Thick & Thin (Thin Love, #3)(75)
“What’d he say, Sara?” I prompted, nodding at Mom when she squeezed my arm.
“Right, well to hear Reynolds tell the story, it wasn’t Cass who looked like the sure thing to win the competition. He said all the dirty details came out a day or so before the winner was to be announced. By that time word had gotten around that the Aymes kid had hauled ass back to Oklahoma. Turns out he’d been caught with some girl who wasn’t even eighteen at the Drake Motel. Couple of nights before the winner was supposed to be announced, Aymes gets a visit from a P.I. who hands him over pictures of him and the girl at the hotel bar. Then Aymes and the minor making out against his hotel room door. Then, one of Aymes passed out, hickeyed up and completely naked in the bed next to the girl.”
“Jesus.” Aly’s unrestrained oath echoed in the studio before Sara’s raspy alto started up again.
“Well that ain’t the hell of it all. Reynolds says the higher ups wanted to know what had happened. It was one thing for a married man like Aymes to get caught with his Wranglers around his boots. It was something else altogether for that very same married man to get caught with a minor just two days before he won a hundred grand contract with Sony.”
“What did they find out?” Mom stepped closer to the phone, as though willing Sara to hurry along with her story.
“They tracked down the P.I. You know how that elements works, Keira. How many did you serve coffee to in Bobby’s diner while they were on a case?”
“Too many,” Mom said.
“Well, it wasn’t hard getting the man to talk or to find the girl once Aymes had left town. Turns out there had been copies of those pictures sent to his little pregnant wife in Tulsa. And it turns out the girl had been hired, she admitted to it. Given two grand to find Aymes and get him drunk. She swore nothing had happened between them so he couldn’t be charged with anything, but the damage was already done. Aymes was gone and trying like hell to keep his wife from leaving him. But the girl admitted that it was the P.I. who paid her to find Aymes and stage those pictures.”
“And?” I asked, a little twitchy for information.
“And,” Sara started, her voice rattling a little when she cleared it. “The P.I. had the check Cass had given him to hire the girl. Five grand. Two for the girl. Three for the P.I. When they confronted Cass about it, he didn’t bother to deny it. Didn’t set right with the big dogs at Sony. They figured if this * would blackmail his competition to get a contract, there wouldn’t be much he wouldn't do. Like maybe hold out for money when the time came to renegotiate contracts or jump ship altogether. They didn’t think he was worth the risk or the hassle so they cut him loose.”
The mood in the room didn’t seem fitting for punching the air, celebrating my gut instinct. Especially not when I looked down at my mother’s face, seeing how she squeezed her eyes shut, how that hand on her neck moved quicker and quicker.
“So,” Sara said, clearing her throat again, “Keira, if you don’t mind me sticking my big nose in your business, your artist is a shithead and I think if you keep him on, especially with you trying to give your new label wings, you’re gonna run into some walls with him. You know how our people talk. You know how loyalties work in Nashville. He stepped on some pretty big toes a few years back. No telling what he’s gotten up to since then. Or how far he'll go in the future, if he goes anywhere.”
I exchanged a look with Aly when Mom walked to the large window at the back of the room, watching the lake stretching out with the slow, steady current keeping her attention, likely distracting her enough that she didn’t break down.
“Sara, thanks so much,” I answered for Mom. “We appreciate you digging around for us. Mom I know appreciates…”
“I do,” Mom said, over her shoulder. “Sara, honey, thank you. Looks like I…well. Hopefully I dodged a bullet.”
“Good to know, Keira. Next time you’re in town…”
“I owe you a beer. A bunch of them. Thanks honey, I’ll make good.”
Phone back in my pocket, I watched Mom staring out of that window, continuing to keep to herself until Aly went behind her, slipping her gaze between my mother and me. “Keira?” she tried.
Mom only shook her head and I knew she needed a second to absorb everything Sara had revealed. She was likely dissecting the details, probably wondering how much stock she should put into office gossip, maybe trying to wage what she knew of Cass and what she knew of most wannabe artists trying to land a contract.
I would have let her go on just staring at nothing, thinking, keeping to herself, but the footsteps overhead knocked me out of my patience as did the chirp of my phone when the text alert sounded. Koa and Mack were upstairs, doing God knew what. They didn’t need to see Mom break down and when I read my message, smiling at my father’s confident attitude, I realized we needed to get things rolling, to find out if Cass had tried to pull another shitty game to get something he wanted: my mother.
“Mom…”
“He’s the type, isn’t he?” she asked, finally turning around. “He just seems like the type to go a little desperate, lie to people, pay people off to…” She rubbed her face, holding her palms over her eyes. “If he’s the one…”
“We’ll find out,” Aly said, standing next to my mother. She glanced at me, looking like she wanted me to move, take action, at least give her an idea what was in my head.