I hesitated, still wondering if Etta might have been following her date around because of me. “Um.”
“This is exactly why I can’t join the Army. And Connor’s right. I don’t want to take it up with her unless I have to. Do you think you could get Etta to see reason?”
“I’ll try,” I promised again.
Unfortunately, the blinds were well-fitted to the edges of the windows, and we couldn’t find any gaps to peek through. However, this close, we could hear the treadmill, and based on the rhythm of Taryn’s feet, it sounded like she was running rather than walking.
Interesting. “I didn’t know it was possible for someone that pregnant to run,” I whispered.
“Me neither. Let’s see how long she keeps it up for.”
We made ourselves comfortable. Well, as comfortable as one can be squatting in a bush in the dark.
Had Taryn put this gym session on hold until her PA went home? So the PA wouldn’t question why her employer was insisting on being waited on hand and foot when she was capable of running? Or maybe Taryn lied about how much exercise she really did to maintain her enviable figure, and she didn’t want the “everyday woman” to find out.
But without her PA there, who would mop the sweat from her brow?
Harper had gone quiet beside me, and as we listened to the whirring of the treadmill and thumping of feet drone on and on, I found myself questioning once again what a pregnant woman and a fertility doctor would want with teenage girls. Instead of tackling it as a whole, I approached it from their individual perspectives this time.
Dr. Dan appeared to love money above everything else. I could imagine him offering playthings for horny husbands if the payday was good enough, but that theory fell short as soon as you brought Taryn into the picture. She didn’t have a horny husband.
How else could Dr. Dan make money from teenage girls? He’d mentioned surrogacy at our appointment. I suppose he could use them as free breeders so he could pocket for himself the no doubt significant sum an American surrogate would charge. But again the theory fell through as soon as we took Taryn into account, given she was eight and a half months pregnant herself.
What drove Taryn? I thought she liked money too, but since her body was her earner, I supposed that made it her highest priority. Except she was putting it at risk through the pregnancy. She might have just really wanted a baby and figured to hell with the consequences. Then again, she seemed confident she’d be able to bounce straight back into shape afterward and would make a lot of dough on her new video series as long as she pulled it off.
That’s when a crazy idea hit me. I remembered thinking that Taryn would outsource carrying the baby if she could.
What if she could? What if she had a teenage girl to do it for her? A disposable one with no voice so she could keep the goodwill and income potential of carrying the child for herself?
As Harper had pointed out when she’d found Alyssa’s body and thought it was a prank—they make them so realistic these days…
20
We all agreed the secret surrogacy concept was possible. There was a feasible market for it: high-profile women who wanted the best of both worlds. The honor and rewards of having children without the drawbacks.
Traditional surrogacy was an option for high-profile women too but one that would result in terrible PR if they did it for the sake of keeping their figures. And although you could have American surrogates sign confidentiality agreements, both the temptation of blackmail and the consequences of the fallout were infinitely greater for celebrity babies. The risk would be too much.
But if someone offered a guaranteed, risk-free option, the going rate could also be infinitely greater.
If the theory was anywhere close to the truth, it would explain both Taryn’s and Dr. Dan’s involvement. The person it didn’t make sense for was Alyssa. How did she get power or attention from a secret bargain like this? Was it possible she’d devised the whole scheme so she could hold it over those women later? I felt like I was grasping at straws.
Nevertheless, it was the best theory we had. The one that fit the most. Especially in light of Taryn’s running on the treadmill and lack of peeing thing. Of course, it was also possible that she was just super fit, which could’ve explained both oddities.
We had to test whether her pregnancy was fake. So we came up with a plan to do it and went to our respective beds.
Okay, I went to Connor’s bed.
The next morning, I was creeping past Etta’s apartment to reach my own, avoiding the confrontation I’d promised Harper, when my phone rang. Unknown number.
“Ms. Avery. It’s Police Commander Hunt here.”
“Oh. Hi. Did you get my cookies?”
“I got them. That’s not why I’m calling.”
“Is Etta okay?”
“She better be. That’s not why I’m calling either.”
“Well then—”
“Ms. Avery, this will go faster if you let me ask the questions.”
“Right. Sorry. Go ahead.”
“Can you meet me for a drink at Tak’s Coffee Shop?”
Hunt had never asked me to meet him before. He’d demanded I come to the station for questioning, but that was the sole occasion he’d ever requested my presence anywhere. Unless you counted the time he told me to “feel free to leave the country.”
“Um, sure.”
Half an hour later we were seated across from each other at a table so small our knees were in danger of touching. Cozy. But at least not quite as cozy as the black booth seating along the right-hand wall.
It was a mom-and-pop-style diner tucked away on the border of Leimert Park and Crenshaw, and stepping through the doorway was like stepping back in time. Automatic drip coffee and cheap, hearty meals served with a smile. I could see why Hunt would like it.
He took a sip of the coffee he’d ordered from the sweet-faced waitress. “Look. I know you’re bound by ironclad confidentiality agreements with the Taste Society, regardless of whether your client is the most evil bastard on the planet, and I haven’t done anything to incline you toward risking your job because I ask you to. But I was hoping we could have a conversation—off the record—about a hypothetical client. We’ll call him Mr. Hill.”
