Stolen with Style (13 page)

Picking up the hem of my long dress, and thankful that I had my Converses on, I ran after the shadow. The second room led to another small connecting chamber. I crossed this one too, wondering where the shadow could have disappeared. Then, while checking behind me, I turned a corner—and ran right into Sebastian!

“You again!” I said, not stopping.

“I've been looking for you,” he said as he matched my pace, jogging beside me. “Where are you going?”

“Someone was following me. So I turned around and started following them, but I think I lost them in the last room…”

He stopped suddenly. “I have an idea. Follow me…”

I followed Sebastian as we retraced our steps into the room where I'd lost the shadow. Hidden in the wall was another door, which he pushed open. “I was using this door earlier,” he said when he saw my surprise. “It leads to the museum's service rooms and corridors. Whoever was following you must have disappeared through here.”

I followed as he led the way down a long, well-lit corridor.

“So how far have you gotten with the case?” Sebastian asked, his voice a whisper as we walked side by side.

“I thought you'd be more interested to hear how my modeling career is going,” I hissed back, my temper rising. “You know, what go-sees, castings, and bookings I have. I know it interests you and my mother.”

He rolled his eyes. “I told you that the text messages you saw are not what you think.”

I tried to interrupt but he quickly asked again, “So how far have you gotten?”

At that moment someone from the catering team walked by and smiled at us. They recognized Sebastian and didn't ask anything about me.

“Not far enough,” I finally admitted. “This case should have been easy to solve, but it's not quite turning out that way…”

“So can I help?”

I thought of what I'd decided earlier about doing more background checks. Cazzie and her livelihood and everything else that was at stake came to mind: the loss of a famous diamond,
Chic
's reputation, and mine too. I needed to solve this case, and I didn't have much time. I needed help, and I could trust Sebastian—at least as far as the detective work went. Quashing any feelings I had about us, I finally answered him.

“Yes. I'd like to have your help,” I said as a couple of waiters walked briskly past us.

He turned and smiled at me as we went down a few steps.

“When do I start?”

“Now.”

We finally came to a door that opened onto a staff changing room with lockers lining the walls. But apart from a couple of Sebastian's fellow “magazine vendors,” no one else was there.

“And what do you need?” he asked as he stepped back into the corridor and shut the door behind him.

“More background checks. I'll text you the names you need to research. Do you think you can do that?”

“Absolutely, Holmes.”

“Thank you, Watson. And tomorrow there might be some running around town. Cazzie's expecting more riddles.”

“More riddles?”

But there wasn't time to explain, because as we turned into another corridor, we heard footsteps around the corner ahead of us—and they were moving briskly. I put my arm out to halt Sebastian and then raised a finger to my lips. When we stopped, so did the footsteps. After a few seconds we moved on—and so did the footsteps. A moment later, we heard a door slam just ahead of us.

I motioned to Sebastian to put his phone on silent and then, moving as lightly as we could, we ran around the corner and down the corridor to the door. I opened it quietly and we both walked through into an enormous storage room. It was like a warehouse. High metal shelves lined the walls and stood in neat rows down the middle of the room. There was just enough space between the shelves to pass through with a small cart, several of which were standing to one side of the door.

I nudged Sebastian and indicated that we should split up, each of us taking a separate direction. I doubted that whoever I was following knew there were now two of us. With any luck, Sebastian and I could corner them in this room.

Sebastian nodded but also motioned to the light switch on his left. Fluorescent bulbs glowed overhead, their sickly light illuminating the room. I considered. Perhaps it would be better with the light off. My phone had a flashlight and I knew Sebastian's did too. I nodded and Sebastian flicked the switch. We turned our flashlights on, and using our hands to cover some of the light our phones made, we slowly worked our way toward the back of the room.

When I'd reached about the halfway point, the beam of my flashlight fell on an opened box of metal or silver polish packed in metal cylindrical bottles. These, I thought as I grabbed two, could be just the trick for scaring whoever I was following into making a mistake.

Knowing Sebastian had his phone on silent, I sent him a text saying that I planned to roll one of the bottles toward the end of the room.
Good idea
was his answer.
Let me move farther forward.

I counted to ten, then turned my flashlight off and, with a swing of my arm, let one of the bottles roll rapidly under the shelves.

It did the trick.

The bottle hurtled its way across the floor, its metal sides banging nicely against whatever little things lay in its path. In the distance I heard whoever was in here with us resume a careful patter toward the far side of the room. Quietly, I tiptoed forward a few more feet before I stood to listen. The footsteps had stopped, yet the person who'd been following me could only be a little way ahead. I'd have seen the light from the outside corridor spill into the darkened storage room if they'd opened the door to escape.

Without more thought, I dipped my hand low and let the second bottle roll forward loudly. As it banged its way between the shelving units, the footsteps resumed at a frantic pace…until a loud crash, followed by a rustling of cardboard boxes, echoed through the storage room. Someone—or something—had fallen.

I turned my phone flashlight back on and ran toward the ruckus at the end of the room. I got there just as Sebastian was pulling a kicking, wriggling form out from under the shelves.

A moment later I shone the beam of my flashlight onto Misty's angry face.

“You!” I said as I took a step back. A random scattering of tiny details flooded my mind—the glances this morning in the studio every time I'd spoken to Brandon, the flash of black nail lacquer as her hands suddenly grasped Brandon's shoulders during lunch when he was talking to me—not to mention the anger I'd seen in her eyes when we'd been on the dance floor. Did this all have to do with me? Or more precisely, with me and Brandon? Was she jealous?

I was on unsteady ground in second-guessing these kinds of situations. As my BFF Jenny liked to point out, “Axelle, if you spent as much time watching
Gossip
Girl
as you do
Sherlock
, you'd learn so much more about life.”

