by Liana Brooks
She frowned. “How does that make Cozy less money? The props were in the budget.”
“Rapid money flow and extra props and repairs.” I ticked the losses off on my hand. “Someone at Cozy overpaid. In some cases they double-paid, marking it as a replacement piece. The money went to Oretega.”
“Someone at Cozy wasn’t good with accounts.”
“No, someone at Cozy had a deal on the side. The computers you had were all bought as part of the company, the software included. For you and Seth to both log in and see separate accounts, someone in the office had to do that.”
Ellen leaned on her desk. “My computer is new, though.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Since when?”
“The one I was working on got dropped when we were shuffling around offices. It was a mess, so I brought in my laptop.”
“Is that when you noticed the discrepancy?”
She nodded slowly.
“Then someone programmed the computers to give you false amounts.” It would be so easy for someone with the right skills to create an extra admin account. A secret back door that scheduled withdrawals and hid them. It’d happened before, and I’d even suspected it in Dulcie’s case, but our tech people hadn’t been able to prove it. I made a mental note to get someone from the office to check out who’d programmed Cozy’s digital security.
“What would have happened?”
“Eventually you would have overdrawn and gotten a notice from the bank.” I dropped my empty cupcake wrapper in the recycling bin by Ellen’s desk. “Which doesn’t make sense. That would get someone caught. Fast.”
“If they already had the money, why go through all this?” Ellen asked.
I tried several scenarios in my mind. The company had changed hands in January. The discrepancy hadn’t appeared until April. Dates and numbers waltzed through my head. “Oh, that’s almost clever.”
“What is?”
“They hid the money from the sale in the Cozy accounts, but left a back door to empty the accounts. Taxes are due next week. I bet they planned on taking the money after. If they could frame someone still working here, so much the better.”
“But, then, the money should be here. All the money they embezzled through the props should still be here.”
“When did the bank account glitch?”
“My computer broke Monday. I noticed the accounting error Thursday afternoon, right before I called your office.”
“Something spooked them.” Someone had pulled the plug early.
No, that still couldn’t be right. It didn’t make sense. All the original conspirators were gone. The original money was gone.
I shook my head.
Something was missing from my equation and I didn’t know what.
Ellen sighed. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this. It’s a mess, and I can’t even pay you to solve the problem properly.”
“It’s all right. What are best friends for if not rushing into wild and dangerous situations together?”
“Exactly.” Her smile was brilliant and terrifying. Last time she’d looked like that I’d been volunteered for the high school math team.
“I just walked into a trap, didn’t I?”
Ellen’s smile widened. “Just a teeny-tiny one.”
“I should have known. Those were cupcakes of bribery, weren’t they?”
“There’s an art charity thing tonight.” Ellen’s hand fluttered. “A big thing at the museum downtown. Food. Silent auction. Live music. We’re all supposed to go and I have the actors all showing up together, but I need a Plus One.”
“Me?”
“Pllleeeaase?” Ellen begged. “I will owe you cupcakes for the rest of my life. Or meals. Or tickets to premier night. Anything. Absolutely anything, just please don’t make me go alone. All of the important people from Slasher are going, and me. I’m already...” She waved at herself as if to say she wasn’t impressive enough. Credit where it was due, Ellen knew how to push my buttons. The very thought that someone would dismiss her was reason enough to go. “I’m in. When is it?”
“We need to be there in sixty minutes.”
I closed my eyes and silently cursed in Latin, Greek, English, Middle English, Scots, and then listed my top ten favorite Shakespearean insults. “Sixty minutes? I hope daywear is appropriate, because I can’t get home and change fast enough.”
“I actually have some options. Kurt in costuming said Slasher had some dresses we could look at.” She bit her lip and gave me an apologetic smile.
