“What do you mean where’s Stanley?”
I looked down at the empty floor.
Uh-oh.
“Erica, where is my dog?”
“Kit Kat and Tweety! I left him with them.” I hurried around the partition to where I had been sitting with the twins. No twins. No Stanley.
“You left my dog with the twins? I wouldn’t let the twins watch a goldfish,” Freddie said, looking around at the empty chairs and floor. “So where is he?”
“He was here a second ago. He can’t have gone far.”
“I can’t believe you lost my dog!”
I held up my hands and took a breath. “I didn’t lose your dog … like permanently. He’s here somewhere. I’m sorry. I was distracted. You’re never going to believe what just h—”
“Remind me to never let you babysit again.” Freddie’s gaze whipped around the crowd. Then he pulled out his phone. “I’ll get Tyler on it. He’d better have his phone on.” Once his thumbs stopped jumping he looked up at me. “So what am I never going to believe happened?”
“Oh,” I said, grabbing his elbow and giving it an excited little shake. “I think Grady and Candace might be having relationship trouble.”
Freddie had gone from angry flutter-blinking at me just a moment ago to the slow blink. It was hard to say which one was worse.
“I mean, we were talking—just the three of us—and then Candace gave him the ol’ Can I speak to you in the kitchen, honey? but, you know, not in those words.”
“That’s it?”
My hands fell to my sides. “What do you mean, that’s it? That’s huge. They even went to another room to talk.”
Freddie scratched his chin. “So what you’re telling me is that you lost my dog because—”
“Wait! There’s more.” I was in big trouble here. Freddie’s right eyelid was twitching a bit now.
“Okay,” he said, folding his arms across his chest, but quickly unfolded them when he saw that he was creasing his silk scarf. “Let’s hear it.”
“Mrs. Robinson dropped her champagne glass just now and Candace totally freaked out.”
No reaction.
Oh wait, that was because he didn’t know what Mrs. Watson had told me. “I realize that doesn’t sound like much, but Candace is the one who has been receiving the threatening letters in town. Multiple letters.”
“What?”
I held up my hands. “Okay, so Mrs. Watson was taking me to see my mother in her fortune-telling room, and—”
“Fortune-telling room?” Freddie asked, suddenly looking even more dangerous. His eyebrows were pointed down now like two thin lightning bolts. “Your mother is fortune-telling? And nobody thought to tell me?”
“Let me back up for just a moment here. Or maybe I should just fast-forward over that part to—dog!” I suddenly shouted, pointing toward the hallway that Candace and Grady had headed for. “I see tail!”
The tiniest of smiles touched the corner of Freddie’s mouth.
I smiled big back at him and nodded. “It was the I see tail, wasn’t it?”
He whacked my arm. “Let’s just go get my dog.”
Freddie and I navigated our way through the rapidly thickening crowd to the far side of the foyer.
“He must have gone in that door at the end,” Freddie said, pointing down the hallway.
We had only walked a few steps down the wood-paneled passage when Freddie stopped short. So short that I stumbled into his back. It was my fault. This was a pretty nice corridor, and I wasn’t paying attention. I was too busy running my fingers along the glossy wood. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Why are we stop—”
“Shush!” Freddie hissed.
“What?” I whispered.
“Don’t you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“Voices.”
“We’re at a party,” I said. I kept my voice to a whisper though.
“Not just voices. Angry voices.”
I stopped talking to try to hear what Freddie was going on about, but all I could hear was the jazz music and din of conversation from the party at our backs. “I don’t hear any—”
“Shush!” Freddie hissed again, waving me forward.
Suddenly I did hear a voice. It was coming from the far room.
“And we’re right back to where we started, aren’t we?”
My breath caught. That voice had sounded an awful lot like Candace’s …
Silence.
Then …
“I don’t think I can do this anymore.”