“Yup.” I unlocked the main door, turned off the alarm and let Nathan in. When I’d turned on the lights, I said, “I’ll hang up my jacket. Then I’ll be ready to go. How do I look?”
“You look gorgeous, gorgeous.” He pulled out a small video camera and a folded-up tripod from the bag he carried. “I’ll get set up.”
My shot list was basic: shot #1 was of my head and shoulders while I introduced myself. Shot #2 was of me demonstrating how to fold T-shirts—yes, there is a proper way. And in shot #3 I gave a tour of the women’s section of the store. Pretty simple. Though it took us over an hour to shoot those three things from different angles. To end up with twenty-five minutes of video that Nathan would edit down to five.
None of the staff would show up until 9:50 am, but I made sure Nathan was packed and ready to go by 9:35. The less anyone at work knew about any aspirations I might have, the better.
On his way out, Nathan stopped on the men’s side of the store, picked up a sweater from the top of a pile and stroked it. “I like this,” he said.
“I’ll remember that on your birthday. Now go. And thanks for being my cameraman.”
He looked at the ceiling. “What’s to stop me from slipping out with this under my arm? Have you got video security in here?”
“We sure do. And I have to check your bag before you go.”
“Are you kidding?”
“I’m not. It’s procedure. So put down the sweater, show me there’s nothing in your bag except the camera and tripod, and say goodbye.”
“My babe, the responsible boss. I love it.” He put down the sweater and opened his bag wide for me. “Do I get an all-clear?”
“Yes. Thanks again. I’ll see you tonight.”
I locked the door after him, went into the back room and turned on my phone. I had three messages. One was a text from Joanne:
How’d the shoot go? Bet you were swell! Love you.
The second was from one of the sales associates, asking what time her shift started. I texted her back and checked the third message. It was an email, from Anna. It said:
Steph:
Are you working today? Can we meet briefly to talk? Wherever you like. Please let me know. It’s important.
Anna
What the hell? I sent a reply, saying I was at the store and couldn’t take a real break till two, when the assistant manager came in. Her message came back right away. She’d meet me outside the store at two fifteen. She’d be wearing a scarf and sunglasses.
A scarf and sunglasses, for god’s sake. A getup right out of Nancy Drew.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Anna spilled the beans as soon as we sat down on a bench outside the mall, far from the foot traffic. “I’m sorry to burden you with my problems, but I don’t know who else to tell, who else I can trust.”
What made her think she could trust me? I mean, she could. But how did she know that, after meeting me only a month before? I said, “Don’t be sorry. What happened?”
“Swear you won’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”
I felt stupid, but I said, “I swear.”
“Someone got in touch about the journal. He wants ten thousand dollars for it, or he’ll send it to The Star.”
“Who got in touch? How, and when?”
She pulled her scarf—a fancy silk one— down lower on her forehead, which made her look like she was in disguise. Or was a nutjob. And she told me the latest developments in what I couldn’t help thinking of as The Mystery of the Missing Notebook.
She’d received an email that morning from someone called [email protected]. She showed it to me on her phone. It said:
I have your notebook. It will cost you $10,000 to get it back. Considering the incriminating shit you wrote in the book, $10,000 is a bargain and you know it. If you want it back, tell NO ONE about this message and bring an envelope containing the cash to the sectional this Saturday. I’ll give you instructions later on how to make the drop. If you don’t answer this email by tomorrow, and don’t pay up, I’ll send the notebook to The Star. You know what that would mean. Goodbye to two careers: yours and a certain someone else’s.
There was no signature.
I said, “Are you sure this is for real? Could it be someone’s idea of a prank?”
“No. He knows what I wrote—things that could get me into trouble.”
“And can you tell me what those things are yet, or not?”
Her eyes got wet. “No.”
“Okay then,” I said. “Why are you referring to the blackmailer as ‘he,’ by the way? What makes you think a guy sent this?”
She looked thoughtful. That is, the small part of her face that wasn’t covered by the scarf and sunglasses looked thoughtful. “I just assumed,” she said. “But it could be a woman.”
I could already think of two female tenors who weren’t Anna’s biggest fans. Could their resentment of her success and status have led them to blackmail?
“Did you check the choir email list for this email address?”
“Yes. It wasn’t there.”
I said, “So the blackmailer isn’t a total idiot.”
She covered her face with her hands and mumbled through them. “I don’t know what to do. I’m such a mess. I don’t even know what I’m doing here, talking to you about this when he—or she—said to tell no one. Someone could be watching us right now!”
Jesus. No one was watching us. “Why are you telling me?”
“Because you were sympathetic about it last night. Unlike those two bitches who sit behind us. Do they think I don’t see them making fun of me whenever I open my mouth?”
She was dead serious, but I laughed. “Kristi and Carmen are bitchy.”
“I’m telling you because I can’t tell anyone I work with, or any of my friends who have media jobs. And you seem street-smart. I thought you might know what to do.”
