Party Crashers (10 page)

“You look like you’re in pain,” Carlotta chastised.

“I
am
in pain.”

“Just think of how good you look and that’ll make you feel better.”

“At least we don’t have far to go,” Jolie said, turning toward the glass door that led from the garage into the hotel.

“We’re going this way,” Carlotta said, pointing in the opposite direction.

Jolie frowned. “What are you up to?”

Carlotta gave her a secret smile. “You’ll see.”

Jolie followed her to a side exit of the garage and out onto the sidewalk, then looked around to get her bearings. They were past the hotel and around the corner. In fact, most of the cars turning down the side street were taxis and limousines presumably circling back around to Peachtree Street after dropping guests at the hotel. Carlotta
turned to the right and headed toward the street corner, farther still from their destination.

Clutching her bag closer to her body, Jolie was besieged by a sudden case of nerves, wondering how she’d made the leap from nice and predictable to…here.

Maybe Sammy Sanders had been right. Maybe she
was
out of her mind to leave her comfy job. What did it say about her that she could let Gary’s disappearance throw her life into chaos? She wasn’t even sure how she still felt about him, but his disappearance had been a catalyst in her life. Carlotta’s earlier words resonated in her memory, in her heart.
“Your life is so much more exciting than mine.”

A few steps ahead of her, Carlotta stepped to the curb and flagged down a shiny black limo, then leaned in a lowered window and spoke to the driver. The woman’s body language was pure flirtation. Suddenly she turned and beckoned Jolie forward. “Come on, we’re going to arrive in style.”

Jolie blinked the swimmy contact lenses into place, scooted forward in her stiff shoes and murmured, “Suddenly,
my
life is so much more exciting than mine.”

J
olie slid in next to Carlotta on the long, black bench seat of the limousine. “We’re taking a limo around the block?”

“It’s all about perception,” Carlotta said. “People will assume we’re somebody important if we arrive in a service.”

Jolie wasn’t about to argue, because her feet were screaming for relief. And although the ride was over before her tootsies could get a break, Jolie conceded a little thrill of excitement when a gloved hotel doorman opened the door and helped her out onto the carpet under the canopied entrance, and people turned to look. “Are you ladies here for the broadcasters reception?”

“Yes,” Carlotta said in a clipped voice, ringing with unmistaken authority. “Could you point us in the right direction, please?”

“Straight ahead to the lobby, then left,” the doorman said, beaming at the women.

Carlotta folded a tip into his hand. “Thank you indeed.”

Jolie was conscious of other people’s heads pivoting
with interest as they walked toward the open double doors. The women seemed intrigued; the men were more blatant with their admiring looks. For a few minutes she forgot how much her feet hurt.

Out of the corner of her eye, a car on Peachtree Street caught her attention—a gray Mercury Sable sedan…Hers? Her breath caught in her chest at the thought of Gary following her. She craned for a better look, but the contact lenses moved on her eyes, obscuring her vision for a few seconds. She blinked furiously, but by the time she had focused, the car had already slid into traffic and out of sight. She exhaled a long breath, telling herself there were hundreds of cars like hers in the metro area. Surely Gary wouldn’t risk being caught driving a stolen car along the Peachtree-Street corridor at night when the police patrols were in full force.

She wondered if he would be waiting for her when she returned to her car tonight, or if, as Leann had suggested, he had used the bought time to get the hell out of Dodge.

Was she being a colossal, gullible fool by believing him?

“Are you okay?” Carlotta asked.

“Fine,” she murmured, and resumed walking.

They were directed down a lavishly tiled hallway that opened up into a spacious foyer with a small, tasteful sign that welcomed guests to the reception for the Broadcasters and Journalists Association of Georgia. Jolie’s palms were moist when they chained onto a line of beautifully dressed guests waiting to give their tickets to a rather stern-looking middle-aged gentleman. She grew even more nervous when Carlotta, casting inconspicuous glances at the tickets people around them were holding, turned a little gray around the gills.

“What’s wrong?” Jolie whispered.

“I was misinformed,” Carlotta whispered back. “I had my brother print up the wrong tickets.”

Jolie felt a full-fledged sweat coming on, and out of fear of staining the rented jumpsuit, concentrated on trying to contract her pores. “What are we going to do?”

“Follow my lead,” Carlotta said just as the couple in front of them moved on and the ticket taker held out his hand.

“Tickets please.”

“Forgive my ignorance, sir,” Carlotta said in a distinct British accent. “This is the first time I have attended such an event, and I wasn’t aware that I was supposed to bring the vouchers.”

Jolie stared. The woman was a chameleon.

A wrinkle formed in the man’s brow. “I’m not supposed to let you in without a ticket, ma’am.”

