Act Fast

by R A Wallace

  “Isn’t it though? It mentions Greyson a lot too,” Margaret said over the paper in her hands. “Ha! Look at this. It says he was absolutely divine.”

  Callie groaned just as she managed to pop the cork. It wasn’t the only article that mentioned that. She filled the plastic champagne glasses and distributed them.

  “Your sister made it to the matinee today,” Margaret said.

  “Gemma? Did she bring the girls with her again?” Callie looked over the food options. Elliot had gone all out, as usual.

  “She did. She said that, thanks to you, the girls were able to explain everything to her.”

  Callie winced. She could imagine the girls talking nonstop throughout the play as they competed with each other to explain the play to their mother.

  “She said she’d get you back for it some other time,” Margaret added.

  Callie didn’t doubt it.

  “We went to the Friday night showing,” Trudy said. “It really was very good.”

  “Greyson really was divine,” Paula added with a chuckle. “We went to the party after and spent time with the actors. He was so sweet to us because he knew we were Margaret’s friends.”

  Callie pictured Greyson spending an evening entertaining a handful of older women.

  “How did you figure out how the ticket money was taken?” Sally asked.

  “Yes, it was the classic locked room conundrum. How did the thief get in to steal it?” Margaret asked.

  Callie took a small plate of food and her champagne glass and sat down at a table.

  “It was a couple of things, really. I figured since there was a drop ceiling near the area of the office that the thief went up and over.”

  “Really?” Trudy looked confused.

  Callie pointed up. “Look at these tiles. The clubhouse appears to be separate rooms because they have walls that you can see. But they don’t go all the way up to the roof. If you moved that ceiling tile there and climbed up, you could go over that wall and get into the next room very easily.”

  Sally understood first. “You would just need to unlock the door once you were inside and walk out.”

  “Exactly. Rob Shaw borrowed a hammer from the carpenter and used it to hit the lock on the lockbox to break it open.”

  Margaret frowned. “Why didn’t anyone see him climbing over the wall of the office? I thought several people mentioned being in the hall?”

  “And they were,” Callie agreed. “But Rob didn’t have to climb over the wall where the door to the office was. He could access the room from any wall. Hank, your admirer and lighting technician, noticed some of his wires being pulled. I’m guessing that’s where Rob went in.”

  “Oh, that makes sense.” Paula finished her champagne and stood to refill her glass.

  “Camille gave me a clue too when she told me about Rob’s costume being ripped. I’m guessing it was when he went over the wall.” Technically, Greyson gave her a hint when he suggested figuring out the timeline of when everyone arrived at the cast party also but since Callie had already planned to do that anyway, she wasn’t going to mention it at the moment. As it turned out, Rob was the last one to arrive.

  Paula carried the champagne bottle around and topped off glasses before returning the empty bottle to the food table.

  “Why did Rob steal the ticket money if he was in on a bank heist?” Sally asked.

  “Hard to say. It may be as simple as the fact that it was there, and he could.” Callie thought about it. “Or, maybe he was worried he wasn’t going to get his cut from the bank heist?”

  “What about the bank heist? How did you know the ticket money thief was also involved in that?” Margaret asked.

  “That one was a little more complicated,” Callie agreed. “I think one of the biggest clues was when I spoke to Rob about the ticket money and he told me that Ian had been at the play.”

  “Why would that be odd?” Sally asked as she moved over to the food table. She began filling another plate with food.

  “Rob shouldn’t have called him Ian.”

  Sally frowned as she carried the plate over and set it next to the other women to share.

  “Who was Ian?” Trudy asked as she reached for the plate.

  “He was originally the lead,” Margaret explained. “Greyson took his place when Chase left.”

  “I thought you said his name was Ian?” Trudy asked.

  “I think you were better off with Greyson as the lead actor,” Paula said.

  Margaret nodded and shared a smile with Paula.

  Callie ignored them. “That’s my point. Ian didn’t want anyone to know who he was in real life. His stage name was Chase. Rob should have known him by that name.”

  “I’m still confused,” Trudy said.

  “That’s because I haven’t told you about Anilese Moore yet.” Callie explained that Anilese had come to Indigo Investigations to hire Callie to find Ian but, in reality, it wasn’t because she was in love with him.

  “Rob put Anilese up to it. He wanted her to get cozy with Ian because Ian worked at the bank that Rob and his friends wanted to steal from. Anilese had an odd fascination with actors. She often followed them home and believed she was in love with them. That’s how Rob knew her. She had followed him around previously. Rob figured he could use Anilese’s predilection for actors to his favor and convinced Anilese she was in love with Ian. The problem was, Ian was in love with Penny and felt that Anilese was stalking him. He ran from her and that’s when he left the play.”

  “Oh, I wondered why he did that,” Margaret said as she reached for the plate of food.

  “Rob had Anilese hire me hoping to find Ian so they could still use him to get inside information about the bank where Ian worked. The bank robbers needed to know specific information about when the money would be moved. In the end, he killed Anilese when she was unsuccessful because he was afraid she would talk.”

