Walter G. stepped over and neatly disentangled Nikki Callivant from the pair of fawning socialites. “May I present my granddaughter, Nicola. Nikki, meet Megan O’Malley and P.J. Farris. I worked with this young man’s father, Trav Farris.”
“The senator from Texas,” Nikki said quickly. “Nice to meet you.”
“Right — I’m sure it’s very nice.” P.J. laughed, looking at the zoo around them.
Nikki’s smile broke through her company manners. “At least my grandfather knew you.” Megan could barely hear her voice over the chatter around them.
“How can you stand it?” Megan asked.
Now Nikki’s smile became rueful. “This event will help several charities my family supports, and the money is desperately needed. If I have to risk pneumonia and smile until my face hurts, it’s a small price to pay. It’s the least we can do—”
And it’s an election year, Megan thought. She almost yelped as an elbow caught her in the ribs. There were other people who wanted to touch a Callivant, and Megan and P.J. were holding up the line.
“Perhaps I’ll see you later,” Nikki called after them. Then she turned to the next set of hand-grabbers.
“If I hold my breath till that happens, my face will match my gown,” Megan muttered as they made their escape. “Nikki and her grandfather are doing better business than some of the refreshment stands.”
“Which would you rather have?” P.J. asked mockingly. “The glow of personal contact with the Callivant clan, or mediocre domestic champagne and a scrap of mystery meat in puff pastry?”
“They’re on display like prize hogs.”
“It’s for charity,” P.J. said. “And I suppose it beats sticking your head through a hole in a sheet and having people throw pies at you.”
“I suppose it’s also for politics.” Megan glanced at him. “Walter G. wants his party’s nomination for senator.”
They both looked at the older man shaking hands with lots of young and not-so-young Junior League supporters. “I’d say he’s doing pretty well with the trust-fund constituency,” P.J. observed.
“But they’re cramping our style,” Megan complained. “How are we even supposed to talk to her again?”
“As opportunity allows.” P.J. sighed. “Look at me — here I am, wasting all those good-cop lines I’ve been studying. Shall I practice them on you? Would you like to dance?”
Megan’s opportunity to talk to Nikki came, of all places, in the ladies’ room. The winter prom had shown her some of the dangers of high formal fashion. Besides nearly falling out of some of the more extreme gowns, girls had tripped on their long, swirling skirts or sprained their ankles falling off the high, slender spike heels that were all the rage.
Destroyed hems, ripped hose, and torn seams were common. Sometimes they’d speared the fabric with their own high heels, other times a clumsy date had stepped on their skirts, sometimes a stranger got too close at the wrong moment. But the worst combination had proven to be haute couture and plumbing. One girl had even flushed a bit of her skirt down the toilet, which had left her stuck in the ladies’ room and had caused a flood. Almost everyone had to depend on friends for help in either temporarily escaping from or rearranging their fashionable formal wear in “the ladies’ lounge.”
High society had the same problem as high school prom girls, Megan discovered, but the hotel provided female attendants to give whatever assistance was needed.
Unfortunately, at that moment the system had broken down — or maybe some designer’s creation had. A young woman was screaming that one of the attendants had destroyed her new Modeschau gown while helping her into the stall.
Women in formal gowns and uniformed attendants alike were all gawking at the disturbance, so that everybody except Megan missed Nikki Callivant about to have her own fashion disaster. Megan acted fast — two quick steps and a grab prevented the socialite’s gown from being destroyed that evening. Megan helped a pink-faced Nikki get back to normal, and a few minutes later they were in front of the big plate-glass mirror repairing their lipstick and making a few final adjustments to their dresses before heading back out to the ballroom.
Nicola Callivant’s face was still a little flushed from her recent misadventure. “Thanks again for your help. I wish I had the sense to wear something like you have on — something sensible—”
“You mean something off-the-rack and unfashionable?” Megan asked as they left the lounge for the ballroom.
The other girl blinked, then cocked her head. “You say what you think, don’t you?”
“Even when people don’t want to hear it,” Megan agreed. “For instance, did you know that P.J. and I are friends of Leif Anderson?”
Nikki Callivant nearly had another disaster, tripping on her skirt in midstep. “What?”
“We all belong to the Net Force Explorers,” Megan went on as if nothing had happened. “Leif’s not as bad as you seem to think. He has his good points. For instance, he’s very loyal to his friends.”
“How nice.” Nikki Callivant’s voice grew cold.
Megan plowed right ahead. “We’re trying to help another friend who seems to have gotten into some trouble with your family. A classmate of mine from Bradford Academy — a guy named Matt Hunter. He was playing in a mystery sim that turned out to touch on a forty-year-old skeleton in the Callivant family closet. The death of a girl named Priscilla Hadding—”
Nicola Callivant had stopped asking questions or making comments. She just stared at Megan, her mouth open.
“Is there a problem here?” The interrupting voice was gruff, but the burly man’s moves were smooth as he moved to separate Megan and Nikki. It was the balding, iron-haired man who’d stood in boredom behind Nikki and her grandfather. He didn’t took bored now. Icy blue eyes backed up his question.
“It’s nothing, Grandpa,” Nikki said. “Just the usual madhouse in the ladies’ room.”
The older man took her arm. “I don’t know why you object to having a female operative come along—” Megan lost whatever else he said in the party noise as they walked away.
Grandpa? Megan thought. Who the frack is that guy?
11
Even without being grounded, Leif wouldn’t have gone far from his computer console tonight. He was impatiently waiting for a report from P.J. and Megan.
The call came much earlier than he expected, though. In spite of that, the call announcement chime had barely sounded once before Leif shouted at his computer to accept the connection.
Megan O’Malley’s face swam into focus in the holographic display over the console — as did the rest of her upper half.
Leif sliced the air with a loud wolf whistle. “Whoa! Nice dress, O’Malley!”
She gave him a look and pulled the little jacket she wore more tightly closed. “We decided to bail early on the Junior League thing. It’s a school night, after all.”
“At least you weren’t thrown out,” Leif said. “Or nearly drowned. Any luck in bumping into the snobby one?”
“Most of the time we saw her, she was trying to be polite and seemed quite human,” Megan replied. “I had a couple of minutes alone with her, rattled her cage a bit, and got a brief taste of what you received.”
“What did you do?”
When he saw Megan’s suspiciously sweet smile, Leif braced himself. “I took your advice,” she said, “and told her that you were a friend of mine. She began to get a little snotty, but that changed after I mentioned Priscilla Hadding.”
Leif leaned toward her image. “Don’t stop there.”