by Liz Marvin
“Wow,” said Wes. “You weren’t kidding.” Betty turned to see him staring at her bed, and the pile of money she had exposed at its head.
“I don’t usually joke about felonies,” she quipped.
“We’ll need to take your statements and some photographs,” Bill said. “Then you can take your essentials and move to your new rooms.”
“What about you and Wes?” asked Betty.
Bill shook his head. “We’ll join you later, but it’ll probably be late.” Bill looked at his watch and grimaced. “By the time we’re done, it might even be early. But we have a crime scene to process, and that can’t wait.” He glanced out the window. “We’re lucky with this weather. The thief can’t go far, and it’s likely they haven’t gone anywhere yet. But there’s no telling how long the storm will last, so we have to move fast.”
Great, Betty thought. I feel all safe and cozy now.
CHAPTER 11
The statements and photos didn’t take long, and the girls picked up the keys to their new room at the front desk. When they entered the room, Betty immediately checked the bathroom and closets, even under the beds and pillows and in drawers. She needed to make sure there were no nasty surprises in this room before she locked herself in and barricaded the door, so to speak. Clarise sat on the bed and watched her. When she’d closed the last drawer and found nothing but the requisite hotel phone number guide and Bible, Clarise looked at her pointedly.
“Are you done?” she asked. “Because I think there’s an inch in that corner you haven’t inspected yet.”
Betty threw a pillow at her. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing.”
“Of course,” Clarise said, lying back against the pillows and closing her eyes with a happy groan. “But why should I, when you’re doing such a wonderful job and these beds are so comfy?”
Betty laughed, and changed the subject. “I think this room is smaller than where we were originally, which will make fitting four of us in here a challenge.”
Where the other room had been the size of a suite, with huge queen beds and plenty of room to move around, this room was cramped with beds that were only full sized. Full beds had plenty of room for one person, but with two to a bed things were bound to feel a bit cramped. Betty thought of her spacious, half-bedroom-half-home-office room at home with a sudden pang of longing.
No one would stash thousands of dollars under her pillow there.
Now that the room was confirmed to be small but safe, Betty had to fight to keep her eyes open. “We’re sharing a bed, right?” she asked Clarise in between yawns. “Because I don’t like the idea of sharing one of these with Bill. I don’t want to give him the wrong idea.”
Clarise raised one eyebrow. “Wouldn’t the wrong idea be exactly the sort of idea he should be getting?” she asked with a grin. Betty’s face flamed. “I thought this weekend was supposed to be a double date!”
Betty groaned. “You’re a brat, you know that? And yes, that would be nice. But we aren’t even officially dating yet, and I’d just as soon not share a bed with him quite yet, thank you very much!”
Clarise chuckled. “I wouldn’t mind sharing a bed with Wes. But,” she said, holding up her hand as Betty started to speak, “I’d be fine sharing with you instead. I think it’s good to play a little hard to get anyhow.”
Betty rolled her eyes. “You have “hard to get” down to an art. How long did it take you and Wes to get together again?”
“And now that I have him I’d like very much to keep him, thank you very much!” Clarise stated. “So, I’m not going to rush anything.”
“Makes sense,” Betty said, though personally she thought Clarise and Wes would get overrun by glaciers if they moved any slower. “Now shove over. It’s sleep time.”
~
Betty slept deep enough that she didn’t hear Bill and Wes come in, but when she awoke in the morning there they were in the bed closest to the door. Betty stared at Bill’s face for a moment. His eyelids flickered, and she realized that he must be dreaming. About what? She only let herself wonder for a moment before shaking herself out of her stupor.
So she liked the man. That didn’t mean she had to act like a lovesick teenager. Clarise was still asleep beside her, her breath coming soft and steady. Betty eased out of bed, trying not to move the mattress and covers so much that Clarise woke. She could use this time to check her e-mail and make sure that everything was going fine with her clients.
Running her own business was a mixture of blessings and curses. In this case, while she could set her own schedule and arrange to come on this trip with no worries, she still had to work on her mini-vacation. If something was going wrong, she was quite literally the only employee capable of putting out fires. She was the only employee period!
Betty pulled her laptop out of its well-worn travel case and plugged in a set of headphones to hide the sound of the system starting up. She plopped down in the chair in front of the screen and tapped her foot impatiently. Why did it take her computer so long to boot up? Could she have chosen a faster model, a better start-up program, a better anything?
One of the boys shifted in their bed. Betty stopped tapping. The last thing she wanted was for one of them to wake up because she was loud. Who knew how long they’d been awake last night?
When her computer was fully awake, Betty opened the wireless network part of her control panel. This was the part of the computer that listed every wireless network in the area. Betty waited for the hotel’s network to pop up.
And waited.
And waited.
It took her a few minutes to realize that there wasn’t a hotel network to find. No free wifi, no wireless connections with blocked passwords… in fact, her computer wasn’t listing a single wireless network in the whole area.
Betty walked over to the window and peeked through the blackout curtains, careful to not let any light fall on the sleepers. For a moment, the brightness outside shocked her vision. She winced, holding her hands up to her eyes to ward out the sun, before realizing that it wasn’t the sun that her eyes needed warding from. It was the whole whitewashed world.
