“What?” Carlos asked, skeptically.
“It’s a confirmation email of some kind. Look, here’s his reservation confirmation number right here,” Mike said excitedly.
I examined the crumpled piece of paper. “But this says it’s page 2 of 2. Where’s page 1 of 2? This thing doesn’t tell us anything about where he’s staying.”
Mike nodded. “He probably took that stuff with him,” he said softly, sounding a touch dejected. “I’ll keep digging in here, though. Who knows?”
I shrugged and fingered the piece of paper in my hands. It was an email from an unnamed hotel that told the recipient that the hotel was looking forward to his stay, but that was all it said, apart from the confirmation numbers, which was QPT59039NH1.
That gave me an idea. “How many top-end hotels are there in Cabo?” I asked. “Five? Ten?”
Carlos looked up from his beer. “Depends what you mean by top-end. There are probably twenty really nice places down there. Lots of California money gets spent down that way.”
I thought about it for a second. “Well, if you had several million dollars, you’re not going to stay at some fleabag, right?”
Mike looked up. “What are you getting at, Raven?”
“It’s just that—if we call some of the nicest hotels down there, we can see if this is a valid confirmation number. Then we’ll know where he is. It can’t be that hard.”
Mike cocked his head to one side, considering the idea. “What exactly do you have in mind?”
“Well,” I said, thinking on my feet, “we just call and pretend to be checking on our reservation. We pretend we’re Steven, and then we give them the confirmation number. If they say it’s not a valid number, we move on. If it is a valid one, then we’re in business.”
Carlos nodded. “So Mike and I have to do all the calls. Is that it?”
I smiled. “Now you’re talking. Let’s get out of here.”
We drove back to our office where I fired up my computer, and Carlos rooted around for some coffee. I did a Google search for the most luxurious and expensive hotels in Cabo and printed off a list of about twelve, each of which charged more than five hundred bucks a night for a basic room.
“Here, guys. I made two copies. Mike, take the first six hotels, and Carlos will do the last six.”
Both of them grunted in unison but fell into line. Mike retreated to his office, while Carlos sat down at the weathered desk in our lobby.
He looked at the phone, shaking his head. “Which museum did you buy this thing at?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Use your cell phone if you don’t like it. It won’t matter.”
“International long distance,” he muttered. “I’m calling on your dime.”
I stood there watching Carlos sit on hold, which was about as exciting as it sounds.
“Put it on speaker,” I said. When the elevator music came on, I immediately regretted it. You’d think these fancy places would have nicer music and wouldn’t make you wait at all, but no, they were just like every other hotel.
Finally, a voice came on. Carlos, his voice a touch high-pitched, ran through his routine. He was just calling to confirm his reservation, and he gave the number. After an awkward ten-second delay, the woman on the other end told him his confirmation number was invalid. About what we expected.
Mike was doing the same thing, playing the waiting game while on hold. He rolled his eyes at me when I peered through his doorway but then flashed a friendly smile, revealing his kind eyes. I smiled back and then disappeared into my office where I kicked my heels up on the desk, which, predictably, almost collapsed.
What the hell was Mike doing? I wondered. He knew I wasn’t working a case, so there was no money in it for him. Was he so bored that he was helping me out just to kill the time? He really had nothing better to do than hang out with me and Carlos? No. Mike had never done anything like this before, and I’d been working with him for months. No. I began thinking it had something to do with Carlos. No. In fact, it had everything to do with Carlos. Mike must have sensed I was keen on Carlos, and he wanted to be here as a buffer, a roadblock, or at least he was curious enough to want to stick around. But why? He’d never shown more than a passing interest in me.
I heard Carlos talking again out in the lobby, so I sprung out of my seat to go eavesdrop. I hadn’t caught the first part of the conversation, but it was clear enough that the situation was an awkward one. And then Carlos said, “Thank you,” and hung up.
“Well, that was awkward,” he said.
“How?”
He was chuckling. “They wanted to know why I was confirming a reservation when I had already checked in three days ago!”
Our eyes met. “So you found him!”
He smiled. “I’ve got the touch, I guess.”
“So who the hell was in his apartment just now?” I asked.
Mike joined us. “Sounds like you found him,” he said, not entirely enthusiastically.
Carlos beamed. “Yeah, he’s at the…” He leaned over and picked up the sheet of paper to examine it. “He’s at the Hacienda del Cabo.”
I smiled. “That one was my favorite,” I gushed.
“You’ve been there?” Mike asked.
“No,” I said sheepishly. “Just from the pictures on the website. They’ve got an infinity pool.”
“They all have infinity pools!” Carlos sneered.
Mike chuckled. “Well, we better pack our bags, right?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
First Mike had accompanied Carlos and me on a mission to visit Mrs. Vandenhoovel then her nephew Steven. And then he’d stuck around to cold-call a bunch of swanky hotels in Cabo San Lucas. Now he was proposing to fly to Cabo San Lucas with us. I didn’t quite know how to take it. But my suspicions were up.
