For much of his working life, woodworking had been her grandfather’s passion, but after his first heart attack in his early seventies, Nonni had demanded that he find a less active hobby. She’d bought him his first paint-by-numbers kit, a cheesy depiction of The Last Supper, and he’d eagerly put down the hammer and picked up the paintbrush.
Drue estimated that her grandfather probably completed at least a hundred paintings before his death, all with his name, Alberto, proudly signed in the bottom right corner. Tropical birds were his favorite subject, but after he’d filled up all the walls in the cottage, he’d moved on to snowy scenes of New England, then sailboats at sunset, followed by exotic depictions of palm trees and grass huts in the South Pacific, woodland scenes of stags and does and elk, then dogs and kittens. He’d crafted his own frames for the paintings, and joyfully gifted them to family and friends, even his cardiologist and the mailman.
She was still filled with remorse at the memory of the paint-by-numbers works Papi had presented to her for her bedroom in Fort Lauderdale: three scenes of ballerinas in pink tutus, which she’d callously replaced with posters of New Kids on the Block. What she wouldn’t give to have those long-lost paintings back.
A blank wall in the living room became a gallery wall of Alberto’s bird paintings now, and in her bedroom she hung a trio of the Polynesian scenes he’d toiled over for weeks, one of a sarong-clad beauty in front of a grass hut, another of an outrigger canoe at sunset, and the third, her favorite, a pair of palm trees with a glowing volcano in the background. Now, when she was lying in bed, looking out the window at the dunes and the beach beyond, she could also look at Papi’s paintings, and remember the joy his hobby had given him.
Early that evening, she put on her swimsuit and walked out to the beach. She waded into the water and floated on her back for a while, then swam laps, back and forth, parallel to the shore, until the muscles in her arms and legs burned with fatigue. Her legs wobbled as she trod the sand back to the cottage to shower and change.
Standing in the shower, she found herself humming, then singing at the top of her lungs. For the first time since returning to Sunset Beach, she felt whole. She felt alive and glad to be where she was. And she was ready to find the answers to the questions that had been plaguing her since the day Yvonne Howington walked into the reception room at her father’s law office.
* * *
Drue waited until nine o’clock to present herself at the front desk at the Silver Sands Motel. The place was a throwback to the 1950s, with a low-slung white stucco exterior topped with its exuberantly scripted neon-turquoise Silver Sands sign across the roof, and turquoise-striped awning overhanging the plate-glass doors to the lobby.
The clerk behind the front desk was dressed in a turquoise golf shirt with the hotel logo embroidered over the breast. He was the age Drue thought Jazmin Mayes’s boyfriend might be, early to late twenties, with neatly groomed dark hair and mocha-colored skin.
“Hi,” he said, looking up from a computer screen. “Welcome. How can I help you on this beautiful evening?”
“Jorge?” she asked.
His smile revealed deep dimples. No wonder Jazmin had fallen hard for this man.
“That’s me. Do we know each other?”
She extended her hand. “I’m Drue Campbell. Jazmin Mayes’s mother hired our law firm to find out the truth about what happened to Jazmin the night she was killed at the Gulf Vista Hotel and Resort.”
The smile faded fast. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t really help you. I left Gulf Vista a couple months before that happened.”
“I know that,” Drue said. “I’ve spoken to Detective Hernandez, the investigator from the Treasure Island Police Department. And I’ve spoken to one of Jazmin’s friends who worked with her. They said you and Jazmin were dating pretty seriously.”
“We were,” he said. He looked around the lobby, which was deserted. “Look, there isn’t much I can tell you. And I’m working, so I can’t really talk right now.”
“When do you get to take a break?” Drue asked, not ready to give up now that she had Jorge Morales in her sights. “I can wait. Maybe you’d let me buy you a cup of coffee so we can talk?”
“I don’t know what I can tell you,” he repeated. “I was working here that night.”
