She sounded serious enough that Scarlett found herself getting off the bed and walking robotically down the hall toward the Maxwell Suite. Lola had that kind of presence, if she really wanted to use it. That was how she managed to become one of the top salespeople on Bendel’s makeup floor before she got herself fired.

Spencer’s door was shut, but there was a light on underneath. Scarlett reached up to knock, but then recalled his strange reaction that afternoon. The smug look, the odd laugh…it made her angry and uneasy all over again. She turned and went back to the Orchid Suite room, but the door had been locked.

“That was way too short,” Lola called from inside. “I’m serious. Go and talk to him.”

This night was unfair, and every door on the fifth floor led to some kind of pitfall. It was only a situation this dire that could make her go down one flight and approach the room at the end of the hall. That door flung open after one knock.

“I was wondering when you’d come and fess up,” Mrs. Amberson said. “When I didn’t see you at the cast party…”

“You were there?”

“Take a deep breath, O’Hara. All things can be overcome if we remember to breathe. I take it you have some personal issues to sort out?”

“Kind of,” Scarlett admitted.

“Then you have done the right thing by coming to me. Meet me in the lobby in five minutes. We’re going somewhere fabulous.”

Somewhere fabulous turned out to be a restaurant called Raw Deal, where none of the food was cooked above a light steaming and nothing was quite as it seemed. The burgers were made of sesame seeds and millet. The tomato sauce was made of beets. Even the “cola” was some syrupy concoction of tree sap and human misery.

They took one of the sidewalk tables so Mrs. Amberson could smoke, a fact that clearly annoyed the other diners and the staff.

“For the last week,” she said, gleefully exhaling a plume in the direction of a particularly peevish looking guy eating a pyramid of lentils, “you have looked like someone about to be sent to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in a second hand Citroën. If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, I will be forced to investigate, and you don’t want that.”

The waiter came over, presumably to request that she stop puffing like a dragon at his other tables, but she undercut him with an order for the adzuki dip with blue algae crumbles, punctuated with a “do not cross me or I will set you on fire” smile.

The one thing Scarlett’s life was currently missing—and could happily continue to miss—was a deep investigation by Mrs. Amberson. Plus, she had run out of options on her own. It was easier just to tell her.

“I’m sort of…with someone in the cast.”

“Ah, the missing verb,” she said. “It’s like the lost chord. And how are things with Eric going?”