1 Hot Scheming Mess (25 page)

“I’m sorry I don’t see it.” He kept turning pages over on his clipboard, searching. “Xander Boyd, you say? And he’s expecting you?”

“Yes. I’m going to be a bikini zombie babe at his booth tomorrow, but he needs to see if I can fit inside a grandfather clock that he wants me to pop out of.” The guard looked at her. She shrugged and said, “He found that clock at the last minute, and I told him I have a bikini that would be perfect for this. It’s all tattered and ripped.”

She had his attention. She looked down at herself, describing the lines of the bikini and where the rips would be, and added, “I want to help him sell more of his art and his books.”

From behind, she heard, “Did you bring the bikini?”

She whipped around and saw ExBoy standing there. She pressed her lips together hard. The guard mumbled, “ExBoy,” like he should have known. “His booth is called Infect Me.” He offered ExBoy a conspiratorial fist, exchanged a quick little fist tap, and walked away.

“Where is it?” she demanded.

“The bikini? Do I have to think of everything?” he said.

“ExBoy…”

“Come on,” he said, putting his arm around her and leading her into the maze of partially finished booths. “It’s over here. No harm.”

“No harm? You don’t know what you did.”

“I got you to come here, didn’t I?”

They walked down an aisle, passing ordinary looking tables typical at conventions, only most didn’t have tablecloths yet. Various vendors had rented spaces to sell their wares at tomorrow’s convention. Most of the spaces were already separated by black curtains hanging from PVC piping. The tablecloths being thrown on the tables were also black. A few work crews labored on backdrops, setting up elaborate displays to delight and entice fans of the undead. Some spaces didn’t have tables so as to invite zombie fans to walk in, perhaps to examine a hanging t-shirt, a clothing article of metal studded couture, or maybe take a seat and pay a professional makeup artist to turn them out in excellent zombie style.

Cardboard boxes littered the place with ghoulish body parts sticking out at all angles. It was an adolescent boy’s idea of heaven. But there would be plenty of adult men and women who delighted in the chill of a good horror movie, and their appetite for scary thrills would find the menu here to be worth the drive, worth the time, worth the money. In this hotel tomorrow morning, everyone could be a fan of anything zombie, and know that he or she was amongst their tribe. They were going to have a blast.

“Why would you want me to come here? You broke up with me, remember?”

“I didn’t break up, I gave up. We’re weren’t a couple, remember?”

“So why?” she asked.

“Because you wanted to see my work. You made me think. I hate that.” He nodded at another vendor setting up styrofoam tombstones as they passed by. “I’m warning you, you may have started something.”

They came up to ExBoy’s space, and there was the Victorian grandfather clock standing in the corner, its door open and askew. Blood ran down the glass door. A crumpled figure, a dummy of a man wearing a white doctor’s coat, lay at the base of the clock appearing to have succumbed to his death. The blood smears running down the sides of the clock made it look as though he had held onto the clock with both bloodied hands as he slid down the sides to the floor. There was blood on the clock, the dummy, and on some of the medical examination instruments, left unattended. A doctor’s private office, left abandoned, was the scene of medical intervention that hadn’t worked. Madison was impressed but returned her attention to the matter at hand.

“But why didn’t you just invite me like a normal person?”

“I didn’t think you would come if I merely invited you,” he said. “You’ve been a little preoccupied lately.”

She knew he was right.

His space looked well thought out. Besides the grandfather clock, he had a medical exam table with patient charts on clipboards. In the opposite corner from the clock there was a room divider made of an aluminum frame with fabric panels where a patient could disrobe behind a privacy screen. The cloth of the screen had long skinny tears as if claws had taken a swipe, leaving goo and blood in their wake. Signs on the back wall announced the release of a new novella,
Infect Me
.

Besides the posters about his book and some smaller sized artwork on display, the space seemed a tad empty. Madison didn’t want to criticize, but he must have sensed her thoughts because he said, “Most of my artwork and the shipment of books are in my room. I’ll be setting the rest out in the morning.” She nodded, looking around.