“I know. I checked. But I need to talk to everybody who knew Jazmin back then, who’d worked at the resort. Did you know that Jazmin’s mother tried to sue the hotel for criminal negligence? The hotel claimed she was working that night, so my father had to settle it as a worker’s comp case. The money will be in a trust for Aliyah, but it will only be a hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars, which Yvonne can’t touch, not even for Aliyah’s medical expenses.”
“That’s all?” Jorge’s face registered his disgust. “You know, I tried to get Jaz to quit that place. The management, they didn’t care about back-of-house staff. Jaz applied for a job here, but there weren’t any openings at the time. And then … it was too late.”
“That’s the kind of thing I want to discuss with you,” Drue said. “So, what about it? Can we talk when you take your break?”
“I guess. Can you come back around eleven?”
She winced. Tomorrow was a workday. “No sooner than that?”
He pulled up a screen on his computer and ran a finger down the listings. “Looks like I only have one late check-in. It’s pretty slow tonight.” He slid a business card across the Formica countertop to her. “Call me in an hour. If it stays quiet, you can come back and we’ll talk. Unless I get a check-in.”
* * *
Remembering her mother’s long-ago advice that it was always better to beg forgiveness than ask for permission, Drue bought two coffees at the Starbucks a few blocks away and arrived back at the Silver Sands thirty minutes later.
She waited while Jorge handed a packet of keys and a hotel brochure to a young couple with a sleeping infant draped over the mother’s shoulder. When they’d headed out of the lobby, she presented him with the coffee.
“Is now a good time?”
“Okay,” he relented. “Those folks were my late check-ins. The phones are quiet.” He pointed across the lobby at a pair of armchairs. “We can talk over there.”
Drue showed Jorge her cell phone. “I’m going to tape this, if that’s okay with you.”
“I have no problem with that,” Jorge said. “But first, tell me about Aliyah. Is she okay?”
“I guess you know Yvonne is raising her?”
“I figured. You know, I only met Aliyah once or twice, and I never met Jaz’s mom. I didn’t want us to be a secret, but Jaz said her mom would never accept her dating a Latino.” Jorge looked down at his hands. For the first time, Drue noticed he wore a gold wedding band.
He saw what she was looking at. “Yeah. I got married a couple months ago. I actually met Melissa when she was staying here for her best friend’s wedding, and we hit it off. Funny thing, she’s got a daughter just about the same age as Aliyah.”
“Jazmin would want you to be happy, wouldn’t she?” Drue asked. It was a cliché, but she didn’t know what else to say. Besides, clichés were usually true, right?
“I think so,” he said. “Jaz was great. We had a lot of fun. Not many people knew she had a goofy side to her. She’d been through some rough stuff, you know? But she was smart. She took a couple classes at USF and made good grades. She was a good person.”
“So I’ve heard,” Drue said. “Jorge, did she ever tell you somebody at the hotel was sexually harassing her? An older white guy?”
“What? She never said anything about it to me. Where’d you hear that?”
“She told her mom that she’d complained to the management, but they never did anything about it.”
“This is the first I’m hearing about it, but yeah, I can totally believe that. The atmosphere over there, it’s not professional. At all.”
“How do you mean?”
“The men who worked there?
They were all the time making dirty comments about the females on the staff and the guests. I’m no prude, but it was pretty disgusting, if you ask me.”
“Can you give me some examples?”
“Yeah. Like the head of security? His name is Shelnutt, and he’s a piece of crap. He’d have what he called ‘porn parties.’ He was the one monitoring the security cameras around the property, and he’d make what he called his ‘greatest hits’ clips—you know, lots of tits and ass: chicks around the pool or on the beach who didn’t have their bathing suit tops fastened, people in the hallways who’d come out half dressed, and his favorite, people getting it on in the elevators.” He looked away, embarrassed. “I went to one of his parties once, to show I was one of the guys, but it was just gross. I made up some excuse and ducked out after about fifteen minutes and never went back.”
“Is that why you left the Gulf Vista?”
