handing it back to him as Sergio gave her a confused stare. “What I wanted to talk with you about is that whoever took Isabel knew that she smoked, and predicted that after the press conference she’d go to the nearest private place where she could have a cigarette and unwind.”

  Sergio looked baffled for a moment, then realization dawned and he stopped on the sidewalk, bringing his hand to his cheek.

  “Hardly anyone knows she smokes!”

  “Exactly. Could you tell me who does?”

  Just at that moment a couple of reporters came up, snapping photos.

  “Mrs. Bond, have you made any breakthroughs in the Morales case?” a reporter asked.

  “It’s Ms. Bond,” Erin replied, “and I’m working closely with police on several leads.”

  A couple of photographers snapped pictures. Erin put on that serious, yet down-to-earth air she took with reporters. Sergio looked annoyed and put his hand in front of his face as one of the photographers approached him.

  “Have you been brought in because the police haven’t been putting enough manpower on the case?” the other reporter butted in.

  “They have been devoting a large amount of resources to this case,” Erin replied.

  “Could you comment on—”

  Erin didn’t hear the rest of the question because suddenly she got jerked away and shoved into a cab. Sergio got in beside her, slammed the door and told the cabbie, “Giovanni’s Restaurant, 11 East 33rd Street.” He had to shout over the sound of the reporters pounding on the window.

  The cab pulled away, leaving the reporters behind.

  “Correction, driver. I actually want to go to Sapore di Roma, 12th Street and Broadway.” He turned to Erin and grinned. “That’s in case one of those lowlifes from the media heard the first address I gave.”

  “Good thinking. Thanks,” Erin said.

  “I have lots of practice with this, darling.”

  Once they were safely tucked away in the back booth of the restaurant, which Sergio reassured Erin was a regular watering hole for the glitterati and respected their need for privacy, they resumed their conversation.

  “So who knew that Isabel smoked?” Erin asked.

  Sergio thought for a moment. “Most people in the company, I suppose. She only hides it when there are media people around. Some of the lower workers, the typists and warehouse people wouldn’t know because they hardly ever see her, but most people at corporate, certainly, and everyone in the inner circle.”

  “Anyone else?”

  Sergio shrugged. “Her lovers, I suppose.”

  Erin bit her lip. From what she’d read online, Isabel changed boyfriends almost as frequently as she changed outfits.

  “Anyone you think would be capable of this?”

  Sergio drummed his fingers on the table and stared abstractly into space. At last he shook his head.

  “I can’t imagine one of her lovers doing this. They’re all celebrities or high-flying businessmen. They all have too much to lose. Plus, none of them seemed unbalanced to me.”

  Erin wasn’t quite sure how to broach the next question, so she decided on the direct approach.

  “Were you and Isabel ever an item?”

  A flicker of annoyance passed over Sergio’s face, quickly hidden.

  “No, I’m her manager. Isabel never sleeps with the help.”

  That was an interesting choice of words, Erin thought.

  Figuring she wouldn’t get any further with that line of questioning, she changed the subject.

  “What about employees? Any of them seem a bit off?”

  Sergio thought for a moment and shrugged.

  “They all seem OK. It’s always a bit of an adjustment working for a celebrity. The new hires get star-struck sometimes. Isabel walks through the office and all work stops, at least with the new hires. After a time they get used to it. The main problem we have is leaks.”

  “Leaks?”

  “People releasing tracks from upcoming albums, sneaking shots of new clothing designs, that sort of thing. There’s no shortage of lowlife journalists who pay for that sort of thing.”

  “And we discussed that nobody was let go recently…”

  “Not in the past year. We’ve tightened up our handling of data. That’s why Isabel was so tight-lipped about her Wall Street demonstration. If that had leaked it would have been disastrous, ruined the whole thing. Not that I would have minded. As I said, it was bound to backfire.”

  “At the press conference that one reporter tried to make an issue about your shrinking revenues.”

  Sergio shrugged, looked annoyed again, plus a bit haggard.

  “Business is tough for everyone right now, especially those cornering the luxury markets. Her albums are selling almost as well as ever, with the usual big bite taken out thanks to piracy. Her film deals don’t help Isabel Enterprises as a whole, though, because that money goes straight to her. Her clothing, perfume, and accessory lines are what’s really taking a beating. It’s all high-end product. People aren’t buying as much of that at the moment, here or in Europe. We’ve been making inroads into the Asian market, but there are so many knockoffs. As soon as we release a perfume, some lab in China analyzes it and has a duplicate out on the market within a month.”

  “Sounds like a hard time to be in business.”

  Sergio nodded angrily, his brow knitted.

  “I’ve talked to her and talked to her and talked to her about diversifying. Why not have some daily wear, or some perfume at the fifty-dollar price point instead of two-hundred-dollars? She won’t do it, though. Says it would ‘dilute the brand’. She can be really pigheaded, you know. She’ll listen to advice as long as it agrees with what she has already decided. Suggest one little change, one new idea, and she shuts down.”

