by Liz Marvin
With that, Miss Knolhart turned her back on everyone in the hall and walked away with ramrod straight posture, not once looking back.
Now that, thought Betty, is a woman.
Betty waited until Officer Park and Earnest had both left the hall before telling Bill her discoveries. This time, he was less than impressed.
“I’m grateful for your help,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “You know that. But, phone calls to Georgia aren’t proof of murder.”
“But what about the revoked visa?” Betty asked in disbelief. “It’s worth looking into, at the least!”
Bill shook his head. “I think you need to get some sleep Betty. And you should stay out of the investigation from here on out. You’ve been a great help. But you’re starting to get reckless and grasp at straws. I won’t have you risking yourself for this. Just go upstairs and get some rest.”
Betty couldn’t believe her ears. Bill was patronizing her? She was the one who’d found the only solid leads in the entire case, and now he was telling her that her gut couldn’t be trusted? How did he think she’d gotten the other leads? She might not be a trained detective, but that didn’t mean she was stupid, or incapable of putting two and two together.
“You asked me to snoop,” she reminded him. “That’s what I’m doing. And pretty successfully, I might add.”
Bill shook his head. “Yes, you’ve gotten some information. You’ve also been threatened by a senator’s uncle and discovered by a casual observer to be investigating. This has gone on long enough Betty! It’s nice you want to play detective, but if Office Park gets wind of this...”
Betty felt like he’d slapped her in the face. “Is that what you think?” she spat. “That I want to play detective?” her voice rose sharply. “Of course it is,” she said, throwing up her hands. “Why would anyone want to help you just because they want to help? Why would anyone think it was good idea to try and do your job, because your goddamned commanding officer can’t see past the end of his stupid, squashed nose to let you do it yourself!” She ended, breathing heavily.
“The point Liz,” Bill said, reverting back to her college nickname in his frustration, “is that you can’t do my job. You aren’t trained to solve crimes. You’re seeing things that aren’t there. You’re making up leads. And I don’t have the time to go tracking down your imagination, when there are real criminals living right down the hall!”
“You don’t have time for anything lately!” Betty yelled before she could stop herself. As soon as the words leapt out of her mouth, Betty wished she could recall them. Yes, Bill had been busy on their weekend together away from Lofton, but he had good reason. There was no reason she should resent him for it. None at all.
And yet… Betty suddenly realized that that was exactly what she was feeling. Wes had made time to dance with Clarise in the middle of the investigation. Why couldn’t Bill manage one conversation that had nothing to do with murder and intrigue? Why couldn’t he manage a meal, or… well, anything?
This was the only chance they’d had to spend time together away from the prying eyes of the Gossiping Grannies since college. And it was ruined.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bill asked quietly. When she didn’t answer, he added, “Betty?”
He took a step closer, and Betty backed away. “I… I can’t.” she said. “I’m sorry Bill. I need to go.”
She turned and walked away down the hall.
Tears pricked Betty’s eyes as she walked, and she wiped them away angrily. It made no sense that she was upset he didn’t follow her.
She wouldn’t let it make sense.
CHAPTER 24
At that moment, all Betty wanted was to fall into the ridiculously soft bed the hotel had provided and go to sleep. But when she arrived at her room, she discovered even that was denied her. She opened the door with the key card to find that Wes and Clarise were already in the room. Thankfully, they were only talking, but even that made Betty sick to her stomach. The way they were cuddled up together on the bed, talking softly and hardly taking notice of anything else in the world… Betty didn’t think she could handle that right now. It made her to envious, and envy made her miserable.
Hoping that the wireless internet really had been restored that evening, Betty made some excuses and grabbed her laptop, resolving to find an out of the way area to park her behind and do some work… and maybe even some research.
Bill might not want her to snoop any more, but Betty just knew that the Georgia lead was important. And if Bill refused to follow it up, then she would. After that, she’d call it quits. No more questions and eavesdropping. If she was wrong, not even a thought of suspicion would cross her mind.
If, however, her research did lead to something…
The killer had to be caught. Her maybe-relationship with Bill had to take second place to that.
Right?
In any case, she had to find out if there was internet first. And to do that, she had to find a place to sit. After a moment’s thought, Betty decided against trying to find an empty room. Sitting by herself in an empty room seemed too much like tempting fate. That left the lobby. She could find a cozy corner there and curl up with her laptop for a few hours. By the time she went back upstairs, Clarise and Wes would be asleep.
It was a good plan, she told herself.
It would’ve been a better plan if she’d been able to navigate the halls without getting confused. The past few times Betty had left the room, she’d been too busy trying to not walk into anyone or anything to pay real attention to where they were going. For some odd reason, the hotel didn’t have signs with convenient arrows directing guests to the more popular destinations. The only directions given were to specific sets of rooms. Apparently, most guests were less directionally challenged than Betty, and had little problem finding where they needed to go. But, Betty wasn’t them. Now that her mind was foggy with sleepiness, she couldn’t remember if she was supposed to turn left or right at the replica of Monet’s “Water Lilies.” After passing the same statue of a merman with a trident three or four times, Betty finally figured out the correct turn to take.
