The side door of the building suddenly swung open, and Loretta stepped back into the foliage to hide. Three short, squat women in flower-print housedresses came out onto the patio, all of them looking guilty. They all had long, straight bangs that covered their eyebrows, and they were speaking Spanish. Loretta watched as one of them took a rock from a flower bed and propped the door open a crack. They went over to a stone bench at the edge of the patio, pulled out packs of cigarettes from the pockets of their housedresses, and all lit up. Their eyes darted around nervously, as if they were afraid they’d get caught. No doubt Roger Laplante, supreme leader of the body Nazis, forbid smoking anywhere in his domain. The cleaning ladies didn’t dare sneak a butt inside, and even doing it out here was apparently risky.
Loretta stared at the door being held open with the rock. Getting in wasn’t going to be so hard after all, she thought as she stepped out into the sunlight and crossed the patio, walking purposefully, as if she belonged there. The cleaning ladies dropped their hands behind their backs as if that would hide the smoldering evidence of their vice. Loretta nodded to them and kept walking, going right up to the door that was propped open and letting herself in. The cool, dry air-conditioned air was an instant relief as her eyes adjusted to the dim light inside. That was easy, she thought.
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
Loretta cringed. Crap!
“Yes, you can,” she said without missing a beat. “I’m looking for the accounting department.”
A tall white guy in a blue polyester blazer was walking toward her. He had a walkie-talkie in his hand but no gun or cuffs that she could see. “The building’s closed, ma’am.”
Loretta said the first thing that popped into her head. “I’m with the movie company.” She left it at that, as if that should explain everything.
“Excuse me?” He was a young guy, twenty-five at the most. Blond crew cut, a lot of pimples, and very serious. Skinny but not wimpy—maybe lifted weights in his spare time. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave, ma’am. This building is off-limits.”
Loretta ignored what he said and pretended to check her watch. “Has Mr. Schwarzenegger arrived yet?”
He furrowed his brow at her.
Loretta smiled at him. “No one told you we were coming, did they? I’m not surprised. We asked for as much privacy as possible.”
“Mr. Schwarzenegger?”
She smiled again. “Yes. That Mr. Schwarzenegger.”
“No one told me anything about this.” He allowed himself a small smile. “Are you serious, ma’am? He’s really coming here?”
“He’d better be.” She looked at her watch again and craned her neck over his shoulder as if Arnold might be standing right there.
He turned around, just in case. “Nobody told me,” he said. Somebody was squawking on the walkie-talkie in his hand, but he ignored it.
“Nobody told you because they probably didn’t know anything about it themselves,” she said. “Arnold doesn’t like a big fuss when he’s working.”
“He’s making a movie here?”
Loretta scrutinized him for a few seconds. “Unofficially? Yes.”
“What’s it called?”
“Oh, I really can’t say.”
“Well, what’s it about?”
She smiled and shrugged. “Sorry. You know how it is.”
He looked disappointed.
She checked her watch again and mumbled to herself, “Damn! They said he might be late.” She touched the guard’s forearm. “Would you be a doll and show me where the accounting offices are? Maybe we can save some time here.”
He frowned. “Why do you want to go up there?”
“The scout’s report said it would be a good location for a particular scene in the movie, but I have to check the light and the view from the windows. It might not work with the special effects.”
“Special effects?” The guard was suddenly a wide-eyed fifteen-year-old. “What special effects?”
She shook her head and shrugged.
“Oh, come on. Can’t you just give me a hint?”
She sighed, mildly annoyed. “Take me to the accounting office first.”
“You promise?”
“We’ll see.”
“All right.” He led the way to the elevators, looking back at her and grinning as he walked. “It’s up on 3.”
An open elevator was waiting for them. They stepped in, and the guard pressed the “3” button. He was doing all he could to contain himself he was so giddy. But as the elevator doors closed, Loretta started to worry. What if there was someone up there who wasn’t so gullible?
