“Yeah,” Josh murmured.“I wonder what that’s all about.”
“They’ll tell us,” Liam guessed, as Josh’s mother sent him a coded look from under her eyelashes.“Whatever it is, they can’t keep it a secret for long.”
Brass Tacks
“WE NEVERdid figure out which Muppet you were,” Josh said as they descended the staircase into the basement again.Phyllis and Marco’s minions had already walked coffee and cookies down there, along with some portions of a pudding dessert that Liam was both fascinated with and afraid of.My God, he knew everybody worked hard for fitness, but they must burn some calories to eat like he’d eaten that night.
“Easy,” Liam replied.“I’m the police bear.”
Josh probably would have stopped dead on the stairs, but they were two of the first going down, so he just let his voice crack.“A what?”
“You know—whenever they need a policeman at the end of the show, I’m the copper who shows up and takes the villain to the nick.The police bear.”
Josh squinted at him.“Grace,” he called, because the boy was behind them, “was there a police bear in the Muppets?”
“His name was Bobo,” Grace said happily.“He was really ugly.”
“I don’t like this solution,” Josh said.“Find another character.”
“I don’t see how,” Liam said.“It’s not everybody who can pull off Shrimp Louis or Rolf the dog.”
“Wasn’t Fozzie a police bear at one time?”Josh asked.
“You remember that and you don’t remember Bobo,” Liam muttered.“No wonder I got sent to the bleachers for six months.”
“I have never actually seen you in uniform,” Josh told him, exasperated.“As far as I’m concerned, you live in a trench coat or a madras shirt.”
“Or my suit jacket,” Chuck added.“We’ll have to work on that.”
Liam suppressed a sigh.It occurred to him that overcoming his own embarrassment with Josh’s money should have been something done during their separation, but he’d been so busy worrying, it hadn’t occurred to him that he needed to adjust to having table service in Josh’s home, or a cast of characters so brilliant that of course they’d get their own Muppet and their own movie.Liam couldn’t afford to be a supporting player in this relationship—he needed to step up and be a leading man.
“In London,” he said, “I wear a cheap tan suit.It’s riveting.I’d rather be seen in a madras shirt.”
“Or without one,” Josh replied puckishly, and Liam felt his cheeks warm.
“Or without one,” he answered with dignity.
Josh winked and went to sit down behind the AV outlet so he could project his computer—or Danny’s—on screen.
“Josh,” Danny said, “let me and Felix sit there for tonight.You sent us everything you had, and we….”He gave a brief smile, and Liam caught the tiredness—happiness, but also tiredness—in his eyes for the first time that night.“Fox and I spent some time strategizing after Stirling got us some of the data from the cloned phone.I think we actually have a plan.”
Liam expected Josh to bristle at this, but he didn’t.Instead his face opened, and some of the tenseness, the drive that had only seemed to fade when they’d been making love, drained out of him.
“It worked?”he said breathlessly.“Last night worked?”
Danny’s smile was as relieved as Josh’s.“It worked,” he said, and Liam recalled all of the fishing nets the crew had cast for information the night before.Not just the cloned phone, but Leon and Julia in the crowd at Celeste’s and Chuck and Lucius downstairs.Hunter and Molly mingling with the staff—even Marco back in the kitchen and Carl doing double duty as an insurance investigator and con man.All of them had been fishing for information.
That’s why they’d spent so long staging the theft, baiting the hook, setting the hook, and making Kadjic’s manic thrashing the centerpiece of the night.
The real con hadn’t been the theft, or even yanking Kadjic’s chain.Josh, tapping on his keyboard that morning and consolidating information during video games—none of that had been frivolous.
Liam’s discussion with Grace as Josh had been sleeping told him that.The young dancer’s famously firefly-like attention had suddenly narrowed, and he’d spent that quiet hour walking Liam through a detailed people map of the party attendees the night before, including diagrams of who was more important than whom when it came to analyzing Kadjic’s details.
Interpol would not have approved of the Salingers one bit, but they wouldn’t have been able to match them in efficiency or accuracy of information either.
“So,” Danny said as the rest of the crew filtered in and settled down, “Fox and I are running this one, because Fox insisted, but I’ve got Liam and Josh here front and center.Liam because he’s had personal experience with Kadjic, and Josh because he’s been running the show thus far and he’s why we have what we’ve got.So has everybody visited the restroom?”
He glanced pointedly at Julia, who rolled her eyes and nodded, which made Liam curious, because as far as he knew, Julia Dormer-Salingerneverused the restroom, nor did she snore, nor did she pick her nose.It was all unfathomable.
