Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
The Infinity Wellness Center was located across the street from the lot where we’d parked, in an unassuming one-story building that had once housed a veterinarian’s office.
I remembered the vet from one of my trips to Gloucester with Richie.
We’d rushed Rosie I here after she’d eaten a big bag of Mallomars.
Not the greatest memory—in fact, I’d blocked a lot of it—but everything had worked out in the end.
I hoped the same for this particular expedition.
I also wanted to stop remembering Richie for a few minutes.
From the outside, only the sign was different.
The waiting area had changed, though. The walls had been painted a pale violet, and there was soft sitar music playing, comfortable chairs, cubbyholes for patrons’ shoes, and potted bamboo plants.
A small Zen garden was perched on a slate table at the center of the room, and the magazine rack, stocked with old issues of Cat Fancy, was long gone.
But something about the place still exuded vet energy. Rosie even whined when she came in.
The woman behind the front desk looked like she’d walked right out of wellness community central casting—from her long silver hair, to her Indian print blouse, to the clusters of multicolored stones and crystals adorning her ears, wrists, and neck.
But it was only when she looked up at us and did a full-on double take that I realized how out of our element Tony and I were.
Him in his Zegna suit and his expensive haircut.
Me in my black Jil Sander shift and my equally expensive haircut.
I wished we’d had time to change. This woman probably thought we were here to serve her a summons.
“Can I help you?” She wore a name tag that read Larch. Was it pronounced like the tree? Or was it an odd spelling of Lark? I had no clue.
“I hope so, Larch.” I pronounced it like the tree. She didn’t correct me. I gave her what I hoped was a disarming smile and asked if I could speak to Natalie Blythe.
Rosie barked.
“Is that an emotional support dog?” Larch said. “I ask because we usually don’t allow animals.”
“That’s funny,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because this place used to be a vet’s office.”
Larch didn’t even crack a smile.
“Anyway,” I said. “Yes. She is. And she doesn’t bite.”
“I should hope not.” She gave Rosie one of those wary looks I found hard to tolerate, given how obviously sweet my dog is.
I scooped Rosie into my arms and refrained from saying something sarcastic. “She won’t bother you,” I said. “I promise.”
Larch kept her wary gaze on me. She picked up a phone and told Natalie she had visitors. When she asked for our names, I told her mine, and then Tony took a step forward. “Tony Gault,” he said. “She’ll know who I am.”
Larch repeated Tony’s name into the phone. After a few moments of listening, she spun away from us and spoke to her boss in a voice so low, I couldn’t even make out consonants.
“Natalie will be right with you,” Larch said. “I have to check on one of the Reiki tables.”
Larch left, and then Natalie Blythe walked in.
She was disarmingly tall—nearly Tony’s height, and he was well over six feet.
She was dressed very expensively, in pale pink yoga pants I recognized from the Lululemon catalog ($200), an embroidered Dior “Dioramour” T-shirt (around $1,500), and a diamond tennis bracelet and earrings that could have easily set her back half a million.
I no longer felt intimidating in Jil Sander.
I started to introduce myself, but Natalie had eyes only for Tony.
Her benefactor. She didn’t seem very happy to see him.
“I’m hoping you just happened to be in the neighborhood,” she said, “and that you’ll be leaving soon. ”
“Nice to see you, too, Natalie,” Tony said.
“It isn’t personal,” she said. “I just know who you work for.”
“Understood,” Tony said.
“He isn’t delivering bad news,” I said.
“Not necessarily,” Tony said.
“What are you talking about?” She looked at me as if she was just noticing me for the first time. “Who is she?”
“Sunny Randall,” I said. “I’m a private investigator.”
Her gaze shifted from Tony’s face to mine and back again. “Is Melanie Joan missing?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, then, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Are you Book Babe?” I just blurted it out. Like ripping off a bandage. Tony gaped at me. He probably didn’t think it was the best approach, but I didn’t care. If we kept dancing around like this, we weren’t going to get anything other than thrown out of Natalie’s spa.
Natalie blinked at me. Her earrings glittered. “What?” Her expression was as noncommittal as it could possibly be.
“Melanie Joan just wants to talk to you,” I said. “Make peace. She’s not interested in the fact that you may have broken your NDA.”
“What? I didn’t break my NDA.”
“Look at this logically,” Tony said. “If Melanie Joan gets fully canceled, she won’t sell any more books. If she doesn’t sell any more books, there will be no quarterly earnings. Your business will suffer.”
“Think of your son,” I said. “His future.”
She stared at me. “How do you know I have a son?”
I started to reply, but Tony kept talking. “My guess is, if you were to take down the review, Melanie Joan would give you anything you want,” he said. “She’d pull the entire prologue, I bet.”
Natalie frowned at him, then turned her gaze on me, then back to Tony again. She shifted her weight and crossed her arms over her chest and looked him up and down, as though she was trying to figure out if he was wearing a wire. “Get out of here, Tony,” she said.
“Natalie, we need to talk about this. It can be a real opportunity for you, if—”
“Get out of here,” she said again. “Go play in traffic.”
“But—”
“I’ll talk to the private detective,” she said. “Cute dog, by the way.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Tony cleared his throat. His cheeks flushed slightly. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll meet you back at the car, Sunny.”
Natalie stood next to me, watching Tony leave.
Neither one of us said a word. Once we were alone, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath through her nose, then let it out slowly.
Yogic breathing. I’d learned it from a meditation app.
It was said to be calming, and sometimes I found it to be.
In with the positive energy, out with the negative.
Natalie yogic-breathed again, two more times.
It seemed to have worked. When she opened her eyes and trained them on me, they were tranquil blue pools.
“What prologue?” she said.