“Hello, Camilla,” said Clay. He had no “how nice to see you” to spare for her, but he bent stiffly when it became clear she intended to air kiss him on not one but both cheeks, whether he liked it or not.
“MUH!” she said to one cheek. “And MUH!” she said to the other.
“Hi,” I said, submitting to my own set of air kisses.
“This is SO weird. It’s the weirdest! All of us together again. It’s just like our Series Seven class!”
“Just like it,” I agreed amiably. The class had taken place eight years ago in an office building with thirty other people, an instructor and an overhead projector, but debating its resemblance to this encounter would only prolong it, and I now very much wanted to talk to Clay alone.
“Let’s grab a drink!” said Camilla. “It’s been way too long since I’ve seen you both. I think the lounge is still open.”
I fumbled for an excuse that would involve Camilla shutting up and going away. “Wow, does that sound like incredible fun, but-”
“Oh, my GOD! Did you get one of those, too?” She was pointing at the keychain resting in my palm.
“Too?”
Camilla held up her own padded envelope. CAMILLA GERGEN was printed on the front in the same distinctive handwriting. “I got one when I checked in. I thought it was a gift or something from the hotel, since I stay here so often. But it’s not from the hotel. I don’t know who it’s from. Isn’t that just the weirdest coincidence that you got one, too? What are you going to do with yours? I don’t know what I’m going to do with mine. I have the cutest little keychain already, with my initials on it and a little picture of my pug and me. See? Do you like pugs? Isn’t he just the cutest? Now, how about that drink? They have the yummiest olives in the lounge here. And pistachios. I love pistachios, don’t you?”
Her voice would make fingernails on a chalkboard sound like Chopin, and it didn’t help that she used it so liberally. But one word-coincidence-screeched into my ears and kept ricocheting off the walls of my skull.
It couldn’t be a coincidence that we’d all received the keychains. There had to be a connection, but that didn’t mean I knew what the connection was. My brain would have kicked into overdrive if it had been sufficiently nourished, trying to figure out what the three of us had in common besides our prep course and our profession more broadly. I scanned the lobby, checking to see if any other yuppies were holding padded envelopes or Lincoln Memorial keychains, but we seemed to be the lucky few.
Then Camilla unwittingly made up for the hours I’d spent in that classroom and the handfuls of aspirin I’d downed trying to remedy the headaches she’d caused.
“I bet you’re both here to pitch the Igobe IPO!” she squealed. “My firm’s scheduled for nine tomorrow morning. When are you two up?”
“I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you,” said Clay, stone-faced, but a muscle in his jaw twitched, and I knew Camilla had guessed it in one.
That Iggie had promised me that Winslow, Brown would be the first firm to make its presentation to Igobe was the least of my concerns. I could postpone getting angry about his scheduling at least two other firms ahead of mine once we’d found Hilary and straightened everything else out.
I said a hurried goodbye to Clay and Camilla, leaving Clay to extricate himself from Camilla’s grasp and without telling them about my own keychain, much less about the iPod video. Neither seemed particularly eager to figure out what their keychains meant, and I doubted they would be rushing over to the Martin Luther King memorial tonight, so if this was a contest I felt confident I’d maintain my lead.
The elevator took only a few seconds to descend from the lobby to the street, but that was all the time required for a couple of things to make themselves nice and clear. I still had more questions than answers, but I did know now that the keychains, and the scavenger hunt for which they were the first clue, had nothing to do with Hilary’s disappearance. They were messages from somebody not just to me, but to all of the investment bankers competing for the golden prize of handling Igobe’s IPO, and the messages seemed intended to make us think twice about the role we would play in making Iggie obscenely rich. Of course, the messenger had overlooked a critical factor: investment bankers, by definition, weren’t exactly fertile ground either for second thoughts or planting the seeds of social revolution. We were all about capitalism in its purest and least fettered form.
I now also knew that the messenger had to be related to Igobe in some way. How else could he-or she-know which firms would be pitching the Igobe IPO, who the contact person was for each firm, and where each could be found today? That was hardly public information. My whereabouts must have been especially challenging, since I wasn’t staying at a hotel, but somebody in Iggie’s office could probably have accessed his calendar and address book, tracked me down at the Forrests’ house, and even trailed me from there. It wouldn’t have been easy-in fact, it would have involved a lot of work-but this person seemed to be a man-or a woman-with a mission: specifically, to derail Igobe and its IPO.
I dashed through the elevator doors as they opened, eager to tell everyone else what I’d just learned, but when I raced out to Market Street, the only person there was a lone uniformed doorman. I looked up and down the nearly deserted street in confusion.
“May I help you, miss?” asked the doorman. His nametag read Dmitri.
“What?” I asked, distracted. Had they ditched me? Given Luisa’s current state of mind, it wouldn’t surprise me, and I couldn’t speak for Ben or Abigail, but it was hard to imagine Peter doing such a thing.
“May I help you?” Dmitri asked again.
“Oh. Sorry. Sure. By any chance were you on duty last night around this same time?”
He smiled and chuckled. He could have given Clay Finch some pointers. “Some people were here just a few minutes ago, asking me the same question.”
“Where did they go?”
He gestured back inside. “I sent them to the other entrance, on Stevenson Street. The guys there were on last night. I have Saturdays off.”
“Great, thanks.” It was a relief to know I hadn’t been abandoned, but I did have to wonder what Dr. Grout would make of the speed with which I’d entertained the possibility.
I hurried back inside and across the marble floors of the lower lobby to a rear entrance I’d never used before, although it was officially the main entrance to the hotel. A circular drive served as a drop-off and loading point for passengers, and I found my friends standing at the curb, talking to another doorman and the bell captain.
“What took you so long?” Luisa asked me, but she didn’t wait for my response. “You won’t believe it. These men say there were two Lamborghinis here last night, both black.”
“Just like the two at the party,” added Peter.
“They were both already parked here when we came on at twelve,” said this doorman, whose nametag read Gustav. “We see some nice cars around here, but two Lamborghinis together are pretty hard to miss.”
“Did you see the drivers?” asked Ben. “Or anyone getting in or out?”
“The cars had tinted windows, so there might have been other people inside I didn’t see, but both of the drivers got out,” said the bell captain. His name, according to his nametag, was Ray, which squashed my budding theory that the Four Seasons didn’t hire people with boring names. “One regular-looking guy, sort of preppie, and then a guy dressed head-to-toe in purple velvet.”
“That must have been Iggie,” said Luisa. “Unless there’s a purple-velvet trend of which I’m unaware, which would be disturbing.”
“On so many levels,” I agreed.
“Iggie sounds right,” said Gustav. “One of the cars had a vanity plate: IGSTER1. And now that I think about it, the other car had a vanity plate, too, but I can’t remember what it said.”