by Dakota Kahn
It wasn’t malicious. It wasn’t even a conscious act, but I had accidentally made a slobbering slave of a young boy, and even though I hadn’t seen him for the better part of a decade, he was still here for me.
“You’re here to see me?” he said, incredulous.
“Yeah,” I said, taking a step to the side in case anyone was behind me in line. They weren’t, but I wanted to get away from Violet’s frank astonishment that a woman came seeking Tyler. She should be so lucky to get a sweet guy like him.
“Well… okay, why?” he said. “Not that I mind. I haven’t seen you since you came back. I’d heard about it, and I thought about coming and seeing you. But, you know,” he said, blushing suddenly.
Being a lawyer, especially one who sometimes sees the inside of a courtroom (that’s not the majority, you know) means thinking on your feet. Happily, right now for me that meant I got to turn a potentially hurtful lie into a minor little fib. His badge, right under the gold-foil Tyler Zane, read, Chief Security Technician.
“Because I have questions only an expert in security can answer. Can we talk somewhere away from—” I jerked my head toward Violet, and rolled my eyes a little at Tyler, to give him back some of the face the mean little receptionist had taken. “I have serious questions, not for everyone’s ears.”
Tyler chuckled, then waved me back toward the room he come in from.
“Get me those logs, Violet,” Tyler said with a newborn confidence I totally gave myself credit for. Violet sputtered as I closed the door.
“You’re a man in charge,” I said, and he beamed. Now I was feeling a little bad. He might be getting the wrong idea.
But instead of making a quick pass, he passed himself down into a chair, and rolled toward a bank of monitors, both video and computer, on the wall. With all of that equipment pumping out heat and energy, I’d expected the much smaller room to be hotter than the lobby, but it was actually a little chilly. I could see a couple of papers on top of a shelf wafting a little in the air conditioned breeze. California Gold was a hi-tech kind of place.
“Well, what do you want to know?” he said, positioning himself so that he was half at a keyboard, half looking out at me. “California Gold has one of the most sophisticated security set-ups in the state, maybe the country. We’ve got hidden cameras on most floors.”
“And in the rooms?” I said, my left eyebrow raised.
Tyler chuckled. “Of course not, that’d be a privacy problem. In fact, we offer discretion and privacy, even anonymity for guests who require it,” he said, sounding a little too much like a brochure.
“Yeah, that’s marketing talk. Let me see the camera setup.”
“Why are you so interested?” he said, his look of ingenuous friendliness faltering a little bit.
“Well, I’m a lawyer. You know that?” I said.
“Yeah, I heard. Were in a firm in the big city, and then you came back…”
“To start my own firm, where I could be completely in control of my own destiny,” I said, taking control of my own story to make sure there was no hint of a poor downtrodden Kate Becker with her tail planted firmly between her legs, running from the city like a frightened animal.
I’m back in Whispering Pines because I like it here, not because I couldn’t cut it out there.
“Anyway,” I said, closing the subject. “I’ve got a client who is accused of something I don’t think he did, and—”
“Is it the guy who killed Mr. Wendover? Man, I’ve heard about that. People all over town are all saying different things about who it is.”
So Rip’s name hasn’t been leaked by anybody. Probably because so many people in town know Rip and like him, and the cops would be getting many a complaint.
“I can’t discuss who I’m working with or why,” I said, trying to sound very professional and competent. “But I want to know how security systems like this work. How long do you keep recordings? How do you sift back through them?”
Asking these simply questions was killing me - I wanted to dive in there, check all the cameras, find out just where Miguela was. I hated doing finesse stuff.
“Well… without knowing exactly what you’re looking for,” he said, raising his own eyebrows at me in case that would get me to budge from my discretion. No dice, kid. “It’s hard to say. We have a really unique system here, with all kinds of things that require a lot of expert set-up.”
“And I bet you’re the expert who set them up,” I said, touching his shoulder.
The man got redder. “Well, I did do a few neat things. Besides the cameras, I have the badges.” He held up his own, in case I’d forgotten just what a badge was.
“Shiny,” I said.
“Not just shiny, functional. They have these RFID tags inside them, so when any employee passes by any sensor, and we have sensors all over the floors, they ping.”
“Ping,” I said.
“Ping,” Tyler said back, nodding. “Like… here.”
He tapped a few keys on his keyboard, and faces appeared on a monitor, with names next to them. It was the entire employee roster, from the manager down to the maids. And I saw one maid in particular. Ioana Ionescu. Eyebrows like a forest you could get lost in for hours.
“So if I wanted, for, instance, to find her,” I said, pointing at Ioana, “You could click a button and tell me just where she is?”
“Sure,” he said, and did it without an instant’s hesitation. “Fourth floor, just entered room 414. Hmm, I wonder what she’s doing there? That’s not where she’s assigned. I’m going to radio her in.”
“You’ve been an enormous help, Tyler,” I said, working very hard to sound casual while every muscle in my body was aching to chase up those stairs. Or, more likely, wait in the elevator. I’d already had some stairs fall out from under me today.
“Hmm? I haven’t really answered anything,” he said. “Hey, you’re seeing the deputy?”
