Vero and I gaped at him as he strutted into the kitchen and came back with two weenies. He offered one to Kevin Bacon and stuffed the other in his mouth.
“What about you?” he asked around his hot dog. “Did you find our guy?”
“Pokey didn’t do it,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “He was bussing tables at a restaurant called Chubbies last night.”
Cam frowned. “Restaurant? Sounds more like a strip joint. That explains the outfits,” he said, gesturing to our costumes. I shot Vero a look. “So what now?” Cam asked.
“Why don’t you tell us,” Vero said, “since you seem to think you have this whole thing figured out. How are we supposed to just magically disappear two dead bodies?”
A shrill ring echoed through the suite. We all turned to stare at the hotel phone on the credenza.
“Someone must have complained about the noise. What do we do?” Vero asked.
Cam reached for it. “It’s probably just my man, the butler. I’ll have him send up some more shrimp.”
I smacked his hand away from the receiver. “No more shrimp!” He and the butler were already cozy enough, and the red light on the phone indicated the call was coming from the front desk. “Let it ring.”
“If we don’t answer, they might send someone to the room,” Vero pointed out.
We all stared at the phone. Cam rolled his eyes and reached for it again. I grabbed the receiver and cleared my throat, affecting an accent. “Marco Toscano’s room. His assistant speaking. May I help you?”
“I’m sorry to bother you. This is Elaine at the front desk. We’re trying to reach a guest of Mr. Toscano. We’ve received a noise complaint…” I turned to glare at Cam. “… actually, more than one, from several rooms on the fifteenth floor. A rather loud banging noise seems to be coming from Mr. Delvecchio’s room. We were hoping you could convey the message and ask him to look into it.”
Mr. Delvecchio’s room? Louis had a room? Two floors below us?
“Of course,” I said, momentarily forgetting my accent. I cleared my throat again. “Mr. Delvecchio’s here with me now. I’ll ask him to handle it right away. I apologize for the disruption.”
“Handle what?” Vero asked when I disconnected. “Are they sending someone up?”
“I don’t think so. Where’s Louis’s wallet?”
Cam reached inside his pocket and tossed it to me. I threw him a chastising look as I thumbed through it, searching for anything that resembled a hotel key card. Finding nothing, I hurried to the bathroom,pausing to hold my breath before I opened the door. A scented candle burned on the vanity top, and a layer of shrinking ice cubes bobbed on the water’s surface between layers of dissipating lilac-scented bath bubbles. A half-empty bottle of lavender and rosehip oil sat open on the tub’s lip.
“Cameron!” I called out.
“I know, right?” he called back from the couch, sounding pleased with himself. “I had the butler send up a bunch of those bath bombs from the spa downstairs. Smells pretty good, huh?”
“It smells like a funeral home!” I angled my head away as I reached inside the pockets of Louis’s jacket. My fingers closed around a waterlogged paper envelope containing a plastic card. The handwritten room number had become impossible to read. Hopefully, the banging noise all of his neighbors had been complaining about would be loud enough to give away the location of his room. But that begged the question: What… orwho…was doing the banging?
I made my way back to the ransacked kitchen, grabbed a box of trash bags, and handed them to Cam. “I want this entire mess cleaned up before we get back. And no more room service,” I said sternly.
“Where are we going?” Vero asked, following me to the door.
“Hopefully to rescue Javi.”
CHAPTER 20
Vero and I straightened our wigs as we slunk out of the suite, hoping to blend in with the other partygoers who had left only moments ago. We crammed into an overcrowded elevator and got off on the fifteenth floor. Room key in hand, we hurried down the corridor, pausing beside every door to listen.
“Hear that?” I asked, ears tipped toward a room near the end of the hall. ADO NOT DISTURBsign hung from the knob. A man’s deep voice boomed through the walls. An argument. Then the rapidtat, tat, tatof gunfire.
“It’s just a TV,” Vero said, scurrying to the next door.
My mind raced back to the night Vero and I had bound Steven’s wrists and ankles and duct-taped his mouth shut, locking him in a cheap motel room to hide him from a contract killer. I’d put ESPN on the TV as loud as it would go, hoping to cover up Steven’s angry thrashing and muffled shouts. “Try the room key,” I suggested.
Vero came back and swiped Louis’s key card over the sensor. My heart skipped a beat as the light turned green.
Vero cracked the door.