The way he asked suggested he was expecting me to refuse.
“Let’s just say I’m not a fan of respecting contracts over criminal behavior myself. What do you want to know?”
The look he gave me couldn’t have been called friendly, but there was a bit more respect in it than usual. Like maybe he was reconsidering whether the manure pile might be useful for something. “Did you ever see your hypothetical client use drugs or take mind-altering substances?”
“No. Unless you count alcohol, and until Alyssa was killed, he was quite moderate with that too.”
“Does your hypothetical client keep any drugs in his home?”
“Not that I saw. He has prescription migraine medication and some ordinary over-the-counter stuff, but that’s it.”
He grunted. I wasn’t telling him what he wanted to hear.
I recycled his line from earlier. “Commander, perhaps this will go faster if you tell me what you’re looking for.”
His mustache twitched. He wasn’t happy about conceding the point—it was bad enough that he’d had to ask me for help—but he knew I was right. “The coroner found that Alyssa Hill had flakka in her system. Its presence supports Mr. Hill’s claim that she was acting strangely and attacked him, but it’s a cheap and nasty drug, not a popular choice among the wealthy.”
“You’re wondering if Zac gave it to her?”
“I think it’s unlikely she gave it to herself. I want to know who did.”
“It might be a coincidence, but there was a bottle of Zac’s favorite wine left in an anonymous gift basket, and it was dosed with flakka too.”
“When?”
I thought back. “It was after we got home from the film premiere on Monday. The same night
Alyssa was killed, come to think of it. But we only opened it and learned it was poisoned two days later.”
Hunt grunted.
“There’s something else you should know,” I said. “There are reports in the Taste Society of chemists altering flakka to guarantee either the fight or flight response, so it’s possible it was a more finely tuned weapon than it appears.”
Hunt’s neck went mottled red the way it did when he was really pissed off. “Bloody Taste Society. How long would it take to start working?”
“Same as the original. Instantly if it’s injected, snorted, or smoked. Ten to thirty minutes if it’s ingested or otherwise absorbed through the stomach.”
“This witness of yours. Did she notice what time Torres dropped Mrs. Hill off?”
“About four a.m.”
“And when she heard shouting?”
“She said it was fast. Maybe a few minutes after she arrived.”
Hunt cursed. “Give me her details.” He cursed again. “It’s going to be hell getting a warrant on Torres’s car and home based on the word of your stalker.”
Harper had cleverly lifted the phone number from Jennifer’s cell when we were looking through the pictures, so I copied it down for Hunt and added a description of her panel van and its license plate. But I couldn’t resist pointing out, “She’s not my stalker.” I had no affection for the woman. Just a silly pinky promise.
Hunt did a grunt that sounded almost like a “thanks” as I slid him Jennifer’s details. He passed me a card too, with a cell number on it. “In case you think of anything else.”
“Commander?”
He gave me his attention. And I was no longer sure I wanted it. But I chose to take the fact his mustache didn’t look like it was about to launch from his face and attack me as an encouraging sign.
“Why do you hate the Taste Society so much?”
He eyed me. “You really wanna know?”
“Yes.”
“Because all they care about is power and money. Sure, they like to go on about how they’re saving lives when they’re greasing palms and weaseling their way into places they shouldn’t be. But do you know how many people have died because they refuse to share their groundbreaking antidotes with the medical community? Thousands upon thousands.” He pushed back from the table and stood up. “In my eyes, that makes them mass bloody murderers. And then the shit-for-brains higher ups give them access to our cases and who knows what else. I didn’t go to war to protect this kind of corruption.”
Wow.
Hunt strode out of the coffee shop. And suddenly I understood him a whole lot better. He was a man who was prepared to lay down his life for his country. For the common good. It was black and white for him. And in his black-and-white view, the Taste Society was a mass murderer. No wonder he hated it and by extension anyone corrupt enough to work for it.
It wasn’t so black and white for me. I’d had no idea about the antidote thing—or at least I’d never thought through the implications of secret antidotes—but it made me sick to think about. On the other hand, they were no more guilty of murder than every person who had the means to save a single life in poverty and didn’t. Yet the more I learned about the company I was working for, the less I liked it.
I wondered whether Connor knew about the antidotes and the real reason for Hunt’s attitude.
Then I thought about how I’d almost made some progress with Hunt until the end there. It seemed a shame to leave things on that unpleasant note.
I called the number he gave me.
“Hunt speaking.”
“You left in a hurry, so I didn’t get a chance to ask. Did you enjoy those cookies?”
“I had to throw them out. Police policy in case of poisoning.”
“Oh.” For a second I was offended. “Then did you at least enjoy throwing them out?”
There was a pregnant pause while I waited for him to hang up.
“Yes,” he said.
Then he hung up.
21
An hour later, Connor, Harper, and I were sitting outside Taryn’s house, waiting for her PA to leave.
The reasons for waiting were twofold. First, Taryn might be more inclined to chat if her PA wasn’t there to overhear. Or second, if her PA was in on the conspiracy—if indeed there was one—then her absence meant the pair of them couldn’t gang up on me, steal any hard-won evidence I’d gained, and throw me out on my ass.
