Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
I took the CD out of the drive and made my way back out into the hall.
Almost immediately I found Anton, leaning against the wall, his head drooping. He was drunk and held a full drink in his hand as if he’d decided to get one to go. I approached him with caution as I would a wild horse who might buck if startled.
“Anton,” I said as I stepped closer. “Hey, Anton!”
He turned then and almost stumbled, using the textured wall to prop himself up.
“You okay?” I asked, genuinely concerned.
He squinted one eye as if trying to focus on me.
“Looking for Lacy,” he slurred. “She went to the Music Room.”
“Lacy? But why—” I didn’t finish my question out loud. What is she doing in the Music Room? I checked my watch. 1:32 a.m. “She should be in bed. You too.”
“She said she needs to look for something.” Anton’s voice was low and his words thick. He pointed a finger at himself and mimicked Lacy rather badly. “I need to deal with some things from my past. Alone.” Despite the subpar impersonation, the words sounded like something she would say.
“I’m supposed to meet her in our room in a half hour.
” Anton fumbled in his pocket and lifted his key card.
He looked at me, eyes heavy. Anton was handsome, with a cleft in his chin and curly dark red hair.
Lacy had joked about dating a ginger for the first time, and then when she’d actually fallen hard for him, she’d started to imagine how adorable their babies might look someday.
“Tonight was sad,” Anton continued, before taking a few beats to rethink his statement. “Lacy’s boyfriend came to steal her.” He sneered the last few words, but with his Texas drawl and drunken state, they didn’t sound totally threatening.
“You’re her boyfriend,” I reminded him as he began to slide down the wall. I yanked on his arm until he was in a standing position again. He might not be able to get back up if he got all the way to the floor. “Why don’t I help you to your room? Then I can find Lacy and send her to you.”
“One more sip,” he slurred, before finishing off the glass in one gulp.
Stairs were not in Anton’s foreseeable future, so we started down the hall and through the Color Gallery toward the elevator. We passed a couple of uniformed men and one old classmate, and I hoped it didn’t look like I was taking Anton upstairs to get in bed with him.
“This way,” I said, steering Anton toward the elevator that led to the newer guest rooms.
He had to lean on me to steady himself, and when we got inside the elevator, I breathed a sigh of relief that he couldn’t escape. Anton pressed his face against the cool metal of the elevator, and I was fairly sure he snored at least once between me pressing the button and the doors opening again.
I grabbed his arm and tugged him out of the elevator.
“Lacy?” he asked, startling at my touch.
“It’s Dakota,” I reminded him, hoping that Lacy might already be in their room and I could deliver him safely before checking in to see what she’d found in the Music Room.
“Dakota.” Anton sniffed the air like a hound dog as if he might know me better by scent.
“Come on, Tex. Hand over your key.” I checked his hands. “You still have it, don’t you?”
He’d tucked it in the cuff of his long-sleeved button down, and when he popped it out, he grinned. “Magic.”
Fantastic. Anton was not only pitiful, he was also a bit of an obnoxious drunk.
I checked the hall placards against the key card. We passed the Sun-Sprinkled Suite and the Carefree Beauty Suite. My goodness, why couldn’t they just number the rooms like a normal hotel?
“Your boyfriend asked us all the questions,” Anton said, peering at me through one eye as he slumped against me.
“Not my boyfriend,” I said firmly.
“Charlie and Dakota sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
Oh, Lord. This has to stop.
“Okay, he can be my boyfriend,” I relented. “What did Charlie ask you?”
Anton screwed up his face so it looked ridiculously severe and tried to stand up straight. It was impersonation time again. “When did you last see Brett? What was the na… na”—he grasped at the air as if trying to catch the word—“na-ture of your relationship?”
“What did Lacy tell him?” I asked him.
Instead of answering, Anton started singing, belting out the titular line of Brett’s song: “The one that got away!” Then his face turned serious again and he was back to Charlie’s questions. “Did you put anything in his drink?”
“Did you?” I asked.
“I plead the fifth,” Anton said, starting to… giggle?
I rolled my eyes. That response and that laugh looked great for ruling him out as a suspect.
After we passed the eighth room, I spotted their room name, The Blue for You. How fitting. I knocked several times, practically begging my friend to come to the door. When Lacy didn’t answer, I swiped the key card and turned the handle.
I held the door open with my foot while gesturing for him to walk inside. “In you go.”
He didn’t budge and instead leaned against the doorframe, looking at me owlishly. He spoke softly. “She loves me.”
“I know she does.” I was telling the truth.
Though their entire relationship had happened in the window of my mother’s diagnosis, death, and a year of grieving, I could see how Lacy beamed when he entered a room and how she considered his needs when making decisions.
Not in a my life is all about Anton kind of way, more in a he’s a person I love so I’d like to hear his opinion way.
That alone told me that she respected his thinking, which meant a lot for a person as intelligent, competent, and capable as my friend.
“Brett is her small romance,” he said, his one open eye drooping. “Anton is her big romance.”
Perfect. We’d moved into the third-person narration stage of drunkenness, and it proved that whether or not Anton showed it, there was jealousy lurking beneath the surface.
Regardless, I wasn’t about to hop on the “everyone is a suspect” train that Charlie rode during an investigation.
I had my list of suspects: Joe, the caterer; Presley, the girlfriend who seemed to be a bit too cozy with Brett’s former best friend; and maybe even Lee Frank, the quiet camera man watching life through a lens. I refused to add Lacy or Anton.
I took a breath, digging deep for my patience as I used my body weight to shove him toward the bed. He made it a few steps forward before his legs gave out beneath him and the bed caught his fall.
I positioned his head so that he wouldn’t choke if he threw up, and I made my way out of the room and back toward the elevator. As I waited for it to arrive, I rested my head against the wall and closed my eyes, taking a beat to steel myself for what I might find in the Music Room.