by Sam Cameron
Key West was often a big giant circus, but this was a circus pumped up on Hollywood steroids.
Plus, it was Pride Week. Whoever had scheduled the film to shoot for a week in Key West obviously hadn’t checked the calendar. Thousands of people had come to celebrate being gay or lesbian or queer or other with parades, music, contests, pool parties, naked pool parties, and tournaments. It was Robin’s favorite week of the year.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Robin told Sean. She headed for a burrito cart and dug her vegan leather wallet out of her backpack. “Except to look for Juliet. The flu story’s fake.”
Sean followed her. “You don’t know that. The note could be a hoax. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s been, you know, erratic.”
That didn’t even deserve the dignity of a response. Sure, Juliet’s last year or two had been a little rocky. The accident on the Pacific Coast Highway (totally not her fault). That nightclub incident in San Francisco (people looking to cash in on her fame). The Las Vegas arrest for drugs in her purse (obviously someone put them there, all charges dropped), but faking a kidnapping—well, that was ridiculously melodramatic. No one did that, except in movies.
Robin stopped to consider the meta of all that. Sean asked, “What if she faked it because she wanted a few days off?”
“She didn’t,” Robin said confidently. She pinned the burrito cart guy with a sharp gaze. “I want a veggie breakfast burrito. No meat at all. And nothing that’s touched meat or been on the same part of the grill as meat or has been near the same oil. Totally vegetarian.”
“Me, too,” Sean said.
“Gotcha covered,” the burrito guy said.
They took their meat-free, totally vegetarian breakfast burritos to a bench down the street. The crowds were thinner here, but steel drum music was blasting out of an open-air bar even at this early hour. Key West always worked hard to have that tropical, laid-back vibe. Robin thought it was an okay town but only if you ignored the ridiculous commercial overdevelopment, the glorification of alcohol, and the low wages that kept hotel and restaurant workers in poverty while rich people enjoyed their lives of luxury.
“I don’t think Karen Francine was lying,” she told Sean. “She seemed totally sincere. I can tell these things.”
Sean wrinkled his nose. “She’s an actress.”
“She’s the sister of an actress.”
“She acted on her own.”
“Moot point,” Robin said. “That was a long time ago. Anyway, she’s really worried. So we should help out. The worst thing that can happen is that we earn her undying gratitude.”
Sean scratched a splotchy red spot on his arm. “Are you going to call Steven and Denny?”
Twins Steven and Denny Anderson were their friends and Fisher Key’s resident teen detectives. Practically every month they were catching new criminals or solving new mysteries or generally being heroic in unexpected ways. Denny had spent his entire life in denial about being gay until graduation. Steven could have any girl he wanted just by snapping his fingers. The important thing was that they were smart and brave and useful to have around. So far that summer they’d already solved the mystery of an exploding yacht and recovered a missing military satellite. Not that Robin was jealous of their exploits and fame, but who said she couldn’t be a hero, too?
“We can handle this,” she assured Sean.
“How? We don’t even have any clues.”
Robin eyed him speculatively. He was a pretty useful sidekick, all things considered, but sometimes you could wave the most obvious thing right in front of his nose and he wouldn’t even notice. Especially if he’d been too busy gawking at Liam Norcott.
“That note that Karen found,” Robin said. “It was white paper with a blue dolphin on top.”
Sean perked up. “Hotel stationery?”
“We start there,” Robin confirmed. “The only hotel in town with a dolphin motif is the Lagoon Resort.”
“Pretty good detective work,” Sean said, tossing his burrito napkins into the trash.
“Thank you.”
“Of course, everyone knows the cast is staying there, thanks to Monica Mell’s website,” he added.
Robin shouldered her backpack. “Shut up and start walking.”
