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.
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.”
“It shook her up. But I didn’t get the chance to take advantage of that. This older guy stepped in and hauled her off. That was the last shot I got at her.” Megan shrugged. “Another reason to blow out of there early.”
She squinted at him. “We’d already met Nikki’s grandfather.”
“Walter G.?”
Megan nodded. “But the guy who showed up to rescue her — she called him Grandpa, too. What gives with that?” Before he could make a comment, she hurried on. “Yeah, of course she has two sets of grandparents. But now that I come to think of it, I’ve never seen nor heard of anybody but the Callivant side — and I looked in all the same books you did.”
“You’d have to look farther afield than that,” Leif said, “if it’s who I think it is. This guy. Balding, iron-gray hair, built like a football player gone to seed?”
Giving him a suspicious glance, Megan nodded. “Sounds like you know him.”
“As it happens, I do. That gentleman is her
“He looks only a little older than Walter G.”
“Less than twenty years older, as a matter of fact. Clyde was divorced and came to live in the Callivant compound with his sixteen-year-old daughter Marcia when he took the job as head of security. Less than a year later Walter G. Callivant married Marcia Finch. It was a big, but well-hushed, scandal. Walter G. was all of nineteen at the time, and Marcia was barely seventeen.”
“Nnggggyuck!” Megan said in disgust. “Marriage at that age! She was only as old as we are! What was that all about?”
Leif shrugged. “I can think of at least two reasons, one of them being undying love at first sight. As for the other major possibility — well, the math supports it.”
She gave him another look. “I can only imagine.” Then she looked thoughtful. “We really don’t see much of Grandma Callivant in the popular press, do we?”
“Only photographed in carefully controlled family gatherings,” Leif said.
“Sounds like that happens to a lot of Callivant women.” Megan sounded grim. “What have they got in that compound, a harem?”
“Find out, in
“Was that in the Herzen book?” Megan asked. “I didn’t read that one.”
“You didn’t miss much,” Leif said. “But the fact was mentioned in passing. The cop, by the way, was a fellow called Clyde Finch.”
Megan’s eyebrows rose. “As someone in Matt’s ill-fated sim might say, ‘Is this a clue?’”
The Washington weather was no longer icy. It had gone back to the usual winter standard — mild, gray, and damp — when Matt set off for school the next morning. Even though Bradford Academy was far away from Foggy Bottom, wisps of the gray stuff floated past the windows of the autobus Matt rode on the way to class.
Matt’s morning turned out to be equally gray. The problems that had haunted him lately had eaten into his study time. He was completely unprepared for the chemistry pop quiz. And he’d barely skimmed the reading for English — which showed all too obviously in class discussion. All in all, his morning’s academic performance would have won him an Oscar for the role of Least Prepared Student of the Year.
