The Boy from the Woods(17)
“Not okay.”
One of the producers yelled, “Ten seconds to air.”
Her cohost pocketed his phone and sat up straight. He turned to Hester, saw she had the phone pressed against her ear, and said, “Uh, Hester? You’re doing the intro.”
The producer held up his hand to indicate five seconds. He tucked his thumb to show it was now four.
“I’ll call you back,” Hester said.
She put the phone on the table in front of her as the producer dropped his index finger.
Three seconds may seem like a very short time. In television terms, it’s not. Hester had time to glance at Allison Grant, her segment producer, and nod. Allison had time to make a face and nod back so as to indicate that she would comply with Hester’s request but she would do so reluctantly.
Still, Hester had prepared for this. There were times you investigated—and there were times you instigated.
It was time for the latter.
The producer finished his countdown and pointed at Hester.
“Good evening,” Hester said, “and welcome to this edition of Crimstein on Crime. Our lead story tonight is—what else?—upstart presidential candidate Rusty Eggers and the controversy surrounding his campaign.”
That part was on the teleprompter. The rest was not.
Hester took a deep breath. In for a penny, in for a…
“But first, breaking news just coming in,” Hester said.
Her cohost frowned and turned toward her.
The thing was, Matthew was scared. That was what Hester couldn’t shake. Matthew was scared, and he had asked for her help. How could she not do all she could?
A photograph of Naomi Pine filled television screens across the country. It was the only photograph her producer Allison Grant had been able to find, and that had taken some doing. There was nothing on social media, which was really strange in today’s society, but Allison, who was as good as they came, dug up the website for the school photographer who took the official Sweet Water High portraits. Once Allison promised that they would keep the watermark with his logo on it, the photographer had agreed to let them use it on air.
Hester continued: “Tonight, a local girl from Westville, New Jersey, is missing and needs your help.”
*
From the parking lot outside Ava’s condo, Wilde weighed his options. There really wasn’t much more to do when he thought about it. The hour was getting late. So Option One: He could just drive back to Laila’s house and gently pad upstairs to the bedroom where she’d be waiting and…
Yeah, did he really have to review other options?
To cover his bases, he texted Matthew: Where are you?
Matthew: At Crash Maynard’s.
Laila had told him that earlier, but he wasn’t sure he was supposed to know.
Wilde: Is Naomi there?
Matthew: No.
Wilde debated what to type next, but then he saw the dots dancing, indicating that Matthew was typing.
Matthew: Shit.
Wilde: What?
Matthew: Something bad is going down.
Wilde’s thumbs didn’t move as fast as he wanted them to, but he finally managed to type: Like what?
No reply.
Wilde: Hello?
The utopian image from Option One—Laila upstairs in that bedroom, warm under the covers, reading legal briefs—rose up in front of him so real he could smell her skin.
Wilde: Matthew?
No reply. The Laila-related image turned to smoke and drifted into the ether.
Damn.
Wilde started up the road toward Maynard Manor.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Matthew was in Crash Maynard’s enormous mansion on the hill.
The mansion’s exterior looked old and kind of Gothic with marble columns. It reminded Matthew of that snooty golf club his grandmother took him to because one of her clients was getting some kind of award. Hester hadn’t liked being there, he remembered. As she sucked down the wine—too much wine as it turned out—her eyes began to narrow. She glanced around the room, frowning and muttering under her breath about silver spoons and privilege and inbreeding. When he asked her what was wrong, Hester had looked her grandson up and down and said, loud enough for those nearby to hear: “You’re half Jew, half black—you’d doubly not be allowed in this club.” Then she paused, raised a finger in the air, and added, “Or maybe you’d be two tokens in one.” When an elderly lady with frozen dollops of snow-white hair made a tut-tut, shh-shh noise in her direction, Hester had told her to blow it out her ass.
That was Matthew’s grandmother. Nana never avoided a controversy if she could create one.
It was both mortifying and comforting. Mortifying, well, that was pretty obvious. Comforting because he knew that his grandmother always had his back. He never questioned it. Didn’t matter that she was small or seventy or whatever. His grandmother seemed superhuman to him.
There were about a dozen kids at what parents insisted on calling a “party” but was really just a gathering in Crash’s “lower level”—Crash’s parents didn’t like calling it a basement—which may have been the coolest place Matthew had ever been. If the exterior was old school, the interior couldn’t have been more state of the art. The home theater was closer to a full-fledged cinema with mod digital sound design and forty-plus seats. There was a cherrywood bar and real-theater popcorn machine out front. The corridors were lined with a mix of vintage movie posters and posters for Crash’s dad’s television shows. The arcade room was a mini replica of the Silverball, the famed pinball palace on the Asbury Park boardwalk. Down one corridor was a wine cellar with oak barrels. The other became an underground tunnel leading to a regulation-sized basketball court, a replica—lots of replicas—of the Knicks’ floor at Madison Square Garden.