“Oh,” Carlotta murmured, fluttering her hands. “I’m quite embarrassed, still adjusting to American protocol and all of that.” She turned to bestow a beatific smile on the people behind them. Then she turned back to the ticket holder. “Isn’t there something you can do, sir? Check my name on a list, perhaps? Betty Halverson, CNN. And guest.”

Jolie did her part, nodding as if she were indeed the guest of British-born Betty Halverson, CNN, although her neck itched and the contact in her left eye was beginning to feel like a tampon all right—a tampon in her eye.

The ticket taker leaned in to speak to Carlotta conspiratorially. “I asked for a list, ma’am, but they didn’t give me one.”

Carlotta made a rueful noise in her throat. “This isn’t your fault, good sir, it’s mine, all mine.”
Flap, flap
went her false eyelashes.

Jolie could practically hear the man’s resolve crumbling. “I think it would be all right this once,” he murmured.

“You are a true gentleman,” Carlotta crooned, and floated through the opening.

Jolie followed with a grateful American nod. When they had moved out of earshot, she looked at Carlotta. “What was that?”

“Accents will open doors,” Carlotta said with a lovely shrug. “People with a British accent sound smart and trustworthy.”

“You’re scary,” Jolie said.

“We’re in, aren’t we?” Carlotta said, then scanned the room full of milling guests. She stopped and inhaled sharply. “Oh, my God.”

Jolie froze and tried to blink her contact lens into place. “Do you see Roger LeMon?”

“No, it’s Thomas Roberts—CNN anchor.” She sighed. “That man puts the ‘ooh’in news.”

“Maybe you should go introduce yourself to your coworker,” Jolie said wryly.

Carlotta made a face and continued to survey the room. “I’m going to be able to add to my book tonight. Without moving, I see Paul Ossman, Monica Kauffman, and Clark Howard.”

“The consumer reports guy?”

“Yeah.” Carlotta frowned. “Someone should tell him that his advice to shop discount stores is not only bad for the economy, but bad for the Atlanta fashion scene.”

“Oh, no,” Jolie said with a laugh. “It’s better to buy something and wear it, then return it.”

Carlotta frowned harder. “I told you, this is good advertising. Do you know how many people are looking at you right now?”

“They’re looking through me to get to you,” Jolie said, then nodded toward the bar. “Since you hired the limousine for our long journey, I’ll get us drink tickets.”

“Wait,” Carlotta said, clasping Jolie’s arm. She stared at the table where tickets were being sold and murmured, “Yellow.” Then she angled her body toward Jolie, opened her purse, and pulled out six yellow generic tear-off tickets. “Three for you, three for me.”

Jolie’s eyes widened, and her errant lens popped back into place. “You brought your own drink tickets?”

“You can buy them in rolls at any office supply store.”

“How did you know the tickets would be yellow?”

“I didn’t—I brought red, blue,
and
yellow, just in case.”

“You really have this down to a science, don’t you?”

“I prefer to think of it as an art,” she said with a smile, as they walked toward the bar. “By the way, don’t get red wine or anything to eat with red sauce—you know the old saying, ‘If you break it, you buy it’?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Carlotta said, gesturing at the jumpsuit. “If you stain it, you’ve just obtained it.”

Jolie swallowed. “Got it.” They joined the line at the bar and Jolie glanced around the ballroom. Even to her unsophisticated eye, this crowd seemed more affluent compared to the crowd of two nights ago. “What’s the biggest event you’ve ever crashed?” she whispered to Carlotta.

“The governor’s inaugural ball.”

Jolie’s eyes bugged. “How did you manage that?”

“Hannah loaned me a chef’s coat to wear over my outfit. I walked in through the kitchen, picked up a tray and carried it to a table, detoured through the bathroom to remove the coat, stuffed the coat into my bag, and joined the party.”

Jolie shook her head in amazement.

“By the way, Hannah will be here in an hour,” Carlotta said, looking around, “so I need to find a side door to let her in.”

“Oh…kay,” Jolie said, moving up in the bar line.

“But the most
fun
I had,” Carlotta said, on a roll now, “was watching the Hawks. I printed up a press pass, borrowed my brother’s camera with a big honking lens, and parked myself courtside.”

“When was that?”

“The entire 2000–2001 season.”

Jolie gaped. “No one ever questioned you?”

“Nope. Of course, now, security at the big venues is too strict for someone like me to get in.”

“Don’t you think that’s probably a good thing?”

“I suppose so,” Carlotta agreed, then stepped up and handed the bartender one of the generic drink tickets in exchange for a gin and tonic.

Jolie got white wine, tipped well to assuage her conscience and then began to scout the room for Roger LeMon or one of the others in the photograph.

