At breakfast, I received a text from Lexi saying that the FBI was sending someone to talk to me this morning. When we got home, there was a black sedan in the drive. We found Lexi giving Special Agent Venture a tour of the house. For some reason, she didn’t seem as scary this morning.
“Nice place,” she said and then shook my dad’s hand. “I understand that you met with the NCAA investigator last night.”
“Fritz loaded the video into your cloud account,” Manaia told me.
“Did you want to see it or just get a copy?” I asked.
“I hoped to see it, and that way, if I had any questions, I could ask them now,” she suggested.
Dad said he had to get ready for work and left us in the kitchen to watch last night’s video. While Special Agent Venture watched it with Lexi, I left to take a shower. Salt water isn’t good for your skin or hair, so I followed my beauty routine. Sometimes I felt like such a girl with all the products I had, but Adrienne had hammered into me that it was necessary for my craft.
I grabbed the list of questions that Stewart wanted me to ask of Southwest Central State. I wanted to make sure that Special Agent Venture didn’t have any to add or delete from the list. If we were doing this once, I didn’t want to give them an excuse to try to force more meetings. Heck, I didn’t want to be in the middle of this and had zero desire to go to Southwest Central State, anyway. They weren’t even a Plan B school. I would gladly go to Kentucky if my top schools turned me down.
Lexi had fast-forwarded through dinner and shown her the important stuff, so they were done when I came down.
“He was a bit of prick,” was Special Agent Venture’s observation. “The comment about giving his consent to be recorded might be handy. He didn’t specify a timeframe on that.”
I handed her the list of questions. She got out her phone and photographed the paper.
“These all seem to work. My only suggestion is not to push too hard. You don’t want him getting defensive,” the FBI agent suggested.
“What about Stewart’s not-so-subtle threat against David’s eligibility?” Lexi asked.
“It might be considered coercion. I’m not sure it rises to the level of criminal coercion yet. From the tape, it didn’t look like David felt intimidated by the threat. Now, if they follow through and try to void your agreement, I would use this tape all day long to show that they are bad-faith actors. I wouldn’t want to go there if I didn’t have to.”
“He’s sort of pissed me off at this point. I don’t plan to have more than the one meeting just on their say-so. If you think we need to do more, I’d be willing to cooperate with the FBI,” I said.
“While it’s always good to suck up to the agency, we don’t even need you to have this meeting. Unlike the NCAA, we can compel people to talk to us.”
That sounded ominous. There was also a glimpse of something scary in the agent’s eyes.
“I’ll email you the video from tonight once we have it downloaded. If you need to talk about it, let Lexi know, and she can arrange a meeting,” I said.
Special Agent Venture thanked us and then left.
“Whatever she asks for, give it to her. I don’t want her mad at me,” I said.
“You got it, Boss.”
◊◊◊
I didn’t feel bad about bailing on the J-drama. They were working me like a dog whenever they got the chance. I was sure I would more than make up for taking the day off.
The rest of my morning was spent learning my song choices for the Christmas special. I wanted to have them ready so that Rita could decide which one she wanted me to sing. I also worked on what Jett had taught me. It was harder than I thought it would be to train my body not to do what was natural. But when I was able to prevent my larynx from rising and kept the muscles under my chin loose, I could hear the difference in my high range. That was enough to keep me working on it.
I had to hope I’d be ready for the live TV event in just a few weeks. While Jett was confident that I would, I could only give it my best shot and see.
After lunch, I spotted Teresa and Paulina lying out by the pool in bikinis. Damn! Against my better judgment, I walked out to see why they were here.
“There he is. Come join us,” Paulina said.
“I was just wondering why you were here?” I asked.
“Oh, sorry. We have an open invitation from the owners since we don’t have a pool,” Paulina explained.
“Mother, we should go. They rented the house to David and his family,” Teresa worried.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Paulina asked me.
“I ... uh ...”
She didn’t give me a chance to object.
“David, could you help us? We need suntan oil put on our backs. Would you be a dear and help Teresa?”
Of course, if she was in need ... Teresa saw my predicament and rolled her eyes at her mother’s antics. She turned over to give me a view of her backside, which was every bit as nice as her front. It did need some oil applied.
It’s funny how you can rationalize things like that. I saw the little smirk of triumph from Paulina. That woke up the devil inside of me.
I took my time applying oil on Teresa.
