Sunset Beach(112)

“Are your nerves getting settled any better?” Drue asked, after Neesa drained her first glass of wine.

“A little,” Neesa said. “Being out here, you know, so close to the hotel where I used to work, it kinda does a number on my head.”

“That’s right,” Drue said innocently. “The Gulf Vista. And you knew the girl who got killed, right?”

“Jaz. My best friend.” Neesa looked over at the hair strand. “Me and that girl, we went through some crazy stuff together. I tell you the truth, I ain’t been back out here to the beach since I left that place.”

“Kinda sucks that they let you go, huh?” Drue said.

Neesa gave her a sharp look. “They didn’t fire me. I quit.”

“What about your boss? The one you told me about, Herman the Munster?”

Neesa giggled. “Yeah, old Herman the Munster. Now, he did get his ass fired, or so I heard.”

“Why did he get fired?”

The hairdresser looked at her over the rim of her wineglass. “How should I know?”

“More wine?” Drue asked.

Neesa nodded and Drue poured.

“You know, it’s too bad old Herman did get fired,” Neesa said, after a second glass of prosecco. “They shoulda locked his ass up for the way he did me and Jaz.”

“Because he was pressuring both of you for sex?” Drue asked.

“That and all the rest of it,” Neesa said, gesturing grandly. “Like, if I ever told what all I know? That old perv would prob’ly get the chair or something.”

“Instead he just walks away like nothing happened,” Drue encouraged her.

“And my poor ‘lil Jaz is dead and her baby ain’t never gonna see her mama again.” Neesa dabbed at her eyes with the hem of her shirt. She held out her empty glass and Drue refilled it.

Drue looked over at the oven timer, and then at the test strand of her hair, which had already turned an unnatural shade of green with five minutes still left on the timer. If she had any hope of saving her hair, and Hernandez’s case, she needed to get Neesa to get to the point before that timer went off.

“So, you think Herman had something to do with Jaz’s death?”

Neesa set her glass down on the table, sloshing a little wine over the edge. “Think it? Girlfriend, I know it. Say, you got anything to snack on?”

Drue jumped up and found a box of Cheez-Its in the cabinet.

“That’s good,” Neesa said, opening the box and shoving a handful of crackers into her mouth. As she chewed, shards of orange crumbs rained down on her shirtfront. She took another swallow of wine.

“Wow,” Drue said softly. “So, were you there? I mean, what exactly happened?” She emptied the prosecco bottle into Neesa’s glass, silently cursing herself for buying only one bottle.

“I wasn’t there when it happened,” Neesa said. “I mean, maybe if I had been, I coulda done something to stop him, but prob’ly not. He was hella strong for an old dude. By the time I got there, poor Jaz, she was already dead. Nuthin’ I could do about it.”

Drue realized she’d been holding her breath. She exhaled slowly and glanced quickly at her cell phone propped up on the windowsill behind a bottle of dish detergent. She hadn’t mentioned the phone to Hernandez, who would have objected, but she thought of it as insurance.

“You’re saying this Herman guy killed your friend? But why?”

“He said she went crazy, soon as she went in that hotel room and saw him standing there. Told me she picked up a lamp and swung it at him, and it was self-defense. I knew that was bullshit. Jaz couldn’t have hurt him. She wasn’t any bigger than a fly. I think he grabbed her, you know, because he wanted sex, and she said no and probably tried to fight him off.”

Neesa shrugged. “She shoulda just kept on letting him do what he wanted to do and kept her mouth shut. Like I did.”

“When did Herman tell you all this?” Drue asked. She was pushing things now, she knew, but if she could keep the other woman talking, maybe she’d lay out the whole scheme.

“After he’d done it, he called me on the radio and told me I needed to come to that room right quick. Only, he told me to come the back way, so nobody would see me.”

“What was the back way?”

“The balcony,” Neesa said. “The rooms in that old wing, the first floor was only a few feet above the ground. There was a stepladder stuck behind the ice machine, so the engineering guys could use it to fix lights and stuff. He told me to climb up that and he’d let me in through the sliding-glass door. So I wouldn’t be on the security cameras, ’cause there weren’t that many in the old wing.”

Gotcha, Drue silently mouthed.

“Huh?” Neesa leaned back in the chair, glassy-eyed, open-mouthed.

“Nothing,” Drue said. “Why did Herman call you?”

“To clean up the mess he’d made,” Neesa said scornfully. “And help him get the body outta there.”

“That’s awful,” Drue said, meaning it.

“Yeah. You know, it’s been two years, and I think maybe I got me some of that, what do they call it, after you been in combat?”

“Post-traumatic stress disorder?”

“That’s it,” Neesa said. She held both hands in front of her. “See this? My hands are shaking real bad, ’cause we been talking about it.”