Stomping over to the Bat Cave, I threw open the door. “Where is Burdette?” I demanded.
Taylor looked both horrified and stunned. “What are you doing?” she hissed at me.
Before I could answer, Burdette emerged from a back room. “What is it now?”
I held out the bottle of ipecac syrup. “Abigail put this in our milkshakes during our slumber party. It’s why we all got sick and she didn’t. She wanted the last-chance date and got all of us out of her way.”
He looked at the label and then back at me. “Go get Abigail.” Some assistant scurried off to do his bidding.
Within a few minutes she arrived in high heels and the skimpiest bikini I had ever seen, followed by her camera crew. Another crew had snuck in to shoot from different viewpoints. The overhead lights were turned on and the whole room lit up.
When she came into the room, I went after her. Somebody had anticipated that, because I didn’t take even one step before two men were holding me back and keeping me from her. “Of all the horrible, evil, psychotic things to do . . .”
“Shut up!” Burdette barked at me. It surprised me enough to go still. He handed her the bottle. “Abigail, Lemon has accused you of using this to make all the other girls sick so that you could have Dante to yourself.”
She looked totally and utterly confused. “I’ve never seen that before.”
Of course she would lie. I reached for her, but I was kept firmly in place. “I found it in your room!”
She turned to me, all wide-eyed innocence. I had decided early on she couldn’t be much of an actress if the only role she could get was on a soap opera, but she was proving me wrong. “If you found it in my room, then you must have put it there. I don’t even know what that is.”
What proof did I have? There weren’t cameras in the bedrooms.
But there were cameras in the kitchen. “Check the kitchen footage from that night. There has to be evidence of her adding it to the blender.” I knew there had been a reason for her acting so nice that night. It was to lull us into a false sense of security.
“Pull it up,” Burdette said to one of the techs.
“It had to be in the last batch she made us in the early morning.” Charlotte had told me that it took anywhere from fifteen minutes to two hours to start working, depending on the person.
I glared at Abigail triumphantly, sure that her time was now done. “Got it,” the tech said.
He put it up on a main monitor, and we all watched. I saw Genesis, Michelle, and myself in the family room on our makeshift beds, giggling and talking. Abigail got up and went to the kitchen, and picked up the blender. She moved it from where it had been to a different location. The problem was, her back was to the camera and we couldn’t see what she was doing with her hands.
She had done that deliberately. She knew exactly where the camera was and how to avoid getting caught.
Now she was the one to look triumphant.
I gave her a look I only gave people when there was no gun handy. “Is there a different camera angle? From a different room?”
“Not for where she’s standing, no,” one of the camera guys said.
She had poisoned us, and she was going to get away with it. This registered at a 9.9 on the insane and unfair scale.
“I would never hurt anyone,” she said. There were unshed tears in her eyes, and she pressed a hand delicately to her chest, as if what I said hurt her.
“Oh, whatever,” I shot at her.
She fluttered her eyelids gently. “What did you just say? I couldn’t understand you.”
“Now we’re back to that? I said ‘whatever.’ Disdainfully and scornfully.”
That had done something. I saw the anger on her face. She came and stood right in front of me, poking me in the chest. “The next time you have an accusation, don’t go running to production. Come and say it to my face.”
“Which face? You have more than one.” The two security guys were still holding my arms so that I wouldn’t strangle her, and I briefly considered spitting at her, although that would have forever shamed my mother and grandmother, so I didn’t. I was most mad for what she’d done to Genesis and Michelle. They were so sweet and so nice; they didn’t deserve to be made sick and to suffer the way that they had. I could fight my own battles, and I hated when people picked on those who didn’t or couldn’t stick up for themselves. I didn’t take too kindly to people messing with my friends.