“Listening to people whine is what you do for a living. Aunt Janet was probably just trolling for some free therapy. What’s her beef with Shane?”
She squinched up her nose. “‘He’s thirty-five, Cheryl,’ ” she said, her voice endearingly whiny. “‘The man is not married, and he’s too busy with his damn restaurant to give me any grandchildren.’ ”
“I’m just an amateur shrink,” I said, “but if I were you, I’d tell Aunt Janet that she’s suffering from a case of meddling motheritis and that her son’s marital status is none of her business. He’ll get around to having kids in due time.”
“Due time? Did you hear what Shane said? The woman leaves nothing to chance. She didn’t come to me because I’m a therapist, Zach. She played the blood-is-thicker-than-water card, and she recruited me to fix him up with someone who will knock his socks off.”
“If she really wants grandchildren, you’re going to have to find someone who can get him to take off more than his socks.”
“You’re not helping, Zach. Most of my friends are married. I need to find someone who is single, smart, and Shane-worthy. Any thoughts?”
My only thoughts were that guys like Shane Talbot didn’t need help getting dates and that Cheryl would be wise not to get caught up in the family drama. I was debating whether to say that out loud when my cell vibrated.
Cheryl has a no-phones-at-the-dinner-table rule, but I’m allowed to make sure it’s not a work emergency, so I took a quick peek at my caller ID. It was my partner.
“Kylie,” I said, explaining why I had to take the call, but that’s not how Cheryl took it.
Her eyes sparked. “Kylie,” she said. “Interesting. Shane has always been attracted to strong women. Classic mommy complex.”
She’d read me wrong. I needed to clear up the misconception, but first I had to answer the phone and let Kylie know that unless it was an emergency, I was too busy to talk to her. “Hey,” I said, putting the phone to my ear. “Can I call you back in five?”
“No,” she said. “I’m at Erin Easton’s wedding, and we’ve got a shit-storm on our hands, Zach.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but the bride is missing. It looks like she’s been taken. I’m at the Manhattan Center. How soon can you get here?”
“Ten minutes,” I said, ending the call and getting out of my seat. “Kidnapping,” I said to Cheryl. “I’ve got to go meet Kylie.”
Cheryl was used to my sudden departures. She stood and gave me a quick kiss. “Ask Kylie if she’d be interested in dating a tall, good-looking guy who can cook.”
“Sure,” I said. But I already knew the answer. Of course she would. Kylie had had a torrid affair with one eleven years ago. Me.
CHAPTER 2
A CAB HAD just dropped people off in front of the restaurant. I jumped in and gave the driver the address.
I was in a hurry, and since not every cabby knows the fastest way between two points, I checked the hack license mounted on the partition. The first two digits were 39. I was in luck. That meant this man had been ferrying people around New York City for at least forty years. He wouldn’t be needing a back-seat driver.
“You’re late,” the cabby said, pulling out.
“Late for what?” I said.
“The Wedding of the Century. Erin and Jamie are getting married in the Hammerstein Ballroom, but it started about three hours ago.”
He reached over the front seat and held up a copy of the New York Post. A picture of Erin Easton, her plastic boobs and sculpted ass straining the integrity of a string bikini, took up most of the front page. There was a two-inch inset of the other half of the happy couple—the one most people didn’t care about—Jamie Gibbs.
“Read all about it,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said, “but I’ve got to make a call.”
I hit Kylie’s number on my speed-dial, and she picked up on the first ring.
“I’m up to my eyeballs in crazy people,” she said. “What’s your ETA?”
“I was at a restaurant on Bank Street. We’re just turning onto Eighth Avenue. I’ll be there in less than ten. When did you get the call?”
“I didn’t. I was at the wedding. Shelley Trager and the rest of the big guns at Silvercup Studios were invited. Shelley’s wife got hit with the stomach flu, so he called me around noon and asked if I’d be his plus-one. I don’t have much of a social life these days, so I said what the hell. I was the first one on the scene. I called Captain Cates. She activated a level-one mobilization.”
There was a time when cops would hear a level 1 come over the air, and it would be a holy-shit moment. These days it’s so overused that the sense of urgency is gone. Cops want the details before they drop everything and go. Is it a shooting on a busy street corner? Or did the parents of some Upper East Side high-school kid panic and call 911 because Junior was three hours late coming home from school?
But this was the real deal. When one of the most recognizable people on the planet gets abducted, that’s level 1 on steroids. Knowing Cates, she’d have called for an army of cops to search the venue, canvass the area, and wrangle the crowd and at least two detectives from every precinct to ID and question the A-list guests, most of whom would probably think they were too damn important to be detained.
I figured by the time I got to the Manhattan Center, it would be a sea of flashing lights and wailing sirens with cops pouring in, guests wanting out, and media trucks clogging the road for blocks.
I told Kylie I’d be there as soon as possible and hung up. “You’re not going to be able to get me all the way to Thirty-Fourth,” I told the cabby. “Just keep driving till you hit a wall, and I’ll jog the rest of the way.”
“What’s going on?” he said.
“I can’t give you the details,” I told him, “but let’s just say that the Wedding of the Century is now the Clusterfuck of the Century.”
CHAPTER 3
YOU’RE A COP in a big hurry, right?” my cabby said.
“Detective,” I said. “Affirmative on the big hurry.”
“You won’t have to jog,” he said as he maneuvered around a city bus. “There’s always white hats outside of Penn Station keeping traffic moving. I’ll drive, you flash your tin, they’ll wave us through.”
He did, I did, and they did.
I’d clipped my shield to my jacket, and as soon as I got out of the taxi, a uniformed officer spotted me, moved the barrier, and escorted me to the Manhattan Center.
Built as an opera house by Oscar Hammerstein I over a hundred years ago, it is now a state-of-the-art production facility catering to film companies, TV networks, and record labels, but much of the old-world elegance and grandeur still lives on in the form of two sprawling event spaces: the Grand Ballroom and the Hammerstein, site of the Easton-Gibbs nuptials.
And now the majestic old building would add a new entry to its star-studded history: crime scene.
The officer led me to the nether regions of the huge complex, navigating through cinder-block corridors never seen or even imagined by anyone but service people. Kylie and a man in a charcoal-gray suit were waiting for me.