“Could she be having a secret tryst with a man?”

  “If she were, I would expect her to look much happier. Plus, she would have been crowing about it.”

  “Did she ever return home with anything new?”

  “She brought in takeout once. For herself. She told me to go home. Home here is a tiny hotel room that she barely covers the cost of.” Grace rolled her eyes again. I got the message: Tiffany was a selfish, demanding boss. She’d been going somewhere secretly and regularly, which was puzzling but I hoped to learn more once I examined her laptop in more depth. I decided to switch to a different line of questioning.

  “Did she ever receive anything that struck you as strange? Flowers or candy? A note she was secretive about?”

  “I don’t think so. I handled most of her mail.” Grace paused, looking thoughtful. “I don’t feel right saying this but I wouldn’t put it past Tiffany to send shit to herself. She once told me a stalker on her trail would be cool and she could film all kinds of content that would make great viewing and probably land her on some talk shows. I didn’t agree but I think she actually considered doing it until Abigail talked her out of it.”

  “Abigail didn’t mention that to us,” I said to Solomon.

  “She probably had fifty other hare-brained schemes to shoot down ahead of that one,” scoffed Grace. “Are we nearly there yet?”

  “This is our building,” said Solomon when he turned into the parking lot entrance.

  “Did Tiffany have many friends here?” I asked.

  “I don’t think Tiffany has many friends anywhere,” snorted Grace. “She has an uncanny knack for pissing people off.”

  A few minutes later, we entered our office. Delgado looked up from his desk where he was reading paperwork and got to his feet. “How is he?” asked Solomon.

  “Still asleep.”

  “This is Grace, Jonathan’s girlfriend,” I said. “Grace, this is Tony Delgado. He’s been looking after Jonathan.”

  Grace proffered her hand and shook Delgado’s. “Thanks, I appreciate it, but I can take over from here.”

  “Be my guest,” said Delgado. “He’s right through there.” Delgado pointed towards the boardroom and Grace broke into a jog, leaning over Jonathan to check on him.

  “He didn’t wake up at all?” I asked Delgado, handing him the sandwich we brought. I already consumed mine in the car.

  “About time,” said Delgado, breaking into a grin as he unwrapped it. “Not for a moment. He’s using the table for a pillow ever since you left.”

  “I think we should wake him,” said Solomon. “Whatever he knows about Tiffany, we need to know too.”

  “I’m starting to wonder if he knows anything,” I said. “According to Grace, it’s not like he and Tiffany were ever really together. He might know nothing about her private life.”

  “I can’t see him drinking himself unconscious just because they got pissy with each other over a stupid stunt like a fake relationship. I want to hear what he knows.”

  Before I could agree, the door banged open behind us and a tall woman with unnaturally blonde hair walked in and struck a pose. With one hand on her hip, she pointed at me with the other. “You are Lexi Graves,” she said, the authority in her voice daring me to defy her.

  Not that I would since she was correct, but I didn’t quite want to give her the satisfaction, so, I said, “Maybe.”

  “Who the hell are you?” said Solomon.

  “You!” yelled Grace, behind me.

  “I am Flavia!” said the woman in a raised, offended voice.

  “How did you get past security?” asked Solomon.

  “I said someone was breaking into cars in the parking lot,” said Flavia. “As soon as he left to investigate, I walked up.”

  “Go check on Jim,” said Solomon to Delgado. “And be sure to talk to him about security.”

  “Sure, boss.” Delgado bit off a chunk of his sandwich as he brushed past Flavia. Surprisingly, she didn’t flinch.

  “What do you want?” yelled Grace, appearing in the doorway.

  Flavia leaned forward, putting her finger to her lips and shushing her. Grace blinked and backed away.

  “You really are Flavia,” I said, squinting at her. She was taller than I thought, and older too. Her pink stilettos and white pantsuit demanded attention. A large purse swung from her elbow. “You look different.”

  “I’m trying blonde this week.”

  “But why are you here?”

  “To help you find Tiffany, of course!”

