Sunset Beach

by Mary Kay Andrews

  Neesa’s eyes were glassy, her words slightly slurred. From her long career working in bars, Drue concluded the girl was, clinically speaking, shit-faced. Drunk and, most likely, high.

  “I don’t think so,” Drue said. “I was fascinated with your hair. It’s really pretty. Do you color it yourself?”

  Neesa’s laugh was a throaty bray. “Nah, girl. This here is a wig.” She lifted the bangs away from her forehead, just enough to reveal that her own hair was snugged against her scalp with a tight nylon skullcap.

  “Oh wow. I wish I could pull off something like that. My hair is so boring.”

  Neesa grabbed a strand of Drue’s long dark hair and examined it critically. “You got nice hair. Good texture. You could definitely go lighter. But don’t be trying none of that stuff out of a box. I could totally take you all the way blond.”

  “Are you a hairdresser?”

  The bartender was back, looking hopeful. “Get you ladies something else?”

  “I’ll have another,” Drue said, seizing the opportunity. “And you can bring my friend here whatever she’s drinking.”

  “Ooh. Thanks,” Neesa said. “I’mma change it up and just have a Kahlúa and coffee.”

  She watched the bartender as he worked at the back bar. “He’s so fine,” she said, a little too loudly. “I do like a white boy with a good ass. How ’bout you?”

  Drue almost choked on her club soda. “Same,” she said finally. “So, did you say you’re a hairdresser?”

  “Cosmetology student,” Neesa said. “I been doing hair since I was twelve. Soon as I get my license, I’m gonna open my own salon. Hair, nails, eyelashes, all of it. How ’bout you?”

  Drue made a face. “I work for my dad. Nothing very exciting. What’d you do before you started cosmetology school?”

  “You know. Whatever. I was working at a dry cleaner’s, but me and the owner didn’t see eye to eye. Before that, I worked at a hotel, out at Sunset Beach.”

  “I live at the beach,” Drue said. “Which hotel?”

  “Gulf Vista. You know the place?”

  “It’s right down the street from my place,” Drue said. She’d been waiting for this moment, hoping for an opening. “Hey, isn’t that where that girl was killed a couple years ago?”

  Neesa toyed with a tiny gold cross that hung from a thin chain around her neck. “Mmm-hmm. That was my friend. Jazmin. Real sad.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Drue said. “I lost my best friend in April.”

  Not exactly a lie. Her mother really was her best friend.

  “Ooh. I’m sorry. What happened to her?” Neesa asked.

  “Hit-and-run accident,” Drue lied. “She died on the way to the hospital.”

  “That’s terrible,” Neesa said indignantly. “Did they ever catch the guy?”

  Drue shook her head sadly, silently begging her mother’s forgiveness.

  “No. Did they ever find out who killed your friend?”

  Neesa stared down into her drink. “No. It was probably some freak. You get a lot of freaks staying in hotels, you know.”

  “What kind of work did you do at the hotel?” Drue asked.

  “I was a housekeeper. Jazmin was too. That’s how we met. I miss that girl, you know? I mean, we fussed at each other sometimes, but ain’t nobody could stay mad with that girl for long. Jaz, she had a way about her. Always laughing and cutting up.”

  “She sounds like she was fun,” Drue said.

  “Mmm-hmm.” Neesa tossed back half of her drink, leaving faint traces of the creamy Kahlúa on her vividly painted lips, which she dabbed with her fingertip. “You know, I was working that night.”

  “The night she was killed?” Drue tried to sound uninterested, but wasn’t sure she could pull it off.

  “We always took our dinner breaks together, if we could. We met up that night, I guess it was around seven. So hot that night. September, you know? Neither of us felt like eating, so we just got a couple of Dr Peppers from the Coke machine and sat around talking, until it was time to get back to work.”

  “Was that the last time you saw her alive?”

  “Yeah,” Neesa said. She drained the rest of her glass, then suddenly stood up, grasping the edge of the bar with both hands to steady herself. “I gotta go. Got class tomorrow morning, and we’re doing razor cuts.”