“Not really. I was up for a managerial position, but they promoted somebody else, a white guy, who had less seniority and experience, over me. He didn’t even have any college. I was fed up. I’d already put in applications at some other hotels out here, and when the Silver Sands called, I went like a shot. You know, if Jaz had left when I did, maybe she’d still be alive. I think about that a lot.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
He sipped his coffee. “Let me think. I know the cops asked me that, but it’s been so long. Lots of nights, we’d go out after she got off her shift, if our schedules worked out okay. Sometimes, I’d get us a room here, so we could be together, and then she’d go home, like around two in the morning, because her mom had to get to work, and Jaz was the one to take Aliyah to school.”
“According to the hotel, the day she was killed, Jaz’s car broke down on the way to work.”
He nodded. “Yeah, that Kia was a hunk of junk. But it was all she could afford.”
“She called her mom and told her she was going to have the car towed to a garage, and then she took a cab and got to the hotel more than an hour late.”
“I bet Byars reamed her ass out,” Jorge said.
“That’s the head of housekeeping?”
“That’s him. Total jerk. He was always at Shelnutt’s little parties.”
“Could he have been the one who was coming on to Jazmin?”
“Absolutely. Another piece of crap.”
“Did you know Larry Boone? One of the other housekeepers told me he grabbed her and propositioned her more than once.”
“Scary Larry, that’s what the girls called him,” Jorge affirmed. “When Shelnutt wanted to have one of his little parties, Larry Boone, who was head of engineering, would put a room ‘out of order’ so the front desk wouldn’t rent it to guests. That’s where the parties would be.”
“Back to the night she was killed. Byars told the cops that Jazmin asked to work an additional shift, because she’d gotten to work late. Do you think that’s true?”
“I never knew her to work an overnight shift,” Jorge said. “She and Aliyah lived with her mom, and the mom had to get to work in the morning. That’s why she never stayed overnight with me, and always went home, even though I didn’t like her driving home alone late at night like that. That neighborhood she lived in is kinda rough.”
“One of the other housekeepers told me that Jaz’s best friend was another housekeeper. Neesa? Did you know her?”
“Kinda.”
“What’s that mean?” Drue asked.
“I know she and Jaz were tight, but I wasn’t really a fan.”
“Why’s that?”
He toyed with the paper band around his coffee cup. “I thought she was a bad influence. This will maybe sound racist, coming from somebody like me, but I can’t help it. Neesa was pretty ghetto.”
“How so?”
“The way she acted. She was all about the partying. She’d get high at work. Like a lot. And I could never prove anything, but I think maybe she was into some other bad stuff. Jaz mentioned it one time, that Neesa wanted her to get in on something, but Jaz wouldn’t. You know Jaz got busted for shoplifting when she was in high school, and she had some weed on her. She told me she got in with the wrong crowd back then, and she wasn’t going to make that mistake again. She wanted to be a good mom for Aliyah. That kid was everything to her.”
“What kind of stuff do you think Neesa was into?”
He shrugged. “Who knows? She was Jaz’s friend, not mine.”
“She was working the night Jazmin was killed, according to the police reports. She left the hotel ten days after the murder. I’d really like to talk to Neesa. Do you know where she is?”
He checked his watch. “Right now? Probably doing Jägerbombs at Mister B’s.”
“That’s a bar?”
“In Seminole. I met her and Jaz there a couple times. Loud country music and kind of a rough crowd.”
Drue pulled up the blurry photo of Neesa and Jaz that she’d found on Jazmin’s Facebook page. “This is Neesa, right? It’s the only photo I could find of her.”
“I’ve got a better one,” Jorge said. He scrolled through the photos on his phone, then held it up for Drue to see.
It was a selfie of Jazmin and another young black woman. Their faces were pressed close together, and they were captured mid-laugh. Neesa’s complexion was two shades lighter than Jazmin’s, and she had a nose with a slight hook. While Jazmin’s hair was worn short and natural, Neesa’s was an elaborate architectural feat.
“This is her.” He tapped the photo. “She’s really good with hair, with the braids and whatever you call it.”
“Great.” Drue handed the phone back. “Now I’ll know her when I see her.” She handed Jorge her business card. “If you can think of anything else I might need to know about Jazmin, I’d appreciate a call.”
