Poison and Prejudice

by Field, Chelsea

  “Nope. But I’m Wendy Cooper from Gossip News, and I’m extremely interested in why you’re so eager to find the answers to these questions.”

  Bleep. A reporter. Drawing media attention to this was about the worst thing I could do. Homeland wouldn’t just shake its head at my incompetence about that. There would be serious consequences.

  “No reason,” I said, getting up to leave.

  “Wait,” Wendy Cooper said. “Maybe I can help you if you help me.”

  Harper paused, forcing me to stop as well. “How would you do that?”

  “You’re trying to attract someone who watches Zac closely, right? A stalker is my guess since you mentioned access to his home as a bribe. I can help. Post an article in our online gossip magazine to draw them all out at once. We have a huge readership and far better reach than your throwaway Twitter account.”

  “In exchange for what?” Harper asked.

  “The truth about what you’re looking into.”

  “We can’t tell you that,” I said. “It’s not our information to share.”

  “Fine. Then an exclusive when it’s all over.”

  Harper looked at me.

  I shook my head vigorously.

  She ignored me and took Wendy’s hand. “Deal.”

  * * *

  The first thing Zac asked when I returned from our failed stalker hunt was: “You wouldn’t happen to know what I did with my other tequila glass did you? The ones we were drinking out of yesterday?”

  The one I’d stolen for DNA testing he meant.

  “Ah, I’m afraid you broke it, sorry.”

  He looked puzzled but accepted my explanation. “What a shame. It was part of a special set my grandpa passed down to me.”

  Great. And now I’d lied so I’d never be able to give it back, even after Homeland was done with it. Except I guess he’d be in prison by then, so maybe it didn’t matter anyway.

  “Are you ready for lunch?” he asked. “I’ve started thawing an Indian curry I had in the freezer.”

  I froze. No pun intended. Which freezer? The one in the garage? I imagined the curry package nestled against Alyssa’s frozen cheek. No. Nope. Definitely not. There was no way on earth I was tasting that.

  Think, Izzy, think!

  “Do you mind if we order pizza instead?”

  He looked at me, trying to figure out if I was serious. I hadn’t turned down a single meal he’d offered up until now.

  “It’s just that after last night—sorry to bring that up again—but you said you ordered pizza which never arrived, and I’ve been craving it ever since.”

  To my relief, Zac put the curry back in the freezer. “Sure. Seems the least I could do.”

  He placed the order, and I recalled my agreement with Harper to find out what his movements were for the next few hours. She was getting her lunch nearby in the hopes we had an opportunity to install the GPS tracker.

  “So what are our plans for the rest of the day?”

  Zac sat down on the couch. The one where he’d cried on my shoulder until his tears had soaked through my T-shirt. “I’m having a quiet afternoon in, so you’re welcome to stay or go after lunch. Then this evening a mutual friend is holding a cocktail party in Alyssa’s honor, so I should make an appearance there, but I was thinking of having an early night.”

  A quiet afternoon in was the ideal time for illicit activities. I texted Harper the good news.

  The pizza arrived twenty minutes later, and Harper another twenty minutes after that, as I’d requested.

  My phone buzzed with a message from her.

  I’m out front.

  I snuck a glance over at Zac. He was still on the couch reading the newspaper, although he’d removed the front-page story—no guesses as to what that had been—and thrown it in the trash.

  It was then I realized the downside to a quiet afternoon in. It was quiet. Not the best environment for stealing his keys and having someone tinker in his garage without his notice. But at least he wouldn’t need to go anywhere.

  I stood up on the pretext of making myself a cup of tea and looked around for an excuse to go outside for a little while. There was only half a pint of milk left. That would do. I turned on the tap to cover the noise and poured it down the sink. “We’re out of milk. I’m just going to walk to the corner and get some. Did you want me to grab you anything?”

  He didn’t look up. “No thanks.”

  Excellent. I picked up my bag and jangled my own keys while pilfering his. “Be back soon.”