  “Well, she did climb up from the bottom. I can understand why she would have her own ideas about how to run things,” Erin said. Like everyone else, she had always been impressed with how Isabel had come up from obscurity and abject poverty to become what she was today. As Erin had dug into Isabel’s past for this case, she had been surprised to find out that every word of her life story was actually true. It made Erin want to save her all the more. Erin knew something about getting a bad start in life.

  Sergio made a face and waved a dismissive hand.

  “Being raised by a shepherd doesn’t make you qualified to run a multimillion-dollar business. I’m the business manager for a reason. I have an economics degree and was chief financial officer for Diesel before getting this job. If she’s going to hire experts, she should listen to them once in a while.”

  Sergio stopped talking abruptly, with an expression that told Erin he felt he had said more than he should. He looked awkward for a moment, and then wiped his eyes. Erin hadn’t noticed them tearing up.

  “Sorry, I can’t believe I’m grousing about work when Isabel is lying dead or tied up somewhere. It’s just that this past day has been like a nightmare for me. I didn’t get any sleep last night, and I’m sure I won’t tonight either. Isabel and I have a close working relationship and we’re good friends too.”

  That last statement came off like he was addressing a press conference. Erin didn’t buy it for a second.

  Sergio checked his phone.

  “I have to run. The office has come to a standstill, as you can imagine. I’ll get the drinks. Please call me if there are any other developments. And I’ll try to think if there’s anyone in the company who has been acting suspiciously.”

  Sergio got up and hurried off, leaving Erin to sit and wonder.

  There was obviously tension between Isabel and her manager, but how deep did it run? Sergio had been at the press conference, and had been running around calling
the police after her abductor had driven off in that white van. It couldn’t have been him personally. Someone with his money and connections, however, could have arranged a kidnapping. She’d heard a lot of talk from fellow private investigators who worked with the entertainment industry. Its ties with organized crime were deep.

  But why kill the cash cow? What was Isabel Enterprises without Isabel? It didn’t make sense, unless there was something Erin didn’t know about. Maybe with Isabel gone the company would devolve to Sergio?

  That didn’t seem likely. Knowing Isabel, she’d probably have the bulk of her money go to some charity. But the company itself would continue. She didn’t have any children or close family to leave an inheritance for, so it would become independent of her at her death. Erin would tip off Captain Wilson to check the company’s financial arrangements.

  It still didn’t quite fit, though. She had a hard time thinking that Sergio would have Isabel kidnapped or murdered. He stood to lose too much.

  Erin sighed, suddenly overwhelmed. Isabel had been missing for eighteen hours, since the previous evening, and they were no closer to finding her. The police had very little to go on and she had been dropped into this case without any preparation and a ticking clock that might have already stopped.

  And she had something else to take care of too. Something that had filled her with an unsettled feeling bordering on dread.

  Once Sergio had paid, given her a curt wave, and left, Erin got on her phone and looked up Edward Waters, the private detective who had recommended her for this job. She had a hard time imagining any of her colleagues doing so. This case paid too well to hand off to a competitor.

  She did not find Waters on Yelp or any other directory. That struck her as odd. Private investigators generally had an online profile to drum up business. Growing more concerned, she went to the website of the United States Association of Professional Investigators, logged in to her account, and looked for his name on the national database.

  Nothing.

  Then she tried the Association of British Investigators. Sergio had said he had an English accent, even though his phone number was American.

  Waters wasn’t on that database either.

  Curious, she dug in her purse and pulled out a prepaid phone. This wasn’t her usual phone, but a burner she used when she wanted to call someone and not give them her usual number. Normally she kept it turned off to avoid it being triangulated. It was pretty easy these days to tap into the wireless network and triangulate a phone. That was why she had a phone for safe calls and one for dangerous calls.

  Her gut told her this was a dangerous call.

  The phone picked up after a couple of rings.

  “Hello?” a man with an English accent said.

  “This is Erin Bond,” she said, trying to keep her voice level.

  There was a pause, then a deep sigh. “Hello, Erin. It’s nice to hear from you after all this time.”

  His voice sounded shaky and a bit slurred.

  “I hear you recommended me for the Isabel Morales case.”

  “That’s correct. I… know you can save her. You’re fated to save her.”

  What was this guy on about? Erin decided to lay her cards on the table.

  “I don’t know anyone named Edward Waters. And I’m not finding any evidence that you’re a private investigator.”

  “I’m not a private investigator, Erin. I’m… not much of anything, I’m afraid. It’s so nice to hear your voice again, although it’s a bit deeper than when I last heard it.”

  He gave a nervous laugh.

  She tried to picture the speaker. Definitely a man and not a woman pretending to be one. More or less her age. Thanks to his being English she could tell more than that. English accents varied with region, social status, and education to a degree unimagined in the United States. Erin could tell that Edward Waters hailed from the Home Counties, the counties encircling London, just like her. He had been raised middle class, like her. No upper-class boarding school, but a government school in a good neighborhood with parents who cared about education. Could this be an old acquaintance?

