Racing toward them.
Chapter 17
Ten minutes later, Barb was dazed and jet-lagged as she entered a suite that on another day, and in different circumstances, she would have thought “magnificent.” If she had peeked at the rate card behind the door, she would have seen that the charge for the suite was over three thousand dollars a day.
She walked into the heart of the main room, as good as sleepwalking, seeing but not taking in the hand-knotted silk carpet, a pattern of orchids on a pale peach ground; the tapestry-upholstered furnishings; the huge flat-panel television.
She went to the window, looked out at the beauty without really seeing it, just looking for Kim.
There was a gorgeous swimming pool below, a complicated shape, like a square laid over a rectangle, with circular Jacuzzis at the shallow end. A fountain, like a champagne glass, in the middle spilled water over the children playing.
She scanned the rows of pure white cabanas around the pool, looking for a young woman in a chaise sipping a drink, Kim sitting at the poolside.
Barb saw several girls, some slimmer or heavier or older or shorter, but none of them Kim.
She looked out beyond the pool, saw a covered walk, wooden steps going down to the beach dotted with palm trees, fronted by the sapphire blue ocean, nothing but water between the edge of the beach and the coast of Japan.
Where was Kim?
Barb wanted to say to Levon, “I feel Kim's presence here,” but when she turned, Levon wasn't there.
She noticed an ornate basket of fruit on the table near the window and went to it, heard the toilet flush as she lifted out the note that was in fact a business card with a message written on the back.
Levon, her poor dear husband, his eyes unblinking and pained behind his glasses, came toward her, asking, “What's that, Barb?”
She read out loud, “Dear Mr. and Mrs. McDaniels, please call me. We're here to help in any way we can.”
The card was signed, “Susan Gruber, SL,” and under her name was a room number.
Levon said, “Susan Gruber. She's the editor in chief. I'll call her now.”
Barb felt hope. Gruber was in charge. She'd know something.
Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes later, the McDanielses' hotel room was full. Standing room only.
Chapter 18
Barb sat on one of the sofas, her hands clasped on her lap, waiting for Susan Gruber, this take-charge New York executive, with her bright white teeth and face as sharp as a blade, to tell them that Kim had had a fight with the photographer, or that she hadn't photographed well enough and so she'd been given the time off – or something, anything that would clear it all up, make it so that Kim was simply absent, not missing, not abducted, not in danger.
Gruber was wearing an aquamarine pantsuit and a lot of gold bracelets, and her fingers were cold when she reached out to shake hands with Barbara.
Del Swann, the art director, had dark skin, platinum hair, jewelry in one ear, and he was dressed in fashionably worn-out jeans and a tight black T-shirt. He looked like he was about to have a mental collapse, making Barbara think maybe he knew more than he was saying – or maybe he felt guilty because he was the last one to see Kim.
There were two other men. The senior one was forty-something, in a gray suit, had corporation written all over him. Barb had met men like this at Levon's Merrill Lynch conventions and business cocktail parties. She thought it was a pretty safe bet that he, and the junior clone standing to his right, were both New York lawyers who'd been overnighted to Maui like a FedEx package in order to cover the magazine's ass.
And Barb looked at Carol Sweeney, a big woman wearing an expensive, if shapeless, black dress. As the booker from the modeling agency who'd landed this job for Kim and had gone on the shoot as Kim's chaperone, Carol looked like she'd swallowed a dog, that's how choked up she was.
Barb couldn't stand to be in the same room with Carol.
The senior suit, Barb forgot his name as soon as she heard it, told Levon, “We have a security team working to find out where Kim may have gone.”
He didn't even look at Barb. Directed his attention to Levon. Pretty much, they all did. She knew she looked emotional, fragile. And who could say she didn't have good reason.
“What more can you tell us?” Barb asked the lawyer.
“There's no sign that anything happened to her. The police assume she's sightseeing.”
Barb thought, Levon, tell them, but Levon had said to her before the magazine people arrived, “We'll take information in. We'll listen. But we've got to keep in mind that we don't know these people.” Meaning, anyone attached to the magazine could have had something to do with Kim's disappearance.
Susan Gruber put her elbows on her knees and leaned forward, said to Levon, “Kim was inside the hotel bar with Del, and Del went to the men's room, and when he returned, Kim was gone. No one took Kim. She left on her own.”
“So that's the story?” Levon asked. “Kim left the hotel bar on her own, and no one's heard from her, and she's been gone for a day and a half, and that means to you that Kim ditched the shoot and went sightseeing? Am I getting that right?”
“She's an adult, Mr. McDaniels,” Gruber said. “It wouldn't be the first time a girl dumped a job. I remember this girl, Gretchen, took off in Cannes last year, showed up in Monte Carlo six days later.”
Gruber was talking like this was her office, and she was patiently explaining her job to Levon. “We've got eight girls on this shoot.” She went on to say how many people she had to supervise and all the things she had to cover, and how she had to be on the set every minute or looking at the day's shots?
Barbara felt the pressure building inside her head. All that gold on Susan Gruber, but no wedding ring. Did she have a child? Did she even know one? Susan Gruber didn't get it.
“We love Kim,” Carol Sweeney blurted to Barb. “I? I felt that Kim was safe here. I was having dinner with one of the other models. I mean, Kim is such a good girl and so responsible, I never thought we had reason to worry.”
“I only turned my back for a minute,” said Del Swann. And then he started to cry.
It all became clear to Barb, why Gruber had brought her people to see them. Barbara had been raised to be nice, but now that she'd stopped denying the obvious, she had to say it.
“You're not responsible? Is that why you're all here? To tell us that you're not responsible for Kim?”
No one met her gaze.
“We've told the police everything we know,” said Gruber.
Levon stood up, put his hand on Barb's shoulder, and said to the magazine people, “Please call if you learn anything. Right now, we'd like to be alone. Thanks.”
Gruber stood, slung the strap of her handbag across her narrow chest, said, “Kim will be back. Don't worry.”
“You mean, you hope and pray with every miserable breath you take,” said Barbara.
Chapter 19
A man stood in the thick of the media gaggle outside the Wailea Princess main entrance, waiting for the press conference to start.
He blended in well, appeared to be a guy living out of a duffel bag, maybe sleeping on the beach. He had on sports sunglasses wrapped around his face like a windshield, even though the sun was going down. Dodgers cap over his rusty brown hair, vintage Adidas, rumpled cargo pants, and hanging down in front of his cheap Hawaiian shirt was a perfect replica of a press pass identifying him as a photographer, Charles Rollins of Talk Weekly, a publication that didn't exist.
His video camera was expensive, though, a state-of-the-art Panasonic, HD-compatible with a stereo microphone boom and a Leica lens, costing over six thousand bucks.