Betty might not have been able to see very far without her glasses, but that didn’t make any difference in this case. Even if her vision had been top-notch, she wouldn’t’ve been able to see more than ten feet from the window. The air was swarming with snowflakes. And they weren’t the pretty, fluffy kind. These snowflakes were small, frozen bits of ice whipping around at who knew how many miles per hour. They clicked and hissed against the glass of the window. This was the type of storm that downed power lines and turned satellite signals into white noise. And apparently, the hotel’s internet hadn’t survived the storm.
She was stranded. Cut off. Isolated from the cyber world that made up her livelihood, her hobbies, her social networking. A choking feeling rose up her throat. Hold on, she thought, forcibly holding off the oncoming panic. The world wasn’t ending because she couldn’t check her e-mail.
Who was she kidding? Of course the world was ending! What if she missed out on a great client? Or an amazing deal? What if some of the items she had up for auction online were about to expire?
Betty closed the blackout curtains, letting her vision adjust once more to the dim artificial light. She rubbed her eyes. Okay Betty, she thought to herself. Think. Think hard. Are there any customers who might need immediate help? Any shipments due next week? Any clients likely to have a major crisis?
She squashed the foreboding certainty that there was a customer having a meltdown and threatening to pull their business from Betty’s company if she didn’t respond that morning. Everything would be fine. So the wireless internet was down. That didn’t necessarily mean that there was no way for her to check her e-mail. The hotel must have a backup. She just had to find out what it was.
Betty dressed quickly in loose pants and a tank top, pulling her hair back into a pony tail. She scrawled a note and left it on the table, just
in case someone woke up while she was gone. She couldn’t make a phone call from the room phone to the front desk without waking everyone else in the room up, so she’d just have to go to the front desk herself.
It took a few wrong turns and one kind maid to point Betty in the direction of the elevators. Once again, Betty was struck by the labyrinthine design of the hallways. It was as though the architect had decided to play a joke on the hotel visitors. She could imagine him perfectly, wearing a villainous moustache and a horrid plaid suit, chortling with glee over the struggles of hotel customers on a desperate search for the ice machine. What a jerk.
By the time she finally reached the elevator, Betty had had it. That’s it, she thought. I’m not stopping at asking for internet. I demand a map! A nice, detailed, color coded map that even the most direction-challenged person could decipher with ease. And I want it to have cartoon figures like on the Candy Land game board, so I can recognize landmarks. So there, evil architect man. I will defeat you!
This time, when Betty walked through the grand entrance hall, she paid no attention to the people milling about, or the grand gold and red décor. She was a woman on a mission.
“Excuse me,” she said to the woman at the front desk. “I have a question about your internet.”
The woman looked at her over horn-rimmed glasses and said in a nasal voice, “What about it?”
“You see,” Betty said, patting herself on the back in reward for her outward poise. “There’s no wireless internet in my room right now. I’m sure it’s the storm. I was wondering where I might be able to check my e-mail.”
“If the wireless is down,” the woman droned, turning to type on her computer, “then there isn’t any internet available.”
Betty gritted her teeth.
“Are you absolutely sure about that?” she asked. “There’s no back up internet anywhere in this hotel?”
“No Ma’am. If the wireless internet is down, there’s no internet available to guests.” The woman continued to work on her computer, clearly done with paying attention to Betty.
Betty clutched the counter, her knuckles white. They let this woman run the front desk? She was horrible! She could at least look a Betty while talking to her.
“Can I help you Miss Crawford?” a man asked, coming to stand behind the counter. It was George, the concierge who had come to tell them about the weather. The woman who’d brushed Betty off so rudely looked back at him in surprise and, Betty was pleased to note, just a touch of panic.
“That would be wonderful,” she said with relief.
George gestured to the side of the counter. “If you’d just step over here, Daphne can take the next guest.” He smiled. “And I know she’ll add just a touch more grace to her greeting.”
Betty smiled at Daphne, who had now gone slightly pale. “Of course. Right away.” Clearly, she’d been caught shirking.
Betty explained her problem to George. Unlike Daphne, he was much more sympathetic. He assured her that, even though the hotel’s wireless internet was down now, they had technicians working to fix the problem and it should be up and running soon. In the meantime, he’d see about arranging something else for her.
Betty could have hugged him. The moment the hotel had internet again, she would be among the first to know. With that thought in mind, she was able to quell the small jolts of panic that were coursing through her system.
“And in the meantime,” George said, “the first round of the ballroom dance competition doesn’t start for a few hours yet. Is there anything else I can show you? We have a spa, recreation room, the fitness area, and of course the pool.”
Betty was about to thank him and go. After all, if she couldn’t do work maybe she could get a little more sleep. But she really should go do her morning workout. After discussions with her doctor and nutritionist, Betty had designed a 45-minute daily workout routine for herself. And yes, most mornings when she woke up she didn’t want to go. She was tired. She was achy. And she hated, hated, hated running!
She hated the thought of uncontrolled diabetes more.
