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“Why doesn’t he have a poster out front?”
“He’s not advertising these shows. All the locations are a surprise.”
“So how do fans find out about them?”
“Two hours before the show, I’ll send a message to the people who run his fan clubs, plus put a bulletin up on Twitter and on his Facebook page. Word will get around.”
You had to love the Internet. In the age of social media, a guy as famous as Judah Pratt could put on a concert with two hours’ notice and attract a crowd. “How many people does he expect to draw?”
“He’ll get capacity.”
Sean looked around the room. It would hold about four hundred people packed tight. “In two hours?”
She shrugged. “He has some pretty dedicated fans.”
One of them was sitting next to him. The thought broke Sean’s concentration, and he had to close his eyes again and force himself to go back to the boardroom. “How long will he play?”
Ginny shrugged. “Ten minutes? Four hours? As long as he wants.”
Sean ran his hand over his jawline. “I don’t get it. Why the secrecy? If he wants to do a show, why not just do a show?”
“He’s got some new songs he wants to test out. This gives him an audience, but a friendly one—small and responsive—and he likes to do some of the songs acoustic. It works better for him than trying new material for the first time on a crappy sound system in some huge amphitheater.”
Ginny made it sound like a logical move, but Sean wasn’t getting logical vibes from any aspect of this situation. From what he’d read online, Pratt’s career was in trouble. He hadn’t put out an album in three years, and there were rumors of a drinking problem. An industry website said his studio had been putting a huge amount of pressure on him to produce something. Yet he was wandering around Middle America giving impromptu concerts.
Add that up with his calling Caleb and Katie to Chicago to meet with him, then failing to show today, and Sean got error messages all over the place.
“How did he pick the High Hat?” he asked.
“Oh, I think he played here once, a long time ago. Fifteen years, he said?”
Pratt was thirty-four. Sean surveyed the room again. The guy must have been a decent musician once, to get a gig like this as a nineteen-year-old.
The whole setup was hinky. Outside consultant, vague instructions, run-down club with lavish interior, missing musician. A puzzle.
Sean liked puzzles.
Extending his hand to Ginny, he stood up. “Thanks for your help. Give us a call when he gets in.”
Maybe it wasn’t a bad thing that he and Katie had a little time to kill. He could find out a lot in a few hours.
Getting information from people who didn’t want him to have it was his specialty.
Chapter Three
“Holy cow,” Katie said under her breath. She craned her head back for a better view of the sculptures perched above the building’s entrance. “Penguins.”
Sean brushed past her, and it dawned on her how she must look, gawping like Bessie in the Big City. She hitched her purse strap higher on her shoulder and followed him inside.
As she passed by a giant metal snail inside the lobby entrance, she schooled her face into cosmopolitan blankness.
Nobody had ever told her there was such a thing as a hotel with an art museum in it. Or was it an art museum with a hotel in it? She didn’t even know. They didn’t have places like the 21c in Camelot, Ohio. They didn’t have them in Anchorage, either.
Surely that was the point. This wasn’t a lobby where one was meant to feel at home. It was designed to be inwardly gawped at while one remained outwardly cool.
Sean knew the drill. He appeared to take the place in stride, glancing around with a nonchalance that sat easily on his broad shoulders.
But then, Sean took everything in stride. The man had the emotional range of a boulder.