  “But you hate her!” I’d seen plenty of their spats online and read enough on the gossip pages to know that Tiffany and Flavia nurtured a long-running beef with each other. I wasn’t entirely sure how it started, but every few weeks, one of them committed a new infraction against the other and the whole fight started all over again. There were several public scenes that featured them screaming at each other. On one particular occasion, a hand-slapping fight occurred. The gossip magazines and blogs lapped it up.

  “Pffft,” snorted Flavia. “We’re friends. The fighting stuff is strictly for social media. Everyone loves an ongoing frenemy conflict. It’s a great storyline for both of us.”

  “Is nothing about Tiffany real?” I asked Grace.

  Grace shrugged. “Not even her fingernails.” She jabbed a finger at Flavia again, “But that slap a month ago felt hella real! You bitch!”

  “Sorry, sweetie,” grimaced Flavia. “You simply got in the way of my swing. Tiffany was supposed to duck it. But you were great. Very believable.”

  “It stung like a bitch! You get why I’m leaving now, right?” asked Grace, flashing a look at me.

  “Why do you want to help?” I asked, sidestepping to block Flavia’s view into the boardroom where Jonathan now leaned back in the chair, drool stringing from his mouth.

  “I heard about your tip line and I have cash to throw into the pot. That will get people talking, right? Everyone wants money. You need a big reward and I have the means to raise it.”

  “But why do you want to help?” I persisted.

  “Tiffany is my best friend. I would do anything to help her. She needs me. You need me.”

  “Take a seat,” I said, pulling Fletcher’s chair from his desk and parking it next to mine.

  “Why is Jonathan asleep over there?” asked Flavia, looking over my shoulder.

  “He’s had a long day,” said Solomon, signaling that she should park her butt in the chair I procured.

  “He doesn’t even like Tiffany. I’d point to him as the number one suspect only he’s too much of a weak, little flower to successfully pull off a kidnapping.”

  “How dare you!” said Grace. “Jonathan’s amazing. He’s great! He’s…”

  “No prizes for guessing you’re his new squeeze,” said Flavia, flopping into the chair and dropping her purse on the floor. Incidentally, it narrowly missed my foot. “Tiffany said she thought you two were having an affair.”

  “It’s not an affair if you’re both single,” hissed Grace.

  “The whole Jonathan storyline was too boring anyway. I told Tiffany that. She needs to be single. I could get her a date with a hot male model just like that! Maybe even two. Polyamory is super hot now.” Flavia snapped her fingers. “That’s the kind of publicity Tiffany needs!”

  “It’s a pretty big claim to say that you’re friends when all the evidence suggests otherwise,” I said. “Can you prove it?”

  “Sure I can. Look!” Flavia tapped her phone, then handed it to me. “Scroll through the photos,” she said.

  I did just that, scrolling through one photo after another of Tiffany and Flavia cozied up. Most of the photos were taken in their apartments but there were scads of them and the dates confirmed they went back a couple of years. “I’ll admit we didn’t start out as friends,” she continued when I returned her phone, “but we just got to talking in an elevator one day about how ridiculous the press were. You see, there was a mix-up with our seats at a fashion show once and the clash just started to blossom on its own. Our managers thought it was pure genius. We did too, kind of. We had fun coming up with the silliest fights. We expected someone to call us out but they never did. We had a big reconciliation planned in a few months’ time. One hundred percent girl power! I’m pitching it as a sitcom to all the networks.”

  I looked at Grace, who simply rolled her eyes and shrugged.

  “Of course we couldn’t let anyone in on the ruse,” continued Flavia. “It had to be top secret and we couldn’t afford any leaks. We had to control the storyline. Just me, her, and our managers. Oh yeah, and that asshole.” She pointed at Jonathan.

  “Is everything you do online scripted?” I wondered.

  Flavia lifted and dropped one shoulder, the most nonchalant shrug I’ve ever seen. “Pretty much. We’re content creators. We’re telling a story when we let the viewers into our lives. They have to be hungry for what happens next.”

  “Like a kidnapping,” I said.

  “That was never in our plan. You know what’s ironic though?” Flavia raised her eyebrows at me, then darted a glance at Grace. “The enemies really are friends, and the friends are actually enemies. Tiffany planned to fire you, you know.”

