Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(57)

“The movie theater, maybe? Under a seat or something?”

“That’s how we should be thinking, but not a movie theater. She wouldn’t chance it. Again, too easy for a janitor or employee to accidentally come across it.”

“What if she got on a plane and stashed it thousands of miles away? She went to the airport, remember?”

“She needed it to be accessible.”

“How about a friend’s house? Someone she trusted.”

“She was too scared. She wouldn’t have risked getting someone she cared about wrapped up with Care4.”

“But how do you hide—” Jess pushed her tray away in excitement. “The hotel and spa that she went to. A spa is perfect. Lockers, cubbyholes, privacy, all kinds of hiding places. And single gender. Harder for the Care4 goons to go in looking.”

I thought about the idea. “Where was it again?”

“The Ritz-Carlton, in Half Moon Bay. We went once for our anniversary. I think I’m still paying off that credit card.”

I thought about Buster. He’d laugh. I was going to the Ritz after all.





30


Like many coastal towns, at some point Half Moon Bay had traded fishing for tourism as its major source of revenue. The hotel was a massive stone and beige palace on manicured green grounds and golf courses, set high above the ocean. It looked like a place where Henry James would have happily placed one of his European scenes. We were in Jess’s old black BMW convertible. It was a stick shift and she drove aggressively, top down, the heater running to compensate for the foggy coastal air.

After parking, we followed signs to the spa. “Do you have an appointment?” asked one of the receptionists, a pretty college-age girl with a perfect smile and a perfect manicure.

I shook my head. “Referred by a friend. We were hoping to talk to her masseuse.”

“We love our referrals!” said the receptionist. “Do you know the name?”

“No. But my friend was Karen Li. L-I.”

She typed into her system. “She had Kaitlyn.” She clicked around more. “Kaitlyn is totally booked today, but can I schedule you with someone else? Everyone’s amazing.”

“Is it okay if we just meet her quickly?”

“I think she’s in between appointments right now. Let me check.”

We waited. I flipped through a home decoration magazine showing perfect outdoor firepits and pools lined with geometric rows of beach chairs, wishing that waiting rooms like this one could be bothered to stock a few paperbacks along with the magazines. Then again, with smartphones everywhere, even finding a Reader’s Digest wasn’t guaranteed anymore.

The receptionist came out with a tall blond woman who smiled, revealing whitened teeth. “Hey guys! I’m Kaitlyn.”

We introduced ourselves. “Our friend loved you,” Jess said. “Karen Li.”

“Pretty Asian woman, late thirties, looked younger,” I added.

Kaitlyn laughed. “You totally described about half my clients.”

I gave a more detailed description and her face pinched in thought. “I thiiiink I remember her.” She paused, trying to be helpful. “I think she did the Pearlescence Facial. Maybe? Anyway, I gotta run!”

She vanished into the door she’d come out of. “Now what?” Jess asked.

“We’re here. Might as well look around. They must sell day passes.”

In the locker room, we changed into comfortable bathrobes and slippers at one of the lockers. It was a weekday afternoon and the locker room was almost empty. Soft music played and the lighting was dim and generous. The lockers were stacks of empty cubes set against the walls. Multiple signs warned that they were emptied nightly. No way something was hidden in one of them long term. The rest of the room would have been equally difficult to hide something in. The counters were sterile, the only objects hair dryers and jars of Q-tips and facial lotion. Even as I watched, a cleaner came through to empty the used towel bin. I thought briefly of the laundry room but wrote it off. The laundry room probably handled the hotel as well as the spa. Cheaper than running two separate facilities. Meaning it would be going twenty-four hours a day, staffed constantly, maids in and out. Whatever we were looking for wouldn’t be there.

We found our way through an opaque glass door to a smaller room with an emerald hot tub set into the floor. Candles glowed from crannies in the walls and Eastern instrumental music played. I hit a button on the wall and the jets came to life. The water frothed appealingly. “Might as well,” I said. “We paid for the damn day passes.”

We left our bathrobes on a teak bench and got in. The bubbling water felt good. I leaned back into a jet, feeling it pulse against the center of my back. “Maybe she put it somewhere in the hotel,” Jess suggested. “But I don’t know where we’d start.”

I shook my head, thinking of the laundry room. “Too many employees everywhere, cleaning. It’s impossible to hide anything because the whole point is to make each person feel like they’re the first ones to ever arrive.”

Jess sank lower in the water until the bottom of her chin brushed the surface. “How are we supposed to find this thing if we literally don’t have a clue?”

I thought again about those childhood afikoman searches through the Berkoviches’ house. “We’re looking, but we’re not seeing. Spas, movie theaters, restaurants—those are just places she went. They don’t mean anything. We could spend a year looking that way. Like digging random holes in the ground to see if we strike oil.”