information, she is NOT a normal human being, Brady. She is Layla Carlysle. One of the best recording artists and entertainers of the twenty-first century. She is a pop icon.” Judging by her foot tapping and the scowl on her face, clearly she's agitated that I don’t share her same excitement.
How could I? Everything I read about her in the tabloids is false. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise to me since the tabloids also write about movie stars buying land on Mars and a country singer finding a bat child in a cave. It shouldn’t have shocked me that she has a sense of humor or that she's more beautiful that humanly possible when she doesn’t have all that make-up on her face or shellacked hair. What amazes me, though, is the fact that she's allowed a woman that should have been her number one supporter to verbally abuse her.
The real Layla Carlysle intrigues me as much as I hate to admit it.
“Can we get down to business, please,” I beg Gwen as I take a seat at my desk and power up the computer. “Tell me what you’ve found on Eve Carlysle so far.”
Gwen lets out a huge annoyed sigh because I'm not going to give her the goods on Layla. Finally, she walks over to her own desk and grabs a file folder off of the top of it. Flipping it open, she scans the pages as she makes her way to me.
“Well, there isn’t much to be found about Eve. I had to do quite a bit of digging, and even then what I found wasn’t very interesting. Parents were blue collar workers, lower middle class. She wanted more out of life and made sure she got it. After high school, she worked hard and put herself through community college. Her first real job out of college was as a secretary for Hummingbird Records, where she met and married Layla’s father, Jack,” Gwen explains, rounding my chair and putting the file down in front of me so I can flip through it.
“I don’t like how little information there is about this woman. I mean, everyone has SOME kind of skeleton in their closet. She has nothing. And when I say nothing, I mean nada, zero, zip. Not even a parking ticket. Which is weird, right?”
I nod my head in agreement. “No one is that clean.”
“Exactly. Which makes me think she’s got something to hide. As awesome as I am on a computer, I couldn’t find squat. I called your friend Garrett for help, but his wife is on some kind of photo assignment and their daughter has been sick so he doesn’t have time to help. He gave me your friend Austin’s number. Let me tell you, that guy is annoying.”
I chuckle as I watch Gwen go back to her desk and sit down.
“What did Austin have to say?”
I pull up my email and shoot off a quit note of thanks to Austin as Gwen regales me with his charm.
“You mean aside from asking me my bra size, what I was doing for dinner tonight, and whether I preferred eggs or pancakes for breakfast tomorrow morning?”
Oh, that boy is so getting his ass kicked the next time I talk to him.
At the closing of the email, I add a threatening little reminder to Austin: My baby sister is off limits.
“Well, when he isn’t thinking with his dick, he’s actually not too shabby at getting information that I can’t. I really don’t want to know how he got this information. He started to tell me it had something to do with two bottles of wine and a lot of sweet talk, but I cut him off when he mentioned some trick he does with his tongue that always makes women talk. I mean really, Brady. These are the people you worked with in the Navy?”
Same old Austin. He could make a mute talk. He's always been our go-to-guy when the computer had us at a disadvantage. With his good looks and southern boy charm, he could walk us through airport security with a bomb strapped to his chest and no one would pay any attention.
“Sorry, Austin is in a class all his own. What was he able to find out?” I ask, shutting the file folder that has no real useful information in it.
“So get this. According to a few ex-employees from Hummingbird Records, Jack Carlysle married Eve because she was knocked up.”