“You’ve got my card too,” he reminded her. “Can you let me know what you find out? Like, if the police catch who did that to her? I’m still so sad, you know? Jaz, she was just getting her life together. We had plans…”
38
Mister B’s was loud and crowded, with men in Wrangler jeans, cowboy boots and ten-gallon hats who outnumbered the women three to one. The hot, damp air smelled overpoweringly like Axe aftershave. Drue elbowed her way through the hordes of boot-scooting boogiers to the bar, which was also stacked two deep.
After five minutes, she was able to inch close enough to catch the attention of a bartender. He was tan and muscled and bare-chested, with a pierced nipple. The bolo tie around his neck was fastened with a chunky turquoise and silver clasp.
“Howdy.” He tipped his straw Stetson. “Whatcha drinking tonight? Can I get you started with our drink special? A Mango Tango?”
“God no,” she said, shuddering. “Just a vodka tonic. Double lime, please.”
While he turned to fix her drink, Drue scanned the length of the bar. A similarly dressed bartender worked the other end. She had long blond braids laced with feathers and beads, and wore a midriff-tied cowboy shirt with jean shorts cut high and tight, exposing an impressive amount of tanned butt cheeks.
Customers had seemingly self-segregated, with the men on the far end, ogling the blonde, and a large number of women clustered at what she’d already started thinking of as the Roy Rogers end of the bar. If Roy had a pierced nipple and a tattoo of a coiled rattlesnake on his right bicep.
She was surprised at how racially diverse the crowd was. Was country music that universally appealing? Drue wasn’t sure.
The bartender was back with her drink. She thanked him and leaned across the bar. “Hey, do you happen to know a woman named Neesa? I think she comes here a lot? Likes Jägerbombs?”
“I don’t,” he said. “But I just started here this week. Want me to go ask Coco?” He pointed down the bar at the blonde.
She gave him her most dazzling smile. “That’d be awesome.”
A moment later, he was back. “That’s her,” he said, nodding in the direction of a black woman who’d pos
itioned herself on a bar stool at the corner of the bar that angled back toward the bathrooms.
Drue had a five-dollar bill ready, and she pushed it across the bar top toward him.
She sipped her drink and surreptitiously watched the woman, whom she’d never have recognized from the photo Jorge had shown her.
Instead of the elaborate crown of braids and beaded extensions the other Neesa had worn, this one had a chin-length platinum blond pageboy. She wore a low-cut yellow tank top and shoulder-length gold hoop earrings. She was chatting with another woman, but her eyes seemed to constantly scan the crowd. When her head swung in Drue’s direction, Drue quickly turned away, leaving her back toward the woman. A moment later, Neesa was engrossed in conversation with a tall Hispanic-looking man, fluttering dramatic false eyelashes and gesturing with long acrylic nails painted neon pink.
The man motioned for the bartender, who brought a new round of drinks. Soon his arm was draped across Neesa’s shoulder, his hand resting lightly atop her breast.
Drue nursed her drink slowly. Twenty minutes passed. Roy Rogers returned. “Get you another?” He pointed to Drue’s drink, the ice now melted. She didn’t want another drink. What she wanted was to talk to Neesa about Jazmin Mayes and then get the hell out of here. She glanced toward the end of the bar. Neesa’s new friend was handing her a bottle of Jägermeister, which Neesa upended into her open mouth. The man laughed uproariously, leaned down and stuck his tongue down her throat. Another man approached and tugged at his arm. Neesa’s boyfriend tossed some bills on the bar and walked away, leaving Neesa pouting with only an empty liquor bottle for company.
“Maybe just a club soda with double lime?” she told Roy Rogers. She didn’t dare order another drink. It was a long drive back to Sunset Beach, and the last thing she needed was to get pulled over for DUI.
She was sipping her drink and plotting her next move when the decision was made for her.
“Hey.” Neesa plopped down on the bar stool that had just been vacated. She poked Drue’s arm with a long tapered fingernail. “Girl, I seen you staring at me down there. Do we know each other?”
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