I felt my face flush. “Yes, ma’am, so far.”
“I know why your name is familiar. You’re Bob’s best man, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Hasn’t Bob told you I’m Gracie’s maid of honor?”
“We men are much too shallow to talk about weddings.”
She laughed. “You and I will walk out of the church arm in arm after they say ‘I do.’”
“I guess we will. It’s nice to meet you.”
A Nike headband held back her hair. Her pale blue smock had paint dabs in assorted colors. Her legs were bare and tanned below the smock. “Let me wash my hands.” She wrapped her brush in a plastic sandwich bag and opened the top door of a small refrigerator. “Keeps the paint from drying out,” she explained as she closed the door.
I followed the young artist to a sink. Blank canvases in various sizes were stacked in one corner. One wall had shelves filled with tubes and bottles of paints, chemicals, brushes, and other objects I didn’t recognize. An easel stood in the center of the room, her current painting half-finished on it.
She was tall, close to six feet, even in flat sandals. I wondered what, if anything, she wore beneath the thin blue smock that reached to her knees. My nostrils flared when I inhaled a whiff of her perfume mixed with paint smell. Despite the paint, she smelled really good.
She squirted a hand cleaner into her palm and rubbed it in. “Takes the paint flecks right off.” She winked at me. “Keeps the skin soft too. Here, stick out your hands.” She squirted the hand cleaner into my palm. “Rub your hands like this until it soaks in.” She grabbed my hands in hers and began to rub them.
I felt my face flush again, so I pulled my hands away. “Thanks.” Dumb, dumb, dumb. Why pull your hands away, stupid?
She pulled a few paper towels off the roll and handed them to me. She took some for herself, dried her hands, and extended her hand for me to shake. “Call me Miyo. I have a feeling we’re going to be good friends.”
“I’m Chuck.” When I touched her hand, I felt a spark. A real, physical, electric spark.
“Would you like coffee, Chuck? Or maybe a cocktail.” She glanced at the time on the stove. “It’s five o’clock.”
I would like anything you have to offer, I thought. Coffee will do for a start. “I still have work to do, Miyo. Coffee would be great.”
“How about a rain check on the cocktail? For when you don’t have work to do.” She gestured me to a seating arrangement around a coffee table. “Have a seat while I make the coffee.” She moved with a dancer’s grace to a small coffee station and poured coffee beans into a grinder. The white sash cinched around her waist highlighted her hips. There was a blue dab on the back of her left calf. “What’s this about? Bob said to cooperate with you, whatever that means.” She turned on the grinder and dropped a filter into the coffee maker.
I waited for the grinder to stop. “Gracie has been missing since Saturday night.”
Miyo scoffed. “That’s nothing new.” She poured the ground beans into the coffee maker and pushed the button. She smiled as she sat in a canvas sling chair across from me. The smock draped open, revealing a tan thigh before she adjusted the fabric. “She’ll turn up; she always does.”
It took an effort to keep my eyes on her face. “You don’t seem worried about her.”
“I’m not.”
I shook my head. “May I ask you a few questions?”
“First, let me ask you one: How do you know Bob?”
“We’ve been friends since first grade. We played middle school and high school football together in Adams Springs, Texas. We’ve been friends ever since. Where do you know him from?”
“We met last summer when he came down to meet Gracie’s parents. Gracie knew Bob was gonna propose, so she brought him over to see if I thought he was as good a catch as she did.”
She grinned at me. She had about a hundred straight, white teeth. “Gracie never makes an important decision without bouncing it off me. We don’t have any secrets from each other.”
The aroma of brewing coffee filled the room, overpowering the smell of paints, chemicals, and Miyo’s perfume. My nose was confused. “And did you approve of Bob?”
“Bob’s the best thing that ever happened to Gracie. He’s an anchor of stability in her life. He’s smart, loyal, kind, handsome, and successful. He ticks all her boxes. We have dinner together whenever they come to town.”
“The three of you?” I asked. “There’s not a husband or boyfriend in the picture?”