Is that what I was? Book-dumb and street-smart? I could run with that, try it on for size.
“Let’s review what we know and don’t know,” I said.
The blackmailer was a tenor in the choir, male or female. Anna had no idea who it could be. And clearly the perp wanted to keep it that way.
“Maybe we could trace where the email was sent from?” she said. “I could ask one of the it guys at work to look into it, make up a fake reason why.”
“I wouldn’t bother. The it guy might get suspicious. And the blackmailer probably created and accesses the email account on a public computer. At a library or an internet café. Somewhere that doesn’t track its users.”
We knew that the blackmailer had been at the last practice and would attend the sectional one. And that he or she had read the journal and recognized that its contents could wreck Anna’s career if they were made public.
I said, “The big question right now is this: Are you willing to pay ten thousand dollars to get the journal back?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know!”
I had fifteen minutes left on my lunch break. “There’s not much I can do to help until you decide.”
She took a deep, shaky breath. “Okay, yes. I totally don’t want to and I hate that I’ve been put in this awful corner where I have to consider it. But yes, I’ll pay.”
“Can you come up with ten thousand in cash by Saturday?”
In a small voice, she said, “Yes.”
“So do you want to pay up and get your journal back? Or do you want to try and foil the blackmailer, and catch him or her in the act?”
For the first time that day, I saw the trace of a smile on her face. “How about if we get the journal back and foil the blackmailer?”
Who’s we? I wanted to say. But I’d already started to think of a plan.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
In the time that remained in my break, Anna and I composed this reply for her to send to nobody123:
Got your message. I want my journal back. I’ll pay to get it if I have to.
She wanted to add in some emotional st
uff. Talk about how being blackmailed made her feel betrayed and exposed. Say what it was like to have her privacy invaded. I told her not to. No point in giving the blackmailer any more material.
After she’d sent the email from her phone and sworn me to secrecy again, we agreed to meet at her house at eight that evening. Then we went our separate ways. She drove back to the tv studio, and I returned to the store. Where my day went by fast, for once. I spent the slow parts thinking about how to catch the blackmailer.
I got off work at six, went home and had dinner with Joanne. And told her I was going out after for a few drinks with my friend Jenn. To make up for that little lie, I gave her a full account of the filming Nathan and I had done that morning. I even stood up and acted out the T-shirt-folding sequence.
At eight o’clock, I knocked on Anna’s back door—her idea. In case anyone was watching the front one. She let me in, offered me a glass of wine and showed me into a living room straight out of an interior-design-magazine spread. It was all beige and cream and black, with teal accents. She said, “I still haven’t heard back from the blackmailer.”
“I’m sure you’ll hear soon,” I said. “Likely tonight.” I had nothing to base that idea on. But she nodded as if I knew what I was talking about.
She handed me a piece of paper. “Here’s the list from Pauline of who’s coming to the sectional practice. And here’s the choir list with the pictures. Shall we go through them?”
I’d decided we should try to come up with a shortlist of blackmailers. There were twenty-nine tenors in all. Only sixteen, including Anna and me, had said they would attend the sectional. So which of the fourteen had all of the means, motive and opportunity to commit the crime?
We crossed off two people right away: they hadn’t attended the Tuesday-night practice. That left twelve who’d been there. Twelve who’d had the opportunity to lift the notebook from Anna’s bag. Or did it?
I said, “The only time you left your bag unattended was when you came back from your phone call, put it on the floor and walked around talking to people. Right?”
“Right. I had the bag zipped up and under my arm the rest of the time.”
“Then the only tenors who had an opportunity to take it would be people who were in the church for the last five minutes or so of the break. And these two”— I pointed to two headshots—“came back to the practice late from outside. They rushed in when the rest of the choir was seated and Richard was talking about the next song to practice. Do you remember?”
“Not really,” Anna said.
“I do. I can see them so clearly. The ponytail man and the woman who wears zebra-stripe eyeglasses. There they are, in my memory, speed-walking to their spots at the end of the first tenor row. Which is strange. I seem to have noticed them without knowing I’d noticed them.”
“Maybe you have a videographic memory. The way some people have a photographic memory.”
“Is that a thing?”
“It should be.”
“Anyway, strike those two from the list.”
We were down to ten. We cut two more who’d sat at the back of the church for the entire break and sold raffle tickets. That left eight.
Next, we looked at who had the means to commit the crime. But we couldn’t eliminate anyone on that basis. Everyone had access to a computer and knowledge of how to set up and use an email account. We knew that since they’d all emailed Pauline to confirm their attendance at the sectional.
How about motive? The blackmailer was doing this for money, so who among our eight was broke?
“Not Carol,” Anna said. She meant the woman I’d nicknamed Old Hippie. “She’s a wealthy widow. I interviewed her for Noontime a few months ago about a huge donation she made to a hospital. A new wing is going up with her name on it.”
I crossed her name off the list.