She had never been so glad to see an elevator. If it wasn’t entirely possible that a person would come upon her in the act, Betty would have hugged the elevator doors in relief. On second thought, maybe not. But the fact that the idea crossed her mind was and indication that she might be due for a nice, long vacation in a room with padded white walls.
The elevator doors opened on an almost deserted lobby. The only guest visible was a well-dressed, well-endowed woman wobbling her way towards the elevator.
“Schooz me,” she said, pushing past Betty. She reeked of scotch. “I haf to go to bed now, be… before I get drunk.”
Now, Betty thought, that was sad. A grown woman should at least know how much liquor she was capable of holding. Betty hoped the woman didn’t have to dance in the morning. If she did, her partner might find himself needing a new pair of toes. Someone with that bad of a hangover was sure to stumble.
It didn’t take long for Betty to find the perfect spot for herself and her laptop. In the far corner of the entrance lobby was an overstuffed chair the color of red wine. It was one of those deep chairs, with enough space on the cushion to curl up in a loose ball and sleep, or to sit cross legged without your angles hitting the uncomfortable wooden edge of the chair. It had some unfortunate gold braid trim, but if you ignored the shiny bits the chair was, in a word, perfect.
Betty scooted back in the seat until she was seated comfortably in a cross-legged position, her back relaxed against the pillowed backrest.
She pulled her laptop out of its case and turned it on. When the computer was all booted up, Betty crossed her fingers, said a short prayer, and double clicked on her internet browser.
There it was, in all its glory. The internet, fully functional and available for all her snooping needs. Hallelujah! Praise technology!
It didn’t take long for Bet
ty to find the name of the Georgian couple who had been banned from entering the United States to compete in the Legacy Trust Dance Competition. They were in the first article that came up about the competition.
Apparently, Danya Felicity and her husband, Xerxes Kleint, were devastated at the “vast misunderstanding with the United States.” And, according to their family lawyer, “Mr. Klient is a law-abiding citizen. All this travel ban has accomplished is to ruin the dreams of his devoted wife to compete at one of the most respected dance competitions in the world.”
Danya and Xerxes had both declined to comment, and the United States was not releasing the reason for travel visa denial.
But there were ways around that. It was Betty’s job to find hidden gold mines on the internet. As far as she was concerned, information was just another type of product. To find it, all you had to do was find the person who would benefit from its sale.
And, after about an hour of searching, she found exactly what she was looking for: a website with a whole list of Kleint’s accused criminal activity. Of course, no one had hard proof of these activities, but the website was thorough enough that Betty suspected there was at least a kernel of truth in its pages.
According to the “about” page, the site was hosted an updated by a person whose fiancée had been murdered in cold blood by Kleint’s people. This person, kept nameless for their own protection, was on a quest to gather all the proof possible of Kleint’s wrongdoings, in the hopes of building a successful case against him.
If half of what they claimed was true, then Kleint had quite a bit to answer for. He was a drug dealer and arms dealer with ties to various terrorist groups, a member of the mob, and a master thief. Scrolling down the list of items supposedly stolen by Kleint, Betty noticed a trend.
Almost every item on the list contained some combination of precious metals and gems. He had a penchant for the gaudy and unique.
The loving cup prize would have been a crowning jewel in his collection, Betty realized. According to the site, Kleint received plenty of money from his other endeavors to keep even a man of his expensive tastes sated. The thieving was more of a hobby, something he did on the side because he liked it.
Betty rubbed her forehead. Why couldn’t he have taken up knitting or Italian cooking, like any other self-respecting mobster?
Her gut hunch had turned into a glaring neon sign flashing “guilty” in six foot high letters all over Xerxes. There was just one problem. He was stuck in The Republic of Georgia, half the world away. He couldn’t have committed the crimes at the hotel. Which meant that someone in the hotel was on his payroll.
Now she just had to figure out who that someone was, before another body showed up.
CHAPTER 25
Betty rubbed her eyes, willing them to stop drooping down… down…
No. She had to stay awake. She had to find out who the killer was. She had to… down…
Betty pinched herself, hard. She would not fall asleep!
She crossed another name off on the competition program and moved on to the next person on the list. She was going through all the names, looking for any connection, any at all, between conference attendees and The Republic of Georgia or the missing dance couple. So far, she’d turned up empty. If she weren’t so completely certain that someone had pulled off the heist for Xerxes, she would have given up long ago.
There were a lot of names in the program.
Even though Danya Felicity and Xerxes Klient had been involved in international dance competitions for years, they’d held aloof from their competitors. She couldn’t find any proof that they’d spoken to any of the dancers in a social setting. She couldn’t find a club they belonged to, or a studio at which they practiced. Xerxes had paid to construct a ballroom dance floor in their home, so that they could have the luxury of a studio all to themselves.
They were complete loners. So far, all she’d been able to find were whiny complaints about their standoffishness from other dancers on their personal blogs.
Betty kept searching. By now, she’d lost complete track of time. Furthermore, she had gotten so used to not finding connections, that when one popped up she almost moved on without realizing she’d found exactly what she’d been looking for.