“Why do you think I asked if you were single? Would you like to apply for the position?” She raised an eyebrow and smiled. “My painting career has monopolized me for the last year or so, while I built my reputation. But with this gallery showing in a few days, that phase of my career will be complete. Then I have to plan Gracie’s bachelorette party.”
“That’s right, the wedding’s gonna be in three weeks, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. But after my showing, I’ll adopt a more normal social life.” The smock inched its way open on her thigh as she laughed and winked.
I felt myself blush again. I hate it when that happens. I realized I was staring at her. I changed the subject. “When have the three of you had dinner?”
“Let’s see. They came down a second time before training camp started. The Jets played an exhibition game with the Port City Pelicans here in August. Gracie wasn’t with Bob so he and I ate alone. I remember now that Bob said he tried to call you too, but you were out of town. I had a gallery showing in New York in October. And the Jets played the Pelicans again three weeks ago in the playoffs.” She frowned for a second. “I guess that makes…four more times.”
I wrote that down. “How did you and Gracie meet?”
“We were next door neighbors when we were little. We’ve been BFFs—and I mean real best friends, not just social media friends—ever since kindergarten. Twenty years. Pretty much like you and Bob.”
“When did you last see Gracie?”
“Last week. She came to see me when she got to Port City. Bob wasn’t coming down until Saturday. I picked her up at the airport and she spent Thursday night here. We drank wine and talked like high school girls all night.”
“What about?”
“Mostly about Bob and what she wanted their wedding to be like.”
“She didn’t have a car?”
“No. I took her to the airport Friday to pick up a rental.”
“May I see the room where she stayed?”
“I told you she’s not here.”
“I don’t doubt that. I need to learn as much as I can about Gracie and her movements. It’s the way I work. I’m not sure what I’ll learn until I learn it. That’s why I want to look. It couldn’t hurt to humor me.”
Miyo sighed and led me down a short hall. I enjoyed the view from the rear. “The guest room is the first door on the right.”
“Thanks.” I flipped on the light, dropped to the tile floor, and looked under the bed.
“What are you doing?”
“Wanted to see if maybe she dropped something.” I stood. “Might be a clue.” I grinned at her and turned to the guest bathroom. The shower had a bar of used soap and used bottles of shampoo and conditioner. The guest towels had not been used. The medicine cabinet contained an Ibuprofen bottle and a half-empty bottle of nail polish called Secret Stash. I hoped the name wasn’t prophetic. I lifted the toilet tank lid and looked inside.
“Wow, you’re thorough. I would’ve never thought of that.”
“I was a police detective for a while. Don’t want to leave the job half-done.”
When I opened the mirrored closet door, a light came on inside. The closet held two winter coats, two pair of warm boots, and a dozen empty coat hangers. Two cardboard boxes labeled as Christmas decorations sat on the shelf. I slid the door closed.
“Thanks for humoring me, Miyo. I’m finished.” I followed her back down the hall. Again, I admired her dancer-lik
e grace.
When we were seated again, I asked, “Have you heard from Gracie since she left?”
“No, but I don’t expect to. The Super Bowl is a social whirl for the rich and famous and a media feeding frenzy, all rolled into one.” She glanced at the coffee maker and levered herself up from the low chair. I don’t know how she did it, but she made it look graceful. “She uses every spare moment here to market herself.” She took two cups from the cabinet. “How do you take it?”
“A little creamer, no sugar.”
Miyo set the carafe and coffee creamer on a tray with the cups.
“How do you mean ‘market herself’?”
Miyo carried the tray to the table and sat beside me on the sofa. Her thigh touched mine for a moment. I hoped it was intentional.
“It’s difficult for a top model to stay at the top. You should hear Gracie complain about all the shit she has to put up with.” She poured my coffee, then her own. Her smock draped open. I averted my eyes, but not before I glimpsed a lacy, pink brassiere. “She has to be seen at the right parties and hobnob with the other beautiful people. She has to schmooze with the right money people.”
