Alexis and the Lake Tahoe Tumult - Erica Rodgers [36]
“First let’s just do general taping,” Alexis suggested. “We’ll go around taping the event and people, and decide which stars we want to talk to later.”
“What about Chloe?” Bailey asked.
“We’ll look for her while we’re wandering around and getting an overview. That’s why I just want to start filming and wandering—that will give us an excuse to go around looking for her.”
“Then we can follow her until we see who her boss is?”
“Yes, that’s what I was thinking,” Alexis said. “Or even better, I hope she’ll arrive with him, so we get that figured out right away.”
“I wonder if she knows how he got the red paint,” Bailey said. “I wonder if she’s in on it, too.”
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
“What are we going to do when we see her with her boss?” Bailey asked.
“Well, first of all, let’s get close and see if his hand is red with the spray paint. Then we’re going to have to come up with some way to see if we can get some evidence to confront him with.
“I hate to say this,” said Alexis, “but I actually hope this guy threatens Jake to his face. I mean, I don’t want him to hurt him, but if we could get a threat on tape, it would be something to take to the police…. Bailey?”
Alexis turned and saw that Bailey had wandered off. She was back at their table chatting away with yet another Oscar winner. Alexis shrugged and kept walking lazily through the crowd. To an outsider, it would look like she was simply listening to the easy party conversations going on all over the room. In reality, though, she was only listening to one person—Jake.
The earpiece in Alexis’s ear caught a signal from his microphone and allowed her to hear everything. She figured it looked pretty natural for a camera operator to have an earpiece. At best, she just looked like she was listening to a director in the other room. At worst, she just looked like she had an earpiece for a cell phone in.
She was surprised to find that she could actually hear the other people talking to Jake as well. Alexis had been unsure if the mic would pick them up, but it did. Now all she had to do was wait for the right person to talk to Jake.
As if on cue, Alexis saw Chloe—the red-haired assistant—waltz through the door. She was in a beautiful, brown, floor-length gown, but her face looked the same as usual—grumpy. If Alexis was right, Chloe was not in the mood for a party.
And she was alone.
Alexis’s high hopes plummeted. She had been so sure that Chloe’s boss would arrive with her. Now, though, she realized that had been a silly thing to be sure of. They had never seen Chloe with her boss, so why should this party be any different?
Alexis left her video camera at the table so she wouldn’t be conspicuous and followed Chloe around. She watched the woman from a distance and kept track of every man she talked to. As soon as Chloe finished a conversation, Alexis would move in and do what she could to check the man’s left hand for red paint.
She had to get pretty creative. Some of the men made it easy by waving to her with their left hands. Other times, she had to introduce herself and offer a hand to shake—the left one. She knew this made her look clumsy and naive, but it worked. Most people simply smiled at her mistake and shook her left hand anyway.
Soon it felt as if she had talked to every person in the room. She wasn’t used to high heels, so her feet were beginning to hurt. Alexis returned to the table and found Bailey messing with the video camera.
“I got some great footage of the guests!” Bailey said as Alexis sat down. “Now I have it all set up to tape Jake’s speech. Have you met anyone cool?”
Bailey went into detail about all the stars she had met and gotten autographs from, but Alexis didn’t hear her. Misty was on the stage in front of the red curtain. She had a microphone and was getting ready to introduce Jake and the eagles.
But that wasn’t what caught her eye. She had just seen Jake go backstage—and he hadn’t gone alone.
Seconds after he disappeared behind the side of