“I’ll check out the other side of the room,” Carlotta murmured. Jolie nodded and watched the men watch her friend as she glided across the room. When she realized she was getting a few looks of her own, she reached up to touch her hair and encountered the unfamiliar texture of the straight wig. The knowledge that tonight she didn’t have to be mousy little Jolie Goodman shot through her. Tonight she could be anybody she wanted to be.

“Beautiful outfit,” a woman next to her said.

Jolie smiled, then wet her lips. “Why thank yaw,” she said, but her British accent came out sounding like Scarlett O’Hara with her mouth full of peanut butter. She
cleared her throat. “I mean, thank you,” she said in her normal voice, then felt compelled to add, “Neiman’s.”

The woman pursed her mouth and nodded, then turned back to her group. Jolie sipped her wine and moved around the room, forcing herself to join knots of people and make small talk about the weather and traffic, and to congratulate the people who wore colored badges, designating a nomination for broadcasting and journalism awards.

She introduced herself as Linda, an attorney—why not? She’d wondered what it was like to walk in the shoes of the rich and famous, and now she was getting a taste of it. Her feet had progressed beyond painful; they were anesthetized, allowing her to accept compliments graciously, plugging Neiman’s at every opportunity. A couple of men tried to latch on, buy her a drink, and while she enjoyed the attention, she made excuses to keep moving.

For some reason, Beck Underwood’s face kept popping into her mind, and she wondered if she’d see him tonight. Mixed feelings danced in her chest over the fact that if he did put in an appearance, she wouldn’t be able to talk to him and not blow her cover. Which was probably for the best, she told herself. The last thing she needed was to develop a crush on Beck Underwood simply because he had a hero complex and was bored with being back home.

Blaming that disturbing mind tangent on the fact that her brain was trying to pump blood to her numb feet, she wiggled her toes (at least she thought she did) and forced herself to move on.

Everywhere she turned, she was drawn into light conversation. She attributed the warm reception she received to the clothes and the shoes, although she couldn’t blame people for treating her differently. She
felt
different.
Taller, sexier, wittier. She was well-read and had observed local politics for years, but had never put herself in situations to engage in clever party dialogue. The wine and the new persona she’d adopted made her brave. In one crowd she ventured a joke that garnered bursts of laughter, to her great surprise. The attention was absolutely heady, more powerful than the wine. She caught a glimpse of herself in a mirrored column and was stunned at the woman who was reflected—self-assured, poised, polished. Was this the person she might have become, under different circumstances?

Jolie turned away and sipped from her glass, unnerved at her train of thought since arriving. She’d never wanted to be anyone other than herself until this mess had landed in her lap. In fact, people with money and power had always made her uneasy, and she’d do well to remember that the same people who had laughed at her jokes wouldn’t give her a second glance if she were wearing her normal discount-store clothing and selling them shoes.

And that some people in this social echelon—perhaps in this very room—might be responsible for what had happened to Gary…and the woman in his car. Bolstered by a second glass of wine, she canvassed the room with new resolve. And then she spotted Roger LeMon, wearing a tuxedo, one hand wrapped around a drink, the other in his pocket. He was talking to a man who was wearing an award nomination badge, and they seemed to be deep in conversation. But what sent a stone to her stomach was the fact that the second man, a stout, round-faced fellow who looked prematurely gray, was also familiar. He too was in the photo in her purse.

“Do you see what I see?”

Jolie jumped and turned her head to see Carlotta, her intense blue eyes wide with excitement. “You mean Roger LeMon? I just saw him. Do you know the man he’s talking to? He’s in the photo too.”

“I’ve seen him around, but I don’t know who he is.”

“He’s wearing a nominee badge.”

“Then by all means, let’s go congratulate him.”

Jolie touched Carlotta’s arm. “Wait. What if LeMon recognizes us?”

“He’s not going to recognize us,” Carlotta said, then wet her lips. “Especially not
this
English rose,” she said in her perfect British accent.

“How did you learn to do that?” Jolie asked as they made their way through the crowd.

“I had an English nanny.”

More clues to her blueblood upbringing. Jolie followed her friend through the crowd, sensing the master party crasher had had a troubled life. Why else would she delight in mocking the class of people that would probably welcome her with open arms? Only a powerful resentment could drive a person to go to so much trouble to pull one over on a group of people who would never realize they’d been had.

The closer they got to Roger LeMon, the harder Jolie’s heart pounded. His voice and his words from the other night reverberated in her head.
“She said she was a friend…Goodman, Jolie Goodman.”

She had to force herself to walk closer, terrified that he would recognize her, that he might even have found her dropped wineglass the other night and know that his conversation had been overheard. By the time they were near enough to the men to strike up a conversation, her tongue
was immobile. Part by part, her body was becoming paralyzed. Not that she had to worry, with Carlotta in the vicinity.