  My heart thudded along, reminding me that I was taking a dangerous risk. There was no reason for Zac to come down to the garage in the next five minutes, but if he did… I didn’t want to think about it.

  I slipped Harper the keys and power walked to the shop to buy milk. My nerves wound tighter with each passing step, and I was almost jogging by the time the loft came back into sight.

  Harper was leaning against the car she was “test-driving” on her extended lunch break. Which meant everything must have gone okay. I whooshed out a breath of relief.

  On the off-chance Zac chose that moment to look out the window, we didn’t stop and chat. I made sure my path went right by her, and she handed me the keys as I passed.

  We’d done it. Disaster free. It was about time something went smoothly.

  Except when I returned to the loft, I realized I’d counted my chickens before they’d hatched. Zac was racing around searching for his keys. What the hell had happened to his quiet afternoon in? And how was I supposed to replace his keys hidden in my bag when I didn’t know where he’d already checked?

  “Have you looked on the kitchen counter?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What about in your jacket pocket?” The one hanging on the rack that I should be able to get to before he could.

  “Already looked there.”

  Dammit.

  “Could they have fallen out of your pocket into the couch?”

  “No, I checked.”

  Ugh. How long had the man been looking? I couldn’t think of any other likely place they might’ve ended up.

  “Have you looked in the bathroom?”

  “No, but why on earth would they end up there?”

  Good question. “Um, well I found them there last night when you were… inebriated, so I’ll have a look just in case.” I walked over and slipped his keys out of my pocket. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  I was right. He didn’t look like he believed it. New subject time. “What’s the hurry anyway? Where are we going?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way.”

  We were going to the hospital. Zac strolled through the maze of corridors to the children’s ward like he’d done it a thousand times before, exchanging familiar greetings with several of the nurses. I followed him into a room and finally met the person he was here to see.

  She was seven years old with solemn, straight dark hair and a smattering of freckles across her nose that seemed stark against her pale skin. She was probably regular sized for her age, but she looked tiny—dwarfed by the hospital chair she was sitting in and the dialysis machine next to it. The alien machine would draw out her blood, filter it, and return it to her. Like a good Samaritan vampire. It was a notion that would’ve terrified me as a kid and still made me uncomfortable as an adult.

  But when she saw Zac, she smiled a brave—and adorably gap-toothed—smile. “Uncle Whack! You came!”

  Zac staggered backward in mock surprise. “Uncle Whack? I thought you’d agreed to stop calling me that.”

  She giggled. “But it’s your name, isn’t it?”

  “No, my name is Uncle Zac. It’s a z sound, not a w sound. Now you try.”

  Her legs kicked against the chair with glee. “Uncle Whack. Uncle Whack. Uncle Whack.”

  Zac sat down on the edge of her chair and cradled his head in his hands. “No, no, no. Oh dear. I guess I’ll forever be known as Uncle Whack now. All my friends will call me Whacky-
Mc-Goo and I’ll have to throw away my old birthday cards ’cause they’ll have the wrong name on them—”

  This was apparently too much for Sara’s kind soul, because she patted his arm with the hand that wasn’t hooked up to the alien machine. “It’s okay. I know it’s really Uncle Zac.”

  Zac lifted his head from his hands. “You do?”

  “Yep. Now did you bring me a story?”

  I bore witness to Zac’s endless love and patience with Sara for the next two and a half hours. Paul—the same Paul that had been playing Zac’s vampire friend on the film set—watched gratefully as his daughter forgot about the machine and her inability to move, wrapped up in Zac’s magical world of make-believe.

  I’d never seen this mentioned in the media.

  How could the saint before me who did this on a regular basis be involved in human trafficking?

  The ice cream we all went out for afterward didn’t hold any answers.

  16

  I went from eating ice cream to my self-defense lesson, which felt like a strange sequence of events, and then headed home to change for the function being held in Alyssa’s honor.

  Etta was standing on the stair landing, leaning over the railing with a professional-looking camera around her neck. There was also a still-smoking cigarette peeping out from under one of her shoes. Guess she hadn’t managed to quit yet.

