Max smirked. “What, you mean in the guys' pants?”
“Boo,” O. C. said, “you have to put your trust in the hands of those with more experience in these matters. Original Cindy and sister Kendra know the ins and outs of dressin' to kill.”
The latter phrase was more to the point, but Max had of course omitted her real purpose for attending the party. All she had told her friends was that she was going to a cocktail party— which was true. And that a very rich man had invited her— which was a lie.
O. C. waggled a finger. “You catch yourself a rich fish tonight, Boo— you just remember it was your home girls help provide the bait.”
Admiring herself in the mirror, a hand to her hair, surprised by how much she liked looking this beautiful, Max said, “But
provided the lure.”
Original Cindy, rather wistfully, said, “No argument, girlfriend… no argument.”
Kendra put her hands on either side of Max's head. “Hold still or we're
going to turn this pumpkin into Cinderella.”
Original Cindy seemed to be thinking over that remark— something didn't seem right about it.
After that, Max sat painfully still throughout a forty-five-minute ordeal, rather amazed by the elaborateness of the makeup application when the end result made it look like she wasn't wearing any. It was at this point that she'd stepped into the little black dress and now, finally— after taking one last twirl in the mirror, delighted by the shimmer of her dark curls, and the way the dress clung to her, like an attentive lover— she was ready… dressed to go to work.
After her last visit to the Sterling estate— as a cat burglar in the middle of the night— Max had decided on a new strategy to gain entry into the mansion and get information from the king of the castle. She'd found out a lot more about Jared Sterling in the meantime.
For one thing, Sterling was not the upstanding, model citizen the mainstream media liked to present to the public; however hard he tried to pass himself off as the post-Pulse poster child of responsible wealth, he was no philanthropic patron of the arts.
Otherwise, Max's little home invasion would have made the news— bigtime. Her escapade would have been on SNN and front pages and all over the Net, and every other place in the so-called free world.
But there had been no mention of it anywhere.
The paper's police beat hadn't even run the usual one liner about “Officers responded to an alarm at… ” No matter how private a person Sterling might be, the break-in should have made some kind of noise— certainly those alarms had. Police had no doubt responded, and either had been sent away by the great man, or any investigation of the break-in was kept confidential from the media.
Why?
Because Jared Sterling was up to what was commonly called
Exactly what, Max couldn't yet say; but Sterling was clearly dirty— as indicated in spades by his possession of the Heart of the Ocean.
But she would have to be convinced of his guilt, first; if he was nothing more than a collector who bought hot property from a fence, that meant Sterling was just a link to the real villain. And with Manticore involvement suspected in the Chinese Theatre slaughter, that villain might well be Colonel Donald Lydecker himself.
On a more mundane… but helpful… level, Max had also learned that the art collector was famously single. He collected pretty women as well as paintings, and was hosting a party to show off the new Grant Wood— at his home… this evening.
Manticore had instilled in Max the need to take advantage of any opportunity, and this seemed like a prime chance to finally meet Jared Sterling… again. Her back had been to him, in their first, brief encounter, and to her knowledge her image hadn't been captured on any security-cam tapes.
Normally Max would have made her way to the ferry landing by the most economical— and most exhilarating— method: her Ninja. Her outfit made that impractical, though, and she wound up investing ten or twelve times as much to take a taxi. The ferry ride to Vashon Island wasn't free, either, and another taxi took her from the landing to the front gate of the Sterling estate.
Adding up the costs, Max rolled her eyes and understood why only the rich lived way out here— who the hell else could afford the commute?
The taxi driver— an older, skinny guy who looked like he hadn't touched solid food since the Pulse— pulled the cab up to the front gate, where a security guard in black suit with tie— dark-haired, Mediterranean-looking, not one of her playmates from the other night— approached with clipboard in hand. The cabbie waved the guard around to the back passenger's seat where Max was sitting.
Max rolled down the window.
“You have an invitation, miss?” he asked, his tone pleasant, but his dark face serious, his brown eyes on her like lasers.
“Oh damn,” she said, pretending to dig through her tiny purse, “I have it
place… ” Finally, she gave up, looked up at the guard with wide and (she hoped) lovely eyes, smiling full wattage. “Guess not… Such a long ride out here, too.”
He leaned a hand on the rolled-down window. “Perhaps if you gave me your name, I could check the guest list.”
She had selected, from the various pictures of Sterling with pretty young women (and there had been dozens over the last year or so), a petite brunette, who bore a faint resemblance to Max.
“I've been here before,” she said. “A few months ago? Marisa Barton.”
A tiny smile played at the corner of the security man's mouth. “Ms. Barton is already inside.”
Max's smile curdled. “Look… I'll be straight with you. I'm a journalist, and this is my big chance.” She withdrew a precious twenty-dollar bill from her purse.
But the guard, not at all mean, almost amused, just shook his head.
Max said, with a frozen smile, “You're not going to let me in, are you?”
“Worse luck for you, ‘Ms. Barton'— I'm gay. You don't even have
going for you… Tell your driver to turn it around, and we don't have to take this another step… You wouldn't like that step, anyway.”
“Bet not.” She'd already put her twenty bucks away.
Max told the driver to turn the hack around, but before the cabbie could shift gears, the guard leaned down, like an adult talking to a child, and said, “By the way, just so you know next time— Ms. Barton's a blonde, now… For a journalist, you're not so hot on details.”
She smirked. “I'm savin' up for a research assistant.”
The driver turned around and drove back toward the ferry. When they were out of sight of the gate, Max told him to stop and, after waiting till no cars were coming in either direction, climbed out of the cab. The street was dark and Sterling's mansion was two blocks back.
“If you're plannin' to go over the fence in that dress,” the skinny cabbie said, when she came to his rolled- down window to pay him, “I wouldn't mind hangin' around to watch.”
She got the twenty back out. “Here.”
“Hey! Thanks, sweetie… that's generous.”
“No— it's payment for you getting amnesia. You alert that guardhouse about me, I'll want my Andy Jackson back.”
“Sure… ” He took the bill from her, and she clamped onto his stick of a wrist. Hard.
She looked at him hard, too, and his eyes were wide and amazed and somewhat frightened.
“If you're thinking of playing both ends against the middle,” she said, “you might be surprised what a girl in a