It was a good thing I didn’t believe in reincarnation, because if I did, I could only accept I had done something truly horrendous in a past life, like coughing on people during flu season.[25]
Ellen dragged me down the empty halls of the quiet studio to a terribly small dressing room with shiny, eggshell-blue walls that smelled of fresh paint and cologne. The wide, dark blue couch looked comfortable enough to nap in.
For a second, I let it tempt me.
But Ellen had dresses for us to try on and we had hair to do before our cab arrived.
For Ellen I picked a shimmering amethyst gown with elegant pleats and just enough color gradient to give her extra height. It was elegant and modern without being gaudy enough to draw criticism.
With her hair drawn back by a matching gold-and-amethyst tiara, she looked like the queen of the gods ready to rule the world.
While Ellen did her makeup, I sorted through the remainder of the dresses. A bright red one was out. So was the short gold one. The silver one was too narrow in the shoulders.
Finally I picked up a black-and-white abomination that Ellen and I had been carefully avoiding. The underlayer started black at the top and fell from one shoulder into silver and then to a radiant white. With skulls.
I did like the skulls.
Unfortunately the rest was covered with bunched-up netting and a blood-spattered rainbow riot of neon silk flowers that smelled of rancid syrup and mold.
It was a smell an Amorphophallus titanium bloom would envy and a look only a Slasher costume designer could love.
Ellen tapped a fingernail on her teeth as she regarded the bulbous padding at the hips. “It would fit in the shoulders.”
“I would look like the Queen of Corpse Flowers.” I plucked a particularly offensive bright-pink specimen centered where my butt would be.
The flower pulled away from the dress with ease.
I pulled some more, and the dress separated into a satin layer and a mesh net with the flowers attached. “I need scissors.”
“Are you sure?”
I held my hand out.
Ten minutes later, the only flowers left were the ones tracing from simple buds and leaves in black on my left shoulder, blooming to a silver rose flecked with garnets and accented by outlines of pomegranates at my waist, and then the flowers faded, wilted and died until all that was left was the shining embroidery of the white skull on the hem.
The matching shoes where white with more pomegranates and skulls outlined in white silk. It was an elegant detail that would probably get missed.
Ellen went to call for a taxi and get her purse while I combed out my curls and tucked them into a chignon. A little hair spray to hold it all in, and the red of my hair went a shade or two darker, matching the garnets better.
Smoky eye makeup, garnet-red lipstick, and when Ellen walked in, she gasped.
I raised an eyebrow. “Well?”
She raised her camera slowly. “Hold still.”
“Ellen!”
“The lighting is perfect! Hold still.”
I gave her my best Grim Reaper death glare.
“I am going to have the best looking date at this party.” Ellen beamed.
“No, I am.” I took her arm and smiled. “You look amazing.”
Ellen blushed cutely. “Can I keep the photo?”
“Lemme see.”
She turned her phone so I could peek at the screen as we walked to the front door and our waiting taxi
. The bright makeup lights had washed out the walls in a flood of color and left me standing like Death in a blazing aura of glory.
“Keep it. And send me a copy.” I watched her hit send.
“You think I should send one to Morana?”
“And warn him I’m coming? No, let’s not ruin his evening.” I picked up the skirt and walked to the taxi door feeling like an all-powerful goddess of creation. “Do you think I could get away with wearing this to work?”
“That dress qualifies as a work hazard,” Ellen said, opening the taxi door. “You’re far too distracting.”
I pushed her into the waiting seat. “Get in, gorgeous. You’re making me blush.”
The cabbie stared at our reflections in the rearview mirror.
“Problem?” I asked.
The cabbie shook her head.
“You have the address?”
The cabbie nodded.
“Can we go?”
“I have sons,” the cabbie offered.
I scootched closer to Ellen. “I’m with her.”
The cabbie sighed. “You’re going to have such beautiful babies.”
Ellen smiled up at me. “It’s true. We would have beautiful babies.”
“It’s our first date! Next thing I know you’ll be dragging me back to Galena. We could get some acreage by our parents.” And I could die of boredom watching the sun set over the Galena River.