If I managed to win any evidence, that is.
I knew that if I walked up to Taryn’s door and claimed to know what was going on, she’d call my bluff. My word against hers would never amount to anything, and besides, to get her to talk, we needed leverage.
If our theory was right, something I was still unconvinced of, she would be a client rather than a partner, which meant she might be convinced to turn on the others if we had solid evidence and threatened to expose her. She lived and died by her YouTube channel, which meant video would be the most powerful threat.
So how did we get video evidence that her belly was one masterpiece of prosthetic engineering?
I’d briefly wondered about tripping and spilling something unpleasant on her, but I couldn’t think of any substance bad enough to convince her to rip off her clothes in front of me when she had this secret to protect.
Harper suggested setting her clothes on fire.
Connor vetoed it.
In the end, we’d decided on a strategy reminiscent of the Princess and the Pea, only it was using a sharp, pointy object rather than a small, round one. I’d dubbed it “The Princess and the Pin.”
But before we could put it into action, I had to convince Taryn to see me face-to-face.
Her PA finally left on some errand or another, and I got out of the SUV, my heart already thundering in my ears. It was time. Time to learn whether I was as delusional as Jennifer or if there was something to this theory.
I walked up to Taryn’s door armed with an important-looking folder, which hid a sharp, pointy object underneath, and a baseball cap, which housed a covert camera in its front panels. As a backup, my cell phone was poking carefully over the edge of my jeans pocket on a recorded video call to Harper. There was a lot riding on this.
The pin was slippery in my hand. Because my hand was slick with sweat. Connor had consulted with a medical associate of his who’d assured us that no harm would be done if the baby was real, and there was a good chance it wasn’t, but what if it was? In all the books I’d read about doctors, soldiers, and villains, I’d never considered how hard it would be to overcome the instinct not to stab someone’s flesh. And vulnerable flesh with a potential infant inside made it so much harder.
There had to be a better way, but this was the one that Taryn couldn’t see. The one Taryn couldn’t plot or devise a way out of. The one that would be impossible to fake.
Connor’s contact had pointed out that nurses stick pins into patients to test neurological response, and I’d insisted on a pin short enough that even if I tripped and plunged it all the way in, it wouldn’t do any damage. Yet now that I was facing the frosted glass door, preparing to stick a pin into the distended belly of an eight-and-a-half-month pregnant woman, I wasn’t feeling so reassured. I couldn’t shake the ridiculous concern that it might pop.
I rang the doorbell with the hand that wasn’t clutching the pin. Then caught myself holding my breath and forcibly resumed breathing. A glance back to the SUV showed Harper giving me a thumbs up. Our signal that Taryn had gotten up and was ambling over. This whole plan failed if she decided not to answer the door until her PA returned.
The door swung inward.
Taryn looked me over, zero recognition on her face. Which meant Harper or Connor could’ve been doing this instead of me. Great. The sole reason I was the one on the doorstep was that being Zac’s food guru would lend credibility to my story.
Even this close, she didn’t show any sign of the fatigue that was common in this stage of pregnancy.
“Wha
tever you’re selling, I’m not buying.”
She went to shut the door, and I stuck my foot in the way. Ouch. Even her arms were stupidly fit.
“I’m not selling anything. I work for Zachariah Hill, and I’m here about your arrangement with Alyssa.”
The door opened again. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about. And isn’t Mr. Hill at the police station being questioned in relation to Alyssa’s murder?”
“You might want to focus on your own problems, ma’am.” I tapped the folder importantly. “These papers were found in Alyssa’s estate, and I think you’ll want to keep them out of public hands. I have a copy of course.” Mentally steeling myself, I thrust the folder in her direction, making sure to bump it against her belly to disguise the pressure of my fumbling pinprick.
She didn’t react except to take the folder and thumb through it. “These pages are all blank.”
Holy cow. Had I missed? Had the pin gotten stuck in her clothing? Or fallen harmlessly to the ground?
Or was this ridiculous theory correct?
“Yes, they are,” I said, “but considering you didn’t react to the pin I just stuck in your belly, I believe I’ve proven your pregnancy is fake.”
She yanked the papers out of the way to look down at her belly, giving the recording camera a clear view as well—exactly as we’d hoped. Sure enough, there was the head of the pin—neon pink to stand out nicely against her white stretch top.
I bent over to give the camera a closer look.
Taryn Powers invited me inside, and I couldn’t help but feel I was stepping into a lion’s den.
Yet despite her name and fame, I was the one with the power here.
“Start talking, or I’ll make your secret the biggest thing to hit YouTube since cute cats.”
It’s not often you get to come up with a line like that the night before and then get a chance to deliver it.
If she’d been a cat, she would’ve been hissing and spitting with all her hair standing on end in warning. But since she wasn’t a cat, all her hair was as beautifully styled as it had been five minutes ago and she hadn’t hissed once. So far anyway.
Poison and Prejudice (An Eat, Pray, Die Humorous Mystery Book 4) Page 18
