Back home, pacing the room like a caged animal, Jennifer dialed the number from Natalie’s text. It was only when the phone started ringing it hit her. 

Samantha was in prison.

Duh, ‘cause I put her there. Booyah.

That crossed her out as suspect number one –big sigh of relief – but now what? The cops? Or straight back to Bayside Intelligence Inc.?—

”Pronto. Who is this?” A woman’s voice answered.

She hadn’t expected anyone to pick up. Weren’t phones confiscated when you went to prison? Had to be the wrong person; one of the digits in the phone number must have been incorrect. And going by the woman’s unexpected accent, it might have been one of the area code numbers or something.

“Jen Tomlin. And who’s this?”

“I had my number unlisted,” the woman said. “How did you get it?”

Jennifer rolled her eyes, ready to hang up at any moment. A dead end: no need to burn any more precious time on it.

“It sounds like I’ve got the wrong number. Sorry, you are…?”

“Who are you trying to call?”

It was the suspicion in the woman’s voice. There was something behind it. She didn’t sound anything like the way Jennifer had imagined: some generic SP airhead who considered Jerry a notch in her ‘fuck a celebrity’ belt. But the instinct was undeniable: it had to be her. Samantha. She just knew it.

On a whim, she put on an entirely different voice and said:

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m going about this all wrong. You’re totally right, you would have no idea who I am. Let me start again. I’m Jerry Mousseau’s publicist. And – correct me if I’m wrong – but I understand you’re a close friend of his.”

“I am independent,” The woman mused aloud. She sounded a little nervous. Why? Was she starting to feel the heat now? Was that it? “And he is independent. So, no, it’s not that simple.”

“Oh, but he’s told me a lot about you. The thing is – I’m just straight up now – he’s in trouble. ‘Trouble’, wow that’s a terrible way to put it. He’s in a delicate situation. I’m just running back and forth in the background trying to assist where I can.”

The vulnerability in the woman’s voice evaporated.

“What is the serious business enquiry here?”

“If we start working on this right now, we can prevent it from becoming serious business. How do I put this? Lately, Jerry’s been fumbling with control over his image. My team is trying to nip a potential blowup of public speculation about his fidelity.”

The woman muttered something under her breath. She sounded knowingly disappointed.

Oh yeah, fake those scandalized vibes, Jennifer thought. You’re full of it and I’ve got you, hunny.

She had Jerry. Why else would she be so defensive? She had him.

“And how does this involve me?” the woman said. “I don’t understand.”

She tried to keep her cool. She had to keep sounding helpful, drunk on caffeine, and morally questionable:

“My team and I are doing all the hard stuff. We need to deflect the heck out of this thing before it becomes a runaway train, taking Jerry –and anyone else he’s involved with—along for the ride. Knowing who Jerry sleeps with is way off my personal give-a-crap meter. It doesn’t make it onto the list of things I toss and turn about when I go to sleep at night. But Jerry hires me to care. I just need to capture how big this is, save as many reputations as possible.”

The other woman seemed to meditate on this, and Jennifer patiently let her. Let it sink in.

“So, some woman would be shamed,” she said dismissively. “But it’s not unfair; it’s life.”

What?

Jennifer needed a second. She was trying to reel out a hook for Samantha to impale herself on, but the woman wasn’t budging. She’d dropped a pretty sweet breadcrumb, though.

“There’s just one woman?” Jennifer said, trying—against all intuition—to sound relieved; to sound grateful. “Great. This is absolutely manageable. I just need to clarify the tiniest thing, and me and my team can quarantine this so fast—”

A laugh came from the other end of the phone.

“No, Ms Tomlin. I know who you are—”

Jennifer shut her mouth.

Fuck.

“—And I know what you want.”

She decided to double down, keeping her voice breezy and disaffected:

“Jerry must have dropped my name into the conversation somewhere. He made what I do sound like profit-hungry meddling, right? I beg to differ, we’re an unstoppable team.”

