Owen raised an eyebrow. “Make sure she has it before you hit her.”
“Spoilsport. What happened to better safe than sorry?” I took a deep breath, and my hand only trembled a little as I reached out to ring the doorbell.
The chimes inside sounded like cathedral bells, echoing out into the vestibule, and I gestured for the others to move to the side, where they wouldn’t be immediately visible from the doorway. There was no response for a long time, and I was almost ready to give up when the door opened a crack. A uniformed maid, complete with frilly cap, stuck her head out. She had the kind of fear in her eyes that I recognized from staff meetings with Mimi. She rattled off something in a language I couldn’t identify. I glanced at Owen, our resident linguist, but he shrugged and shook his head. I figured it was just like Mimi to import a maid from some exotic locale—probably some place where they were used to living under the rule of tyrants and didn’t know anything about human rights.
“Um, hi,” I said. “Is Mimi home? I’m a friend of hers. We used to work together.”
The maid said haltingly, “Sorry. No English.”
“Okay,” I said. In desperation, I tried charades, pulling my face into an exaggerated snarl and hissing as I raised my hands in claws.
The woman flinched but grinned in recognition as she nodded. She then shook her head. “Not home. Left this morning. Gone all day. Not back until late, late night,” she said, pausing between words as though running them through a mental phrase book.
“I don’t suppose you know where she’d be now,” I said wistfully, but the maid just shook her head. “Well, thank you. You’ve been very helpful. And I am so, so sorry. We’re doing everything we can to make sure it doesn’t get worse.”
After she’d closed the door, Thor asked, “Now where should we go?”
“If Mimi hasn’t been home since lunch, she probably still has the brooch with her,” I said. “And you can usually find Mimi by the trail of shattered people she leaves in her wake. I bet we could walk up and down Park Avenue and look for people who work in service industries who are either crying or setting things on fire. There could even be riots.” Then I had an idea. “Or I could call Gemma and find out who the most exclusive hairstylist in the city is. Mimi would get her hair done before a gala like this, and we might find her there.”