On nights where she knew that she wouldn’t want to wake up in the morning, Betty had taken to sleeping in her workout clothes. It meant one less step, one less excuse in the morning. And now, looking at her outfit, Betty realized she had unconsciously chosen her work out clothes to wear.
That was good. It meant she was developing a habit.
It was also bad, because it meant she had no excuse to go up to her room and fall onto the bed for “just a moment.”
Rats. Didn’t her diabetes know it was vacation? She was supposed to indulge in soft beds and amazing pillows (minus the stolen cash).
“The fitness room would be great,” her traitor mouth said. George smiled. “Right this way.”
Forty-five minutes of treadmills and rowing machines and weights later, Betty was relaxing in the sauna, letting the steam and heat sap the tension from her muscles. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall.
Heaven. For a moment, Betty enjoyed the irony. If she stayed in this sauna too long, she could probably get heat stroke. And yet, mere yards away through walls and some windows a blizzard was raging.
She breathed deeply, letting herself relax fully. The sauna door opened and shut, but after making sure she was completely covered by her towel Betty paid her company no mind. It wasn’t like anyone could see through this steam anyhow. It wasn’t until the conversation started that Betty realized that more than one person had joined her.
“I can’t believe that woman!” one female voice with a New York accent exclaimed. “To pull the stunts she has, and then just show up here with her latest toy as though she owned the world. What a cold stone bitch!”
Betty’s scandal ears, well-trained by years of exposure to the Gossiping Grannies of Lofton, perked up. It seemed the women didn’t realize they were alone, and Betty refused to pass up a chance to gather some information. She tried to breathe quietly and commit as much of the conversation to memory as possible. It might be something that could help Bill with the investigation.
“Will you relax?” asked another woman with a Southern accent. “And give her some credit. She was a wonderful dancer once. She could probably still dance circles around most of the people at the competition.”
“Of course she could,” the first voice scoffed. “That doesn’t change the fact that she’s a manipulating, thieving wench. Look what she did to us!”
The second woman laughed. “She was a better dancer than us! That doesn’t make her a thief. Don’t be a sore loser Sue.”
Betty made special note of the name. She was almost certain they were speaking about Emily Knolhart. It seemed like everyone at this competition hated the doyenne. Apparently she had stepped on a lot of toes on the way to top.
“I’m not a sore loser!” the disembodied voice of Sue protested. “I just… I can’t stand that woman! I mean, she comes with that trophy husband of hers… I bet the second her reality television show gets off the ground he gets left in the dust. If I were him, I’d be expecting it.”
“True. And that show with the ex-husband on the floor. Wasn’t he the accountant? I heard she married him so that he’d help foot the bill for her plastic surgeries.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me. Knolhart takes what she wants and moves on. Honestly! She’s like an amoeba, eating everything in her path and leaving her crap behind for others to clean up.”
“Sue!” the second voice protested, laughing. “That’s horrible.”
“No, what’s horrible is that I have about two hours of hair and makeup before the first round. I’ve got to get going.”
“I’ll walk you up to your room.”
The sauna door opened and closed behind them, leaving Betty in steamy silence.
That was interesting, Betty thought.
CHAPTER 12
The first round of the dance competition came, and Wes insisted that he be allowed to compete. At first Bill wasn’t too t
hrilled at the idea of his right-hand man going off to waltz in the middle of an investigation, but Wes made some very convincing arguments.
One: He would return to Bill’s side immediately after dancing, and let Clarise call him when they were due to dance again so that he spent as little time away as possible.
Two: As a dancer, he would be in an excellent position to listen in on conversations and keep an eye out for anything untoward.
Three: He’d come here to dance with Clarise, and he absolutely refused to let some thief ruin their weekend away. Besides, the thief couldn’t go anywhere. They wouldn’t be able to leave until the storm lifted. That might not be for days, so the investigation had some time.
Bill caved and let Wes join the dancing, but he and the girls were on strict orders to keep an eye out and the fetch Bill immediately if anything looked suspicious.
As Betty watched the roiling mass of blurs and color that made up the crowd gathering for the competition, she wondered how much help she could really be. She was sure that each couple was dressed in elegant evening wear, and she knew for a fact that each competitor had a large white number pinned to their back. But, past ten feet in front of her, Betty couldn’t make out any details. To her, the dancers looked like a flipbook where the images were made of finger paint and glitter. And if she couldn’t tell one dancer from another, how could she be expected to see anything suspicious?
Still, she wasn’t about to tell Bill that. So, while Clarise and Wes readied themselves for the first round, she found a safe spot along the wall and gazed out towards the blurs.
“All those in the amateur competition,” came Miss Knolhart’s voice over the microphone, “please report to the judges for check-in. All those in the amateur competition, please report to the judges for check-in.”
Dancers began shuffling about, moving off the dance floor or towards the judges, as their level permitted. The crowd on the sidelines grew, until Betty’s view of the dance floor was entirely obscured by other spectators. Betty pushed her way through the crowd, looking for a better spot to stand. Perhaps if she were close enough to the dance floor she could at least pick Wes and Clarise from the crowd.
