“Whoever’s doing these things to us. Gabby’s hotel room. My thing in the sauna, a threat to my mom.” She sat down on the bench, removed her glasses and gazed up at Rochelle with those wide blue-green eyes. “We can’t be the only ones. Something has happened to you, too.”
Gabriella expected Rochelle to fly into a fury again, but instead, she sank down on the bench beside Tania Marie. “You say someone sent a threat to your mother?” she asked.
“Yes. A picture of me torn up, and a postcard with Julie Larimore’s photo on it.”
Rochelle’s hand flew to her sunglasses. “Oh, my God,” she said.
Tania Marie
They ended up at a bar, with a menu offering one page of tacos and three pages of tequila. Tania Marie would have preferred tacos to booze, but she wasn’t about to start that again. What had Annie said at the last meeting? Nothing tastes as good as thin feels. Tequila it was, and damned if they didn’t serve it with chips.
Sitting on tall stools around a small, round table, they all avoided looking at the basket in front of them and pretended not to notice the salty fried-corn smell wafting from it. Tania Marie had wussed out with a margarita, but the other two had straight shots.
“The tequila bar must be to Southern California what the martini bar is to San Francisco.” She sucked the tart liquid through the way-too-small straw, giving herself an instant headache.
Rochelle hadn’t spoken. After her outburst on the beach, she had shrunk inside herself and moved almost zombielike. Nowshe reached for her shot glass and, ignoring the ritual of lime and salt, drained it.
“I thought it was you,” she said to Princess Gabby.
“I thought it wasyou.”
“That’s ridiculous. How would I be able to lock Tania Marie in a sauna, let alone stage that fiasco at the hotel?”
“You seemed like the one with the most to lose,” the princess said.
Tania Marie pushed away her drink. “Let’s face it. We all have a lot to lose.”
“Indeed.” The princess nodded. “But if it isn’t one of us, who is it?”
“That’s what we have to find out,” Tania Marie said. “We need to stick together instead of trying to screw one another over at every turn.”
“I’ve never—” Princess Gabby huffed.
“You know what I mean. We have to keep in touch with one another. We need to report anything unusual to one another, even if it seems minor. And we need to tell what we know about Julie. She’s the only thing we all have in common.”
“Who should we tell it to?” Rochelle caught the server’s eye and pointed at her empty glass. “The police aren’t all that interested. They don’t even think there’s foul play involved. When I reported getting that threat in the mail, they didn’t even send anyone out. They took the information over the phone.”
“What about the reporter?” the princess asked.
“I don’t trust her. She doesn’t care about what happens to us.”
“She was nice to me,” Tania Marie said. “She saved me from the nightmare inside the gym that night.”
“But then she wrote that story about us.” Rochelle’s second tequila arrived, and she lifted it to the light, studying its amber glow. “Let’s toast,” she said, and with a harsh laugh, “You’ve got to want the body.”
They shrieked, then clinked glasses. Rochelle swallowed, then turned to Tania Marie. “You’re the last person who ought to trust the press.”
Tania Marie felt herself flush. She slammed her sunglasses back on, indoors or not.
“True. But I think we should talk to Rikki Fitzpatrick, and I think we should talk to Mr. Warren, too.”
“That’ll be a cold day in hell,” Rochelle said. “If Bobbo thinks there’s a chance of bad publicity involved, he’ll call off the competition.”
“Have you ever thought—” Princess Gabby paused, staring down at her untouched glass.
“Thought what?”
“Have you ever thought that perhaps Mr. Warren should do just that?”
