Games Divas Play (A Diva Mystery Novel) (23 page)

“No,” I admitted. “I’m going to do it
tonight.”

“What do you mean you haven’t told him? What about all those quotes that Marcus e-mailed to my editor about how happy he was about
the baby?”

I stiffened my shoulders and stared back at her with a hard glint
in my eye.

“Look, I’m going to tell him tonight, and all those things I said in the magazine are going to
be true.”

“Going to be true? Are you nuts? That’s not how it works,
Vanessa!”

“Look, don’t try to get all high and mighty with me right now. Look at how you sold your best friend down the river by working with a woman who is trying to destroy my family,” I yelled ba
ck at her.

“You know I didn’t have a choice,
Vanessa!”

“We always have choices, Nia. And I’ve made mine. The magazine will make its debut tonight at Laila’s party, and I’ll tell my husband that he’s going to be a father again. End of story. Even I couldn’t have dreamed that the magazine would be debuting the cover at that whore’s little party,” I said, clapping my hands. I knew I must have sounded and looked crazy, but I didn’t care. It was time for payback and for Laila to learn what it felt like to be h
umiliated.

“You know I’m your girl forever and always, but you better have my back when the ish hits the fan with DeAnna for dropping this bomb at the party we’re sponsoring. You do realize I could get fired for this?” she
asked me.

“Look, Nia, you wanted a big story, and I gave you one. So now let’s just sit back and watch the f
ireworks.”

When Nia left, she wasn’t totally happy with me, but she’d get over it. I was confident that my plan would prove fruitful for the b
oth of us.

The next knock at the door was also exactly on time. And after my last meeting, I was looking forward to this one, which was hopefully going to bring me more
good news.

“Mrs. King,” said the tall gentleman in an expensive black suit, crisp white shirt, and yellow Hermès tie as I opened the door. His dark hair and piercing blue eyes complemented his tan features, reminding me of T
om Cruise.

“Mr. Knight, please come in,” I said as I shook his outstret
ched hand.

“Thank you, Mrs. King. It’s such a pleasure to finally meet you i
n person.”

“The pleasure is all mine. We’ve certainly been texting and
e-mailing for quite some time. Please call me Vanessa.” I led him into our suite, and we walked past the formal dining room and into the sunken li
ving room.

“And please call me John,” he said as he unbuttoned his suit jacket and took a seat on the long
gray sofa.

“I’d offer you a drink, John, but frankly we don’t have much time. My husband will be here in about thirty minutes, and he’d go ballistic if he saw you here, so let’s get down to business, shall we?” I asked as I took a seat next to him on
the sofa.

“That sounds good to me,” John said, smiling as he reached into his
briefcase.

“Good,” I said with a smile of my own. “So, John, tell me how your firm, Knight Sports Management, plans to take my husband Marcus King’s career to the next level and how you’re going to get him out of his contract with that thieving son of a bitch, Kare
em Davis.”

I closed the door behind John and ran into the bedroom, giddy with excitement. The Knight Sports Management proposal had exceeded my wildest expectations. While we hadn’t had time to go through the entire proposal, John hit the high points, outlining a top-tier strategy about how to make Marcus an internati
onal star.

But the most illuminating part of the meeting had to be the research
Knight’s team had done reconstructing Marcus’s earnings over the past year and matching that up with the forensic accountant’s audit I had begun when we first got to New York. I always suspected that Kareem was skimming money, but I had no way of proving it. Now, thanks to Knight, I had all the proof I needed and
then some.

He also shared one cautionary note: with all the recent drama Marcus and I had been going through, John heard that the Gladiators’ owners were getting nervous. They were concerned that Marcus could get involved with a career-ending scandal and, even worse, that winning basketball games didn’t seem to be his priority. John assured me that he understood that all athletes go through rough patches, but one of the things that his firm specialized in was crisis management and making unwanted people and problem
s go away.

The buzzing of my phone on the nightstand interrupted my reverie. I rolled over to pick it up and read the incoming tex
t message.

What I read made me drop the phone and scream. This couldn’t be happen
ing again.