  I was also guessing she didn’t want me to notice she hadn’t managed to quit yet.

  “What’s the camera for?” I asked.

  “I thought I should take up birdwatching to give me something to do during the day.”

  Funny, it looked more like a people-watching kind of camera to me. Especially considering it had appeared so soon after her visit to Mae. And most suspiciously of all, birdwatching would be an age-appropriate hobby. I was pretty sure Etta actively avoided age-appropriate anything. Except when she was in the “harmless little old lady” disguise she used to manipulate people.

  “Spotted anything good?” I looked over the concrete jungle. There were a few palm trees and garden plants, but the only wildlife that was prolific around here were rats, bats, and drugged-up junkies. “What birds are you looking for?”

  “All sorts.” Etta pointed at a bird guidebook that sat on her outdoor sofa. I was willing to bet the cover had never been cracked.

  Perhaps realizing she might need to do some research to be convincing, she deflected to me. “What about you? You’re spending an awful lot of time out and about lately.”

  “Well, working for a celebrity and having a boyfriend takes up a lot of time.”

  We were both flat-out lying, and I suspected we both knew it.

  “I guess I shouldn’t tempt fate when I’m nearing three-quarters of a century, but sometimes it feels like I have too much time. I wish there was an investigation I could work on.”

  Did she know? Was she trying to guilt me into it when other methods of prying hadn’t worked?

  Nah, Etta was hardly subtle. If she knew I was working on a case, she’d probably threaten to waterboard me until I let her in on it. Although she could also be quite sneaky when it suited her.

  “Maybe one of those birds will have a mystery for you to solve.”

  Etta snorted. The inelegant sound at odds with her sleek black dress and fitted charcoal trench coat. “I’ll tell you about a mystery I’ve been pondering. Your job as a honeytrap. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Uh-oh. The mystery of my job was the last thing I wanted Etta to ponder.

  “I saw you and Zachariah Hill on the red carpet, but there was no sexual tension between you two. I might not be great at spotting birds just yet, but I can spot that stuff a mile away.”

  I wished Jennifer was better at discerning the same.

  “Well, sure, I’m working for him as his food guru. Being a honeytrap alone doesn’t pay the bills.”

  She frowned. “No. I don’t think that’s it. I don’t think it’s about money at all, but I reckon I’ve figured out what it’s really about.”

  Heck, I hoped not. I noticed my knuckles were going white around the railing and let go. My voice was light. “Oh? What would that be?”

  “You’re a closet groupie.”

  A closet what?

  “Except you’re more clever than most groupies and have found a job to get you nice and close to the stars.”

  “Um.”

  “I did think it was strange how you kept rubbing shoulders with rich and famous people, like that fancy chef and the founder of Busi-Leaks and all those snobby WECS Club women. But this is LA. It happens.” She sent me a sideways look. “Your acting must be better than I thought because it took me ages to figure it out.”

  “Uh—”

  “It was mean of you to play along with my honeytrap theory, but I can see why you did it.”

  Her words reminded me I should be playing along with this theory too. In which case, how would I react?

  “You can’t tell anyone!”

  She considered me with such scrutiny that my cheeks grew hot. Thankfully, my discomfort supported her theory.

  “Please don’t tell anyone,” I amended.

  She patted my shoulder. “Your secret’s safe with me, dear. But obsession can ruin lives, you know. You should get help.”

  I thought of Jennifer and had to admit she had a point. Lucky for me I wasn’t obsessed with anything except cookies and coffee. “That’s kind of you. Thank you.” I cast around for a distraction. I needed Etta to have something to ponder other than my job or the possibility I was investigating a case without her.

  Should I mention I saw Hunt today? No. That might raise questions I didn’t want to answer.

  Could I tell her how Connor had me learning self-defense? Nope. Same problem.

  Ask her to teach me to pick locks? Not that either. Humph.

  Then in a stroke of genius, I thought of the perfect thing. The perfect project to keep her attention away from me. “I may have something you can work on to relieve that boredom you mentioned.”