Carlos butted in. “Woah, who said anything about flying to Mexico? I mean, I have a job and stuff. I can’t just—”
“Sure you can,” I said, interrupting him. “They love you. If I can take off, surely they wouldn’t mind a short absence from the likes of you.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “The likes of me? What’s that mean?”
Mike looked confused. “Wait, you guys work together?”
At that moment the blood drained from my face, and feeling lightheaded, I grabbed onto the desk for support. I shot a desperate look at Carlos, who seemed a touch guilty about what had just occurred. He hadn’t known that I’d never told Mike about my night job.
“I work as a bouncer at nights,” Carlos explained. “I assumed you knew we worked together. Raven’s one of the—”
“Carlos!” I hissed, flashing him daggers with my eyes.
Mike was standing there, looking back and forth between Carlos and me. At that point it must have become obvious. I was a woman with obvious surgical enhancements, and Carlos was a bouncer. If we worked together, it wasn’t at NASA.
“I see,” was all he said.
I would have preferred an outburst or some show of anger or…something. But no, Mike had just drawn up inside himself, his lips pursed and his jaw firm. He seemed disappointed somehow rather than angry.
I let out a long sigh. “Well, now you know. This is Vegas. It’s not like I’m a crack dealer or heroin junkie. I just show men what they want and make a healthy living doing it.”
He nodded. “That would explain your lifestyle. I just assumed you were living off of credit cards or something. But hey, you don’t have to justify your life to me. None of my business.”
His demeanor told me that he didn’t mean it. He was judging me, and maybe he was judging himself too. Had I let him down?
“Anyway,” Carlos said.
“Yes,” Mike said. “Anyway, you really won’t need me in Cabo. I’m gonna take off, guys. Have a good trip!”
He was smiling, but it wasn’t a truly genuine smile. It was the kind where you have to force your facial muscles to make the right movements, the kind that never quite looked legitimate
. There was sadness in his eyes.
“Mike,” I said softly. “I hope you’re not mad at me.”
He looked at the ground and then met my eyes. “No, I’m not mad at you, Raven. I’m mad at myself. I feel like an idiot. Good night, guys.” With that, he turned and left us.
My heart was pumping, and my face felt flushed. Something had just happened there, something bad. Something I wanted to stop but felt powerless to handle. My brain was frozen, unable to function, and my feet were glued to the floor.
Carlos was looking at me in a weird way. “You got a thing for that guy or something?”
I turned to face him. “What makes you ask that?”
“That’s not a ‘no’,” he said.
I put my hands on my hips. “What if I do?”
He shrugged. “He’s cute. I’ll give you that much. But come on. I’m way better,” he said, flashing his bright white teeth.
“Better at what?” I asked.
“I’ll show you in Cabo,” he said, moving his eyebrows up and down.
I shook my head. “You look like Groucho-freaking-Marx when you do that. It’s not a turn-on. I can assure you of that.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “So are we going or what?”
“This isn’t an actual case, you know. There’s no client paying our expenses,” I said.
He nodded. “That’s fine with me. I want to find out where your money went. That might pay for the whole trip itself. You can give me a cut.”
I was skeptical. “Maybe.”
I walked back to my office and began looking at flights on my computer.
“So how come you want to come with me, anyway?” I asked Carlos, who had been cooling his heels in the doorway of my office. “Trouble in paradise?”
He scowled. “You always think I’m working some kind of angle, Raven. My girlfriend and I are good.”
I rolled my eyes. “Separate rooms,” I announced. “By the way does she know you’ve been skipping work and chasing around town with me? And not even getting paid for it? I wonder what she’d say about that.”
For a split second he actually looked frightened. The funny part was seeing a muscle-bound alpha male like Carlos be completely whipped by his woman.
“How would she find out something like that?” he asked. I almost thought there was a tremor in his voice.
“A woman like that will have sources. Spies, really,” I said. I had met her a few times and never received anything other than a death stare from her. A real peach, that one. Protective of her man like a mama bear protecting her cub.
Carlos smiled. “Now I know you’re just messing with me. Don’t play with me, Raven, not on that subject.”
I decided to take pity on the poor man. “If I book these flights, you’re reimbursing me, right?”
He looked wounded. “I’m not a mooch, Raven.”
“Just a tightwad,” I muttered.
“There’s a difference,” he announced.
“Well, you can tell me all about it on our flight. Tomorrow morning, eight-twenty. Delta. I can pick you up if you want.”
“Stop by around seven,” he said.
“See you at six thirty,” I said. I was a terrible flyer, and so I always arrived earlier than required to allow me suitable time to drink enough liquid courage.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Carlos was fidgeting in the passenger seat. I had just picked him up from his house, and we were on our way to McCarran Airport to head to Cabo San Lucas. He was wearing a tight-fitting gray shirt that didn’t leave much to the imagination, with his bulbous upper arms bulging out in every direction.
“How do you get through security with those?” I asked, finding myself in an uncommonly playful mood.
“With what?”
“You can’t bring those guns on an airplane,” I explained.
He chuckled and then made a show of flexing his muscles.
“So I’ve been thinking,” he said.
I sighed. “I don’t like the sound of that. You’re here for muscle, not for brains.”