She looked up and noticed the huge overhead lighting fixtures of the hotel. Large and round, they had beautiful cut glass domes. It was odd to see something so nice. They seemed out of place for Zombie Prom.

“It looks great,” she said. “And I don’t mean to mess up your work here,” she looked down at the crumpled dummy on the ground holding his death pose, “but I need to retrieve some paperwork that I left inside that grandfather clock.”

“What about the bikini?”

“Yeah, right.”

“It actually would attract a lot of customers.”

“Aw, come on. Don’t hold that over my head.”

“It really was a good idea,” he sighed. “But I’m just glad you came. I figured we’d probably still be friends, but now you get to see something besides the party boy.”

She tried not to look sad, forcing a smile. “Yeah,” she said. “Friends.” Looking at the few pieces he had out in his display, she said, “You really are good. I heard you were, but it’s nice to see some evidence.”

“You mean this stuff?” he asked. “This just happened to be the right size for the space, that’s all. My good stuff is in the room. And so is an envelope that fell out of the clock when I was setting it up. There were a bunch of old newspaper articles in it. Is that what you’re looking for?”

“Yes! Did it get damaged?”

“No, it’s fine,” he said.

She put a hand on her heart. ExBoy watched her for a moment, and said, “You didn’t really need the clock, did you? Are those papers part of your ongoing drama?”

“I can’t…”

“Just tell me if you’re in trouble. Maybe I can help.”

“There is trouble, yes. But it’s not about me. I’m just caught up in it.”

He dug around in his pocket. “Here,” he handed her a hotel key card. “It’s on the desk in my room. You’ll see it. I have to stay here and finish up.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

She sat on the bed, leaning up against the headboard with her phone against her face, talking to Spenser. She had the envelope of Grandpa’s paperwork on the bed next to her. ExBoy’s artwork was all over the room. Most of it was the exact size of a comic book. He had used comic book storage methods, tucking each piece inside clear plastic bags with a cardboard insert intended to give it stiffness and protection from being bent. But other pieces were larger and framed. They certainly weren’t all about zombies.

In one piece, dragon creatures of wild fantasy swarmed in the sky, their wing spans obscuring the sun, casting deep shadows of certain doom upon the ground. In another piece, sweet little fairies charmed a maiden to keep her busy, while their fairy kin bared their long sharp fangs behind her back. There was one where demons from hell contemplated the workings of an elliptical exercise machine, looking at once terrifying yet perplexed at modern life. Some of his work was dark and moody, or frightening, while some of it was more whimsical. All of it was amazing. It revealed a side of him that she hadn’t seen before. Some people could speak of darker things only through their art.

Next, she needed to call her agent. Being followed to her singing telegram gigs was pretty unnerving. The pieces were coming together, but she still wasn’t certain who she could trust. She needed to lie low for a while, so she hoped Phil would understand why she had to cancel a few gigs coming up.

“Holy cow, Minty,” his Boston street tough accent boomed, “I can’t believe how many calls I got about you today. What’d you do, rob a bank?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I keep getting asked where you are, but they don’t want to identify themselves. They all say they’re friends, or friends of the family. About five calls in all. All different people, by the sound of their voices.” Madison fought down a sense of dread. She was right about her instinct to lie low.

“What did you tell them?”

“Not a damned thing. I protect my people, you know that. But it’s making me wonder what’s going on.”

“Me, too. I thought I had this all figured out, but now I’m not so sure. I haven’t done anything wrong, Phil, but I should keep my head down for a while. I need to cancel some gigs.”

“Ah, Chocolate Mint… don’t do this to me, girl. I got all kinds of trouble right now.”

“Trouble?”

“Jen was all excited about trying this new dance she does with a candle, so she tried to rally from that groin problem. She’s doing the dance, goes upside down with the candle, and her hair caught on fire. The guys in the bachelor party all rushed to her aid at once. Turns into a big fistfight.”

“That’s terrible!”

“Tell me about it. I gotta pay for her new hair extensions.”

Madison hung up as fast as she could.