  Her head whipped around. “What?”

  “Well, at our New Year’s party, I had this idea that Harper and Oliver might be great together.”

  “Hmm. Keep talking.”

  “The problem is, Harper is attracted to unsuitable men with nice cars, and while Oliver brings the occasional girl home from the bar, he hasn’t had an actual girlfriend since my cousin Henrietta. And we both know how that worked out. So I was going to devise ways of getting them in the same room so they can figure it out for themselves.”

  Etta smiled. “Leave it with me.”

  Why did I get the feeling that I’d just created a bigger problem than the one I’d been trying to avoid?

  * * *

  When you picture an exclusive A-list celebrity event, you think of lavish food, a colorful and daring array of the latest fashions, and yawn-inducing conversation (or maybe I’m the only one who thinks about it like that?). You don’t think of spending the whole night trying to stop your date from getting drunk…

  “Sorry, the scotch was poisoned,” I lied when Zachariah Hill went for his fourth helping. He gave me a suspicious glare but merely reached for the next alcoholic beverage that came his way on a convenient circular platform held aloft by the all-too-obliging servers.

  I darted into the server’s path, making her swerve to avoid me. She narrowly prevented the liquid from sloshing down her front, and I winced in knowing sympathy, but it was my job to protect my client. Or at least keep him sober enough to be worth spying on.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to stop him from walking up to the bar. And while most of the film crew were here as well, I wasn’t sure Fred the escape artist would take my side on this one.

  Grimly I sat down next to Zac and tasted his drinks. First there was a Long Island Iced Tea. Then a Classic Manhattan. Then a Gin Martini compliments of a lady at the other end of the bar. That drink really was spiked: with a potent aphrodisiac. I glared over at the wo
man who’d sent it, but she was too busy lusting after Zac to notice.

  The last thing I needed was an inebriated, horny version of one of America’s sexiest men. It was a pity he didn’t have a nicer car, or I might have palmed him off to Harper. Except for the whole murderer and human trafficker thing. Oops. Focus, Izzy.

  I spilled the drink on the counter, earning a glare of my own from the beleaguered bartender. Ugh. This job tonight was not endearing me to the staff.

  Movement in my peripheral vision told me we had company. I prepared to haul Zac’s drunk ass off the chair so I wouldn’t have to watch him make out with whatever opportunist was about to make a pass. I got the feeling Zac wouldn’t be happy at getting hot and heavy with another woman at his ex’s memorial party, when he sobered up at least.

  Boy how I wished he’d stuck with his original plan of having an early night.

  However, when I saw his potential make-out partner, I realized my fears were misplaced. At least I hoped they were. She was heavily pregnant—at the stage you can only waddle rather than walk—although she was beautiful still. And familiar. My memory drudged up the idea that she was one of Hollywood’s hottest exercise gurus.

  She laid a hand over her belly protectively, perhaps smelling the alcoholic fumes around Zac. “My deepest condolences for your loss,” she said. “Alyssa was a remarkable woman, and I know you loved her even though you had your differences.”

  “Thank you,” Zac said. The bastard was awfully good at enunciating despite the quantity of alcohol he’d downed.

  “I’m sorry to bring up business at a time like this, but could you tell me who I should deal with in regards to my arrangement with Alyssa?”

  “What arrangement?”

  She glanced down at her belly. “You don’t know?”

  Zac shook his head, and I wondered if it made the room spin. “No idea, sorry.”

  “Oh. All right. Thank you anyway. I’m so sorry again for your loss.”

  Zac turned back to the bar, and I tried to figure out how I could convince the bartender to refuse to serve the grieving A-list celebrity no one wanted to upset.

  An hour and a half later, Zac had reached the weepy stage, and I’d finally convinced him it was time to go home. A man I’d never seen before had other ideas. He intercepted us five yards from the door, his sudden appearance upsetting Zac’s tenuous grasp on staying upright. Zac wobbled. I steadied him. The gentleman didn’t seem to notice.