Sunset Beach(107)

She stared at it for a moment, trying to think of an alternative, but lacking one, she called her father’s cell phone.

It rang four times and went to voice mail, so she disconnected and tried again. This time, to her great regret, Wendy answered.

“Drue? Do you know what time it is?”

“Yes, Wendy, I do. Can I please speak to Dad?”

“He’s sleeping. We were both sleeping.”

She heard her father’s voice in the background, then heard Wendy again. “He wants to know what the problem is.”

“The problem is that I’ve been arrested and charged with trespassing, and I’m at the Treasure Island police station,” Drue said.

“Is this some kind of a sick joke?”

Before she could answer, Brice came on the line. “What was that last part? Did you say you were arrested?”

“Yes,” she said. “I was arrested at the Gulf Vista. If you’ll just come down and get me out of here, I promise I’ll tell you everything.”

“Unbelievable,” he muttered. “I’ll be right down. Don’t talk to anybody. Tell them your attorney is on the way.”

As holding cells went, Drue thought this one wasn’t as awful as it could have been. Not that she had much experience with that kind of thing. She’d been a rebellious, pain-in-the-ass teenager, but somehow, she’d always managed to stay out of serious, go-to-jail trouble.

She leaned against a wall, closed her eyes and, despite the fluorescent lights overhead, dozed off.

Thirty minutes later she awoke to see the holding cell door open, with her father on the other side of it. He was dressed like someone who’d just been rudely awakened with the news that his adult daughter had been arrested for a teenager-type crime, in baggy cotton drawstring pajama pants, rumpled T-shirt and leather moccasins. His hair was mussed and he needed a shave.

“Let’s go,” he said, handing her a plastic bag containing her phone and keys. He kept his hand on her elbow as he steered her out the plate-glass doors and into the parking lot. Just then a silver minivan sped up to the entrance. The driver braked and jumped out.

Rae Hernandez looked just as unhappy as Brice Campbell.

“Drue! What the hell’s going on? Daniels just called and said you’d been arrested at the Gulf Vista. Are you out of your mind?”

Brice gripped her arm tighter. “Who’s this?”

Hernandez looked him in the eye. “Detective Rae Hernandez. I take it you’re this juvenile delinquent’s father? I recognize you from your television commercials.”

“Brice Campbell,” he said. “Nice to meet you, but she doesn’t have anything to say to the police.”

Drue wrenched her arm away from his. “Actually, Dad, I really, really need to talk to Rae. I’ve been trying to call her all night.” She glared back at the detective. “That’s why I went over to the hotel tonight, to see if my theory was right.”

“Come on, Drue,” Brice said. “As your attorney and your father, I’m telling you this is not the time or place for this discussion.”

“Dad, please!” Drue exclaimed. “Rae is the detective working the Jazmin Mayes’s homicide.”

He rubbed the stubble on his cheek. “What’s that got to do with you? Yvonne Howington is no longer a client of the law firm.”

“You took your legal fee from that crappy settlement you got her,” Drue said. “Yvonne deserved better than you gave her. Jazmin deserved better. So yeah, I started poking into it. And I found something. Something you and Rae need to hear about.”

“Nobody asked you to go breaking and entering. And trespassing,” Hernandez said.

Brice shifted into attorney mode. “From what I’ve heard she didn’t actually break into or enter any premises.”

Drue sighed. “Can we just take this someplace else to talk about? Preferably some place with coffee?”

“Waffle House okay?” Brice asked, looking at Rae Hernandez.

She shrugged. “Why not? I’ll follow you over there.”





50


Brice waited until Drue had worked most of her way through a platter of scattered, covered and smothered hash browns along with a side of bacon.

“I still don’t understand what would possess you to break into that hotel. Zee looked into Jazmin’s murder very thoroughly. And so did the police. It’s tragic, but there was nothing there.”

Hernandez set her coffee mug down. “Actually, the hotel employees we talked to at the time were less than forthcoming. Management at Gulf Vista stonewalled our investigation right from the beginning. From what we’re now hearing, several male supervisors were sexually harassing and preying on female employees, including Jazmin Mayes.”

“Is that true?” Brice asked his daughter. “Where did you hear this?”

“I tracked down two different housekeepers, both of whom were friends of Jazmin’s, who, by the way, were never interviewed by Jimmy Zee,” Drue said. She couldn’t resist getting in a dig about the law firm’s investigator.

“I went over Zee’s report, he didn’t find anything about sexual harrasment,” Brice protested.

“Maybe that’s because he didn’t look hard enough,” Drue said. “The first time I went to Gulf Vista, I talked to Lutrisha Smallwood, she was the girl who found Jazmin’s body in that laundry room. She told me that the head of engineering made a habit of trying to grope her, until she zapped him in the eyes with glass cleaner. And she hinted that another guy, Herman Byars, the head of housekeeping, had a ‘thing’ with one of the other girls working there.”