Harry Berch, Miss Knolhart’s ex-husband, worked for an accounting firm that had been brought up on charges. The charges were for working with drug and arms dealers in the Republic of Georgia, and Xerxes was listed as one of the persons they were accused of having dealings with.
Harry. She saw him in her mind’s eye, flirting and throwing high bets on the table. Bill had said the guilty person was someone who liked to take risks. Someone who was physically fit. And now he was connected to a mobster whose M.O. was stamped all over the case.
That was it. He was their killer. She was sure of it.
Now, to convince Bill.
She only hoped that he’d forgive her for snooping after his… strongly worded request that she keep her nose out of it.
Betty dragged her eyes from the computer screen, and was startled to realize there was light coming in the front doors. Yes it was faint, early-morning light, but it was still sunshine.
Dawn had arrived while she’d been glued to her computer screen.
Betty packed up her laptop, carefully stowing it in her carrying case. She rubbed bleary eyes and went to fetch a coffee from the continental breakfast table in the corner. Her stomach rebelled at the thought of food, but after checking her blood sugar levels Betty realized she needed to eat something. She grabbed a piece of toast, smearing it with just enough butter to make it palatable, and gobbled it up while waiting for the elevator.
After the first few bites, Betty realized that toast was a miracle. Whoever invented something this tasty should be granted sainthood. Why had she thought she wasn’t hungry?
The caffeine from the coffee went right into her system. Betty was still tired, but now she was alert, with that half-jittery feeling that came from the combination of caffeine and exhaustion. Still, it was better than falling asleep at the drop of a hat.
It was still early, so Betty thought to look for Bill in their room first. He’d probably been up late with the investigation, so he might still be sleeping.
But when she entered the hotel room, she found there was no such luck. Both Wes and Bill were already gone. Clarise was sitting on the end of the bed in her nightwear, staring down a cup of tea. Her hair was tousled, her silken nightgown rumpled. She had the distinct look of someone who had been woken unwillingly, and who was refusing to acknowledge the world quite yet.
Someone with no respect for the sanctity of the REM cycle had opened the blackout curtains on the window, so that daylight flooded the room in stark, high-relief daylight, made even brighter by the white snow covering every inch of the outdoors and reflecting the light every which way.
Betty would’ve felt bad for Clarise if she hadn’t been so relieved to see her awake. If Bill wasn’t here, at least she could tell Clarise what was going on.
The last thing she wanted was to run into trouble and have her knowledge disappear with her untimely death. And, given her past history of winding up in the exact wrong situation, she wasn’t going to trust her findings to luck and safety.
“Good morning!” Betty quipped, plopping into a chair. Clarise raised her head blearily, blinking at Betty for a moment until recognition dawned.
“Where’ve you been?” she croaked. “I was worried.”
Betty wasn’t sure how much to tell Clarise. It wasn’t that Clarise couldn’t handle the facts of the case without blabbing them to everyone, it was just that Betty didn’t know if she was awake enough to process anything beyond “fire bad, tree pretty” at the moment. So, instead of giving her the details of her investigation, Betty kept to the simple facts.
“I know who the killer is.”
That woke Clarise up. She sat up straighter on the bed and rubbed the sleep crust from her eyes. “Can you repeat that?” She as
ked.
“I know who the killer is.” Betty watched her friend reach for consciousness and coherency.
After a moment Clarise said, “Okay. Explain. Slowly. She took a sip of her tea and waited.
Betty did. She explained everything she’d discovered since the beginning of the tournament, ending with her findings on the computer while Clarise had been… well, Betty assumed that she’d slept at some point.
“Right,” Clarise said when she’d finished. “If you’re going looking for Bill, then I’m coming with you. No more going off by yourself.” She stood and walked to the bathroom door, where she paused for a moment before looking back at Betty. “Bill’s going to be mad. You know that, right?”
Betty shrugged helplessly. “What was I supposed to do?” She asked. “Sit back and wait for him to come to his senses? There’s a killer on the loose!”
“Actually,” Clarise said, “that’s exactly what you were supposed to do. But it doesn’t surprise me one bit that you didn’t. Now, wait here,” she said sternly. “I’ll be done in a New York minute.”
She shut the door, and Betty heard the sound of the shower running. She put her empty coffee cup on the table and went to lie down on the bed. Just for a moment, she told herself.
Her eyes closed down… down…
When she woke, Clarise was lying on the next bed over, a book propped in front of her. She was dressed in jeans and a red sweater, and her hair was completely dry.
“Hi sleepy head,” Clarise said. “Have a good nap?”
Betty sat up slowly, feeling like she was struggling through a thick haze. Apparently, even the coffee hadn’t been enough to catch up with her sleep deprivation.
“How long was I out?” she asked.
Clarise marked her place in her book before sitting up. “Not too long,” she said. “About two hours.”
“Two hours!” gasped Betty. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
Clarise gave her ‘the look.’ “And let you go running off to catch killers, only to kill yourself with exhaustion? No thank you. I figured I’d let you sleep until at least nine. It’s only eight now. Want to go back to sleep?”
