Chapter 73: The Party Mission
The home theater showroom had gone very quiet.
The six members of the sports team were seated on the sectional sofa, arranged in the posture of people who had recently reconsidered a number of their decisions. Several of them had developing bruises. One was holding his jaw. Another was trying not to look at Simon at all, which was its own kind of answer.
Simon was seated across from them in the display armchair, hands folded, smiling pleasantly.
"The thing about communication," he said, "is that it works better when everyone's calm. You notice how much more productive this conversation is now than it was five minutes ago?"
No one responded to this.
"Excellent. So here's where we are." Simon looked around the group. "I'm going to say this once, clearly, so there's no confusion later. If I see any of you in this section of this store again — this room, specifically — I will handle it in a way that will require you to explain the results to a medical professional." He kept his voice pleasant throughout. "Are we aligned on that?"
Several heads nodded. The nodding was sincere.
"Wonderful. You're free to go."
They went. Not walking — moving with the specific energy of people who had somewhere else to be and had just been reminded of that fact.
Simon stood, straightened his jacket, and walked out of the showroom.
Lester and Morgan were waiting in the aisle with the expressions of men who had been listening through the wall and were still processing what they'd heard.
"You alright?" Morgan said carefully.
"Fine. They were very reasonable once we established some shared expectations." Simon looked at Lester. "One paid day off. We had an agreement."
Lester opened his mouth, looked at Simon's expression, and closed it again. "Yes. One paid day off. Absolutely."
Simon retrieved his name badge from Chuck, who had been holding it with the expression of someone watching a nature documentary that had taken an unexpected turn.
The rest of the shift passed without incident.
He was home by seven, showered by seven-fifteen, and dressed by seven-thirty.
The suit was the same one he'd worn to the 71Above dinner with Meg — it had earned its keep twice now. He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, adjusted the tie, and decided it was fine.
Meg was waiting at her front door when he pulled up. She came down the porch steps in a white evening dress that had clearly been chosen with this specific event in mind — the kind of dress that made every other sartorial decision in a room look considered rather than accidental.
Simon got out of the car.
"I guarantee," he said, taking her hand, "you are the most interesting person in that room before we walk through the door."
"That's a very specific kind of compliment," Meg said.
"It's accurate. Come on."
Von Hayes's estate was in Bel Air — the kind of property that announced itself through its gate rather than its architecture, which was the tell of old money that had stopped needing to explain itself. The drive was lined with cars that Simon recognized as expensive without being able to name them specifically, which was a reliable indicator of the guest tier.
A valet took the Mustang. Simon noted the slight pause of a young man encountering an American muscle car among a fleet of European luxury vehicles and deciding not to comment.
They walked in together.
The main event space was a large interior courtyard that had been opened to the December night — heaters positioned throughout, string lighting overhead, a band playing something tasteful in the far corner. Waitstaff moved through the crowd with champagne and small plates.
Simon spent the first fifteen minutes being sociable with the people Meg knew, which required less effort than it might have — Meg was naturally graceful in these environments, and he'd learned that staying slightly quieter than the room expected made him more memorable rather than less.
"Can I interest you in a dance?" he said, when the band shifted to something with a clear tempo.
"You can always interest me in a dance," Meg said.
He led her to the open space near the band and they fell into it — not showy, just present, the way dancing worked when both people knew what they were doing and didn't need to make a point of it.
"That's Sarah," Meg said quietly, maybe three minutes in.
Simon had already seen them — Sarah and Bryce, three couples away, moving through the floor with the practiced ease of two people who had covered operational ground together and found social situations considerably simpler by comparison. Bryce was in his element. Sarah was performing hers.
"Probably," Simon said.
"Who's the man with her?"
"Someone she knows."
Meg looked at him.
"I genuinely don't know enough of the details to give you an accurate answer," Simon said. "And knowing more details would create a problem."
"Because you'd have to decide what to tell Chuck."
"Yes."
Meg was quiet for a moment. "That's a real dilemma."
"I know."
"Speaking of people and their complicated situations," Meg said, "Veronica has a new boyfriend."
Simon's attention sharpened slightly. "Who?"
"Logan."
Simon processed this. He'd suspected it — the way she'd talked about Logan two months ago, the specific quality of defensiveness that came before admitting you liked someone you didn't expect to like.
"They're actually together," he said.
"They're happy," Meg said. "That's what matters."
Simon looked at her. "You're going to tell me to ease off."
"I'm going to tell you that Veronica is my best friend and she's happy. And that whatever history you have with Logan is yours to manage. But she shouldn't have to manage it too."
Simon thought about this honestly. Logan was a specific kind of difficult — the kind that made rooms harder rather than easier. But Veronica had always been able to handle difficult, and she'd chosen this.
"Alright," he said.
"That's it?"
"That's it. You're right."
Meg kissed him on the cheek. The band segued into something slower.
And then from the far side of the room, a bottle broke.
Not dramatically — just the specific crash of glassware hitting marble, followed by the silence that always followed unexpected sounds in enclosed spaces.
They turned.
A server was standing with one hand still extended where a champagne bottle had been. The broken glass was at his feet.
The server was Chuck.
Chuck, who was supposed to be in the background. Chuck, who had clearly just seen something that had broken his operational composure, because his eyes were fixed on the dance floor where Sarah and Bryce were currently positioned in a way that communicated something Chuck had not been prepared to see.
Simon heard Casey in his earpiece: a slow, tired exhale.
"He's going to get fired," Meg said quietly.
"Almost certainly," Simon agreed.
Indeed, thirty seconds later, a man in event management attire was escorting Chuck toward the service exit with the polite firmness of someone who had handled this before.
"Did you know he was going to be here?" Meg asked.
"Yes."
"And that she—" Meg glanced at Sarah, still dancing.
"Yes."
"And you didn't tell him."
"Operational necessity," Simon said.
Meg looked at him with the expression she used when she accepted something without quite approving of it.
"Lewis." Casey's voice in the earpiece, clipped and quiet. "Stay focused. We have a target. Female, blonde, white blouse. She's been within fifteen feet of Hayes since the party started."
Simon swept the room without moving his head.
He found her quickly — a woman in her early thirties, positioned near Hayes with the specific quality of someone who was interested in a person and in the room around that person simultaneously. Two different kinds of attention, running at the same time, which was the tell.
"I need some air," Simon said to Meg. "I'm going to find a quiet corner."
He produced a single cigar from his jacket — which he'd obtained that afternoon specifically for this moment.
Meg looked at it. "Since when—"
"Recently," Simon said.
She studied him for a moment with the perceptive attention that had always been her most consistent quality.
"Go," she said. "Come back smelling like yourself, not that."
He kissed her and moved toward the corridor.
The estate's main corridor connected the event space to the private wing through a series of rooms that had been opened for the evening's guests. Simon moved through them with the unhurried purpose of a guest exploring the property, found a utility passage off the third room that wasn't on the guest route, and followed it.
The room adjacent to the study — where Hayes and the woman had moved ten minutes earlier, based on Simon's tracking — shared a wall that was, like many older Bel Air estates, not particularly well soundproofed.
Simon settled in and listened.
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