  “I already quit so… whatever,” said Grace.

  “She knew about you and Jonathan too.”

  “We told her!”

  Flavia blinked, apparently stumped into silence.

  “That’s enough,” I said, raising my voice. “No more fighting… fake, real or whatever. Regardless of what happened in the past, Tiffany appears to be in a very real, very dangerous situation right now. Can you both put any ill feelings aside and just help us find her? Please?”

  Solomon pulled over another chair and gestured to Grace. Grace pouted before she flopped into it. “Fine,” she said.

  “Fine,” agreed Flavia. “I don’t dislike you, by the way. Tiffany said you were a good assistant.”

  “High praise,” snorted Grace.

  “It is. It got hard always sneaking around so you didn’t suspect anything.”

  A thought occurred to me. “Flavia, did you and Tiffany spend Wednesday afternoons together?”

  Flavia tried, but failed, to frown. “No. Don’t be weird. I don’t even live in this pit of a city.”

  I shushed them both. “Flavia, you are Tiffany’s friend and she might have confided something in you that she wouldn’t tell Grace. Grace, as Tiffany’s assistant, you might have seen or heard threats made to her that might have been dismissed. I need you both to think very hard now and tell me if you remember anything strange.”

  “What about the tip line money?” asked Flavia.

  “We’ll get to that and we appreciate your generous offer,” I said. “Now, think. Grace doesn’t remember anyone following Tiffany. Flavia, do you?”

  “No, but we mostly met in my apartment or hers, well away from prying eyes.”

  “Could anyone have known about your meetings?”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe the doormen of our buildings but we always wore hats and sunglasses, you know, that kind of thing.”

  “Okay. Did Tiffany tell you with whom or where she spent every Wednesday afternoon recently?”

  Flavia’s forehead attempted a wrinkle. “That’s oddly specific. No, she didn’t. And we haven’t seen each other at all since she moved here. We just talk on the phone.”

  “We’ll check the phone records,” said Solomon, but I knew we didn’t need to. Flavia wasn’t lying. She seemed genuinely concerned.

  “Do you know why she moved?”

  “I… don’t really know,” said Flavia.

  “Um…” said Grace.

  “Yes?”

  “Officially, Tiffany said she was sick of the big city and wanted a change but I saw a bunch of overdue bills at her apartment, the one she had in New York, and they were huge amounts. I asked her about them and she snatched them out of my hands and told me to mind my own business. She insisted it was a big mistake.”

  “Bills for what?”

  “Designer clothing stores. Jewelry. Restaurants. Credit cards. Legal notices too. She hadn’t paid the mortgage on her apartment for three months and the bank was threatening foreclosure. The bills had to mount to well over a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Shut! Up!” shrieked Flavia. “Tiffany makes a ton of money.”

  “Do you know if she paid them yet?”

  Grace shook her head. “I never saw them again, and I think Tiffany started filtering her mail. I saw something else too.”

  “What?”

  “A letter from someone called Catherine. She said their grandmother was ill so she must be a relative. I don’t remember the return address but it was definitely in Montgomery. That’s why I thought of using it for an excuse to get out of here. I figured if her grandmother was ill, she’d have some compassion for mine. Even though I did fake it,” she finished with a shrug. “The only mail I saw since she moved here were parking tickets. On the same road every time! One Hundred Pines Road. You’d think she’d learn!”

  Solomon stood quietly in the background. Now he spoke. “Could she have borrowed the money? Maybe to pay off those bills?”

  “Maybe,” said Grace. “I never saw another bill like that again, but a week later, someone approached her in the lobby of her building and I think they served a subpoena on her. Tiffany never confirmed it to me, but I think that’s what it was.”

  Solomon and I exchanged a glance. I knew what he was thinking: we needed to dive deeply into her financial records. If Tiffany were in debt and struggling to access credit, she could have borrowed money from the wrong people. The kind that could hurt her. Except those kinds of people don’t serve subpoenas; they prefer a bullet to the knees. What the hell was going on?

  “Where the hell am I?” growled a throaty voice.

