My anxiety spiked as I knocked a third time on the door to Marco’s suite, and I considered the very real possibility that Cam and Vero had murdered each other while I’d been gone. I raised my hand to knock again, then paused as footsteps trotted to the other side of the door. “I charged it to the room,” Vero called through the door. “Just leave the tray outside.”
“It’s me. Open up and let me in.”
The dead bolt flipped and the door swung open. “What took you so long? I was starting to worry.”
I followed her into the suite, lurching to a stop as I reached the living room and spotted a pair of hotel slippers sticking up over the arm of the couch. Cam didn’t look up from the telenovela on the TV. He was wrapped in a plush hotel bathrobe, his head propped high on a mountain of king-sized pillows. Marco’s wiener dog rested on a cushion beside him, and a plate of hotcakes and syrup rested on Cam’s lap.
He speared a breakfast sausage and held the fork out to the dog. Kevin glared at me as he gobbled up the link.
I felt my blood pressure rise as I looked around the room. Every surface was littered with empty, crumb-covered serving trays. A platter hadbeen left on the floor, presumably for the dog, who was now strung out on the couch in some kind of sausage-induced coma. “What on earth were you two doing while I was gone?”
“Babysitting,” Vero said, arms crossed, scowling at Cam from the opposite arm of the couch.
“Shhh,” he said, turning up the volume on the remote. “La Reina just told that cartel dude to step off or she’ll put a cap in his ass.”
“Don’t look at me,” Vero said to me. “You’re the one that brought him here.”
I snatched the remote control from Cam’s hand. Kevin growled, and Cam looked stricken as I turned the TV off. “You two were supposed to be working! While you were up here having a pajama party, two dead men have been decomposing in the bathroom, and if we don’t figure out who killed them, there’s no chance we’ll find the car.OrJavi!” I reminded Vero.
“Relax, Mrs. D.” Cam swung his slippers off the arm of the sofa and sat upright, wiping his syrupy chin on the collar of his robe. “We already know who murdered Mario and Luigi.” He held his empty plate toward Vero. She got up to take it, grinding her teeth.
“What?” Vero said at my slack-jawed expression. “I lost a bet, okay?”
“She’s just sore because I solved the mystery first.”
“Wait,” I said, looking between them. “Youknowwho killed Marco and Louis? How? What did you find?”
“Check it out.” Cam held Louis’s tablet out to me. A document was open on the screen, containing a short list of names with dollar amounts and check marks beside them. One name jumped out from the others—VERONICA RUIZ (AKA RAMIREZ): $200K—one of only two names with no check mark beside it.
“What is this?” I asked, trying to make sense of what I was looking at.
“A list of people Louis was hired to spy on. The ones with checks beside their names already paid their debts to Marco. The only two that aren’t checked are—”
“Vero and…Pokey?” I skimmed the dollar amount beside the secondunchecked name. Apparently, Francis Slocumb—aka Pokey—was in debt to Marco for a whopping hundred grand. Not as much as Vero, but certainly enough to be a motive for murder.
“You think this Pokey person killed them?” I asked.
Cam leaned back and propped his feet on the coffee table. “Always follow the money, Mrs. D.”
“That’smyline,” Vero snapped. She turned to me. “Remember that little black book Marco had in his pocket at the restaurant? It was a ledger. Cam and I searched every inch of this place and that book isn’t anywhere in this suite. Whoever killed Marco must have taken it to cover their tracks.”
“A ledger? Like the one we found in Steven’s drawer? Why would a loan shark keep his records in a book? Why wouldn’t he keep them on a computer, like Louis?”
“Because books can’t be hacked,” Cam said wryly.
“But they can be stolen,” Vero pointed out. “And someone must have wanted this one pretty badly.”
I had no idea what the names and numbers in Steven’s book translated to, or the significance of them, but the thought of someone breaking into my ex-husband’s house and strangling him for it was enough to send a chill up my spine. I shook it off.
“What about the car?” I asked. I didn’t have the bandwidth to worry about Steven’s secrets right now. Those would have to wait until after we’d found Javi.
Vero shook her head. “Nothing in either of their texts or emails suggests they moved the Aston someplace else. We know the car was here—the valet at Caesars told us that much. My guess is the keys were sitting out in plain sight, and Pokey took those, too.”
“Okay, so where do we find this Pokey person?”
Cam shrugged. “Couldn’t find much about him online. He’s twenty-nine years old. No recent pics. No social media accounts. The guy’s credit report was a mess though. A couple of collections, back taxes, dozens of late payments on his rent. As far as I can tell, dude got evicted from hisapartment about a month ago. No new hits under his name with the local utility companies. Looks like he’s lying low. The guy’s pretty broke. He’s probably couch surfing.”
“Which would explain why he took the Aston,” Vero said. “That car’s worth a lot of money. He’ll probably try to fence it.”