“Galena isn’t all bad,” Ellen said. “I told Patrick about it, and he doesn’t think it sounds all bad.”
They never did. Small town living was romantic, right up until you had to do it. “You may take Patrick Miles,” I said. “I’m staying in Chicago for life.”
Somehow I was in the middle of a party, in the middle of the Field Museum, alone.
That was a new skill for me.
Stanley Field Hall had been decorated to match the theme of Lost Things, which was probably just an excuse to use all the winter holiday decorations that hadn’t been used for last year’s Midwinter Ball because an ice storm had shut down the city for two weeks.
Sharp, glittering snowflakes made of crystal hung overhead, threatening to drop and impale everyone. Pine trees decorated in wintery fair that was not supposed to look specifically religious but still leaned heavily to a twentieth-century European Christmas theme created a curved space.
And amid the greenery, displays of taxidermied animals that had gone extinct skulked with portraits of notable scholars and artists who had died in the past few decades, along with surrealist sculptures made of trash and lost forks.
The overall impression was a winter hellscape as described by someone on a bad acid trip. And the live orchestra from the music department of the local university was playing The Song Of Ice from the fantasy RPG I’d played in middle school.
Carefully maneuvering around a cluster of Chicago nouveau riche drenched in overly floral, competing perfumes as they discussed a bent fork with disgusting sincerity, I searched for the purple pop of color in a sea of dull autumnal tones. She was nowhere to be found.
I’d lost Ellen somewhere. How was beyond me. But I had.
Very thematic and all, but troubling. I hoped the curators weren’t randomly kidnapping people from the party to maintain the nightmare motif.
Drifting through the crowd, I found a pocket of space away from the greasy smell of the buffet and the dance floor where I could watch most of the room with my back to a support pillar that had escaped the winter wonderland treatment.
“Merri, I didn’t expect to see you here.” The voice was chilly as the museum air and possibly the best thing I’d heard all night.
“Delilah?” I turned to look at the only woman in Chicago who almost made me envious. She was wearing a blood red Taverly original.[26] Her long, chocolate-brown hair hung in seductive waves down to her hips, and wide, topaz-brown eyes sparkled against flawless, pale skin. And she was a good six inches taller than me. I’d have hated her if we didn’t get along so well.
Lifting her champagne glass, Delilah drifted across the floor. “I didn’t expect to see you here. Who deserves a dose of Kriesmas Cheer?”
“My friend is making her debut as a film director tonight and I am here as her Plus One and support.”
Delilah wrinkled her nose in disappointment. “And here I was hoping for fireworks.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” I looked around for the person I knew wouldn’t be far away.
He wasn’t.
Mayor Alan Adale was almost ten years older than me, fair-haired, green-eyed, impossibly fit—and somehow he always managed to stand so the lights hit his cheekbones like they were chiseled. He was beautiful, like a sculpture by Da Vinci or Luo Li Rong. He stepped beside his wife, slid an arm around her waist, and I felt a hot surge of envy for the look they shared.
I rolled my eyes. “How long have you been married?”
“Nine years in January,” the mayor said without missing a beat.
“It would have been sooner if I’d actually shown up to our first date.” Delilah rested her head on her husband’s shoulder. “But that’s ancient history. Merri was just telling me about her friend who is a film director?” Delilah raised an elegantly sculpted eyebrow. “But first, I have to know about the dress. I don’t think we’ve ever seen you in this style.”
Sleek and skin tight? No, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn anything like it either. I lifted my glass. “Thank the costume department at Cozy Studios. This was a last-minute affair.”
Delilah chuckled.
The mayor’s eye caught on someone and he whispered something to his wife.
She looked past me with an appraising smile. “Remember the old cartoon where Hades is played by a guy with blue flames for hair?”
“I think I’ve seen some of the memes.” At the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, about three miles north of where we were. “Why?”
