“No, breaking into hotels to get into security footage, unless I have to wipe my own presence, I guess.”
Good Lord.
“I think involving the police would be the way to go,” Dotty said. “They can search for any evidence left, and they canget the footage easily, without us having to resort to anything dangerous.”
“All right,” Ink said. “I’ve got some contacts at the police station. Hopefully, they can help us. Have any of you got any ideas about who could have done this?”
Dotty shook her head.
“The cops asked questions about Vextar,” Monroe burst out.
“What?” Dotty asked as everyone turned to her. “You didn’t tell me that. Was that what took so long for you to come out?”
Monroe nodded, looking miserable. “Yeah, sorry. I should’ve told you that straightaway, huh? When they asked me questions about what we were doing in that bar, and why three women would go to that place, well, I figured I had to tell them. So I told them how I’d married this guy, and he’d left me the next morning, and now we were trying to find him. And they sort of got this funny look on their faces when I said his name. I don’t know why. But you don’t think . . . I mean, why would he have done this?”
“But who else would do this?” Dotty said. “We don’t know anyone else in Billings. That’s the reason we’re here, to find him. Perhaps he’s wanted by the police. Maybe he doesn’t want to be found, so he’s left a message to make that clear. Which means he was likely there last night and got his hands on Monroe’s bag. Then he decided to send a message.”
Ink nodded and gave Dotty a look of approval. “You’re good at this.”
“I’m smart.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Plus, I usually see the worst in people.”
“So obviously this guy is known to the cops,” Ink said. “Brody, have you found anything on him yet?”
“I’m still running a search,” Brody said. “I was concentrating on trying to get access to the hotel room cameras and find Dotty and Monroe, so I haven’t had a lot of time to look into him.”
“That’s good. You’re doing a great job,” Ink told him.
Dotty eyed him with interest. “I like a person who treats his employees well.”
Ink looked surprised. “Everyone here is like family to me, and I couldn’t run this place without them. They deserve the praise. And our priority was to find the two of you,” Ink said. “As well as keeping Addie safe.”
Dotty glanced over at her, and Addie could practically see her thinking over everything in her mind.
“This man with the body . . . is that something separate? Should we be concerned about that?” Dotty asked.
“Besides the fact that someone might be dead, she means,” Monroe added.
Dotty cleared her throat. “Right.”
This was the part that she didn’t want to think about. Well, that and the message on the mirror.
“We’re looking into it. But it seems unrelated to anything else,” Ink said. “So it’s not a priority right now.”
“Were there any murders in that area last night?” Dotty asked. At least her sisters weren’t looking at her like she’d been seeing things. Then again, she hadn’t thought that they would, because Dotty and Monroe were always on her side.
“Not that we’ve come across,” Ink said. “There was nothing in that area. No one was reported missing last night. But that could change.”
Addie felt like Butch was staring at her. She should look up at him, meet his gaze. He was going to read her lack of eye contact as guilt, but it wasn’t. Sometimes, Addie just had trouble meeting people’s eyes. Although she hadn’t had that trouble with Cash, had she?
“Did you see the face of the guy carrying the body, babes?” Monroe asked.
“She didn’t see much,” Cash said. “She did a bit of a rough drawing and wrote down some things, but there’s nothing distinguishing.”
“Could be that it’s someone who doesn’t live here. The body, I mean, and the person, I guess,” Brody said. “It could be that no one’s noticed them missing.”
“Maybe the person wasn’t dead,” Monroe suggested. “Perhaps they were drunk, and he was just picking them up and putting them in his car. Although the trunk part is a bit weird, but you never know. Maybe he thought he was going to puke in the car. I had an Uber driver once who kicked me out of the car because he thought I was going to puke. I really wasn’t, I just had some bad curry. And then I was stuck on the side of the road in the dark, with no one else around. All the other Ubers were busy because we’d just been to a big concert that ended.”
“What the fuck?” Ralen snapped. “He just left you there?”
