Already Taken (Laura Frost FBI)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Laura stretched her hands over her head for a moment as she waited outside the hotel for Agent Moore to catch up. Laura was stiff after a night of air travel and then a two-hour drive, but she was apparently still more sprightly than the rookie. Agent Moore had fallen asleep in the passenger seat on the way, and was only just managing to walk a little unsteadily up the path from the parking lot where Laura had left her as she jumped out of the car.

“Come on,” she said impatiently. “It took us long enough to get here without adding more delays.”

“Right, right,” Agent Moore said, stifling a yawn. “Sorry! I’m not used to traveling at night.”

“You’ll get over that,” Laura said, half joking—but half serious. They traveled a lot for cases, and without fail, Laura could almost always guarantee they would be stuck on a red-eye. The Bureau had a budget, after all.

“This is the place, then,” Agent Moore said, glancing up at the façade of the hotel as Laura started to step inside.

“No, I thought I’d stop somewhere random along the way,” Laura said. Then she stopped herself, taking a deep breath. She was being unnecessarily snippy. She didn’t like the fact that the rookie had managed to fit in a nap—she was jealous, truth be told—and she was still on edge about… well, everything. Nate. The changes in her visions. The headache that never truly went away anymore, just stayed throbbing at the back of her skull—begging her to douse it with a drink that she couldn’t let herself have. “Yes, this is it. We’ll talk to the reception staff, see if they recognize anything about the bookings first.” Her tone was softer for the second part, trying to defuse the meanness of the first.

“Sorry,” Agent Moore mumbled quietly, and Laura felt a stab of regret. She needed to remember that she was basically working with a kid right out of training. Annoying as that was, it was Rondelle’s fault she was stuck with Moore, not the rookie’s.

Laura led the way to the front desk, taking out her badge and holding it up until she was acknowledged. “Hi, we’re working on an open investigation right now,” she said. “Special Agents Frost and Moore. I need to take a look at your guest records.”

“Um,” the young woman behind the desk said.

“We’re with the FBI,” Laura said, waiting for this to sink in. The receptionist was obviously inexperienced and had no idea what she was supposed to do in this kind of situation. When she still hesitated, Laura added: “We’re investigating a murder.”

“Let me get my manager,” the woman suggested.

“Great idea,” Laura said, leaning her hand on the counter to tap her fingernails restlessly as the young woman disappeared.

“Do people not just usually look scared and give us what we need?” Agent Moore asked in a stage whisper. “That’s what they do on TV.”

“Sadly, people in the real world are both more suspicious and more knowledgeable of their rights,” Laura said. “If she comes back with a manager who doesn’t want to help, we could be stuck trying to chase down a warrant for the rest of the day.”

“Oh,” Agent Moore said, in a tone which implied she very much hoped that didn’t turn out to be the case.

When the manager did appear a moment later, however, Laura breathed an internal sigh of relief. Outwardly, she remained stoic, straightening her back just a little more to give her that air of steely authority. The manager was a middle-aged man with a receding hairline, a nervous chin, and a duck of his head that indicated he was scared of talking to them before they had even begun.

“Um, good morning, ladies,” he said. “I mean, Agents? Joanna told me you’re FBI agents.”

“That’s right,” Laura confirmed, showing her badge again. “We need to check out your guest records for last month. I have a couple of credit charges for rooms here and I need to verify that the people in question were actually guests here, rather than simply paying for someone else’s stay.”

“Alright,” he said, nodding slowly and then beginning to type rapidly into a computer behind the desk. “That doesn’t seem like an unreasonable request. What were the dates in question?”

Laura gave them, then the names of the two victims. The manager nodded all the while, as if trying desperately to show that he was cooperating and understood everything she was saying.

“Okay. The names in our database match up,” he said, looking up expectantly. “Those are the guests who were registered here with us on those two nights.”

“And do you take ID checks at all?” Laura asked.

“Yes,” he said, then hesitated. “Although, we don’t have any record of them, so I can’t show it to you.”

“The point is I need to be absolutely sure it was those two people who checked in,” Laura said. “Were they staying in different rooms?”

“Yes, 203 and… 306.”

Different floors. Laura mused on that for a moment. There was still nothing to prove that they weren’t there together. If they were being as cautious as possible to stop Bluton’s wife from finding out, then they might have paid for separate rooms but snuck in together. “Were you working that day?” she asked.

The manager frowned, clicking onto what Laura assumed was probably the staff roster. “No…” He brightened, glancing over his shoulder. “But Joanna was.”

The young receptionist looked nervous to be called forward again. She had her hands clasped in front of her uncertainly, and kept them that way as she stepped back to her normal place behind the desk, replacing the manager. “Did you need me to check anything?”

“Just tell me if you recognize these people,” Laura said. She took a moment to open up the right images on her phone—the ones where James Bluton and Janae Michaels were alive, not their crime scene photos.

Joanna looked for a short moment, then nodded enthusiastically. “Mm-hm. