Sunset Beach(108)

Rae cleared her throat. “Byars has dropped off the radar. He’s not working at the tire store where he was employed when I last spoke to him, and I don’t have a current address, but I’m working on that.”

Brice nodded and glanced at his daughter, who was mopping up the last of the hash browns with a triangle of rye toast. “You said you talked to two housekeepers. Who was the second?”

“Neesa Vincent. Who was supposedly Jazmin’s best friend,” Drue said bitterly. “But after looking at the hotel’s security video for hours earlier tonight, I’d hate to have a friend like her.”

“Why’s that?” Brice asked.

“Neesa was in on Jazmin’s murder,” Drue said. “I’m sure of it.”

Brice signaled for the waitress to bring the coffeepot back around and settled into the corner of the booth. “Okay. I’m listening.”



* * *



Drue filled her father in on how she’d tracked down Jazmin’s friend and the revelations she’d made after a night of drinking at Mister B’s.

“Neesa admitted to me that she started trading sex for preferential treatment from Byars, after she got caught stealing from a guest,” Drue said. “The guest complained to management that he’d left eight hundred dollars in cash in the pocket of a bathrobe. Byars lied for Neesa, turned in five hundred, and said the guest was drunk and mistaken about the amount of cash. Afterwards, he kept two hundred and Neesa got to keep a hundred.”

“After you told me that, I pulled up all incident reports mentioning missing or stolen property at that hotel for the past three years,” Hernandez volunteered. “Lots of petty theft going on at that place. Jewelry, cell phones, cash. But not a single arrest was made.”

“You think the head of security was part of the theft ring?” Brice asked.

“We’re looking into that,” Hernandez said. She tapped Drue on the arm. “Don’t leave us hanging here. Let’s hear what you think you figured out from the video.”

“It’d be easier if I actually had it in front of me,” Drue said.

“Hold that thought,” Hernandez said, sliding out from the booth.

A moment later she returned from her minivan with a laptop computer. She pushed away the plates and coffee mugs, raised the lid, tapped some buttons and cued up the video from the hotel’s security cameras.

Drue pointed at the screen as Jazmin’s cab rolled into view.

“I kept going back to that argument Neesa had with Jazmin in the employee locker room that afternoon,” Drue said. “There was a time lag of almost thirty minutes between the time Jazmin arrived at the hotel and when she got to the locker room. Of course, there’s no video to prove it, but doesn’t it stand to reason she had to report first to Byars, and explain why she was late?”

Hernandez paused the video. “Byars told us that when she got to work that day, Jazmin came to him and asked to work a second shift because she needed the money.”

“Yvonne has said from the beginning that Jazmin wouldn’t have worked that late because of Aliyah,” Drue said. “But what if Byars was lying? What if he told her she’d have to make it up to him later that night for coming to work an hour late?” Drue asked.

“That’s just supposition,” Brice objected.

“Watch the video,” Drue said, turning the laptop so her father could see as the action in the employee locker room unfolded.

“Which one is Neesa?” Brice asked.

“The girl with all the extensions and dreads,” Drue said.

They watched in silence. “They’re definitely having some kind of spat,” Brice commented. He watched while Jazmin left the room and Neesa lit a cigarette and pulled out her phone.

“Any idea what the argument was about?” he asked.

“Rae said that Neesa claimed it was a mix-up over trading days off, but they worked it out,” Drue said. “But I think she’s lying. Look how agitated she is. And who’s she calling?”

“You think it was Byars?” Hernandez asked.

“Definitely,” Drue said.

Hernandez started the video again. “You can tell that’s Jazmin, mainly because she’s wearing that white baseball cap,” Drue told Brice, referring to the slender woman shown pushing a cleaning cart down the hotel hallways.

“Yeah, but the bill of the cap hides her face,” Brice said.

“Exactly.” Drue nodded.

After another five minutes of watching, Brice yawned and looked down at his watch. “My God, it’s after three. I’m too old for this crap. Can we just get to the point?”

Now Hernandez was yawning too. “My kid has a baseball tournament in Sarasota starting in exactly five hours, so yeah, Drue, let’s wind this up.”

“Okay,” Drue said reluctantly. “Can you fast-forward it to the last room Jazmin cleaned that night? I think it’s around the 11:05 mark.”

The detective sped up the video, pausing it at the point Drue requested.

“Now back it up, please, so we see Jazmin approaching the room.”

Hernandez did as she was asked.

“Check her body language,” Drue said. “She’s beat. She’s walking slowly, you can tell it’s an effort pushing that cart. Her shoulders are slumped, her head is down.