The elevator stopped on the top floor. “What’s he like?” the guard asked as they got out. His walkie-talkie crackled again, and she clenched her fists, praying he wouldn’t reach for it.
“So what’s he like?” the guard repeated as they headed down a long corridor.
“Arnold? Oh, he’s very sweet. Usually.”
“Oh. Sure, I’ll bet.” The guard stopped at a doorway and pointed down to the end of the hall. “The accounting department starts here,” he said, nodding toward the nearest office. “All the offices from here on are accounting.”
She nodded, wondering how the hell she was going to get rid of him. She started mumbling to herself, wandering down the hall and glancing into all the small offices she passed. “Now which one were they talking about? The report said it had a nice view of palm trees.”
“Well, they all have pretty much the same view, I think.” The guard wanted to be helpful.
“Yes, but . . .” She kept looking, pretending to be looking for something technical. “The special effects people need certain conditions—the angle of the light, the amount of sky in the shot, things like that.”
All the offices were nearly identical: beige metal desk, posture chair with oatmeal upholstery, computer, printer, phone; a few had fax machines. Only the plants and the pictures set the rooms apart from one another.
She passed one that had a travel poster for Sun Valley with a skier schussing down a powdery sun-drenched slope.
The next one had a Grateful Dead poster on the wall and a dancing bears bumper sticker on the file cabinet.
The one after that had a framed photo of a little girl on the desk. On the bulletin board there was another photo of a fat woman wearing a silver cardboard birthday hat with a pink feather glued to the front. Loretta stopped and stared at it. She leaned into the doorway to get a better look. My God, she thought. It was exactly who she thought it was, Ricky Macrae, Martha Lee Spooner’s ornery sister-in-law.
“You said you were going to tell me.” The guard came up behind her.
“What?”
“You said you were going to tell me about the special effects,” the guard reminded her. He’d done his part; now he wanted her to live up to her end of the bargain.
She pressed her lips together as if she had to give this some serious consideration. “All right,” she finally said. “But do you promise to keep it to yourself?”
“I won’t tell a soul.”
“I don’t want to see you blabbing on Hard Copy or any of those other shows. It’ll mean my job if you do.”
“I promise. I won’t tell a soul.”
She hesitated. “I don’t know. . . .”
“Please?”
“Oh . . . all right. Dinosaurs.”
His eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “Dinosaurs? Really?”
“Don’t tell anyone I told you. Please.”
But he wasn’t listening. “Dinosaurs . . . wow! Hey, Pm just gonna take a wild guess, okay? With all the palms and stuff around here, I bet you’re doing Jurassic Park 3. I know you’re not gonna tell me, but I bet that’s the movie you’re making. Pm willing to bet.”
She sighed and shook a finger at him. “You’re very clever. You know that?”
“Yes! I knew it! I knew it!” He was very proud of himself.
The walkie-talkie crackled again with t
hat distant, disembodied voice, and Loretta’s stomach jumped.
“Listen—I didn’t catch your name,” she said.
“Craig.”
“Craig, would you mind doing me a big favor?”
“What?”
“Would you go down and bring Mr. Schwarzenegger up when he arrives?”
“Sure, No problem.”
“I want to start taking light readings. If that’s okay with you.”
“Sure, sure. Go right ahead.” He was already on his way down the hallway, heading back to the elevators.
Thank God, Loretta thought.
As soon as he was out of sight, she went back into the office that had Ricki Macrae’s photo pinned to the bulletin board. Loretta studied it for a second. Ricki was heavier in the picture than she had been at her mother’s house the other day, but the bitchy expression was the same.
Loretta looked around the small office, trying to figure out what she could take that would make Lawrence Temple happy. Next to the computer there was a clear plastic file box full of computer diskettes, backups of Martha Lee’s work no doubt. Perfect.
But as she reached for the box, intending to stuff her pockets with diskettes, she remembered something. She couldn’t take anything because that would be theft, and any evidence gained that way couldn’t be used in court. She could make copies if she could find some blank diskettes, but making copies took time. What if her buddy Craig came back and found her in there with the computer on? She’d have a hard time explaining that.