She set down the carafe. “She’s gotta stay in the public eye so they keep buying magazines with her picture on the cover. And everyone she meets—and I mean everyone—has a hidden agenda. They all have an angle. It gets old after a while.” She sipped coffee.
“I didn’t realize it was such a chore to be famous.”
“She attends three or four parties or receptions a week, eats only a couple of appetizers for appearances sake, limits herself to two drinks, and then eats a business meal—and holds her weight at a hundred and ten pounds. And she has to show up at photo shoots at dawn and work until sunset.” She sat back with her cup in her lap. “I don’t think I could do it. She does that stuff month in and month out. That’s gotta take a toll. That’s why she disappears from time to time. I’m not worried about her.”
“This time may be different.”
Miyo set her cup on the table. “Can you keep a confidence, Chuck?” She leaned against me and put a hand on my leg. “Like a private detective’s privileged communication or something?”
It was hard to concentrate with her hand on my leg. “I’m discreet, but I look out for my client’s best interests—in this case, that’s Bob.”
“Bob’s okay. Hell, they’re going to become one in three weeks. But don’t tell this to anyone else, or Gracie will kill me. Promise?” She removed her hand from my leg and I could breathe again.
“Okay.”
“Any famous person has to decompress from time to time; Gracie is no different. When she goes AWOL from the modeling media circus, she usually stays with me. I’m one of the few people who couldn’t care less that she’s famous. To me, she’s just my best friend.” She held her coffee in both hands and gazed at me over the rim of the cup.
“Where do you think she is now, Miyo?”
“Well, she’s not here, for starters.”
“Aren’t you surprised, since she’s in the same town with you?”
Miyo’s face clouded. “I don’t know what to make of it. I would’ve expected her to hide out here since she’s so close.”
“Did Gracie mention any trouble she might be in?”
“She did seem a little preoccupied when she first showed up. I asked her what was going on. She said she was working on a new deal that was different from anything she’d done before. She wasn’t sure if it was right for her.”
“What kind of deal?” I thought of Vicente Vidali. Maybe VV wanted her to be a spokesperson for the casino.
“That’s the strange thing; she wouldn’t say. Just that it was way different. She usually tells me everything.” She shook her head. “We got to talking about Bob, and the Super Bowl, and wedding plans. I forgot about it until you asked.”
“Could her new deal have to do with promotion for a casino?”
“I don’t follow Gracie’s career closely. I have my own business to look after.” As she leaned over to pick up her coffee, her thigh brushed mine.
Was I seeing something that wasn’t there? Miyo had quite an effect on me. “I hate to hit you with this cold, Miyo, but did you know that Gracie had a history of drug use?”
“History, that’s the word for it, Chuck. Ancient history. After her stint in rehab last summer, that’s behind her. When she was here a few days ago, she said she was drug-free.”
“Bob said her rehab was a secret.”
Miyo’s black ponytail swayed behind her as she shook her head. “We don’t have secrets between us. She called me when Bob asked her to go. I told her to do it. She called me when she got out. She said she would be clean and sober from now on.”
“When Gracie spent the night here, did she do any drugs?”
Miyo’s shoulders slumped. Tears welled in her eyes. “Is she doing drugs again? That’s why you checked under the toilet lid, isn’t it?”
“It’s a favorite place for people to stash drugs. Sometimes they forget and leave them there.”
“Is that why you think this disappearance could be different?” Tears rolled down her tan cheeks. “The pressure must have gotten to her again, or you wouldn’t ask me that. No, she didn’t do any drugs here. I have my own history, and I won’t stand for it.”
“I don’t mean to pry, Miyo, but your history could have some relevance to Gracie since you two are so close. What are you willing to tell me about it?”
She stared into her cup for a long while.
I waited. She would answer when she felt like it. Or not. I was content to look at her as long as she would let me.
