Smoke and Mirrors - Hollywood Knights One (12 page)

Mr. Haverty was speechless. I couldn’t blame him. He
asked me for the address to the fertility clinic, and I waited
around to make sure he wasn’t going to do anything rash. I didn’t
follow him inside but waited in the parking lot. When no cops
showed up and the Havertys and their friend walked out together,
tear-eyed but smiling, I figured it was safe for me to go get that
nap.

On my way home, I remembered Lori’s message, and I
knew the nap wasn’t going to happen. I called her the second I
walked through my front door, and we made plans for an impromptu
girls’ night of bad movies and bitching about men.

Chapter Twenty-Six

By the time I got to Lori’s for our girls’ night,
she’d somehow gotten a whole lot of other folks involved in the
Seth situation. She’d talked to JT, who’d confirmed that Seth and
Hailey seemed to be getting serious, and Elizabeth had actually
talked —well texted— with Seth.

“He says he really likes her,” Elizabeth told us. We
could all read between the lines: the rumors were true enough. And
Lori went from being angry and hurt to just being hurt.

I decided that a little distraction might be in
order. As soon as I could safely do so, I turned the conversation
toward magic —which I knew Elizabeth would just love— and my hunt
for Sarah Matthews.

“London says you have a knack for telling when
people are lying,” I said to Lori.

She rolled her eyes. “I never seem to actually use
it when it could be, you know, useful.”

“How do you feel about changing that?”

She sat up a little straighter and looked up me,
clearly intrigued. I filled the girls in on my investigation and
the fact that I was meeting with someone who might have known
Sarah.

“If you have the time, I’d love for you to go with
me. I don’t know if this Marie girl has anything to hide, but it’s
always better to err on the side of caution.”

Lori was nodding before I even finished talking.
“Sure. I’m about to die of boredom anyway.”

“You wouldn’t be bored if you, you know, got a job,”
Elizabeth teased.

“What fun would that be?”

“It could be fun,” I told her. “You could work for
me.” The offer was out of my mouth before I even had time to
consider it, but it felt right.

Lori’s eyes lit up, but she didn’t answer right
away. “That might be kind of awesome,” she said after a minute.

“A lot of what I do is boring as hell, but the hours
are flexible, and I pay a decent rate.”

She flashed me a smile. “If you pay well enough,
maybe Mom will get off my back about going back to school.”

From there, the night slowly took a turn for the
better. By the time we all parted ways, Lori seemed to be feeling
better. We made plans for the trip the next day, and then I headed
home to Seth’s huge, empty, kind-of-lonely house. Thankfully I was
only in Chateau Webber long enough to sleep, shower, and get ready
for another day. I met up with the girls for breakfast and then
Lori and I were San Diego bound.

The drive gave Lori and me time to talk. She asked
questions about the case and about what I knew of the girl we were
meeting. We talked about the P.I. business and about what she’d be
doing if she came to work for me. And of course, we found music on
the radio to talk about and sing along with.

Traffic wasn’t too bad, and we made good time
getting to San Diego, but once we got there, we had a hard time
finding the restaurant where we were going to meet Marie. We ended
up being a few minutes late, and she was already seated at a table,
fidgeting with her phone.

“Marie?”

She looked up at me and hesitated for a heartbeat
before asking, “Ms. Marshall?”

“Jenny,” I said, earning a small smile. “And this is
Lori Dahlbeck. My apprentice.”

“I prefer assistant,” she said. With a smile, she
extended her hand to Marie, who shook it. “Pleased to meet
you.”

“And you. Um...both of you.” As we took seats at her
table, she seemed to recover herself a little. “Oh. I already
ordered. I hope that’s okay.”

“Of course,” I told her. “I don’t want to keep you
from your lunch. I know your time is pretty limited.” I pulled the
photo of Sarah out of the backpack at my feet and slid it across
the table to Marie. “Do you know this woman?”

She nodded at once. “Layla Sparks. But didn’t Carla
already tell you that?”

I smiled. “She did. How well did you know
Layla?”

Marie shrugged. “Not that well, really. I mean, we
were friends, sort of. We would hang out sometimes. Go to the
movies or a club or something. She was a lot of fun, but she could
also be really standoffish.”

