Chapter 6 Never Sleep on the Assistant #2
Vic turned her phone around and lifted it up so all three of them would be visible, giving Sam her first glimpse of Haris.
He sat on the end of what was obviously a hotel bed, with bland art on the wall behind him framing his handsome face, beautiful deep brown skin, and dark curls.
He slid his heavy glasses up his nose. “Hello. Everyone. Ms. Farmer. Ms. Simon. Victoria.” He gave a small wave and looked to the side, where Frankie was probably glaring at him from off screen.
“If you’d rather talk some other time,” Sam said, “we completely understand.”
“No, it’s okay,” he said. “I want to help. Ms. Watts is really great, and I hadn’t heard no one knows where she is.
But it’s tricky because of privacy. And I worked for her almost two years ago.
We’re not, like, friends. Now. I would say we were friendly, then.
She’s friends with my uncle, actually not my uncle, one of my dad’s friends who’s a producer who I always called my uncle. Nepotism. That’s how I got the job.”
“We don’t know that she’s actually missing,” Sam said. “Just that she didn’t go to work. But if she were missing or in trouble, we’d like the right people to be aware of that. Really, anything you can tell us would be helpful.”
Haris pushed his glasses up again. “She talked to Macie Finn all the time, but you know that. Vic said. That’s how you know about Ms. Watts being gone. And from Vic’s friend Piper. That’s not helpful. I’m sorry.”
“No worries.” Haris’s rapid-fire self-doubting declarations were making Sam’s pulse race. She made a point of projecting detachment. “It’s all good.”
Haris did not seem convinced. “Or I could see if she still had her location turned on.”
“What?” The question had shot so fast from her throat, it made Sam cough.
“She’s given you location tracking?” Bex asked. “Why the hell haven’t you checked it already?”
He ran one of his hands through his hair. “It’s just that—”
“Turn it on, man!” Vic shouted. “Better yet, share it with me!”
“I wouldn’t ever—”
“It’s an emergency.” Bex was attempting her gentle voice, but the undisguised urgency in it gave off enough decibels that Haris reared back from the phone. “I’m sure Ramona would never challenge someone who used information to help her, even as a private person.”
“It’s okay,” Frankie said from out of view of the camera. “I’ll back you up.”
Haris’s face relaxed, and he looked to where Frankie was with gratitude. It made Sam’s chest ache. She had loved Frankie since she was a girl. Frankie deserved someone who looked at her that way.
And kissing Bex had made Sam sappy.
“Hang on.” Haris reached around to his back pocket and pulled out his own phone. He stared at it for a moment, then let out a sharp breath, stretched his neck, and squared his shoulders.
“You’re not getting ready to slalom down a mountain, Haris,” Vic bit out. “Open the freaking app.”
He shot a look at Vic that she fully deserved, then swiped and tapped at his screen.
“Well?” Sam hadn’t meant to sound so impatient, but if Haris could track Ramona, it would be such a tidy conclusion to the mystery Macie had dropped on them. She wanted to find out that Ramona was camped out at a friend’s or holed up in a hotel in Nevada. Somewhere.
“It’s going to take me a minute,” Haris said. “My whole family shares locations. There’s so many iPads and phones on here.”
Vic closed her eyes. “Haris has a huge family. This could take all damn day.”
“Found it!” Haris looked up at the camera. “I’m still connected to Ms. Watts’s phone! She never took me off.”
Sam crossed her legs and summoned the patience she’d cultivated growing up with five men. “And?”
Haris held up a finger, then went back to tapping. “She’s … nowhere.”
“What?!” Now Bex shouted in earnest, making Sam’s ears ring.
“I mean that it says she’s offline, and ‘no location found.’ That could mean a lot of things. Her phone could be turned off. Or she doesn’t have an Internet connection.”
“Or she stopped sharing with you?” Sam asked.
“No, if she stops sharing, she’s gone from my list. She is sharing, but she’s not online. I have a toggle for if I want to be notified when she connects again.”
“Do that, oh my God,” Vic said.
“And do you know if she shares her location with anyone else?” Bex was sitting on her hands to keep control of herself. “Macie didn’t mention it, and I can’t imagine Macie would forget they had that access if they did, but maybe a different friend?”
Haris shook his head, then had to catch his glasses to keep them from flying off.
“Not that I know of. She was making an exception for me. She didn’t like the idea of being tracked, but when I worked for her, she was doing a movie that shot all over L.A.
, sometimes multiple locations in a day.
She wanted to make sure she kept on schedule and made every call.
I shared my location with her, too, so we could accomplish this. ”
Ramona disliked the idea of being tracked.
Was that paranoia or practicality? Or just being part of a generation that wasn’t used to leaving digital footprints everywhere they went?
Sam thought again about how fine the line could be between privacy and secrecy.
“Who took the assistant job after you?” she asked.
“If we could talk to that person, they might know more than you do.”
Haris shook his head. “She had to fire them. There was some turmoil with a friend in her personal life, and she was concerned this assistant would leak to the tabloids. She didn’t hire another assistant after that.
Ramona actually contacted me to see if I wanted the job again. That’s how I even know about it.”
Sam mentally crossed the potential lead off her list. Macie had made it clear that she and Bex shouldn’t reach out to anyone who couldn’t be trusted to keep Ramona’s situation under wraps.
She tapped her upper lip. “What about this friend she was having problems with? Do you know anything about that?”
“I don’t. Her circle of friends is small. I can say that if she fired an assistant because she was simply worried they would leak whatever was going on, then whatever was going on was probably about this friend acting messy and threatening her private life, not about anything Ms. Watts was doing.”
Haris was the third person to tell them Ramona wasn’t messy. Sam filed this away.
Frankie stepped into the frame and took Haris’s phone from his hand.
She tapped the screen. “The notification thing is turned on now. But, you know, it won’t work if her phone’s dead.
Or if she got a new one. People switch phones.
” When she gazed into the camera, her mouth in a firm line, Sam saw the same disappointed worry in her expression that all of them felt.
People went missing in Los Angeles every day.
It wasn’t unusual for celebrities and others with industry connections to drop off the map.
A starlet walked out of a party and never made it home.
A director took a trip to the desert and didn’t return.
In a town where youth and beauty were a currency, where #metoo had turned over dozens of rocks and exposed the scandals and shame hiding beneath, it was hard not to worry that Ramona was gone in a way that meant she’d never turn her phone back on.
“Maybe you guys could ask her roommate if he knows anything,” Haris said from somewhere off-screen.
“Her roommate?” Vic asked.
Sam collapsed back into her chair and caught Bex’s eyes. “Macie did not, I am positive, mention a roommate.”
“I put that wrong. He’s not exactly a ‘roommate.’” Back in front of the camera, Haris made air quotes around the word. “Colin Worth rents her guesthouse.”
“Colin Worth!?” Bex was projecting with her full voice again. “Broadway’s Colin Worth. The man who I wrote a letter to when I was twelve years old, who graciously sent me an autographed headshot that is right now hanging in my hallway?”
“His name is also on the list April gave me,” Sam said. “I was saving it, but we got caught up with Haris.”
“Well, that’s a hell of a secret,” Bex said. “I’ll tell you right now, if April put Sir Colin Worth on the list, we are giving him a call. But how private do you have to be to keep a seven-time Tony winner stashed in your fucking guesthouse?”
Privacy. Secrets. When it came to Ramona Watts, which one was it?