There was a small desktop copier on a side table. If she could find something good in Martha Lee’s files, she could make copies. That would be better, she decided.
She glanced at the tall file cabinet, then spotted the upright files on Martha Lee’s desk next to the framed picture of the little girl. Loretta sat on the edge of the desk and dragged her finger along the tabs, reading the labels: “Waitford, Inc.,” “Tolliver & Sons,” “M&B Foods,” “Frankfurt Dairies,” “Dennison Group.” The names didn’t mean anything to her, so she pulled out a file at random, “Lexington and Myers.”
There wasn’t much in the file, but the top sheet was an invoice, dated a few weeks back. It was for 5,000 pounds of “Beef Product.” Loretta made a face at the euphemism. She was sure “Beef Product” meant all the parts of the cow that were left over after they took the good stuff. She remembered the hard gristly bits she’d always find in the WeightAway Micro-Fast Salisbury Steak Dinner.
She put the file back and pulled out another one, “Sullivan-Davis.” She found invoices for tons of cod and was immediately reminded of the WeightAway frozen breaded fish fillets, which had the consistency of sandpaper but tasted like nothing.
The next file she checked was marked: “Caxton Farms.” This one was for truckloads of peas. All the WeightAway frozen dinners had peas. She hated peas.
As she put this file back, her eye caught the first one in the line, “Alvarez Cocoa Co.” She pulled it out and found another invoice, this one on fax paper. It was for $210,000 for . . . ninety tons of cocoa?
No way! she thought.
Loretta remembered the piss-poor excuse for chocolate that WeightAway used in their foods, and there was no way in hell it was the real thing. Maybe they used a little to give you the hint of chocolate, but it was mostly artificial. Christ, she’d read the ingredients listed on the sides of enough packages to know real from bogus. The Chocolate Creme Sandwich Cookies tasted like chalk. The Double Dutch Choco-Shake tasted like more chalk. The strip of chocolate frosting on the Almost Sinful Eclair had the consistency of an oil slick and tasted about the same. And the Black Forest Cake was a chemical mirage. It looked like the real thing, but it tasted like whipped mud.
Ninety tons of cocoa? Never! She had no idea how much chocolate could be made out of this much cocoa, but it seemed like an awful lot, a lot more than WeightAway would ever use. She decided to make a copy of this invoice. This was definitely fishy. It had to be some kind of scam, billing for nonexistent supplies, something like that. And either Roger Laplante was getting rooked or else he was taking part in it, pocketing money he claimed as a business expense.
She switched on the copier and listened to it grind as she waited for it to warm up. This would definitely give Lawrence Temple’s mechanical pencil a hard-on, she thought.
But just as the copier quieted down and the green ready light flashed on, she heard the elevator doors opening down the hall. Must be Craig, she thought. She quickly switched off the copier and put the Alvarez Cocoa Company file back in the uprights. She’d have to get rid of him again. Maybe send him out for Evian for “Mr. Schwarzenegger.” She moved over to the window and stared out at the treetops, pretending to be studying the view.
“Can I help you?”
Loretta looked over her shoulder, surprised to hear a female voice instead of Craig the guard’s. Then she saw who it was.
Crap!
Martha Lee stared at the porker in her office, working hard to keep the pleasant Welcome-to-Rancho-Bonita smile on her face. “I’m afraid this building is off-limits to the guests, ma’am. The guard downstairs should’ve told you that.”
“Oh, well. . . you see, I was hoping that I might, you know, maybe perhaps run into Mr. Laplante. I watch him on TV all the time. I was just hoping . . . well, you know.”
This chubbette was full of shit, Martha Lee thought. The Roger Laplante groupies gushed, and they weren’t shy about what they wanted. Roger was their guru, and they wanted to touch him. They needed to connect with him, as Roger said. This one was not a groupie.
