Chapter 17 #2
“And if we don’t want anything in return?” Cash asked. “Is it hard to believe that we like Addie and want to help her?”
“Actually, it is,” Dotty said.
“The fact that we like your sister is so hard to believe?” Cash asked, a warning note in his voice.
Dotty glared at him, her cold blue eyes piercing.
Monroe reached over and grasped hold of Addie’s hand.
Addie suddenly realized that she’d been pressing her fingernails into the palm of her hand.
Cash took her other hand and opened it. Had he seen what she had done?
He ran his thumb over the marks in the palm of her hand.
“You took off your bandage,” he whispered to her. “Without permission. That was naughty.”
Urgh, why did that send a shiver of heat up her spine?
“Of course that isn’t hard to believe. This has nothing to do with Addie. It’s all of you. I don’t know you. I can’t trust you. How am I meant to know that you don’t have some ulterior motive?”
Ink nodded. “Fair enough. Would it make you feel better if you did pay us?”
Dotty gave him a surprised look. “Actually, it would. However I haven’t decided that we need your services.”
Ink nodded. “I get that. But someone did threaten you.”
“Right. The hotel room was really trashed?” She glanced over at Addie, who nodded.
“We took some photos,” Ink said.
Brody must have done something on his computer because a number of photos appeared on a screen at the end of the room. Ralen had to move his chair around so he could see them.
Monroe sucked in her breath. “Oh my God, they touched my clothes. Look at my poor heels. Jesus, what were they doing? That is not the way you treat Manolos.”
“Who?” Ralen asked.
“Manolos. My shoes. Poor things. They’re going to be so sad and upset with—”
“They’re just shoes,” Ralen growled.
“That’s rude,” Monroe muttered.
“Eat,” Ralen said.
“Addie, did you have to find the bossiest men in Billings?” Monroe grumbled.
“Why just throw everything around like that,” Dotty said, ignoring Monroe’s mutterings. “There doesn’t look to be anything taken. Addie, did you notice anything missing?”
Addie shook her head.
“The safe still had your laptop. We’ve brought it back with us,” Ink said.
“I didn’t know if you’d want to contact the police, but we’ve gone through and searched for any fingerprints.
The trouble is that it’s a hotel room, so there’s going to be fingerprints, and a number of them will belong to the staff. ”
“I don’t think the police are going to come to our aid anytime soon,” Monroe said.
“It’s their job,” Dotty replied. “If they don’t do it, I’ll be making some complaints.”
Addie knew her sister would do that.
“And that’s the message?” Dotty pointed to one image which Brody made bigger.
“That’s it,” Cash said.
Dotty glanced over at Addie again, who nodded. She had her backpack between her feet, and reaching down, she opened it so she could hold onto Snaggles as he sat in the backpack.
Cash gave her a strange look and glanced down. Then he grabbed the backpack and pulled it onto her lap, but kept it hidden, so it was still under the table.
She gave him a small smile, and he winked.
Damn, that wink was potent.
Monroe nudged her slightly, and she turned to her.
“Dotty is asking you a question, babes.”
Oh, shoot. She hadn’t been paying attention, had she?
Had everyone seen her and Cash interact? Had they seen the look of admiration on her face as she stared at him? That would be super embarrassing.
But no one gave her a strange look, so she guessed that she’d kept her feelings hidden. Thank God for that. The last thing she wanted was anyone figuring out how she felt about him.
She raised her eyebrows at Dotty.
“I asked you if you saw the message, Addie.”
She nodded her head as a shiver ran through her. Dotty’s eyes narrowed, and she shared a look with Monroe.
“How would they have gotten into the hotel room?” Dotty asked.
“Our best guess is that they found a keycard,” Ink said, glancing at Monroe.
“But how would the keycard have told them which hotel it was and which room?” Dotty asked.
“Remember that my bag got stolen,” Monroe told her older sister. “And in it was a keycard.”
Dotty leaned her head back. “And you like to keep the piece of paper with the hotel name and room number with the card. Damn it, Monroe, how many times have I told you that’s not safe?”
“She didn’t know it would get stolen,” Ralen defended her.
Huh. That was surprising, he’d seemed irritated by Monroe earlier.
“Who the hell would’ve stolen your bag with the keycard, gotten into our room, trashed it, and left that message?” Dotty asked.
“That’s what we’re looking into,” Ink said. “The hotel refused to let us view the camera footage for the foyer and hallway outside your room. If you want to involve the police, they’ll be able to get it.”