For the first time, I was wondering if maybe she had a point.

At least now I knew that Misty had been following me here at the party. This naturally led to another question: had she also been following me earlier today?

Sebastian went to turn the lights back on, while I turned to question Misty.

“Is this all about Brandon?” I asked, watching as she daintily picked herself up and dusted her dress off.

“Does it surprise you?” she hissed, the venom in her voice unmistakable. “You talked to him—fawned over him, even—every chance you had today, didn't you? As if you couldn't get enough of him!” She was glaring at me now, shaking with such rage that I was surprised her eyes weren't glowing red. Everyone had fixations and weak spots, I thought, no matter how successful. But still…to have gone this far, she must have hated me since the moment she saw Brandon talking to me at the studio this morning.

“What are you talking about, Misty? Beyond basic courtesy, I've hardly singled out Brandon for special attention!” She was nuts. Drawing this kind of attention to herself and her obsession was risky. If she kept doing this, someone would eventually label her a stalker, and surely even her career could suffer from that. “Let it go, Misty—let
him
go.”

“You would say that, wouldn't you?” she spat.

I had a sudden flashback to the email I'd received at lunch:

You're getting in the way. I know you know what I mean—even though you're trying to hide it.

Pull back now.

From someone who's watching you.

I'd been running with the assumption that the email came from the person who'd stolen the diamond—that they knew I was on the case and wanted to scare me off. But now, as I watched Misty reapply her lipstick with her shaking hand, I wondered if my assumption could be wrong. The words of the email were threatening, no doubt. And while it could still be interpreted as a warning to stay away from the mystery of the missing diamond, with what I now knew—and what Misty had just made more than apparent—the wording of the email could also be interpreted as a warning from a jealous ex-girlfriend to stay away from “her” beloved Brandon.

The question I'd asked myself a minute ago came to mind again: was Misty the same person who'd followed me after my Jared Moor casting?

I decided it was worth lying a bit to see if my hunch was right.

Misty had just snapped her tiny evening clutch closed and was trying to push her way past Sebastian, lips pressed shut, when I said, “Misty, I saw you earlier today, you know.”

She stopped and looked at me. “Of course you did. We worked together.”

“That's not what I'm talking about. I saw you following me near Times Square this afternoon, after my Jared Moor appointment. You may have tried hiding your hair, but it was you. I saw you as you ran out of the ribbon shop.”

Anger flashed from her eyes and twisted her features. She was strange. Seen across a runway, her vanilla-blond beauty eclipsed her bitterness. But now that I'd seen her close up, under the glare of a flashlight and squirming under shelving, she just looked crazy.

“You didn't see me,” she spat. “It must have been someone else. Why would I follow you on Times Square? And by the way,” she said suddenly, a sly, dangerous smile on the corners of her lips, “
who
followed
me
here? I think that when I tell people what you've done, what you've put me through—following me and harassing me at a gala, scaring me and cornering me—and don't forget I now have the bruises to show for it…well, it wouldn't take a genius to know who people will believe.”

If she'd had fangs, I have no doubt she'd have bared them at that moment. Instead she set her mouth into a menacing line and clenched her free hand into a fist. I'd cornered her, and deep down she knew it. At the same time, I had no doubt she'd go through with her threat if I pushed much harder. I still had no proof that she'd been following me earlier—but I'd called her bluff, and she'd told me more with her threatening reaction than she ever would with words.

But I still had a couple of questions I wanted answered.

“The email you sent me at lunch was from an anonymous account. Where did you learn to open and close one so quickly?”

She didn't answer. Her eyes shone with contempt.

“And what about text messages? Have you been sending many of those lately? From a disposable phone, maybe?”

My last question surprised her, and for a fleeting second her anger gave way to confusion. She genuinely didn't seem to know what I was referring to. I was fairly sure now that although Misty had followed me twice today and sent me the threatening email at lunch, she probably had nothing to do with the Black Amelia or the texts Cazzie was receiving.

“And what were you hoping to achieve by following me?”

“Like I said,
you
are following
me
.”

“Were you hoping to scare me away from Brandon? Because if you were, it never would have worked.”

She snorted and glared at me for a moment. “It would have eventually,” she finally answered, all pretense of innocence dropped. “It's worked before.” The corners of her lips turned upward again in a sly smile. “Another model. She went back to Europe, terrified someone was stalking her.

“Anyway I don't know what
you're
trying to achieve now,” she continued, “because this game is over. I have a party to get back to—or do you want me to make good on my threat?” Then she lifted the sleeve of her dress and pointedly looked at the large bruise forming on her upper arm. After another moment she pushed her way past Sebastian and left.

I motioned for Sebastian to stay back and not follow her, and a few moments later we heard the door we'd come in through slam shut behind her.

“Why did you let her go? She should be reported, even if she does seem to think she has the upper hand. She's completely nuts!” Sebastian said.

“I can't report her because I never saw her following me.”

“But you said that you'd recognized her—even with her hair hidden.”

“I never saw her. I only guessed it was her after chasing her down just now. And as for saying that she'd hidden her hair…that was also a guess, although a fairly easy one. After all, from afar her hair is her most recognizable feature. It would be the first thing she'd hide to blend into a crowd.”

In silence, we quickly did our best to bring some order to the cardboard boxes Misty had overturned as she'd struggled with Sebastian. Then we turned and left. It was time to rejoin the party.

“Earth to Axelle? Can we talk about this case?” Sebastian was walking beside me, mask back in place, as he patted the dust off his suit. His hair was going in all directions, just the way I liked it. I quickly looked away before he caught me looking at him. “So can we?”