  She swayed a little, then sat back down abruptly. “Whoa. Cowboy mighta made that last drink a little stout.” She dug in her pocketbook and brought out her phone.

  “How are you getting home?” Drue asked. “You’re not driving, right?”

  Neesa looked around the crowded bar. “I thought I had me a ride home, but looks like his friend made him leave already. Guess I’ll see about a cab.”

  “Where do you live?” Drue asked quickly. “I can give you a ride. I was just about to leave, myself.”

  “Down the road a ways,” Neesa said. “You sure you don’t mind?”

  “Positive.”

  * * *

  It had started to rain while they were inside Mister B’s. Neesa stood next to Drue with shoulders hunched under the shelter of the club’s covered entryway, looking up at the sky. “Girl, I hope the rain don’t mess up this wig. I kinda borrowed it from school.”

  “I’ll go get my car and pick you up,” Drue said. “Stay here and I’ll be right back.”

  Her bad knee protested as she sprinted through the deepening puddles in the parking lot, but she didn’t care. She found OJ, jumped in the driver’s seat and pulled out the ashtray, where she carefully positioned her cell phone. Then she drove through the downpour to the club’s entry, blinking her headlights to let her passenger know her ride had arrived.

  Drue watched while Neesa wobbled toward the Bronco, teetering precariously atop her spike-heeled metal-studded boots. As Neesa approached, Drue tapped the Record button on the phone and slid the ashtray back into the dashboard.

  “Where to?” she asked, as they pulled out of the parking lot.

  Neesa yawned widely. “Straight down this road for ten miles, then when you get to the Walmart shopping center, take a left at the light. My complex is behind there.” She leaned back in the seat, her neck lolling against the headrest.

  Drue was afraid the other woman was about to nod off. “What’s it like, working in a big hotel?” she blurted. “Do the guests, like, hit on you? Stuff like that?”

  “Sometimes, but really, it’s more like the men who work there,” Neesa said, her eyes closed. “They’re all pigs.”

  “Like who?”

  “The bosses,” Neesa said. “Head of housekeeping, head of security, the guys in engineering, you name it, everybody with a dick and a name badge.”

  “That’s awful,” Drue said, acting shocked. “Do you think one of them hurt your friend?”

  “I don’t think it. I know it.”

  “Did your friend Jazmin—is that her name?—did she tell you that was going on?”

  “She didn’t have to. I seen it. This one time, I was waiting on the service elevator and the doors opened, and he had Jaz backed into a corner, had his hands down in her pants. As soon as he saw me standing there, he gave me this look and punched the button to close the doors.”

  “Gross. Who was the guy?”

  “Head of housekeeping. His name was Herman. Like Herman Munster, you know? Nasty old piece of shit.”

  “Oh wow. Did she report him?”

  “Jaz? No.”

  “Did she talk to you about it?”

  “Kind of.”

  “What did she say?”

  Neesa yawned again. Her eyes were closed and her breathing had slowed. Drue was afraid she was about to pass out.

  “Huh?” Neesa blinked awake. “Who?”

  “Your friend. Jazmin. What did she say about the guy who was groping her?”

  “Just that he’d been watchin’ her, saying things when they were alone, like how nice she looked. And sex stuff. She didn’t like it, but what was she supposed to do? He was our
boss.”

  “She never reported him?”

  “Hell no. She did what she had to do.”

  “Which was what?”

  Neesa stared and shook her head dismissively. “Forget it. Girl like you? You’d never understand.”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Drue said, with genuine venom in her voice. “I waitressed in beach bars for years. Had bosses peeking at me through cracks in the bathroom door while I was peeing, putting their hands on me while I had a full tray of dishes, sharing all their sex fantasies … I felt dirty and disgusted with myself for putting up with it, but like you said, I had bills to pay.”

  “Huh,” Neesa said. “Okay. Maybe you are for real. So yeah. We played the bosses.” She affected a flirtatious wink and a breathless voice. “‘Oh, you want to feel me up in the elevator when nobody’s looking? Okay, but then you better let me off work when I gotta take my sick kid to the doctor.’ Or, ‘Oh, you want me to come in your office with the door closed and give you a lap dance? All right, but there better be something extra in my paycheck next week.’”