He looked out the window in mock disgust. “Anyway, I’m thinking why are we going at all? Why not just call in the feds? We have evidence of a financial crime going on here. This is way over our heads. I mean, this has now become an international crime.”
I sighed. He was right about the last part. We pulled up to a stop light, and I turned to face him. “If we call the feds, then this guy will go into deep hiding. We’ll lose him completely. We might never see any of that money ever again.”
“So this way, you think, we can track him down?”
I shrugged. “Try to locate him and his money first, and worry about busting him later. That’s my theory. That way, maybe we can get everyone’s money back. Some of those girls can’t really afford to lose it,” I said.
“And you can?” he asked.
I shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the end of the world for me. I’ve been dancing a long time, you know. It’s not like I go out every night and blow all that money on purses and champagne.”
“You just blow most of it?” he asked, smiling.
“Do shut up,” I announced. “Anyway, are you still doubting my plan?”
“I see where you’re coming from. It’s nice that you care about the other girls. And hell, you might be right. This kind of thing happens a lot in these schemes. Some of the people getting scammed start to become suspicious, but they never call the authorities because they want the party to keep going and going.”
“Really?” I asked. “I wonder if I’m the only one who smelled a rat here.”
“But then, of course, there are clawbacks,” Carlos muttered.
“And what, pray tell, are clawbacks?” I asked, taking the bait.
“When some investors get paid, and others don’t get a nickel,” he said, “the trustee supervising the case will demand that people who got paid give the money back so that it can be split up evenly.”
He was sounding alarmingly well-informed on the subject. “You know an awful lot about this kind of thing. For a bouncer, anyway.”
“You do remember I’m in business school, right?”
“Oh,” was all I could muster.
At Carlos’s insistence, we parked in the cheapest lot imaginable, which seemed to be closer to my apartment than to the airport.
“Are we going to make it?” I asked, huffing and puffing while dragging my suitcase at a half sprint.
“We’ll be fine,” he announced calmly, barely breaking a sweat.
He was right. After we checked in, I found the first bar in the terminal and ordered myself a triple gin martini on the rocks. Carlos made a face but kept his mouth shut. I took a healthy swig and then took the glass with me, leaving a ten on the bar so that the bartender wouldn’t squawk.
“You know, it’s the safest way to travel,” Carlos muttered.
“Nevertheless,” I said, hoisting my glass again as we walked to our gate. The warmth of the gin as it trickled down my gullet began calming me almost immediately. It didn’t hurt that we had managed to be about a half hour early, so I could sit down and take some deep breaths.
“Seriously, Raven,” he said, eyeing me. To him I must have looked like an escaped mental patient, eyes bulged out and darting in every direction, my white-knuckled hands gripping onto the sides of my chair.
I forced a smile. “You don’t know what it’s like. I’ll be fine in about ten minutes,” I said, taking another glug of vodka.
“Whatever,” he said. “I’m gonna take a little walk.”
That was a relief. It was bad enough sitting there thinking the world was about to end, but having Carlos eyeing me the whole time made it even worse. I focused on some deep breathing exercises and then finished off the gin. By the time he returned, I was in a somewhat relaxed state.
“Better now?” he asked.
I nodded.
We boarded the plane without incident, with Carlos graciously giving me his aisle seat
and taking the middle one for himself. The flight was only about half full, remarkably, and so the two of us had the row to ourselves. Despite the gin and deep breaths, I was still in a bad place. When we finally taxied onto the runway, and the jet engines roared to life, I gripped the armrests for dear life.
Carlos snuck his right hand under my left and then squeezed it. “You’ve got this,” he said reassuringly.
The warm touch of his strong hand distracted me for long enough to temporarily forget that we were about to take off. It proved to be a much needed interlude that allowed my addled brain to hit the “reset” button and stop going down all the dark paths it had been exploring. I turned towards him and smiled, and he squeezed my hand again.
“Here,” he said, leaning over towards me.
I took his meaning and leaned my head on his shoulder. Although the plane had reached its full acceleration, I no longer minded. I closed my eyes and focused on Carlos’s warmth, his powerful shoulder muscles, and barely noticed when the nose of the plane launched us up into the air. The last thing I remembered was that my mouth had somehow turned itself into a tiny smile.
The next thing I knew, I felt a powerful nudge coming from my left.
“Hey, Raven, we landed,” the voice said.
My head was foggy and confused. The person on my left began pushing me up into a straight position.
My first thought was that my neck was killing me. Apparently, I had been leaning on Carlos’s shoulder for the entire flight, and now my neck was paying the price.
“I slept through the whole flight?” I asked, stretching out all of my limbs and flexing my neck.
“Don’t worry,” Carlos said. “Here, I saved you some peanuts.”
Peanuts weren’t going to make my headache any better, but it was a start. “Thanks. Did the flight attendants happen to pass out any ibuprofen or Tylenol?” I asked.
He chuckled. “You know, they have drugs for that kind of thing. You don’t need to get drunk every time you fly. You just take a pill and go off into la-la land. That’s what my cousin does.”
I smiled. “But then I’d have to see a doctor, right?”
“So?” he asked.
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