Monica Mell was Juliet Francine’s biggest online fan. She always had the best gossip, the newest pictures, and the snarkiest comments about Juliet’s Hollywood enemies. Thousands of fans read her site every day. Robin was sometimes embarrassed at how many times a day she checked for updates. But here, at least, was something Monica couldn’t know. Monica was only a fangirl operating out of her bedroom in the middle of Iowa. Robin was right here on the scene, and after she solved Juliet’s disappearance, Monica Mell would come begging for Robin’s interview.
The Lagoon Resort was only a ten-minute walk away. The lobby was an enormous atrium of glass and blue-green tile, like standing at the bottom of a shimmering aquarium. The hotel was the most expensive in Key West. It was six stories tall, with dozens of suites and even more luxury bungalows out by the expansive pools. Sheiks, foreign dignitaries, and the occasional U.S. president stayed in those bungalows. Robin gazed at the water fountains, the mosaic floor, and enormous vases of freshly cut white flowers. Platoons of low-paid workers probably scrubbed those floors every night and replaced the flowers every morning. Wasted electricity kept the air icy cold.
“Security’s everywhere,” Sean observed, nodding toward men by the elevators. Although they wore white shirts and khaki shorts, they had earpieces in their ears and radios on their hips.
“This proves we’re in the right place,” Robin said. “Follow me.”
She walked up to the reception desk. “Excuse me, where can I fill out an application?”
The clerk directed them down a side hall to the human resources office. The office itself was a large, long room in beige and gray, a lot more bland than the lobby. It had old office chairs, several cluttered desks, and a multitude of boring safety posters. The manager on duty was a Cuban woman in a powder blue suit who eyed their casual clothes and dirty knees.
“Have you ever worked in a hotel?” she asked doubtfully.
“I was a housekeeper last summer,” Robin said confidently. “I won Employee of the Month.”
Sean nodded. “Me, too. Different month.”
The HR lady didn’t look convinced, but was distracted by a phone ringing in an inner office behind her. “Fill these out,” she said, handing over some clipboards. “I’ll be right out.”
She went to answer the phone and closed the door behind her. Robin picked a chair against the far wall and wedged her backpack between her feet.
Sean plopped down beside her. “You lasted two days in housekeeping at the Fisher Key resort before you called the manager a sexist pig and quit.”
“That’s two more days than you would have lasted,” Robin replied, and started filling in the application with false information.
A door opened at the far end of the room and two housekeepers came in, their white uniforms wrinkled from a hard morning’s work. They were speaking Russian to each other. Or maybe Polish. Robin planned on visiting Eastern and Western Europe one day, and Asia too, and maybe even India. So far, the farthest she’d been was North Carolina, but last summer she’d gotten a passport in case she needed to jet off on an adventure.
“Excuse me,” Robin said to the maids. “We’re applying for jobs. Do you think it is a fair and equitable place to work?”
The two women stared at her. The taller one said, uncertainly, “Yes?”
“It’s okay,” said the shorter woman, whose English was stronger. “You are very young to work. You like housekeeping?”
“I think it’s good, honest work, and much better than slaving over a fry vat all day,” Robin said. “My mother was a housekeeper, and her mother, too.”
Sean muttered something under his breath. He knew that Robin’s mother had never worked in a hotel or motel. Her grandmother, who’
d married into money in Miami Beach, had never even worked outside the home. Even inside the home, she’d had a staff of cooks and cleaners and even someone to walk her dogs. Robin loved Grandma Bunny, but had to admit she was part of the 1% who were hastening the decline of America.
“You don’t mind cleaning toilets?” the shorter woman asked.
Sean said, “If it’s good enough for Zora Neale Hurston, it’s good enough for me.”
Robin nudged his leg. Literary references were not always appropriate. Besides, it wasn’t as if one of the most important female writers in African-American literature had intended to spend her final, impoverished days doing manual labor. Misfortune was a terrible thing. Luckily, scholars and academics had rescued Hurston from obscurity and restored her to her proper place in the pantheon of American literature.
