Eshe gives a little shrug. “I did nothing wrong.”
“Yeah,” I say, throwing a thumb over my shoulder. “Tell that to them. Everyone’s going to want to believe what they want to believe, until I can hand them something that convinces them to believe something else. So, work with me on this. What were you doing?”
She doesn’t answer.
“So obviously it was something you don’t want me to know about,” I say, leaning back in the seat, crossing my legs. “Reconnaissance? Checking in on the other bidders?”
“Don’t you have video showing my movements through the hotel? I’m sure that could exonerate me.”
Is she taunting me? Does she know our system has been compromised? Even if she doesn’t, I don’t want to tip her off that it has been.
“It doesn’t,” I say. “But I did have another idea.” I raise my watch and page Allyn. “Is Fumiko here?”
His voice comes back, nearly lost in a sea of jabbering voices. “Yes.”
“Bring her in. Just the two of you.”
The door opens and all the muffled voices spill into the room. Allyn gets the door closed and leads in a small Japanese girl, her orange hair in a bob cut. She’s wearing pants that match her hair and a green velvet top, tapping away on her phone without looking up. The hotel’s costume designer, responsible for outfitting travelers in period-specific clothing.
“Fumiko,” I say. “Tell Allyn what you were about to tell me.”
Her eyes are glued to the phone and I wonder if she even heard me. But she puts up a finger and her phone makes a little whoosh noise. Then she looks up.
“There’s a burka missing,” she says.
I raise a finger in the air, glad that my timing was on. Eshe seems to untense a little. It would be easy enough to steal something from Fumiko’s collection, but I also figured it wouldn’t be long before she noticed.
“So you think the attack on Osgood was staged to throw suspicion on MKS?” Allyn asks.
“Yes, thank you for catching up. But it begs the question of who. As I was just telling Eshe, logic says it would have been Teller, because he’s been expressing the most animosity about MKS being involved in this, but again, it wasn’t Grayson under there and they don’t seem to be traveling with anyone else.” I turn to Ruby. “Keep an eye on the two of them, let’s make sure there’s not a third member of their entourage. Someone they’ve been meeting with on the sly.”
“Sure thing,” Ruby says.
“And”—I turn to Allyn—“how is Osgood?”
“Didn’t even need stitches,” he says. “Obviously he wants answers, but he is conspicuously absent from the mob outside the door.”
“Speaking of, go take care of that, and let’s square it with Osgood that it was someone else. Then we have to figure out exactly what is happening.”
“Can I go now?” Fumiko asks, back on her phone.
“Yeah,” I say, and she exits, the voices bursting through the door. Allyn follows her, and it’s just me and Eshe again.
“Thank you,” she says.
“Well, like I said, it didn’t track,” I say. “You struck me as more professional than that. Whoever did that was sloppy.”
She stands and gives me another nod, then leaves the room, where the voices have softened significantly.
I lean into the seat, lean my head back, and close my eyes, but it’s too bright in here. I don’t like it. Take a few deep breaths. Pray for a break in all this. That maybe the chaos is enough at this point for someone to say, yes, let’s move this stupid meeting because everything that’s happening right now is just too much.
There’s a silver lining here. This isn’t a ghost stealing an EpiPen. It’s a clear attempt on the life of one of the bidders, plus an incursion on our security system to cover the killer’s tracks. Even Drucker can’t say it’s a good idea to keep after this dumb auction.
And then my watch lights up with reports of a fire in the kitchen.
When it rains.
* * *
—
The fire suppression system kicks in before I’m even halfway to the restaurant, so when I get there foam is already seeping around the corner of the bar. That much is a mercy because I haven’t been in the kitchen since the night Mena died and I have no intention of going back in. Not that there’s even much for me to do.
How am I going to handle a fire? Investigate it into going out?
Mbaye is talking intently with Reg, and I consider getting closer to join the conversation, but realize now is not the time. I don’t really regret saying what I did to Mbaye—it’s been a long time coming—but I know it’ll just make things worse to push myself into his orbit right now. I hang back until they’re done and wait for Reg to come over to me, Mbaye disappearing into the back to assess the damage.
“That’s weird,” Reg says, jerking his head toward the kitchen.
“We don’t have enough of that going around,” I tell him.
“Chickens roasting in the oven. Mbaye says he put them in ten minutes ago. Suddenly they’re black as charcoal and the oven catches fire.”
“Motherfucker can’t cook chicken now?”
Reg looks around at the guests, some of whom are lingering, unsure what to do. Others are still eating like nothing happened. “Said it’s like they’d been in there for hours.”
The clocks. The sun. Now the ovens. Time has always been a bitch, but now it seems to have a vendetta.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask.
“Mbaye wants to shut down the kitchen to make sure it isn’t some kind of mechanical issue. But we’re both thinking the same thing. He’s had issues with cook times before. Things taking slightly longer or slightly shorter than they should. Figured it was a hazard of being here. But this.” He shakes his head. “This is dangerous.”
“What’s going on?” Allyn is cutting through the restaurant, Nik at his side.
I put my hands up to slow them down. “Fire. Currently under control.”
“What happened?” he asks.
I run him through it, along with the time theory. He closes his eyes and bows his head, then says, “Downstairs, now.”
* * *
—
Popa again holds court, but this time it’s just me, Allyn, Nik, and Reg. And we skipped the security office in favor of the chapel, a room which I am sure has never once been used for praying, but has most definitely been used by older couples looking to “spice things up” by smashing their wrinkled parts together in a semipublic place.
It’s a small room and there’s not much to it—three rows of wooden pews, gorgeous never-lit candles in sconces along the walls, and a large window overlooking what’s supposed to be a rolling field, but right now is covered in a blanket of white.