Dinah lifts an eyebrow. “But St. Charles is perfectly safe.”
“I don’t think he was concerned about the hospital specifically. I think he was concerned about some outside force harming Alissa.”
Dinah shifts her gaze. “You mean…?”
“I don’t know what I mean.” I squeeze my eyes shut, try to remember the rest of the day. “I rode up the elevator with Alissa, and then you told her about Lou, and she sauntered off to see him. And then, later… She wasn’t looking where she was going and bumped into me.”
Dinah nods. “That sounds like Alissa. She often gets lost in thought.”
“Yeah, but she’s usually pretty attentive at work, so I asked her if anything was the matter. The way she was acting, plus Maddox’s strange request to make sure she was protected, had my hackles rising. So I asked her point-blank to tell me what was on her mind.”
“What did she say?”
“That there had been some kerfuffle at Aces Underground, that club Maddox took her to.”
“Oh, right. With the playing card waiters. Alissa told me all about it.”
“That’s the one. And Alissa told me they had learned something upsetting about the woman who runs the club.” I lean in, lower my voice. “Her name is Rouge Montrose.”
“Rouge Montrose.” Dinah bites her lip. “Why does that name sound familiar?”
“She’s involved in a lot of charities and businesses with the city, owns lots of clubs, Aces chief among them. But the reason you might hear her name now and then is that she also sits on the board of this very hospital.”
Dinah cocks her head. “That’s quite a coincidence.”
“It is.” I swallow. “It’s almost too much of a coincidence. The color drained from Alissa’s face when I told her.”
“Have you met this woman? Rouge Montrose, I mean?”
I shake my head. “Maddox always kept a healthy distance from her when he’d take me to the club. I never even knew her name was Rouge Montrose until Alissa told me. But Rouge is one of those people with a very…specific aura.”
Dinah leans in. “How do you mean?”
“Like… She’s very charming, very charismatic. But whenever she was within a few feet of me, I’d feel this…chill. Like a foreboding feeling that something terrible could happen at any moment.”
“Interesting.” Dinah scratches her chin. “And Alissa got mixed up with this woman?”
“Yeah. Or so she told me. She said she and Maddox found out something about Rouge and they were concerned it would affect Maddox’s membership at the club.”
Dinah frowns. “That’s it? Who the hell cares about his membership? He can go to another club. He’s a Hathaway, for Christ’s sake. Those sons of bitches can write their own ticket anywhere.”
“Yeah, it didn’t sit all that well with me, either,” I say. “But that’s all I have to go on. As soon as I told Alissa that Rouge was a board member, she stormed off. That was the last I saw of her that day. She acted relatively normal the rest of the week when she was in. But then, the night of the fourteenth, Maddox tried to call me. I was working late and didn’t have my phone on me, so I missed the call. He left me a simple voicemail, saying ‘Damn it, Harrison.’”
“What does that mean?”
“I texted him back the next morning. He told me it was nothing, and”—I hold up my phone, displaying my messages—“that was the last text he sent me before he told me he was taking Alissa out of town on a trip.”
Dinah presses her lips together. “Nothing is always something.”
“I felt the same way,” I reply. “But that’s the whole story. I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do with it.”
“The only lead we have is this Rouge lady, right?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“Maybe we can have someone look into her?”
I cross my arms. “Rouge has paid off every single detective in town. I don’t think that’s the answer.” I rub at my forehead. “But that club is where Maddox took Alissa when things started getting fishy. I’ll go to Aces Underground myself and check things out.”