The tall woman searched through a rack of timecards. The short woman blinked at Sean and said, “Is good place to work. You’ll like it.”
Robin tried to get the conversation back on track. “Are they strict? Like super strict? My friend at the Casa Marina hotel got fired because she asked a guest for an autograph. He was a movie star.”
The tall woman spoke in Polish. The short woman said, “No, you should not talk to movie stars. They pull their pants on just like you and me, yes? Want their privacy. Even when they yell and make a fuss. All those actors last night, yelling in the bungalows.”
“Many complaints,” the tall woman added.
The housekeepers punched their time cards, wished Robin and Sean well, and departed without leaving behind any useful information, such as Juliet Francine’s exact room number. Still, Robin was satisfied.
“So now what?” Sean asked.
Robin glanced toward the inner office. The HR lady was in an animated discussion on the phone and seemed to have forgotten all about them. She edged toward a desk against the wall and slid open the top drawer.
“You heard her,” Robin said. “Actors yelling in the bungalows. We’ll start there.”
She riffled through layers of napkins, pens, paper clips, and memos until she found some discarded nametags. Robin passed one to Sean, grabbed some pamphlets from the side table, and picked up her clipboard.
“Follow me, Jose,” she said.
Chapter Three
The far door led out to a service corridor and then the pool area of the resort. The paved walkways, carefully shaded by ferns and palm trees, wound lazily around the swimming pools toward the wooden bungalows set back in the carefully tended landscape. Beyond a low fence, the Gulf of Mexico glimmered in the sun.
“I bet it costs a thousand dollars a day to stay here,” Sean said. “Maybe five thousand.”
“Waste of money,” Robin told him. “Think how many vaccines you could buy for Third World children with that. How many meals for children starving in the Ozarks.”
“You’ve never even been to the Ozarks.”
“One day,” Robin said. After she got her degree from the University of Miami, of course. After graduation, she was going to move to L.A. or New York City, someplace where she could launch a media empire. Of course, if Juliet Francine fell in love with her in the meantime, they’d have to juggle their long-distance love affair—
“Excuse me,” a woman said from behind her. “Welcome to the Lagoon Resort. Can I see your guest identification, please?”
Robin turned around and fell in love.
The woman was slim, tan, and ridiculously fit, with a sleek brown ponytail and tiny gold hoop earrings. She looked like a runner. Probably did free weights, too. Not a lot of makeup, which was good. Beauty like that didn’t need makeup. She was only in her mid-twenties or so, which made her perfectly eligible for Robin’s default fantasy about bikinis and sailboats.
The only downsides were her earpiece, radio, and casual uniform. Hotel security, then.
Robin tried bluffing.
“We’re not guests,” she said. “We’re employees. Delivering this important information to every room.”
The woman looked at their clipboards. “I didn’t realize occupational safety was so important to tourists.”
Sean said, “You’d be surprised at how many of them try to change light bulbs on their own.”
“No,” the woman said dryly. “I don’t think I would be. Who are you?”
Sometimes it was best to throw yourself on the mercy of totally hot strangers. Robin admitted, “We’re trying to get Juliet Francine’s autograph.”
Sean scowled at Robin. “Really? You went for that?”
The guard didn’t seem surprised. “You and a hundred other fans. Need I point out that you’re trespassing?”
She had brown eyes. Brownish-green. The kind of eyes Robin could stare at for hours, preferably over candlelight at a charity dinner to save whales from the cruel industry trying to annihilate them.
“Come on,” the woman said, completely unaware of Robin’s inner visions. “The parking lot’s this way.”
She gestured down the path toward a high white fence. Sean started walking. Robin kept pace but tried to slow him down. She needed time to memorize every lovely detail.
“You’re not calling the police?” Sean asked.
“I am the police,” was the woman’s answer.
The idea of this woman in uniform opened up an all new fantasy for Robin. Not that she approved of Big Brother or a police state, but there was something undeniably sexy whenever a good-looking woman climbed into formal clothes, a big hat, and steel-tipped boots.