“Not Martin either,” Anna said. Martin was the middle-aged man I called Tall Guy. He often came to practice in a suit, white shirt and tie. She said, “He’s a high-priced corporate lawyer. Ten thousand dollars is what he’d spend on a weekend getaway.”
“That’s two down. Who’s left that’s poor? Or poor-ish?”
She made a face. “I hate talking about people like this.”
“You’ll get over it. Who else?”
“There’s Brandon. He’s been unemployed since he got his graduate degree, I think. Or is he working part-time at a coffee shop while he tries to find a job in his field? Whichever.”
“What’s his field?”
She had to think about that. “Could it be philosophy?”
“People with philosophy degrees don’t actually expect to find jobs in their field, do they?”
“I don’t know, but he told me last season he wasn’t sure if he’d be back for this season. He couldn’t afford it.”
I circled his name on the list. “Yet he’s back.”
“Yes, he is.” She looked down at the list. “Next is Pauline. She can’t be the blackmailer. She’s been in the choir for years, and she always hosts the tenor sectionals. And she has a good job, in insurance. So unless she’s racked up some gambling debts or has a secret drug habit, I’d say she’s out of the running.”
“A secret drug habit? Her?”
“You’re right. Cross her off.” She kept going down the list. “I don’t know anything about these two—Kristi and Carmen— other than that they don’t seem to like me much. What’s their problem anyway?”
“They’re just jealous of your looks and your success. But we can’t dismiss them— Kristi has mentioned being short of money a few times. And those two are joined at the hip. They might even be working together. Mark them as maybes.”
“Done.”
“Now, what about the creepy guy with the tattoo on his neck?” The guy who’d probably won the Most Likely To Serve Hard Time Award in high school. If he’d even graduated. “What’s his name again?” I found the photo of Sticky Fingers on the list. “Oscar. What’s his story?”
“He collects a disability pension. He was injured on the job a few years ago. In a factory, I think.”
“So he’s not well-off.”
“No. And frankly? I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a criminal record.”
“Do you think he could be in a biker gang? I heard someone refer to him as a biker once.”
“He could. Though he seems nice enough. Friendly.”
I said, “You have to watch out for the nice ones. Isn’t that what they say?”
“Who says that?”
“Never mind. We’ve narrowed the list down to four people to watch at the practice: Kristi, Carmen, Brandon and Oscar.” Especially Oscar. “Good for us.”
Anna’s phone made a clicking noise. “That’s my incoming email signal. Maybe it’s him!”
“Or her.”
She picked up her phone, opened the email. She said, “It is him. Or her.” And together, we read the message.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The email said:
You’re smart to pay up. Now don’t screw up. Follow these instructions and you’ll have your precious journal back on Saturday.
1. Bring the $10,000 cash in $100 bills inside a sealed, unmarked 8 ½” by 11” manila envelope.
2. Get to the practice early enough that you can go to the main floor bathroom before the sectional starts.
3. Lift the radiator shelf in the bathroom, leave the envelope underneath it and replace the radiator shelf.
4. Do not return to the bathroom until after the practice is over. Don’t be watching who goes in and out of there either.
5. After the practice, lift the shelf again and you’ll find your journal there in an identical envelope.
6. Don’t even think of trying to screw me around unless you want your smutty love life exposed to the world.
I said, “Your smutty love life?”
She sighed. “It’s not that smutty. But I guess it’s time I told you about it.”
“Pretend I’m a
doctor and the doctor-patient confidentiality rule applies.”
Truth was, I didn’t have to be any kind of smart to guess what Anna was hiding— she was having an affair with someone she shouldn’t be. So I wasn’t surprised when she confessed. She’d been sleeping with Tom Reynolds, the national news anchorman for her network, for the last year. Though he was fifty-three to her thirty-six. And married with three teenage children. Though he was a serious old-timey journalist. A guy who stood for ethics and integrity.
“There are no details about our sex life in the journal,” she said. “Oh, I might have mentioned buying new lingerie or getting a Brazilian wax before meeting up with him, but there’s nothing racier than that. The problem is that there’s zero room for scandal in Tom’s personal life. If he plays by the rules, he might last as the evening news anchor into his sixties. But if our affair is found out, that would be excuse enough for the network to replace him with someone younger and fresher. And maybe less white and male.”
“Someone like you.”
“Well, yes. Except it couldn’t be me if I’m involved in the scandal.”
“Then why are you risking everything by continuing to see each other? Why didn’t this affair end before it started? Before the journal got stolen?”
“Because I’m irresistible?”
I hoped she was joking, but I was afraid she wasn’t.
“Hey,” I said, “don’t let Kristi or Carmen hear you say anything like that. Talk about fuel for their fire.”
“I was kidding.”
Yeah right, she was.
“It sounds clichéd,” she said, “but there’s a real spark between Tom and me. I don’t want him to leave his wife or kids. And I don’t want to give up the connection we have either. It’s too important to both of us. Too rare.”
And Everything Nice Page 4
