I couldn’t stop myself. “What’s the problem?”
“I’m a production assistant on Tammy Susie and Company. I’m Tammy Susie’s wrangler-”
“Whose… what?” Toni wrinkled her brow.
“I’m Tammy Susie’s… well, basically, I’m her gofer.” Uttering those words unleashed Erica’s pent-up frustration. “My parents went into hock to put me through Harvard, I graduated with honors, won an award for my screenplay in drama lit class, and now I fetch caramel corn and Slurpees for a nine-year-old beauty-pageant runner-up.” She held up a hand. “Excuse me, sorry. Anyway, we’re taping here because the family wanted a vacation, so the producers decided to kill two birds with one stone by making their vacation an episode. The reason I’m jumping you like this is… she’s gone missing, and if I don’t find her quick, I’ll be out of a job.”
Oh, and a missing child was kinda bad news too. But I got why she couldn’t afford to call in the police. “As of when?” I asked.
“As of an hour and a half ago. She’s wandered off before, and the show gives her a limo to take her pretty much wherever and whenever, but-”
“So she might just be rolling around the island with her chauffeur,” Bailey said.
“She might, but I just… have a bad feeling about the way it all went down-”
“Which is?” I asked.
Erica swallowed again and took a deep breath. “We went shopping… she wanted to get ‘in character’ for her scenes with a fortune-teller-”
“Why on earth would you want to do a show with one of those crackpots?” Toni asked, incredulous.
“Fortune-telling is big on the island. The producers thought it would be fun to show all the high jinks Tammy Susie and her family got into. Anyway, Tammy Susie decided she wanted to wear something ‘Gypsy’ for the show, so I had to take her shopping. I think it was just an excuse to go to the Royal Plaza Mall. She loves that place.”
“Where’s the Royal Plaza Mall?” I asked. From what I saw on the way to the hotel, there was no shopping mall nearby.
“Downtown, in Oranjestad. The place looks like Disneyland… on crack. Tammy Susie loves it. We wound up at this little boutique. Tammy found a couple of skirts she liked, so she went to the dressing room to try them on. I stayed right outside… well, pretty close. I just went over to the jewelry counter for, like, maybe five minutes at most, but-”
“How’d you get to the mall?” I asked. “Did you take the limo?”
“No, we took a bus. Her choice. She said she was tired of always riding in a limo.”