“Sheriff’s department?” Robin asked. “State trooper?”
The woman’s mouth quirked. “Key West Police Department. Off duty. Now, promise me you won’t try and sneak back in, and I’ll forget I saw you. No promise, and you can go downtown and wait for your parents to pick you up.”
Robin hated when people underestimated her. She could drive, she’d been working for two years now, and in October she’d be able to vote. And she was going to solve the case of Juliet Francine. Of course, this cop didn’t know anything about that. And couldn’t, not if Robin were to keep her promise to Karen.
“We’re not kids,” Robin said.
The woman opened the gate in the fence. “My mistake.”
Sean said, “We promise we won’t come back, Officer…”
“Michelle Boyle.”
He shook her hand. “Thank you, Officer Boyle. You won’t regret it.”
Robin added in her own handshake. Which was a mistake, because the minute she squeezed Officer Boyle’s firm fingers she felt a surge of attraction that threatened to derail any and every thought of Juliet Francine. She wondered if Boyle felt the same thing, if she’d be interested, if she’d let herself fall for an almost-eighteen-year-old about to start college.
“I need my hand back,” Officer Boyle said patiently, with no sign of overwhelming lust.
Robin let go. She wanted to say something witty and urbane, something Michelle Boyle would remember her for, but her brain was a big blank white screen.
“Okay, thanks,” Robin said.
Stupidest thing ever.
“You’re welcome.” Boyle glanced at Robin’s nametag and offered a tiny smile. “Have a good day, Ivanka.”
*
“It’s possible that we’re not very good detectives,” Sean said on the drive back to Fisher Key. He slurped on a caramel iced coffee. “I take solace in the fact our client might not actually be kidnapped.”
Robin’s hands tightened on the steering wheel of her Civic. “Juliet’s not our client. Karen is.”
“You say that like we were actually hired.”
“I say that like we should keep helping,” Robin said. “And you should keep searching for any news about Juliet.”
Sean tapped on his smartphone. Beyond the windows, the sky had gone dark. They’d poked around Key West all day, trying to dig up clues. That was the problem with mysteries. Unless you asked the right questions, found the right witnesses, or had amazing strokes of luck, you got no
where at all. Which is exactly where they were. Nowhere. Meanwhile Juliet might be out there somewhere, scared and alone, at the mercy of psychopaths seeking fame or fortune.
Or maybe not.
“Maybe we should have told that cop,” Sean said. “Officer Boyle.”
“We couldn’t.”
Sean grinned. “You liked her. She’s exactly your type.”
“You have no idea what my type is.”
“Sure I do. Mrs. Morrison in the fourth grade. Coach Wilson’s wife when we were in Little League. And then there’s always Sgt. Powell—”
“Not true,” Robin said. Sgt. Bonnie Powell worked out of the county sheriff substation on Fisher Key. She came to the school every year as part of the safety program. From the first moment she’d seen her, Robin had admired her.
“Everyone knows you’d jump into her cruiser if she asked,” Sean said.
“She’s straight.” Robin fiddled with the air conditioner, which was pumping out less-than-cold air. Inheriting her parents’ car had been great on her wallet, and she loved the fuel efficiency. It was beginning to fall apart, however, and she wasn’t sure it would survive four years of back-and-forth trips from Miami.
“But totally your type.”
Robin’s speedometer had inched up, so she eased off the pedal. Speeding along the Overseas Highway was bad for any number of reasons, including hitting the innocent little Key deer who sometimes wandered onto the road. “Will you stop talking and check the net?”
“I did. There’s nothing new about Juliet anywhere. Monica Mell hasn’t updated all day.”
“Nothing?” Robin said. “Not even about the stomach flu?”
“The big news is that new Kardashian baby,” Sean said. “I wish they’d stop reproducing.”