  “Who are you? Do I know you?” she asked.

  “We were very close, Erin. Still are, I suppose.”

  A tingle went down her spine.

  “Look, this is getting creepy and I don’t have the time for this.”

  “I need to speak with you.”

  “I’m thinking I don’t need to speak with you, Sir. How about you tell me who you are or I let the police deal with you? Impersonating a private investigator when you don’t have a license is illegal, in case you didn’t know that. I have your number, that’s all I need to trace you.”

  “I’m using a burner just like you. I already know your usual number. Don’t you want to meet me?”

  “Not on your life.”

  “Well that’s a shame, Erin, because I’m most anxious to meet you. I assumed you would like to know what ‘thirty-one’ means.”

  Erin nearly dropped the phone. It took her a moment to speak, and when she did her voice came out as a harsh whisper.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is real, and I told the truth when I said I knew you, although it was so long ago you wouldn’t recognize me even if you remembered. We grew up together. Oh, it was only for eleven months, but we certainly did a lot of growing up.”

  Erin shivered as she broke out in a cold sweat. She could barely hang onto the phone.

  “Y-you’re not him?”

  “No, but I knew him for much longer than you. If you want to know the answers to your questions, meet me at the main entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in one hour. If I see any police, I’ll disappear and you’ll never track me down. And you’ll never find out what happened to you, or know what’s happening now. Come and don’t try any tricks, for your sake and Isabel’s.”

  With that, the line went dead.

  Chapter 9

  Erin got to the front entrance of the Met early, standing at the foot of the steps at the 82nd Street entrance leading up to the grand façade of arches and columns. She had no idea who she was looking for as she scanned the crowd of people entering and leaving.

  An English accent made her spin around, throat clenching, but it was only a group of British tourists passing by.

  Erin paced, putting her hands in her pockets to keep them from shaking. Her mind couldn’t focus, her thoughts a blur. For the moment the Isabel case had been forgotten, drowned out by a strange voice repeating a number that had haunted her all her life.

  Who was this person? Was this a setup of some sort? A trap? But he had offered to meet her in one of the most public places in the city. No, it was he who sounded scared.

  Something was bothering her in the back of her mind, a thought or impression that she couldn’t quite get a hold of. She couldn’t figure out if it was a childhood memory or something she had dreamt in those fitful nights she’d been suffering recently, but she got the impression that she hadn’t been alone in that house with the man with the old hands.

  There had been others there too.

  Other children.

  She stopped her pacing abruptly, completely unaware that people were staring at her.

  Other children? She didn’t have any clear memory of that. She had searched and replayed and overanalyzed the few memories she had from that time all her life, and she didn’t recall any other children. So why had she thought of that now? Was a new memory emerging, or some sort of wish fulfillment from a dream?

  No, Edward Waters must be some sort of crank. So much had been written about her over the years that it wouldn’t take much time on the Internet to build up a profile of her case and her later life. She’d always worried that some weirdo would come after her like this. Her parents had certainly dealt with their share back when she disappeared—self-proclaimed psychics saying they were in communion with Erin’s dead spirit, conspiracy theorists who told them of secret government medical tests on kid
s, even one sad and deluded woman who insisted that her own daughter was in fact Erin transplanted to her home by aliens.

  Suspicion overlaid her doubt. What if this was some sort of trick to keep her off the case? She should be working on her leads right now, tracking down and interviewing Isabel’s employees. Instead she was wasting the rest of the work day hoping to meet some strange voice on the phone.

  “Erin.”

  Erin whirled around.

  She didn’t know how the man behind the voice should have looked, but it certainly wasn’t like this. He looked in his late thirties, overweight and haggard. He wore dirty chinos, worn old shoes with mismatched socks, and a dress shirt that looked like it hadn’t been ironed for a year.

  Even worse than his dress was his demeanor. He looked nervous, keeping his eyes down, and stood slouched a little way away from her. Even though he stood three steps above her, he seemed shorter than her just because of the way he curled in on himself.

  Erin had studied psychology and got a lot of field training with her line of work. This man was filled with insecurities and hang-ups, probably from a life of dealing with childhood trauma. Or not dealing with it, as the case might be.

  But what trauma? Had he been through what she had?

  For a moment they stood facing each other in silence, she studying him, he wilting under her gaze. There was something familiar about this fellow.

  Erin took a step closer. She caught a whiff of alcohol on his breath.

  “So you’re Eddie.”

  She clapped her hand across her mouth as shock and panic welled up inside her, pushed up by a strong memory that rose up from her gut like vomit.

  Why had she called him Eddie and not Edward? And why did that panic her so?

  The memory rose further.

  Because that’s what everyone called him. You met him before, when you both were young.

  There really were other children in the house.