She sighed. “I almost died from a heroin overdose two years ago. Gracie called 911 and got me to the hospital. I had stopped breathing when they wheeled me in. If she hadn’t acted quickly, I would’ve died. I was scared to death. When they released me from the hospital, I went cold turkey. It hasn’t been easy with the artist crowd I hang out with—but I haven’t had anything stronger than a Mai Tai since—and I never will, God willing. Gracie knows that.”
Chapter 16
Snoop stuck his head in the door of my home office. He had let himself in with his key. “Something fishy has happened to the betting line on the Super Bowl.”
I gestured to a chair. “What you got, Snoop?”
Snoop plopped down and pulled out his notepad. “First thing I learned was that sports betting is illegal in New Jersey. But it’s legal in Delaware, so I checked out the Double Down Delaware Casino.”
I nodded. “Good move.”
“A few days ago, right after the conference championships games were over, the Vegas bookmaker line opened with the Jets a thirteen-and-a-half point favorite. That zigzagged back and forth a few days. Finally settled at sixteen-and-a-half, Jets favored. Maybe a point either way. Depends on which casino you ask. The Mexican Muscle must have looked real good in practice for the line to go up three points.” He glanced again at his notes. “The Delaware casinos, including the Double Down, are toeing the line with Vegas—which they always do. There’s only a half dozen casinos in Delaware.” He looked at me. “You with me so far?”
“Yeah, Cowboys plus sixteen-and-a-half is an even bet.” I motioned for him to go on.
He held up a hand. “Was an even bet, but not anymore.” Snoop’s eyes lit up. “Sunday the line at the Vegas casinos changed. Jets are now favored by seven-and-a- half. And the Double Down Delaware Casino has stopped taking Super Bowl bets.”
“That’s right after Gracie disappeared.” That was a head-scratcher. “Snoop, I’m not a gambler. What does that mean in the real world?”
“It means the Double Down casino has taken all the bets it wants. It means somebody in Vegas bet a truckload of money on the Cowboys two days ago.”
“Can you find out how much money?”
“To move the betting line nine points that fast, it would be maybe a hundred million dollars. It’s hard to say, but it’s a ton of money.”
Chapter 17
Flamer sent Graciela’s tablet back to me with a note. Password is Ama$ingGrace. Have fun. I found a file with Gracie’s passwords for all her online accounts and emailed it to Snoop.
I searched the tablet’s address book for anybody named Sharky. No luck, but that was no surprise. If he was a drug dealer, he wouldn’t want to leave any digital footprints. A text message was bad enough. I read her correspondence with Jerry Greenbaum for the last six months. Mostly agent/client business. But he had made oblique references to “our mutual friend” and “packages.” I printed copies of the emails and set them aside for further use.
Then I had a thought so simple that I wanted to smack myself upside the head because I hadn’t thought of it earlier. I had not played back the flip-phone’s voicemail. I felt like a fool, until I realized Snoop hadn’t thought of it either. I didn’t feel quite so stupid. Not quite.
I called the voicemail from the flip-phone. Most people never bother to set up a password on their voicemail. Graciela was no exception. The voicemails began to play. The first message had come in the previous Saturday from an area code I recognized as New York City: Gracie, this is me. When you come back to New York, you better have my money. Have a good time at the Super Bowl. Just remember that a lot of your good times come from me. Jerry’s too. If you don’t pay me Wednesday after the game, you’d better start looking over your shoulder. Remember what happened to Tawanda Grisham. But maybe I’ll start with Jerry to show you that I mean business. That way you still have a career.” I reverse looked up the phone number. It was a burner phone.
I Googled the area code and wrote down the name of a local pizza chain. I called the burner phone’s number.
“Hello.”
“We know we’ve called you on your cell phone, but this will take less than sixty seconds, and we’ll send you a coupon for a free large pizza with unlimited toppings from your neighborhood Pizza Paradise if you’ll answer two questions for us. One, have you ever used your cell phone to order a pizza from anyone?”
Quarterback Trap (A Carlos McCrary novel Book 3) Page 6