“Especially when it came to her personal and family
life?”

She nodded. “Exactly.”

“Did she ever talk about her family?”

Marie looked thoughtful for a long time and then
shook her head. “Not that I can remember.”

The server brought Marie’s food and asked if we
wanted anything. Lori and I both opted for water. As soon as the
server was gone again, I resumed the interview, narrowing my
questions down, hoping to knock some memories and answers
loose.

“Oh!” Marie finally said. “When she quit, she said
something about going home to finish school.”

“Did she say where?”

“Or what school?” Lori chimed in.

She thought for a second and then laughed. “I do
remember the school! Sort of. It had a name that was hard to
forget, kind of like Layla’s. I remember because of the X-men:
Xavier something or other.”

It was a start, at least.

“Did she say where home was, though?”

Marie shook her head.

“Did she mention any place she might have visited
near home?” Lori asked. “Or something about the weather or any kind
of natural disasters?”

“She mentioned something about the snow.” She bit
her lip while she thought. “And Lake Michigan. She said something
about her family going to Lake Michigan on vacation.”

We talked for a while longer, but nothing else shook
loose. Marie had to get back to work, and I knew she’d given us all
she had. I thanked her, and Lori and I walked back to my car.

“You did great in there,” I told Lori.

“Thanks. It was pretty obvious that she’s on the
up-and-up, but I still did my thing. She’s not hiding
anything.”

“Yeah. I didn’t figure she was, but like I said
before, better safe than sorry.”

“Thanks for bringing me along,” Lori said. “I needed
to get out and get out of my own head.”

“De nada,” I said.

She smiled at me. “I think I’m going to like working
for you.”

I beamed back. “Don’t count your chickens. I’m a
slave-driver.”

Lori laughed, and I mentally patted myself on the
back for my stroke of genius in distracting her. Now if my genius
would just kick in where the case was concerned, I’d be in good
shape.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

When we got back to L.A., I dragged Lori to my
office and we started tracking down our new lead. A quick search of
“Xavier University” came up with a few hits, and one of them
happened to be in Ohio, which wasn’t too far from Lake
Michigan.

“Too easy,” Lori said. “It can’t be that easy.”

I laughed. “Finding a university isn’t the same as
finding the person, Lori. It’s not like our work here is done.”

“Still too easy.” She shrugged. “It just feels
wrong.”

I made a note of the university and
its location and then we looked through a couple of pages of search
hits to see if there were any other possibilities. Lori’s feeling
might or might not mean anything — though with us practitioners
they usually
do
mean something—but having more facts couldn’t be a bad
thing.

I scanned through the listings pretty quickly. They
all seemed to refer back to two universities — the one we’d found
in Ohio and one in Louisiana.

I was just about to abandon the search when Lori
said, “Stop. Go back.”

I clicked back a page, and she tapped one metallic,
purple nail against the monitor, pointing to one of the search
results. The listing looked like it could have belonged to one of
the other schools we’d found, but Lori saw what I hadn’t — one
little word that seemed to jump off the screen, now that she had
pointed it out: Chicago.

“That’s it,” Lori said.

“Maybe. You can’t always go with gut instinct. We’ll
look into both of them. I’ll take one and you can take the
other.”

Lori straightened and looked around my small, sparse
office. “You’re kind of missing a second computer, Jen.”

“I’m going to have to remedy that.”

“For now, why don’t we go to my place?” Lori
suggested. “We have three laptops, an iPad, and beer.”

I knew she also had two roommates who might be a
distraction.

“Better idea: let’s swing by and
grab your laptop and then go back to
my
place. I have better
beer.”

Lori frowned a little, and I knew she was probably
digesting the fact that we’d be in Seth’s place. The last thing she
wanted was to think about him, and it’d be hard not to in that
setting.

“We can also drink all of Seth’s crappy Scotch when
we figure this out. To celebrate.”

She grinned at me. “Deal.”