“The man who could play him in the live-action movie just arrived. Hades is here and...” Delilah tipped her chin to the side as she studied my dress. The pomegranates. The flowers. The embroidered skull. She smirked.
I smiled sweetly back at her.
“He looks familiar,” Adale said.
Since there was no polite way to ignore the conversation at this point, I looked over my shoulder and saw Seth: a sleek, dark silver button-down shirt that absorbed the light, tailored black slacks that hinted at the body underneath, platinum white hair artfully tousled. The lights played across the sharp angles of his face, flirting with shadows, caressing his lips the way I’d wanted to more than once this afternoon. Mayor Adale was not the best looking man in the room.
“You know him?” Delilah guessed in her very best confessional tone. People liked to talk to Delilah, spill their secrets, share their burdens.
I’d never been very good at sharing. “I know his name. Seth Morana, head of the Slasher–Cozy Studios. I’ve bumped into him before.” I turned back to the political couple with a smile. “You’ve probably seen him on screen before.”
Adale and Delilah shared a look but both shook their heads.
“So,” Delilah said in the drawn-out way of someone stalling for time, “what have you been up to since we spoke last? I heard the case at Windy City Security wrapped early. Are you planning another trip? Miami, perhaps?”
“Ah.” I chuckled in mild embarrassment. “You called the art dealer I told you about?”
“Mister Kane[27] was very helpful,” Delilah said. “Very complimentary of you as well.”
“And very engaged, as of January.” The wedding invite had sent my office into a tizzy of speculation. They were so used to my hate mail that the idea someone was inviting me to an event because we were—nominally—friends was quite confusing.
I suspect the invite had more to do with the fact that Del Farmer, Kane’s bride-to-be, was nearly as efficient and organized as I was and there was a sizable wedding budget, so everyone they knew was invited.
My plan to go wa
s motivated purely by mercenary reasons: the couple both worked for one of the best art houses in the country and the guest list would include many new, lucrative, clients for Sloan and Markham. The best kind of beach vacations were the ones where I spent the entire time adding up dollar signs.[28]
“Merri!” My name, gasped in a deep and unfamiliar tenor, grabbed my attention.
I turned, saw a blue shirt, and looked up, up, up, into the hazel eyes of Patrick Miles. Cue the confusion. “Patrick.”
He tugged one of the decorative pines to fill a gap that exposed our bubble to the rabble and slumped against the column I’d been hiding behind. He took a breath, and then rebuilt himself.
“Are you okay?” Delilah asked, looking him over.
Patrick shook his head. Somehow he managed to look boyishly charming and scandalously handsome in the same movement. I could see why Ellen liked him. “It’s just...” Patrick shook his head. “Mild, mild social anxiety.”
“I know that one,” the mayor murmured. “If I could, I’d ghost right out of here.” His eyes lit up with amusement at some private joke as his wife shook her head.
“Ellen said that if I couldn’t find her, I could come to you.” Patrick looked at me pleadingly.
I smiled back. “I’m happy to be your human shield until we find Ellen again.”
“Thank you,” he said with enough gratitude I almost felt bad for him. “This is why I left Hollywood. I couldn’t do the crowds any more. People pawing at me, grabbing me and photographing me, and acting like they owned me because I was in the public eye. I thought Cozy would be safe.”
“If anyone gives you trouble Merri can’t handle, we’ll help,” Delilah said.
“Time for introductions,” I said before Patrick accidentally got sucked into the black mires of Chicago politics. I understood wanting a breather from the sycophants here to boost their social media numbers by chasing the elusive status of Celebrity, but he should know who he was dealing with first. “Mayor Adale, Delilah Samson, VP of Subrosa Security, this is Patrick Miles. He’s starring in a new Cozy holiday movie.”
“Winter Wish,” Patrick said with the charming smile of someone who had been marketing movies since he was twelve. “It’s going to be phenomenal. You couldn’t ask for a better cast or crew. The story is—”