“Blake Spanner, yes.”
“On-again, off-again boyfriend, hey?” he said with a hint of superiority.
Some bit of womanly pride made me want to stake out Blake as my fiancee. But I could see from the look on Tyler’s face that it would not have gone over well. Not that I was leading him on, you see. Just… I didn’t need to be mean.
“Blake and I are doing great. When he can get away from work. Look, Tyler, I wanna talk to you again soon, but right now…”
“Yeah, I got it,” he said, smiling again, but there was a pain behind that smile. A ‘girls are only nice when they need something’ look. I wished I had the time to fix Tyler Zane’s problems, but I was helping out a homeless drunk. Priorities.
“Bye,” I said, and, racing as casually as I could, got to the elevator. It was empty, and while I leaned on the button to the fourth floor, I went through the possibilities in my head.
What was Miguela doing, coming into the hotel like this? She obviously didn’t want to be seen (and just as obviously wasn’t nearly the expert in the hotel’s security system I had just become, or she’d realize her attempts to hide were pointless.) Was it some lover’s tryst I’d be interrupting?
But if that were the case, why would the maid have gone into the room with her? Or did she? I didn’t know for a fact they were still together. I had nothing but half-formed hunches and bare instinct to go on… but that had to be enough for now. Miguela was hiding something, and when Kate Becker is in her discovering things mode, no secrets may remain hidden.
The elevator stopped, and so I stepped out onto the fourth floor. It had that kind of artificial hotel quietness, like it was a room filled with people all holding their breath. As I walked down the hall, I found myself looking in the corners of the ceiling, and at the walls. Anywhere a camera could reasonably be hidden.
Tyler could be looking at me right now. My secret mission to discover Miguela’s secret mission could be an open book to anyone properly curious. I stopped right outside the door to room 414. It was closed… but not really closed. The b
ar-lock on the top of the door had been turned inside out, holding the door open rather that keeping it locked. It looked closed, but a light push would put me inside.
From inside I could hear sounds. Rustling, light talking. Were they the sounds of lovers? Thieves? Business people conducting secret meetings?
I took a deep breath, and steadied myself. Whatever was going on in there might not be any of my business… but I was going to find out anyway. Investigations are not polite things.
I pushed the door open as quietly as I could, stepped in, and fake-closed it behind myself, like I’d found it.
Straight down the line from the door I could hear papers being shuffled. Boxes opened. Miguela’s massive shadow moved in the light, but even if I couldn’t see her, that wave of perfume she always wore filled the room with her presence.
From my vantage point I could see the rear of the maid, her hands clasped behind her back, fingers moving nervously. Well, there was no sense in pretending to be coy.
“Hello, Miguela,” I said, in a not too loud voice.
The maid shrieked and flew back, bracing herself against the wall as if, somehow, she could sink into it and disappear.
“That’s Kate Becker,” Miguela said. And that was it. I walked further into the room, and saw her still poring over some box, her fingers flitting over what looked like folders inside.
“What in the world are you doing?” I said. I was right next to the maid, who was still open-mouthed and terrified. You’d think she was the one who’d seen a ghost today.
“I could ask you the same question,” Miguela said. “But I bet we both know. We want to find out what he has on us, huh?”
Miguela finally looked at me with a knowing, intelligent glance. A glance that I hoped did not notice I had no idea what in the world she was talking about.
“Those are the files?” I said, feigning a bit of cocksureness.
“Mm-hmm. I wonder… looking here, what is more important? The people he is looking at, or the people he is not looking at, hmm?” Miguela turned back to the folders and skimmed through them.
“Like who?” I said.
“Ioana, be a lookout, like I told you. Do not just stand there like a silly girl,” Miguela said, glaring at the maid. Ioana peeled herself off of the wall, gave me another terrified glance, then headed out of the room.
“That girl,” Miguela said, shaking her head. Then she looked at me again. “What did you ask?”
“Who is he not investigating?” I said.
“Well… Look for yourself. You’re right there in the middle.”
Miguela pushed the box of folders toward me, nearly knocking it off the bed. I caught it, pushed it back in a place where I could look at it, and there it was. My name, on top of a red folder.
Kate Becker - Attorney/Public Defender.
I pulled it out, and yanked it open. Photos of me, some of them from newspapers and even my high school yearbook (I almost gagged to see my old hair.) And then some more recent. More candid, photos taken of me on the street. Sitting in the restaurant with Blake.
“Oh my God,” I said. There was also a typed sheet of information. All of it was simple public record type stuff… except next to that were notes about my schedule. Places I would visit. “Is this some kind of stalker?” I said, feeling numbness in my fingers.
“Huh?” Miguela said. She was looking through a folder she’d already pulled out of the box.
There were pictures inside, and a large crudely made flier. I couldn’t tell what any of them were, because the instant Miguela saw them she snapped them up and pushed them somewhere inside her dress. Either she had hidden pockets or wanted to make very sure no-one was going to get those photos in a frisking.
“What was that?” I said.