Martha Lee stepped into the room and noticed a warm, vaguely chemical smell. She knew that smell; her copier had been on. Shit! she thought. This little blimp is the spy from the IRS. She has to be.
“I’m afraid you won’t find Mr. Laplante here,” Martha Lee said, holding the smile and extending her arm toward the door. “But I may be able to arrange a short meeting for you. If you’ll come with me.”
The little fattie came out from around the desk. “Oh, that would be wonderful,” she said.
Oh, it sure will be, Martha Lee thought, her face aching from the smile. Don’t you worry about that.
15
Loretta felt a little queasy as Martha Lee held the door open for her and they stepped out of the jungle humidity into the spa’s air-conditioned main building. She couldn’t figure out if Martha Lee was on to her or not. She was a pretty good actress if she did know. As they walked past the front desk, Loretta wondered where Martha Lee was leading her. Not to her boyfriend, Loretta hoped.
“I was thinking we might have dinner first, Mrs. Marvelli,” Martha Lee said, leading the way. “Then we can go find Mr. La-plante. If he’s not too busy.”
“Fine.” Loretta smiled at Martha Lee, wanting to put her in a choke hold and arrest her on the spot. But even if she could get Martha Lee to the airport, she knew Temple and his men would stop her.
“Are you on the intensive plan, Mrs. Marvelli?” Martha Lee asked.
“Excuse me?” Loretta wasn’t listening.
“Are you staying with us on the intensive plan or the standard plan?”
“Oh . . . the standard plan.” The “intensive plan” was Rancho Bonita’s deluxe package. The standard plan was for the plebes.
“Well, don’t worry about it,” Martha Lee said as she picked up her pace to get the next door ahead of Loretta. It was the smoked-glass door of the “restaurant,” as they called it here. In fact, it was the private dining room where the guests on the intensive plan had their meals. Everyone else had to eat in the cafeteria in another building.
The restaurant’s decor was old Me-hee-co, grand hacienda style, the kind of place Zorro was always escaping from. The floor was made of large terra-cotta tiles, and the walls were flan-colored stucco. The legs of the dark wood tables and high-back chairs were carved like fusilli. Blue-glazed urns held gracefully arching palms, strategically placed to give each table a discreet amount of privacy.
“Two for dinner, Jasmine,” Martha Lee said.
“And how shall I . . .?” Jasmine eyed Loretta’s shorts and left her question unfinished.
“Special guest account,” Martha Lee said, smiling at Loretta.
Loretta smiled back. She wanted to smack this Jasmine kid.
“Right this way,” Jasmine said, snatching up two menus from an antique side table as she sauntered into the dining room, swinging her nonexistent hips. Jasmine had no butt, and her breasts were melted-down single scoops of ice cream. She circled an empty table, trailing her hand like a game-show bimbo indicating the grand-prize washer and dryer. Loretta and Martha Lee chose their seats, and Jasmine handed them the menus. “Enjoy your meal,” she said, trying to smile—but not very hard—before she sauntered away.
Martha Lee opened her menu. “The fish is always excellent here. Actually, everything is excellent here.”
I’ll be the judge of that, Loretta thought as she scanned the menu. Whenever she got nervous, she got hungry, and she was starving now.
But as she read the menu, she looked for anything that had chocolate in it, still wondering about that ninety tons of cocoa. Unfortunately, desserts weren’t listed on the menu, which wasn’t a big surprise, since every item had its fat, sodium, and calorie content listed right beside it. They probably didn’t serve desserts other than fruit. So what was WeightAway doing with all that cocoa? She glanced at Martha Lee over the top of the menu, determined to get back to Martha Lee’s office, so she could go through the rest of those invoices. She just wished she knew where Martha Lee’s boyfriend was.
“Good evening, ladies.” Their waiter arrived. He was a good-looking guy, trim and in his twenties, wearing a blousy white collarless shirt and black jeans. His dark hair was pulled back tight in a ponytail. “Can I get you something from the bar?”
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