“You—no, listen—you are a journalist. The worst kind. You call me and you lie to me and you think I’ll tell you anything. No. This conversation is over.”  

Dull heat rose into her cheeks. Her eyes narrowed, and her mouth was moving before she could stop it.

“You’re the worst kind, and you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Finally, the other woman’s voice held some kind of emotion; a flicker of restrained rage.

“Ms Tomlin, I will find out your publication and sell my story to your competitor.”

Now Jennifer laughed.

“Have fun. Tell me how it works out.”

There was no response, only typing sounds over the phone. Then it stopped.

“You take his fiancée’s name,” the woman muttered. “She must think that slander.”

“I am Jerry’s fiancée!” Jennifer burst out, trying to figure out whether she’d just been insulted or given a weird compliment.

The other end was silent for a long time. Then:

“So, you exist. You're not a convenient fiction. I began to wonder.”

Her voice was maddeningly calm again.

Now Jennifer began to feel, not angry, but – not afraid – cautious. Her powers of manipulation only worked after carefully reading someone. But this woman was a freaking Rorschach blot.

“You figured out I exist. Great job. But I beat you: I figured out you existed a long time ago…And a lot of other stuff about you, as well. Now, you can try to zero yourself from the feds, see how long that works. Or you can just lay it all out right now and tell me where Jerry is.”

The woman seemed to want to say something. Jennifer held her breath, thinking there was a seventy or so percent chance the phone would disconnect. But instead –

“You must talk to him. I won’t contribute to this.”

The change of mind was even more offensive than pure silence. Like this was a game.

But the woman had put her foot in it again. She didn’t even pretend to act surprised. If she was totally innocent she wouldn’t have known Jerry was even missing. The P.I. said they needed reasonable suspicion or probable cause for a search warrant. Did a suspicious lack of surprise count?

“Oh, you will contribute, or your ass is getting served.”

The woman sighed.

“It’s like fashion. If, the first time, it was a mistake, I don’t try it out, the exact same thing, a second time.”

There was another explanation for the woman’s calmness, Jennifer realized, growing panicked. It was genuine; she was innocent. She genuinely did not understand that Jerry was in trouble. And that would mean this entire phone call was a desperate mistake.

“Okay,” Jennifer said, fighting a losing battle to stay calm, “this is where you tell me: Where he is, why he’s not answering his phone, and how neither of those are your fault.”

The woman’s voice changed. Not just her voice, her whole phone presence. She started to sound worried. 

“I have another suggestion. I will find him and return him. And no more questions.”

"Oh, uh uh. No. I’m handling this. Tell me where he is.”

“Ms Tomlin, you think the absolute worst of me, when I want the same as you. My way is more straightforward.”

Jennifer let out a laugh.

“I can click my fingers and have an agency pull up hundreds of records before you’ve even out of your front door.”

“An agency will make your search very intense and very short. You will be reported to the SPPD Threat Management people for suspicion of celebrity stalking.  Now, what you need, more than anything, is not that.”

“I am not a stalker,” the words seethed out. “I’m his guardian and I can prove it!”

“They will mistake you for stalking his…friend,” the woman corrected. “She’s a celebrity.”

Jennifer caught the ironic emphasis on the word ‘friend’ and her lip curled down.

“Oh. Right. Uh huh. So, which trash net subscription told you that?”

“He told me.”

She felt out of breath as if she’d been sprinting.

This couldn’t really be happening.

First Stuart, and now Je…

She couldn’t even finish the thought. The weight of impending agony threatened to crush her.

This couldn’t be real. It was worse than anything.

“That’s it,” she said, suddenly striding through the house. “Enough. Done. I’m going to SP.”

She was on the verge of screaming or crying, and wondered if it was possible to snap a smartphone like a wafer, just for the satisfaction of making the call come to a violent end.

The other woman cautioned her again, told her to wait, insisted ‘my way is better’ and made other noises in her patronizing accent – until Jennifer punched the ‘end call’ symbol on her phone with almost enough force to send her sharp nail through the screen.