  I jumped and spun around to see Jonathan standing in the doorway, his face crumpled from sleep. I could smell the booze on him from across the room. Grace hurried over to him and he gave her a lopsided smile before they folded into each other’s arms. I could hear her saying something but couldn’t make out what it was. When Jonathan looked up again, his eyes were filled with worry. Or was it anger? His gaze darted around, taking in me, then Solomon. He frowned at Flavia who offered him a finger wave. Then he curled his fingers around Grace’s and seemed to try to pull himself up straighter.

  “I think we need to talk,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “We sure do.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Maybe I should call my lawyer before I speak to you.”

  We all trooped into the boardroom where Jonathan slumped into his seat once more. Grace pulled a chair next to him and stretched her arm out, wrapping her hand around his. Jonathan looked clammy and pale. I wasn’t sure whether to hand him a trash can or offer to get him some more water. Solomon stood over him, his arms crossed, staring down. It was hard to determine, but I thought Solomon might have been a little pissed when Jonathan sat down in Solomon’s usual seat. Not that Solomon ever seemed to care about physically positioning himself at the head of the table. I and the rest of the staff automatically deferred to him. After all, he was the boss.

  “You can if you want to,” I said, taking a chance, “but Tiffany’s apartment manager already told us everything about your public argument. You might as well save us all some time and tell us in your own words.”

  “He overheard it, huh?” Jonathan glanced at me, and sighed. “He’s the big dude, right? Tiffany yelled at him.”

  “She yells at everyone,” said Grace.

  “She yells at Grace all the time,” said Jonathan. Then he hiccupped.

  “Which is how the manager heard everything and he already told us,” I said, eager to get them back on topic. Sure, it was a small lie, but I had to get Jonathan talking. Tiffany was still missing and the clock was ticking. Even though I felt reasonably sure Jonathan wasn’t involved in her abduction, he still knew things about her that we didn’t. She seemed to lie to everyone in her personal life as well as her on-screen professional life, which made it difficult to narrow down a suspect.

  “Fine.” Jonathan took a deep breath. “Can I get some more water?”

  “Start talking,” said Solomon.

  “He needs water,” complained Grace. “We could walk out of here any minute, you know. We don’t have to be here. You’re not the police.”

  “The minute you walk out, we’ll call the police and turn you both over to them,” I warned her. Catching Jonathan’s eye, I continued, “It really is best if you just tell us everything.”

  “Can you get me some water?” Jonathan asked Grace.

  She looked at him, then glanced around, apparently reluctant to leave. “I don’t think I should go,” she said, after a long pause.

  “Fine. I didn’t want you to hear about this but I guess it doesn’t matter. Everyone is going to know anyway. Tiffany and I were arguing because she stole something from me and I told her to give it back. She was holding it hostage so I’d do whatever she asked me and I finally had enough.”

  “What did she steal?” I inquired.

  “A ring that belonged to my grandmother. It’s sapphire and diamond.”

  “Sounds expensive.”

  “Not especially. Mostly sentimental value. I had it at my apartment and she saw it one time and wanted it. I told her no, it was an heirloom, and I wanted to give it to someone. She demanded to know the recipient and I told her it was for Grace. Not that it was any of her business! Anyway, she stole it. I think it was right before she left the city. She came over and insisted I keep up the charade until she said otherwise and told me if I went public with Grace, she’d destroy me.”

  “What makes you think she stole it?”

  “A few days later, when I realized it was gone, I called her and confronted her and she denied it. I wasn’t sure I could believe her but she was pretty convincing. I hired a construction crew recently to begin renovating so I thought it could have been one of them. I was ready to write it off as lost. Then a week ago, I watched one of her videos and there it was! Right there on her finger! I called her and told her to give it back. She denied it again. Then she threatened to tell everyone I gave it to her and make me look like an ass if I kept demanding she give it back. She said she’d tell Grace it was second-hand and she was second best, which was a flat lie. I said I didn’t care what she threatened anymore, I wanted it back and I was coming over to get it.” He looked up, his face hard in anger. “So I got on a flight as soon as I could and tracked her down.”