Welcome back to Phoenix, bitch! Are you rea
dy to die?

CHAPTER 18

Nia

A
s the eleva
tor doors opened into the crowded lobby of the Ritz-Carlton hotel, I reconsidered if it was a good idea to come downstairs to meet MJ. My intention was to order a very large alcoholic beverage and download to MJ
my disastrous confrontation with Vanessa, but the sea of bodies cut off a direct path to the bar. The lobby was packed with clusters of B-list celebrities and their entourages, basketball players in warm-up suits and sunglasses, and women dressed in what can only charitably be described as damn near nothing. Cameras were snapping, video cameras shooting, and phone and room numbers were exchanged. I felt like I had stumbled into
hedonism.

This wasn’t a professional sports weekend; this was Freaknik for grown-ups. All these people weren’t staying at the hotel, but the earnest hotel staff conferring behind the check-in desk felt powerless to stop everyone who had turned their elegant lobby into a makeshift nightclub. But then the scent of reefer wafted in the air, and I knew the party in the lobby would be over soon. Any moment hotel security, backed up by Phoenix police, would sweep in and order anyone without a hotel key
to leave.

“Excuse me,” I said as I twisted my body sideways to squeeze between masses of oiled and scented bodies. It was slowgoing. At about the halfway point, I tried to jump up to see over the heads of the people in front of me to make sure I was even headed in the right direction. A woman, wearing a short orange silk halter dress that looked like she fell into a paper shredder on the way to the hotel, snapped at me angrily when I accidently came down on her diamond-encrusted big toe stuffed in an open-toe cryst
al sandal.

“Watch it,
bitch
!” she said, popping her gum as she whipped around, slapping me in the face with a mass of Indian-hair extensions in a confection of curls that looked straight off the Miss Americ
a pageant.

I smiled and apologized to the young woman, hoping to diffuse a potential episode of
When Sisters Attack
, but her girls didn’t want to
let it go.

“Nuh uh, girrrrrl. I know she didn’t just step on your fresh diamond pedi,” said one of her friends who was clad in a fuchsia copy of the shredded dress worn by the offen
ded party.

“Is you crazy? You know how much I paid for this pedicure?” the woman with the helmet of hair said as she reached down to rub her foot dramatically. A chorus of “I know that’s right” rained down o
n my head.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, craning my neck to see if I could make a quick escape, but my path was blocked by the crowd of men talking loudly about all the women they intended to sleep with thi
s weekend.

“I know you ain’t trying to just run off like you ain’t just step on my damn foot,” the woman started again, stepping closer to me. Did she really want to fight in the middle of the Ritz-Carlton? I couldn’t imagine being a grown woman and fighting over stepping on someone’s toe, but I also knew enough from growing up on the streets of the Chi that this young woman felt like I had disrespected her in front of her friends, and she wasn’t going to stand for that. I hadn’t fought anybody since I was sixteen and had to throw down with a girl from another block after she accused me of trying to talk to her boyfriend at a skating party. I was nice with my hands, thanks to my uncle Frank, and back in the day we could have gone back and forth barking at each other until one of us jumped, but those days were far behind . . . for me
at least.

Suddenly MJ appeared by my side. He was not exactly giving me a fighting chance at 140 pounds, but it least there would be a witness to my side of the story when we were all inevitably
arrested.

“Hi, Nia, everything OK?” MJ asked, lifting his stunner shades. “Hi, ladies. Love the dresses
. Fierce!”

“Thanks, boo boo, but your friend here just fucked up my fifty-dollar pedicure, and I ain’t havin’ it,” the w
oman said.

“Oh, that’s Nia. She’s always so clumsy,” MJ said, putting his skinny arm around my shoulders as I gave him the
side eye.

“What’s your name, honey?” MJ said to the woman who was still huffing and puffing as he reached into his nylon Prada cross-body bag and pulled out a white
envelope.

“Remy Cherelle,” she said with her hand on her hip and a sculpted eyebr
ow raised.