  “So, she was, like, blackmailing her boss?”

  “That’s what you call it. Jaz, she just made sure he treated her right, that’s all.”

  “And she never complained to the hotel manager?”

  “I guess she could have, but why wouldn’t she tell me? I was her best friend.”

  “Maybe she didn’t want to get you involved?”

  Neesa fumbled around in her purse. “You got any smokes?”

  “Sorry, I quit.”

  “Good for you,” Neesa said. “Jaz used to stay on me about quitting…” Her voice trailed off.

  “When the cops were investigating your friend’s murder, did you tell them about this boss and his arrangement with her?”

  “They didn’t ask.” Neesa nibbled on a bit of ragged cuticle.

  “They didn’t? For real? How stupid can you be?”

  Neesa’s eyes were closed again. “Even if they had asked, I wouldn’t have told them nothing.”

  “Why not?”

  “I needed that job,” Neesa said wearily. “Herman was my boss too. He could hire me, fire me, pay me overtime, give me a better shift, let me clock in whenever I wanted. And if I’d said no, he’d give me a shitty reference so I couldn’t get another job.”

  “That’s always the way, right? So, did you have the same kind of arrangement with Herman that your friend had?”

  “Not quite.” Neesa glanced over at Drue. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this stuff. I don’t know you from Jack.”

  “Who am I gonna tell?” Drue said lightly. “I don’t know you either. I don’t even know your name. Pretend I’m a shrink.”

  “True,” Neesa said. “This is the first time I’ve talked about any of this stuff, ever. But what the hell? It all happened a long time ago. Nobody except me even remembers Jazmin’s name anymore. You asked if I had the same deal with Herman that Jaz had? The answer is no. My deal was different.”

  “How so?”

  Neesa took a deep breath. “See, I screwed up.”

  She abruptly dumped the contents of her purse into her lap and pawed through the jumble of detritus. She held up a crumpled pack of Newports. “Damnit. I coulda swore I had one left.”

  “You want me to stop at a gas station so you can buy some?” Drue asked. She detested smoking, had forbidden Trey and others from lighting up in OJ, but this one time she was willing to make a sacrifice, if it would keep Neesa Vincent talking.

  “That’s okay. I got a carton at home.”

  “Thank God for that, right?” Drue said lightly. Her new friend’s apartment complex couldn’t be that far away. She had to get her back on track again. “So, how’d you screw up at work?”

  Neesa toyed with a plastic cigarette lighter, turning it over and over between her long, curving fingernails. “There was an incident, with a guest, and Herman found out about it, and he fixed things. So then I owed him.”

  Drue looked down at the cell phone, trying to remember how much battery life it had. She prayed it was still recording. “What kind of incident?”

  “Some money went missing from a guest’s room. There was a car dealers’ convention that week, and those men were all rolling in money. This one dude, he checked out early, and I was cleaning his room, and I found a wad of bills. Like, hundred-dollar bills, in the pocket of the bathrobe. You know, the ones the hotel puts in guest rooms?”

  “So you kept the money. Totally understandable,” Drue said.

  “Yeah. The dude was drunk when he checked in and he stayed drunk the whole time. And disgusting. You wouldn’t believe the things people do in hotel rooms. He messed himself in the sheets, puked in a trash can and left it for me to clean up. And didn’t even leave a damn tip. Like, at all. So when I found that money, I tipped myself. Just a hundred-dollar bill. Which I earned, right?”

  “Damn straight,” Drue agreed. “But what? You got caught?”

  “Yeah,” Neesa said bitterly. “The guest called the front desk and said he’d left eight hundred dollars in the bathrobe, and he’d better get it back or he’d call the cops. The security chief called Herman in and Herman called his bluff. Said one of the housekeepers had turned in five hundred dollars and the guest must be mistaken, because he was drunk.”

  Drue couldn’t help asking, “What happened to the missing money? Did you get to keep it?”

  “I got the hundred bucks and he got the rest. And a couple weeks later, Herman got laid.” Neesa stared out the window at the rain streaming down the passenger window. “He has a room at the hotel for when he works late.”