“I can’t hack in unless I can get into their security room, which would be pretty tough to do,” Brody said. “Although not impossible.” He glanced around the room.
“What are you looking for?” Dotty said.
“He’s waiting for me to chime in,” Dr. Claw said over the speakers.
“Who are you?” Dotty demanded.
Ink sighed. “He’s extra help we have, an adviser, you might say. He’s watching from his home. He doesn’t like to come to meetings in person.”
Probably wise not to tell Dotty that he was Brody’s boyfriend. Addie kept quiet. She wasn’t going to chime in with the truth.
“I could help, but it’s not really my thing,” Dr. Claw said.
“Helping?” Dotty asked.
“No, breaking into hotels to get into security footage, unless I have to wipe my own presence, I guess.”
Good Lord.
“I think involving the police would be the way to go,” Dotty said. “They can search for any evidence left, and they can get the footage easily, without us having to resort to anything dangerous.”
“All right,” Ink said. “I’ve got some contacts at the police station. Hopefully, they can help us. Have any of you got any ideas about who could have done this?”
Dotty shook her head.
“The cops asked questions about Vextar,” Monroe burst out.
“What?” Dotty asked as everyone turned to her. “You didn’t tell me that. Was that what took so long for you to come out?”
Monroe nodded, looking miserable. “Yeah, sorry. I should’ve told you that straightaway, huh?
When they asked me questions about what we were doing in that bar, and why three women would go to that place, well, I figured I had to tell them.
So I told them how I’d married this guy, and he’d left me the next morning, and now we were trying to find him.
And they sort of got this funny look on their faces when I said his name.
I don’t know why. But you don’t think . . . I mean, why would he have done this?”
“But who else would do this?” Dotty said.
“We don’t know anyone else in Billings. That’s the reason we’re here, to find him.
Perhaps he’s wanted by the police. Maybe he doesn’t want to be found, so he’s left a message to make that clear.
Which means he was likely there last night and got his hands on Monroe’s bag. Then he decided to send a message.”
Ink nodded and gave Dotty a look of approval. “You’re good at this.”
“I’m smart.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Plus, I usually see the worst in people.”
“So obviously this guy is known to the cops,” Ink said. “Brody, have you found anything on him yet?”
“I’m still running a search,” Brody said. “I was concentrating on trying to get access to the hotel room cameras and find Dotty and Monroe, so I haven’t had a lot of time to look into him.”
“That’s good. You’re doing a great job,” Ink told him.
Dotty eyed him with interest. “I like a person who treats his employees well.”
Ink looked surprised. “Everyone here is like family to me, and I couldn’t run this place without them. They deserve the praise. And our priority was to find the two of you,” Ink said. “As well as keeping Addie safe.”
Dotty glanced over at her, and Addie could practically see her thinking over everything in her mind.
“This man with the body . . . is that something separate? Should we be concerned about that?” Dotty asked.
“Besides the fact that someone might be dead, she means,” Monroe added.
Dotty cleared her throat. “Right.”
This was the part that she didn’t want to think about. Well, that and the message on the mirror.
“We’re looking into it. But it seems unrelated to anything else,” Ink said. “So it’s not a priority right now.”
“Were there any murders in that area last night?” Dotty asked. At least her sisters weren’t looking at her like she’d been seeing things. Then again, she hadn’t thought that they would, because Dotty and Monroe were always on her side.
“Not that we’ve come across,” Ink said. “There was nothing in that area. No one was reported missing last night. But that could change.”
Addie felt like Butch was staring at her. She should look up at him, meet his gaze. He was going to read her lack of eye contact as guilt, but it wasn’t. Sometimes, Addie just had trouble meeting people’s eyes. Although she hadn’t had that trouble with Cash, had she?
“Did you see the face of the guy carrying the body, babes?” Monroe asked.
“She didn’t see much,” Cash said. “She did a bit of a rough drawing and wrote down some things, but there’s nothing distinguishing.”
“Could be that it’s someone who doesn’t live here. The body, I mean, and the person, I guess,” Brody said. “It could be that no one’s noticed them missing.”
“Maybe the person wasn’t dead,” Monroe suggested.
“Perhaps they were drunk, and he was just picking them up and putting them in his car. Although the trunk part is a bit weird, but you never know. Maybe he thought he was going to puke in the car. I had an Uber driver once who kicked me out of the car because he thought I was going to puke. I really wasn’t, I just had some bad curry.
And then I was stuck on the side of the road in the dark, with no one else around.
All the other Ubers were busy because we’d just been to a big concert that ended. ”