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Up the stairs they trudged and followed the signs to room 211, where a door stood open. Just as they walked inside, they were met with an obstacle, a long folding table manned by a heavyset woman in jeans, a T-shirt, and a vest. Her face was square and tanned, blue eyes a shade bordering on green and covered by cat’s-eye glasses. Over one ample breast was a button that read I BELIEVE in red letters over the silhouette of a black Sasquatch. Upon the table was a stack of brochures about Big Foot, a cash drawer flipped open, and a stamp resting on a pad oozing green ink. “Are you two together?” she asked, peering upward through her glasses while motioning in an arc between Pescoli and her daughter Bianca.
“Yes,” Pescoli said.
“That’ll be fifty dollars. No student discounts tonight.”
“Fifty bucks?” Pescoli was outraged. “We were invited by Carlton Jeffe.”
The woman squinting behind her glasses said, “And I was told to charge for everyone who wants in. We’ve got serious entertainment tonight and,” she said, on eye level with Pescoli’s belly, “you’re lucky I’m not charging you for a third. You look like you could pop and have that baby any minute.”
Pescoli was getting real tired of being reminded of her condition.
“So that’ll be fifty. Cash only.”
“Wait a second.” Pescoli was seriously thinking about reaching for her badge while Bianca died a thousand teenage deaths of embarrassment beside her. “I didn’t want my daughter to come down here in the first place but—”
“I’m Bianca Pescoli,” Bianca cut in. “I was asked to speak by Mr. Jeffe.”
The woman’s mouth rounded into a silent O just as Carlton himself squeezed through some men who had gathered around the other side of the table. The noise from within was a cacophony of serious voices punctuated by occasional bursts of sharp, short laughter.
“Is there a problem, Edie?” Carlton asked. He was medium height, maybe a couple of inches under six foot, wiry, with near-black hair that matched his eyes. In his early forties, he was a man who looked like he took himself seriously. His nose was hawkish, his skin stretched tight over his sharp features, and when he smiled, it seemed forced, a hasty stretching of the lips to show peg-like teeth.
“This woman doesn’t want to pay. Says she was ‘invited, ’ whatever the hell that means.” Her voice dripped skepticism.
But Jeffe recognized Bianca. “She’s right.” His gaze moved from her daughter to Pescoli. “They are special guests.”
Behind the slanted glasses, Edie’s eyes were flint. “Well, someone shoulda told me, don’t ya think?”
Carlton reached across the table, grabbed the stamp, and pressed it onto first Pescoli’s, then Bianca’s wrist. “Okay, you’re in. Sorry, Edie, it’s been crazy, you know. What with Barclay coming.”
Wending through a couple of guys who looked like members of ZZ Top, Carlton rounded the table. “Bianca’s our guest, and she’s here with her mother.”
“Fred told me to charge everyone, and that’s what I was trying to do,” Edie muttered, irked that her authority had been usurped. “That’s the problem, Carlton. I hear one thing from Fred and Ivor and those guys with their rifles and scopes out to hunt down and kill a Sasquatch”—she flipped her hand to a group of a dozen or so bearded men in trucker’s caps, jeans, and T-shirts who were huddled into a group—“and then I hear something else from you tree huggers who just want to capture one on film.” She twisted the same hand toward the other side of the room, where there was a smaller contingency. Groups A and B didn’t look much different aside from the fact that there were more women in the cluster identified as tree huggers. “So, you tell me, Carlton,” Edie went on. “You tell me, who am I supposed to listen to?”
“Well, I am the president of the club, elected, mind you, this past January, and I did set up this meeting with Mr. Sphinx, so you tell me.”
Red color climbed up her neck and suffused her face, and she turned aside. Jeffe either ignored her or didn’t notice as he ushered Bianca and Pescoli inside. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Everyone’s on edge. Not only is Barclay arriving, but when we moved the meeting to this room, we discovered some of our decorations, the things we usually have at meetings, were missing.” He was obviously disturbed. “It’s irritating as hell to spend hours looking for a folding table we need and can’t find it and, God, the costume. Where the hell is it?”
“What costume?” Pescoli asked.
“We have a Big Foot costume, you know. For plays and reenactments. Parties. Whatever. Very expensive. Very lifelike. Supposed to be locked up, but it’s missing. What’re ya gonna do?”
“You’re missing a costume and there have been Big Foot sightings? Don’t you think someone took it and used it? That it’s what someone was wearing when they chased Bianca?”
“Why would they do that?”
“Maybe a prank.” Or, worse, she thought. “Which of the members have access to that closet?”
“Anyone who’s a member, I guess.”
“You said it was locked. Where are the keys?”
“Well . . . they’re in a box in the regular meeting room, and before you ask, the key wasn’t missing. I used it earlier when we were setting up.”
“I need you to get me a list of members and note on it anyone who was in the closet recently, or since you last saw or used the costume.”
“Oh, come on.” She stared at him and Jeffe shrugged. “I’ll try,” he said, then led her through the crowd that was, for the most part, about seventy percent male. There were women, of course, but most of them seemed attached to one of the men.
