Sunset Beach(48)

“What was the deciding battle in your family feud?” Corey asked.

“Halloween, when I was fifteen. This one Friday night, my best friend was spending the night, as usual, and Joan and Dad were away for the weekend. We decided we really, really wanted to go to Fright Fest, at Disney World. And I knew where Joan hid the keys to her Cadillac. So we went.”

“You’re telling me that two fifteen-year-old girls loaded up in a stolen Caddy and drove two and a half hours to Orlando?”

“At night. And we’d been drinking. And we would have gotten away with it, if some asshole hadn’t sideswiped the Caddy in the parking lot and ripped the right rearview mirror completely off the car.”

“Ouch.” Corey winced. “So you got caught and, what, put in permanent time-out?”

Drue’s smile was brittle. “Something like that. My friend’s father was this uptight, asshole preacher who made a big stink when my father called to tell him what we’d done. She told her father that I’d forced her to go with me. Which was a lie. She drove because my feet couldn’t even reach the gas pedal. Annnnnd, after that, she never spoke to me again. Totally ghosted me. When the school year was up, my dad put me on a Greyhound bus and shipped me back to Fort Lauderdale to live with my mom.”

“That’s some story,” he said.

“It gets worse,” Drue said. “Dad and Joan divorced, but now Dad is married to my former friend—who is my boss at the law firm and who’s made it her mission to make my life a living hell.”

“And I thought my family was screwed up.” Corey hopped off the bar stool. “Hey, I’ve had about a gallon of iced tea. I’m gonna go find the men’s room.”

“Okay. I’ll be right here.”



* * *



“Let’s go,” Drue said, when Corey returned to the bar. “I’ve already settled the tab.”

She walked briskly away from the pool area. “Where to now?” he asked, glancing at his watch. “Hate to say it, but I can’t hang out here much longer. I’ve got a five-mile bike ride to get in tonight.”

“Laundry room,” she said.

“How are you going to get in?”

She turned and dangled the key-card lanyard before his eyes.

“Do I want to know how you managed to snag that?”

“I accidentally spilled that whole big bowl of popcorn on the floor. The bartender was super annoyed that she had to come around from behind the bar and sweep it all up. While she was tidying, the lanyard somehow fell off that hook and into my bag.”

“You’re the kind of girl my mama tried to warn me about,” Corey said, shaking his head.

“She never did bring my drink, so I figured this was a fair trade.”

When they arrived at the service area, Corey grabbed her arm just as she was about to slide the key through the laundry room door’s reader. “What if somebody comes along and catches us?”

“They won’t,” she assured him, pushing the door open.

The room was large, with walls of stainless steel industrial washers and dryers, and intensely hot. A stainless steel folding table ran against one wall, and shelving held jugs of bleach and laundry detergent. A wheeled canvas cart was pulled up in front of one of the machines, and Drue shuddered.

“They found that poor girl’s body shoved into a cart like that one,” she told Corey, her voice hushed. “It could even be the same cart.”

“Thanks for that visual. This place gives me the creeps,” Corey said. “What are you looking for, anyway?”

Drue walked around the room, looking down at the floor and up at the ceiling. She pointed at a spot above the doorway, where a metal bracket was bolted to the wall, and wires sprouted from the plasterboard. “Our firm’s investigator said there wasn’t a working video camera in this room when Jazmin was killed. But it looks like maybe there was one here at some point.”

“Let’s just go, okay?” Corey said, his hand on the doorknob.

She took out her phone and snapped a few quick shots of the room, zooming in on the area where a wall-mounted camera might have been, and then pulled the door open again.

“God,” Corey breathed, when they were well away. “It must have been a hundred and ten degrees in there. How do the housekeepers stand working in there without air-conditioning?”

Drue turned to look at him. “Good point. If I were in there doing laundry, where there’s no air-conditioning? I’d leave the door open, to at least get some fresh air. Maybe Jazmin left it open that night, and that’s how her attacker got in.”

“If that’s so, the killer could have been anybody,” Corey said. “Even a guest.”

As they were walking away they heard a rumble of wheels on the concrete walkway. A housekeeper in a white uniform smock was trundling a huge canvas laundry cart toward them, her body nearly dwarfed by the piles of rumpled linens.

“Busted,” Corey whispered. “Almost.”

But Drue wasn’t listening. She was walking toward the housekeeper, a friendly smile pasted on her face. When she got close enough to speak, she noticed the housekeeper’s name tag. LUTRISHA. Wasn’t that the name of one of the employees Zee had interviewed?

“Excuse me,” Drue said. “Could I speak to you for a couple minutes?”