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He really didn’t want me snooping around, but I wasn’t about to let him rush me. I pulled a pair of latex gloves from my jacket pocket and put them on. “In a minute. I want to say I did a thorough look-through for Jonesy.” He shifted his weight and let out a sigh—which I ignored. I spent the next ten minutes looking under the beds and going through the closet and dresser drawers, giving them the utmost scrutiny.

“Okay. Shall we check the next room?” Chet didn’t answer but stepped back so I could pass by him to exit the room. I was irritated by his behavior. “Am I keeping you from something, Sheriff?” I asked, giving him a glare as I walked past.

“No. It…it’s just there’s nothing more you’re going to find,” he replied.

I wasn’t entirely confident in the smaller forensics team here in Lake Tahoe, and I didn’t want to leave any stone unturned. I figured they were competent, but I wished the SFPD had done the work.

During the time we’d been in Gretchen’s room, the housekeeper had moved her cart further down the hallway away from us. I noticed the police seal on Jasmine’s room had been cut as well, but I said nothing. That room hadn’t been cleaned either, but besides the beds being unmade, there were no signs of a struggle.

I went through the same process I had in Gretchen’s room, but before I could drop to the floor to look under the bed, Chet said he needed to pee. I thought it odd that he planned to use the room’s bathroom as he headed toward it, but calling attention to it didn’t seem worth my time. He excused himself and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

Getting on the floor to look under the bed, I saw a glint of something shiny close to the nightstand and next to the bedframe. I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight. Sure enough, it was a diamond stud earring, at least a full carat. After taking a pic of where I found it, I took a Kleenex from the nightstand. I heard the toilet flush and knew I didn’t have much time.

I didn’t have a container on me, so I picked up the earring with my gloved hand and quickly wrapped it in the tissue. Knowing Chet was part of some plan had me second-guessing handing it over. I knew that was against protocol, but I wanted Jonesy to have their lab test it for any DNA or touch evidence. I slipped it into my jacket pocket as the door to the bathroom opened. Luckily, Chet didn’t see what I’d done. I was still on my knees and acted as if nothing had happened.

Not seeing anything else in the room, I told Chet I was finished. We walked back to the elevators, passing the housekeeper again. I wanted to stop to ask her questions about the day Grethen and Jasmine disappeared, but with Chet in uniform, I figured she wouldn’t say much.

“Like I said, not much here to go on,” he said as I looked around.

I noticed a surveillance camera that pointed down the hall. “What about security footage?” I asked.

“We saw nothing unusual over the twenty-four-hour period when they went missing.”

“Can I look at it in the security center?”

“Sure. Again, you won’t find anything,” he replied, rather nonplussed.

I nodded but kept my mouth shut, and the more time I spent with him, the thinner my tolerance grew. Once in the security center, he directed me to a monitor where I could view the footage. He showed me how to control the speed and how to start and stop it. I asked for a cup of coffee, and he pointed to the corner of the room with a coffeemaker and left me to fend for myself. So much for service on his part.

Jonesy had told me the estimated time when Gretchen was taken, so I fast-forwarded to right after she entered her room. I played it at regular speed for a few more seconds. Suddenly, the timestamp on the footage jumped forward twenty minutes. I rewound it and watched, confirming what I’d seen. Something was definitely fishy. I noted the timestamp and asked whether there was another camera closer to Jasmine’s room. One of the security officers in the room showed me which channel to go to.

I knew Jasmine had disappeared after Gretchen. We’d figured her disappearance was within a few hours of Gretchen’s abduction, so I fast-forwarded the footage and stopped it when Jasmine and another woman appeared wearing athletic clothes. Both women went into her room. About ten minutes later, the woman who was with Jasmine left the room by herself. I then noticed what looked like the back of a maintenance man, his ball cap pulled low, walking down the hall with a toolbox. Like before, there was another glitch in the timestamp, and what showed was an empty hallway. He simply vanished. That confirmed something was being done to block any visual evidence.

I looked around the room for Chet, but he’d left. I thanked the security officer who had helped me and headed out. I thought about letting Chet know I was finished, but I figured he could fuck off. It was now early afternoon, and I wondered if the same housekeeper was still on duty in that hallway. The problem was that I didn’t have an access card to the guest floors.

I headed to the elevators again, and with luck on my side, there was a young couple entering the elevator with their suitcases. I squeezed through the doors just before they closed and said, “Sorry.”

“No problem,” the guy said, taking hold of the hand of the woman next to him.

The doors closed, but the elevator didn’t move. The couple looked confused when their floor button didn’t light up. Another stroke of luck was that it was the same floor where Chet and I had been.

I pulled out my wallet and fumbled around as if looking for my keycard, telling them they needed to hold their card to the elevator’s pad to access their floor. The man did that quickly and thanked me, giving me a sheepish grin.

Once we’d gotten to the floor, I held the door for them and told them to have a good day. They hurried down the hall, passing the housekeeping cart I so desperately hoped would still be there. As I approached it, the room attendant walked out with an armful of bath towels.

“Hi, uh, excuse me, but I was wondering if I could ask you something?” I said softly.

She smiled and said, “Sure,” dumping the towels in the cart. She was probably in her late 40s or early 50s, from what I could tell.

I introduced myself as a reporter and asked whether she’d been working during the pageant last week. She said she had learned that two women had disappeared from this floor.

“Did the police or the sheriff ask if you saw or heard anything?” I made sure to take notes like a reporter would.

“No, they never did. But we have cameras pointing down the hall for security. I’m sure they’d check those first if something was wrong. They don’t share that kind of thing with the staff,” she said, grabbing small bottles that looked like shampoo and conditioner, along with small bars of soap. She stopped and rested an arm on the cart. “But, now that I think about it, I saw a maintenance guy toss what looked like a large bundle of sheets down the laundry chute. That’s what I do, not a maintenance guy. I thought it was odd, but maybe he’d soiled something in one of the rooms.”

“Probably,” I said nonchalantly. What immediately came to mind was Gretchen or Jasmine, wrapped in a sheet, then dropped into the laundry room, where someone else could remove them in a cart and take them out back to the hotel’s loading dock. It was risky, especially with an unconscious victim who could be hurt. It needed to be a coordinated effort. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled as I thought about how many individuals could be at play in the abductions.

Handing her one of my cards, I thanked her and said that if she remembered anything else, I’d appreciate a call. She pocketed my card, but I doubted I’d get a phone call.