“Well, Remy Cherelle, please, you and your gorgeous friends must accept our invitation to join us for the premiere party for Laila James’s new reality show,
What Laila Wants
,
at the Inferno tonight.” He handed each of the four young women a ticket to
the party.

“Eww, Serena, girl. We goin’ to Laila’s party!” squealed Remy Cherelle as she looked at her ticket and then high-fived her twin in the fuch
sia dress.

“That’s hot, girl!” Se
rena said.

“Ballin’!” the girls screamed in unison. Jim Jones would be
so proud.

“I told y’all we were going to be ballin’ this weekend,” said Remy, taking credit for getting her crew tickets to one of the hottest parties in town. “And you broke bitches ain’t even want to chip in gas money for the trip from
Houston!”

“You right, girl. You right,” another of Remy’s crew said with a nod. She had decided to break ranks on the fashion front and wear white leather jeans that looked like they had been painted on her curvaceous body, a black leather halter top, and a black rhinestone-studded c
owboy hat.

“I hope y’all got some more fabulous dresses, because this party is going to be off the chain, Ms. Remy,” MJ said, smiling as he tucked the envelope with the rest of his comp tickets back in his bag. He’s always very adept at diffusing tense s
ituations.

“You know we do, boo. What’s your name?” Remy asked MJ, her n
ew bestie.

“I’m MJ, and this is Nia Bullock, the editor in chief of
DivaDish
,” MJ replied as he picked up my arm to extend i
t to Remy.

“Nice to meet you,” Remy said, shaking both of
our hands.

“Nice to meet you, too, Remy,” I managed to squeeze out. “I look forward to seeing you guys
tonight.”

“We wouldn’t miss it,” Serena chimed in excitedly. “Laila is a pimp for real. She got that Marcus King on lock, and I can’t wait to watch her show.” Before I can say anything else to put my foot back in my mouth, MJ tells the 2 Live Crew extras “toodles” before leading me through the crowd t
o the bar.

“Thanks, MJ,” I yelled over the crowd. “You know I didn’t want to have to show that chick how we get down in
Chicago.”

“Yeah, right,” MJ snorted. “That’s all I need, to have to be bailing your crazy behind out of a Phoenix jail during All-Star weekend. DeAnna would
loo
ove
that!”

“
No doubt.”

We finally made our way to the entrance of the Club Bar. The thin blond hostess asked to see my room key, explaining that they were trying to keep the bar space free for hotel guests and their parties. Good, at least it would be quiet
in there.

As I dug around in my Gucci tote for the key, the hostess asked, “How many people are in your party, Ms.
Bullock?”

“Two,” I responded, holding u
p the key.

“OK, just a moment, please. I’ll go get a table set up
for you.”

“Thank you,” I replied. I put the key back in my handbag and heard a man’s voice cal
l my name.

“Nia! Hey, Nia, o
ver here.”

I looked to see where the voice was coming from, and that’s when I saw Eric squeezing through the crowd and making his way over to
MJ and me.

“Eric?”
I said as he reached down to hug me. “What are you do
ing here?”

MJ slipped his shades down on his nose and looked over the tops of the frames at my ex-
boyfriend.

“Well, one of my boys works for Nike, and he had an extra ticket to the game, so he invited me to come down. Plus, I knew you were going to be here, and I got that information you were looking for.” Eric patted the breast pocket of the tan linen sports coat he was wearing over a chambray shirt that was tucked into dark blue jeans. I hadn’t seen him since the day he moved out. I had even blocked him on Facebook so that I wouldn’t have to see his updates and photos on the feeds of mutual friends. He looked like he had lost a few pounds. His face was clean-shaven, hair fr
eshly cut.

“You look good, Nia,” Eric said, swallo
wing hard.

“Uh, thanks. It was nice of you to bring it over to me in person, but you could have just called,” I said, shifting in my Valentino suede heels. Suddenly I was glad I had changed after leaving Vanessa’s room into a black-and-white off-the-shoulder Derek Lam blouse and skinny bl
ack jeans.

The hostess then returned, and MJ said we’d now need a table for three, clearly getting the vibe that Eric wasn’t leaving any
time soon.