Within an hour, we were settled into opposite
corners of Seth’s couch, beer in hand, good tunes on his awesome
stereo system, digging through Google, my databases, and the social
networks, trying to pair up Layla Sparks with one of the
universities. A couple of hours later, we took a break to order and
eat Chinese food, and then we dove right back into our search.

We worked well together, rarely speaking except to
note something extraordinary or funny we found in our searches.
During our dinner break, we did some brainstorming, and when we
went back to work, we both had some new ideas on how we might find
Ms. Sparks.

Finally, Lori growled in exasperation and slammed
the lid of her laptop shut.

“There are five-fucking-million women named Layla
Sparks, and none of them seem to live in Ohio. Or Illinois. Or else
they don’t want anyone to know where they live. None of the ones
who have pictures on their Twitter or Facebook or whatever look
anything like the picture of Layla, but half of them have something
weird as their profile picture, anyway. This is pointless.”

“Welcome to the thrilling life of a private
investigator,” I told her. “I think we’ve earned a break. Beer and
hot tub?”

“Yes, please.”

Lori hadn’t planned on hitting the hot tub, but it
was just us girls. We stripped to our skivvies and climbed into the
bubbles, our bottles of beer within easy reach. I rested against
the side of the hot tub, my head leaned back to loll against the
perimeter and my eyes on the stars. I let my mind wander as I
drifted, half-awake.

And then I shot up, startling Lori.

“I’m an idiot,” I said, like that was some great
revelation. Then I climbed out of the hot tub and wrapped up in
towel.

“Jenny?”

I didn’t even really hear Lori. My mind was on the
case. I hurried back inside, plopped my wet butt down on Seth’s
overpriced leather sofa, and woke my laptop.

Lori came in a minute or so later, our beers in the
hand that wasn’t holding the towel closed around her. She sat the
bottles on the coffee table and said something that I didn’t really
hear before wandering off somewhere.

When Lori came back, dressed and toweling her hair,
I said, “I think I found her.”

Lori blinked at me. “Cool.” She dropped down on the
sofa beside me, and I showed her what I’d found.

“Married,” she said. “Wow. That makes sense. No
wonder we were striking out.”

“Yup.”

“She’s the right age, in the right place...so how do
you find out if it’s her?”

I grabbed my beer and took a swig. “First, we check
the social sites again, using the right name. If we don’t find her
there, I may have to go pay her a visit.”

“We.”

I looked at her.

“We may have to go pay her a visit.”

I smiled and shook my head. “Maybe.”

“You might need backup,” Lori said, forcing a
serious expression onto her face. “She could be dangerous.”

“Only if I suddenly become a man,” I countered.

“If that happens, I promise to put you out of your
misery, so she still wouldn’t be dangerous.”

I laughed. “Thanks. I appreciate that.” I took
another pull from my beer. “As for ‘we’ — we’ll see. I probably
couldn’t justify the extra expense to my client, but maybe I can
work something out.”

“Didn’t think about money. That’s pretty screwed up,
isn’t it?”

I shrugged. “Maybe.” Then I shivered. “I’m going to
get dressed, and then we’ll see if we can dig up anything on
Mrs....what was it? Oh. Harvey. Layla Harvey.”

I went upstairs to dry off and put on some warm,
comfy clothes, and when I came back down, Lori was already hard at
work, trying to track down our missing person.

The social sites turned up nothing, but the record I
had on Mrs. Layla Annette Sparks Harvey listed an address. I hoped
the address was current; it was really all we had to go on.

I moved on to researching airfare —last minute
travel is generally ridiculously expensive, but I lucked out— and
finding a hotel in Chicago.

“You sure you want to go?” Lori nodded, so I handed
her the laptop and said, “Put in your passenger info.” If I had to
pay the extra airfare out of pocket, so be it.

As she beamed at me and started typing in her info,
I felt a twinge of doubt and wondered if London was going to kill
me for getting his sister entwined in my case and my agency. I
wondered if his mom would kill me for giving Lori an excuse for not
going back home and back to college. I decided that it didn’t
matter. Lori was a grown-up —if only just barely— and her life was
her own to live as she saw fit. She needed options, and I wasn’t
going to withhold one because some people might not approve...and
anyone who didn’t like it could get fucked.