  “That sucks,” Drue said, meaning it. She could see the lights of a shopping center a couple blocks ahead. She needed to cut to the chase before she ran out of time with her edgy passenger. She took a deep breath and just went for it. “Do you think this Herman guy could have been the one who killed Jazmin?”

  Neesa suddenly sat up straight, knocking her keys and cell phone in her lap to the floor of the Bronco. “You ask a lot of questions, you know that?”

  Drue tried to calm herself in order to calm her passenger, who was now fumbling around, trying to retrieve her belongings.

  “Sorry. I guess I sympathize with you and your friend, having to put up with sexual predators like this Herman guy. Men like him, they see girls like us, girls working as housekeepers, waitresses, cashiers, and they don’t see us as real people. We’re just a piece of meat to them.”

  “I know that’s right,” Neesa said, sighing. “We got no power, so what’s to stop these dudes from doing whatever they want to us?” She pointed to the fast-approaching shopping center half a block away. “That’s the Walmart up ahead. Hang a left there, then make a quick right.”

  The apartment complex was called Sherlock Forest, but the only trees Drue saw were tall, skinny pines. Neesa directed her to a two-story building with brown cedar siding. “That’s me,” she said.

  Drue pulled up in front of the building.

  Neesa plucked the wig from her head, tucked it into her purse then swung the passenger-side door open. “Thanks for the ride, girl,” she said. “And hey, if you do decide to go blond, give me a call. I’ll hook you up.”

  “I’ll definitely do that,” Drue said. “But how do I find you?”

  Neesa reached into her pocketbook. “That’s right. I never did tell you my name.” She handed Drue a hot-pink business card. “I’m Neesa Vincent. Salon Neesa. That’s what my place is gonna be called.”

  Drue waited while Neesa ran through the rain to the door of a ground-floor apartment, unlocked it and disappeared inside. Then she drove around the corner, put the Bronco in park and reached for her cell phone. Her power level was at five percent. She plugged it into the charger and drove home to Sunset Beach through the rain.

  39

  When Drue arrived at work on Thursday morning, a yellow Post-it note was attached to the computer screen on her desk: GEOFF TAKING PERSONAL LEAVE DAY
. YOU’RE WORKING RECEPTION THIS MORNING—WENDY.

  “Damnit.” She’d deliberately arrived fifteen minutes early, hoping to get time to take another look at the video from the Gulf Vista. But she dutifully donned her office sweater, picked up her headset and went out to the lobby. No sooner was she seated than the front door opened. A tall, imposing black man swept inside.

  He was dressed in a vaguely Egyptian-looking ensemble—floor-length gold lamé gown, a homemade cardboard breastplate studded with red bicycle reflectors, and a headpiece made from a woman’s striped chiffon scarf wound around his head. The man planted his feet firmly apart, staring at the ceiling and the walls, before finally leveling his gaze toward the woman at the reception desk. He crossed his arms over the breastplate, and she noticed that he had shiny brass serpent-shaped bracelets around his biceps.

  “Can I help you?” Drue asked.

  His voice was booming. “Brice Campbell. I am here to see Brice Campbell.”

  “He’s not in the office at the moment,” Drue said. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Brice Campbell is my attorney,” the man said.

  Drue smiled nervously, hoping the visitor was harmless.

  She placed her fingers on the computer’s keyboard. “Are you in our client database?”

  “Of course. Brice Campbell is my attorney. My name is Kaa.”

  She looked up quizzically. “How is that spelled? And is that your first or last name?”

  “Kaa. Only Kaa.”

  “Let me just call Mr. Campbell’s assistant to see when he’s expected.”

  She swiveled her chair around, leaving her back to the visitor, and buzzed Wendy’s office.

  “What is it?”

  “Mr. Campbell’s client Mr. Kaa is out here in the reception area, and he’d like to see Mr. Campbell.”

  “Kaa?” Wendy sounded puzzled. “That’s not a name I recognize. Get his full name and phone number and ask him what it’s in reference to. Tell him we’ll get back to him later.”

  Drue shielded the receiver with one hand and whispered, “He’s, uh, dressed as a pharaoh or something.”