She glared, and then enlightenment dawned on the face as a curling kind of anger came into her lips. “You got no idea, do you, about any of this? You just followed me up here. You’re watching me, too?”
“No,” I said, setting my folder down. “I just saw you wearing that… Miguela, is that supposed to be a disguise?” I said, pointing at her. “I recognized you from across the street in the dark.”
“Hmph,” she said. “And why would you follow me? Why do you not mind your own business?”
Because this isn’t a day for minding my own business. I need a list of suspects for a crime, and the leading anti-developer activist might be on that list.
“Because I’m trying to find out as much as I can about James Wendover’s movements last night. You know what happened to him, right?”
“Yes, a terrible thing,” she said, so perfunctory she might as well be saying ‘bless you’ after a sneeze. “But now that casino is not gonna happen. I look for the silver lining, Kate.”
“I don’t know if that’s true. I’ve talked to his wife, and his partner, Mr. Greene,” I said, fibbing slightly. “I think the plans are all full steam ahead.”
“No, no, no. They didn’t even show plans to the committee, I know. I talked to them. They were all in Mr. Wendover’s head. With that head quiet, no more casino.”
It looked to me very much like Miguela was trying to suppress a smile. I’d like to pretend I didn’t see it, since she was, if not a friend, at least a long-time acquaintance about whom I had no ill feelings. But now…
“Did you meet with Mr. Wendover last night?”
“What?” Miguela said.
“Last night. Sparks came to the meeting. Maybe Wendover did too, to give you his side?”
Miguela barked out a laugh.
“Wendover didn’t want to give his side. He wanted to bulldozer the townspeople like he wanted to bulldozer Crestgold.”
“And why do you care so much what happens to Crestgold?” I said.
Miguela drew herself up to her full height, and looked down at me like the Red Queen about to go ‘off with my head’.
“Smile ladies,” someone said behind us.
We both turned in time to be blinded by a flash of light. A man, average height, stocky, with a thin comb-over and a little ratty mustache, laughed as he took our picture two, three times. He dropped the camera into his coat pocket, and smiled.
“So that’s the Attorney and the Social Diva, both breaking into my hotel room. Wow, that’s total PI gold,” the man said, smiling, chewing on something.
“You!” Miguela shouted, pointing at him. “You’ve been following me around, taking my picture. Asking people questions about me.”
“And yet I haven’t done a single illegal thing, unlike whatever this is. Evening, Miss Becker, Miss Sepulveda.”
Miguela sputtered for a second, then regained her regal anger.
“You give me those pictures you took,” she said.
“Mm-mm. Even if I gave you the card in my camera, one of the wonders of the modern age is that, the second I take a picture, magical Internet fairies take it from the card and put it in the cloud, somewhere. Every picture is now forever, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Miguela looked very much like she wanted to do something very permanent about it.
“What’s your name?” I said, pretending that the circumstances he had us in were not exactly as potentially damaging as he said they were.
“Ronald Obergast, private detective, in the employ of none of your business. Here, my card,” he said, producing two in a flick of his wrist like a magician’s trick. I took one, out of sheer automatic politeness. Miguela looked at it like it was a particularly offensive worm.
“Now, I have to update my files, if you don’t mind seeing yourselves out,” he said, laughing. “And if you’ve taken anything out of here, just leave it on the counter. Don’t bother trying to steal anything, I’ve got copies and copies of those copies.”
He walked past the both of us, picked up his box of files, and set it on the table.
No clue what else to do, we both just walked out.
After he closed and locked the door on us, I turned to Miguela, but she
was already heading away.
Chapter 10
When I got home I was so wound up I half expected marauders to jump me from inside the door, midway through their marauding. Or maybe pirates to come in on the bog that reached almost to my back door. It wasn’t the first time I regretted fixing up old Aunt Gladys’ place to live in, because it is way too big for one girl to rattle around all on her own. All kinds of ghosts and goblins could hide there.
I had enough of those in my head to have to deal with any real ones, thanks.
But all that happened when I came in the front door was that Matador quacked hello.
Matador was my marriage duck. If you’ve never heard of a marriage duck before, that’s because Matador is the only one in the world. He was a gift from Blake last Christmas, part inside joke and part sincere attempt to get me a pet that wouldn’t send Blake into an allergic fit. I don’t think anybody’s allergic to ducks, and if they are Matador would probably be a good enough duck to make them take their antihistamines and bear with it.
I do not know if he was smarter than the average duck - I have very little traffic with the average duck. But he could read my mood and was very good at coming to me just when I needed a companion who wouldn’t talk back.
“What the heck have I gotten myself into, Matador?”
He looked soulfully into my eyes with all the mallard sympathy he could muster, then he quaked quietly, in thoughtful contemplation.
“So, I have Rip Chiaki in jail for something I don’t think he was physically capable of, forget mentally or morally. You know who I like for it?” I said.
Matador didn’t know, but he was dying to find out.
“Mr. Greene. Big guy, he could lift a man up onto that gallows. And he’s as much as said he was the last person to see Wendover alive. If only they had a set-up like they have at California Gold over at the ghost town, then we wouldn’t have to speculate, we could know.”