She set her phone aside and picked up her big tote bag. She wondered what life would be like without always having to bring this thing along. It held everything and she took it everywhere. She never knew when Phil might call with an emergency gig, and she might need to drop everything and get ready to go. Now here she was, canceling gigs. She dug around in the tote and pulled out the large envelope of old pictures. Maybe she could use the old photos as an excuse to see her mom. She’d pretend she was just returning them, then ask her in a casual way how she was doing.
That’s not nearly clever enough.
Madison gazed at the big pile of photos. They were still pretty damned cool, like something out of a black and white movie. There were so many, she hadn’t even seen them all yet. She sorted through them in a lazy fashion.

Maybe she should come right out and tell her mom that she had forgiven her, and that she wanted to try again.
But, damn it, I don’t want her to think that it would be okay to do that sneaky shit again.
It wasn’t okay, but Madison was not convinced that her mother understood that.

She pulled out her small mirror from the tote bag, checked her makeup, and reapplied her lipstick.

I could always try the truth. I could say I found out about the adoption and ask her if she would like to talk about it. Madison rubbed her lips together to smooth out the color, and a thought occurred to her. What if she said no? What would Madison do then? It hadn’t occurred to her until this moment that her mother might say no. Holy shit. She can’t let her say no. Her mom had to face this. This might be the biggest thing to ever happen to her and her mother, and they needed to face it together. Ann strived to be perfect, but Ann wasn’t perfect. She still needed someone.

Madison made a quiet little discovery and blinked. She had been sitting here trying to figure out how to help her mother instead of trying to figure out how to trick her mother. Madison was so tired of her own shit; she wanted to rise above it. She inhaled deeply. This felt good.
But how will I know if I’m doing it right?

She stood up from the bed and sorted through the things in her tote. She made a conscious decision not to hide her love. The fear of that notion was still there, but at least it felt more like a spider you could walk around, rather than pick up. Hiding her love had never worked anyway. It had been a stupid way to protect herself.

There was a knock on the door, and Madison dropped the tote bag. She went stiff.
Who followed me?
With a tiny adrenaline shot to her system, her heart started beating faster. She took a deep breath, more to brace herself than to relax, and tiptoed into the short narrow hallway to the door, looking out the peephole. It was ExBoy.

Exhaling, she pulled it open fast, once again thankful that it was him at the door and not someone creepy. “I’m so glad it’s you,” she said as her shoulders went back down, deflating in front of him.

“Uh… surprise, it’s me?” he said.

Fumbling for words, she said, “Well, sure. Who else would it be? Right?”

After a few seconds of standing out in the hallway, he leaned forward and whispered, “Can I come in?”

Madison blinked. “Oh! Of course,” she shook her head. “It’s not like this is
my
room,” she laughed, “this is
your
room.” She backed up, holding the door wide open for him.

He stepped in and stopped just inside the door. “Are you okay?” he asked. They were standing inches apart in the short narrow hallway.

His willingness to show her a little more of himself made him seem more sincere, made him that much more attractive to her. She let go of the doorknob, still looking him in the eyes. The door closed with a firm thump.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m good.”

“When you didn’t bring back the key card,” he said, “I wondered if maybe you had decided to stay?” He looked suspiciously casual. Madison took the cue and acted as if she were completely relaxed.

“I got a little caught up in a few phone calls. It was nice to have a quiet place to,” she looked around the room, “collect my thoughts.” She had left some clutter. “How’s the, uh, booth thing? I mean, is it all done being set up?”

“It’s good enough for now,” he said. She saw him looking around the room. He walked over to the desk and set down his pack, straightened out his pens, picking up some papers without really looking at them and setting them back down. Madison walked over to the bed, removing her phone and paperwork, putting them back into her tote bag on the floor.

“Sorry,” she said, “I guess I wasn’t thinking. I started to make myself at home.” She nudged her tote bag with her foot, scooting it away from the bed.

“Oh, that’s all right,” said ExBoy, but he sounded uncertain. He added, “You’ve probably had a long day.”

She saw his gaze go to the bed and hold. She noticed the envelope of pictures was still sitting by the pillows. Sauntering over, she picked it up, placing it on the bed stand, next to the lamp. He watched her.