  “If they didn’t get that information from Ian, where did they get it?” Paula asked.

  “Rob managed to get a part-time job working in the bank on the cleaning staff. It was at the other branch involved in the transfer and not the one that Ian worked at.”

  “That’s so clever of you and Greyson to figure that out.”

  “Greyson and I weren’t working together,” Callie insisted.

  “Wasn’t he with you when you found Anilese dead at her apartment?” Margaret pointed out with a smile.

  “What’s this?” Sally picked up the other newspaper that Callie had brought in. She spread out the first page. There was a large picture above the fold.

  “Darling, that’s you!” Margaret said. She leaned over and pointed. “And there’s Greyson, with his arm around you.”

  Callie stifled another groan. She’d been working as hard as she could to build up Indigo Investigations into a money-making business with jobs that came to her without the assistance of Elliot.

  “Oh, you have to listen to this.” Paula adjusted her reading glasses as she held up the paper to read it. “It says here that the owners of Indigo Investigations, Greyson Divine and Callie Indigo, solved the bank heist and helped the police to capture the thieves.”

  Callie shook her head. With one photo and a mistaken headline below it, Greyson had managed to do in that brief moment what she hadn’t been able to do in a year. Her phone had been ringing off the hook. Everyone wanted to hire Greyson and Callie, the attractive investigative couple who graced the front page of the paper. That photo had also been shared across other media outlets. Callie had found that photo all over the Internet and she was fairly certain all of the national news channels had also flashed the photo briefly during the late-night news the previous evening.

  “He’s very photogenic,” Sally said as she leaned over to look at the paper.

  The article had incorrectly listed them as co-owners of the agency. Callie dropped her head into her hand. Greyson had found it all very amusing and had said he was looking forward to working with her. Sh
e’d explained to him again that she worked alone. He had merely pointed out that all the callers were specifically asking for them as a team.

  “Aren’t they an attractive couple?” Margaret asked brightly.

  Callie lifted her head and scowled at her mother then stood to open another bottle of champagne.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The birthday party for Ariana was a family affair. Callie couldn’t tell if Leslie and her father were happy or sad about the event. It wasn’t every day that your youngest child turned eighteen. Perhaps that explained the tension Callie felt in the Indigo home on Sunday but she doubted it. Leslie kept throwing looks at her daughter, Ariana. Ariana pointedly ignored her. Wade kept looking at Leslie. Twenty-one-year-old Blake appeared oblivious to them all.

  Callie knew that much of Blake’s time was spent with college and work. Now in his junior year, when he wasn’t in class or studying, he was working with their father at the roofing and aluminum company their father owned. Blake had, in fact, been working for his father since he was sixteen. Like Ariana, Callie had never spent much one-on-one time with Blake, but it had never seemed to bother her even-keeled half-brother that his older sibling wasn’t around. Although she’d managed to see him on birthdays and holidays, Callie had never attended his ball games when he was a kid or any of the other important moments in his childhood.

  She wondered now why that was. She could tell herself it was because she had been busy with her own life but one glance at her nieces across the table told her that was a lie. She’d made it a point to spend time with each of them since their birth. Why then had she always kept her distance with her father’s second family?

  “How was Grandma Margaret’s play?” Leslie asked Josie and Cassidy.

  Callie half listened as her nieces competed to explain the gist of the play, how well their grandmother had performed, and how much they had enjoyed it. It occurred to her that Leslie had always left the door open for anyone to talk about her husband’s first wife and she’d made it a point to be a part of Josie and Cassidy’s childhood. She celebrated birthdays and holidays with them and even attended functions at their school when her schedule allowed. Callie knew that Josie and Cassidy loved Leslie as much as they did Margaret.

  Callie looked around the table at her family. Ariana was picking at the piece of cake on her plate. Blake was adding a second piece to his plate after inhaling the first piece. Gemma was smiling fondly at her daughters as they explained the play. Max and Wade were carrying on a conversation about something Callie couldn’t hear. Leslie was listening to the children and periodically stealing glances at Ariana.

  When the girls finished talking about the play, everyone began moving away from the table. The men were migrating toward the living room to look for something on television. Callie offered to help clean up after the meal, but Leslie vetoed it with a meaningful glance toward Ariana. Callie took the hint.

  “Ariana. I hear you renovated your bedroom. I’d like to see what you did to it.” Callie saw the look of surprise in her sister’s eyes before she concealed it with a look of boredom.

  “That was a couple of months ago,” Ariana said as she crossed her arms.

  “Well, you should have it the way you really like it now. I’m thinking of making some changes at my place.”

  Ariana dropped her arms and began walking to her bedroom.

  Callie followed and wondered what she was going to say once they got there. The conversations she’d practiced in her head hadn’t gone well.

  Ariana stalked into her room and threw herself down on a comfortable chair. There was a game controller and a computer nearby.

  “I didn’t know you liked video games,” Callie said.

  Ariana shrugged.

  Callie went over to the bed and sat on the edge.

  “I don’t really remember eighteen,” Callie said without thinking.