“No problem,” the hostess said brightly as she turned and headed back into the Club Bar to now secure seating
for three.

“You cut your hair. I like it,” Eric said as he reached out to touc
h my hair.

“Thanks,” I said. He and MJ shook hands cordially, although I knew Eric was still on MJ’s
shit list.

Before MJ could inject himself into the awkwardness of this moment, I heard another man’s voice callin
g my name.

“Nia! Hey, there you are,” Terrence said as he made his way through the hotel crowd. Wearing dark black jeans, a crisp white shirt, and a steel gray sports coat with dark navy-blue threads that matched the pocket square, he also looked re
ally good.

“Aww, shit, now,” MJ whispered under his breath. “This is getting good.” The hostess returned to the stand, ready to lead us to the table for three, when MJ leaned over and told her we’d now need a table for four. She nodded and headed back into the bar to find anot
her table.

“Hi, Terrence,” I said as he bent down to kiss me on
the cheek.

“What’s up, MJ, right?” Terrence said as he gave MJ some dap. “Nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard a lot a
bout you.”

“Oh, likewise. I’ve heard a lot about
you, too.”

I could tell from the sound of MJ’s voice that he was enjoying this just a little
too much.

“What are you doing here, Terrence?” Didn’t I just say the exact same thin
g to Eric?

“I’ve been calling you, but you didn’t pick up, so I came over to your hotel to see if I could catch you. I just received some more information on Carlo’s activities while he was in
Phoenix.”

“Oh, I see,” I said. I hadn’t noticed any missed calls on
my phone.

I looked back at Eric who was looking at me quizzically. Clearly an introduction was in order. But how was I supposed to introduce my ex to my ex? I had to bite t
he bullet.

“Uh, Terrence, this is my uh, friend Eric from LA. He’s tracked down that information we were looking for on the ISP address. And, Eric, this is Terrence, my friend from New York who works in the DA’s office. His fiancée is modeling in the National Basketball Wives Association fashion show tomorrow afternoon, so that’s why he’s here.” I knew this was an awkward way to introduce them to each other, but I honestly had no idea wh
at to say.

As Terrence and Eric shook hands, I could see each sizing up the other. I had told Eric about my relationship with Terrence when we started living together during one of those new-couple conversations where you count down your most significant relationships. As for Terrence, he had a mind like a steel trap, so I knew he remembered that I said I had been dating someone seriously in LA named Eric before I took the job at
DivaDish
. I hadn’t told him why we broke up. Too emb
arrassing.

“Nice to meet you, man,” Terr
ence said.

“Nice to meet you, too,”
Eric said.

Fortunately, the hostess returned, and she seemed happy to see that my party hadn’t yet expanded again. She led us through the dark mahogany bar to a circular dark wood table in a corner of the room and left us with cocktail menus. Terrence was seated on my left and Eric on my right. I could see MJ trying to keep it together as he took a seat across from me. Suddenly the room felt
very warm.

An awkward silence settled around the table as we all studied the cocktail menu as if our lives depen
ded on it.

“Well, Nia, I think we should have their signature drink, the Purple Diva,” MJ said, breaking the silence. “But this Chanel No. 6 could be
fun, too.”

“Mmm, Purple Diva sounds fun,” I said, dying to drink anything at this point. “What
’s in it?”

“Vodka, blueberries, lemon, and basil,” MJ said, reading the in
gredients.

“Perfect,” I said as the waiter reappeared to take our orders. I asked for two Purple Divas for MJ a
nd myself.

“I’ll have a scotch, neat,” Terrence said, handing the waiter
his menu.

“And I’ll have a beer. Do you have Blue Moon?” Eric asked when it was his turn
to order.

“Absolut
ely, sir.”

Not wanting the strained silence to return to the table and eager to shut down this meeting as quickly as possible, I dove in. “So, Eric, you said you got the information on the real ISP address for the computer that’s been sending Vanessa and Marcus the threatening e-mails and text
messages.”

The waiter returned with our drinks, and I tried to not swallow my entire cocktail in
one gulp.