  Ariana shot her another surprised look.

  “What kinds of problems are you having?” Callie asked.

  Ariana frowned. “Problems?”

  Callie made a face as though her question had been obvious. “Sure. We all have problems. They’re just different as we age.”

  Ariana looked suspicious. “What problems do you have?”

  Callie thought of the laughing eyes that mocked her.

  “Well, there’s my business for one thing. I wasn’t getting the kinds of jobs or the number of jobs that I was hoping for.”

  Ariana straightened a bit in her chair.

  “Why not?”

  Good question. “Maybe I’ve been doing something wrong. You know, the wrong kind of marketing or something.”

  “I saw your picture. The one with your partner.”

  “I don’t have a partner,” Callie said automatically.

  “The picture said you did.”

  “Yeah. That would be another of those problems I was mentioning.”

  “The bank heist case you solved was all over the Internet,” Ariana pointed out. “The kids at school even knew about it. That’s good marketing.”

  “Yes. It was all over. Maybe things will turn around now. We’ll see.” Callie turned her focus to Ariana. “What about you?”

  Ariana shrugged. “I don’t have any problems.”

  “I think your parents would disagree.”

  A bored look masked Ariana’s face again but she didn’t reply.

  “Now that you’re eighteen, what are you planning to do?” Callie asked.

  “Why do you care?”

  Callie sighed. She knew she deserved the question. “Because I’m beginning to realize what a horrible sister I am.”

  “You want to make up for eighteen years now?” Ariana said with a shake of her head.

  “Maybe. Why not?”

  “I already have a mother. I don’t need another one.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting that. I was thinking more about being your sister.”

  Ariana shrugged. “I don’t know what that means. I’ve never had one before.”

  Ouch. “What if you did?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, like maybe we could hang out sometimes.” Even as she said it, Callie wondered what interests the two of them might share.

  “Does that mean you’d let me work your cases with you?”

  That hadn’t occurred to her. “It’s more boring than you think.” And sometimes dangerous. Callie thought of the truck looming in her rearview mirror just before it hit her.

  “I didn’t think you were serious.” Ariana turned her head.

  “I don’t know. I’d have to think about that. What about college?”

  “You want to spend time with me at college?” Ariana said snidely.

  “No. I’ve already put my time in. I was wondering where you were planning to go?”

  “Not everyone needs college,” Ariana said.

  Callie stood from the bed and walked over by Ariana so the younger girl couldn’t avoid looking at her.

  “I don’t agree, but let’s say you’re right. What are you going to do instead?” Another thought occurred to her. “Are you going to work for dad?”

  Ariana barked out a laugh. “What, in the office?”

  “Without a college degree to get into another career, that would be a pretty good job,” Callie pointed out. “Besides, you wouldn’t have to work in the office. There’s nothing stopping you from working on a crew like Blake does.” It was not something Callie had ever wanted to do. She knew the work was hard.

  Ariana appeared to share her feeling. “No way.”

  Callie was running out of options to get through to her sister. She turned to walk back to the bed and something caught her eye. It was an envelope tucked under the game controller. She recognized the logo on the return label.

  “Is that from the Fielding Modeling Agency?” Callie asked. She reached for the envelope before Ariana could stop her.

  “That’s mine!” Ariana stood from her chair.

&nb
sp; The two sisters faced each other. Callie knew Ariana was correct. It was her letter and Ariana was now an adult. She handed the envelope to Ariana.

  Ariana immediately folded it and put it in her back pocket.

  “That’s not a good agency to get involved with.”

  “How would you know?” Ariana asked defiantly.

  “It was one of my recent cases. Ariana, they’re scammers.”

  “You’re just saying that because you want me to go to college.”

  Callie let out a frustrated breath and wondered how she could convince her sister.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  They made the drive to the Turpins in silence. Callie had called ahead to make sure they were home. Alan Turpin met them at the door and led them back to the sunroom where Belinda and Kym were waiting for them. Callie and Ariana declined the polite offer of a drink.

  “Thank you for taking the time to speak with us,” Callie said.

  “You didn’t explain on the phone what it was about,” Alan said with a frown.

  Callie turned to her sister. “This is my sister, Ariana. She recently began working with the Fielding Modeling Agency as a receptionist.”

  “Oh,” Kym said simply.

  A look of understanding crossed Belinda’s face.

  “Did they tell you that if you make cold calls to get in more business, they’ll deduct some money from what you owe them for your fees?” Kym asked.

  Ariana looked reluctant to respond.

  Kym continued talking. “That’s what they told me. They charge you all kinds of money for their services like the photo shoots that never happen and the makeup classes that they end up cancelling most of the time.” Kym made a face of disgust. “Then they talk you into working for free and you end up with nothing.”

  Callie stole a glance at her sister. Ariana looked as though she were struggling to hold on to her belief that the modeling agency would turn her into a star.

  “All those photos they have on the walls of models? Those are all fake. They aren’t clients of the Fieldings. And the comments on their web site from satisfied customers? They wrote all of those.”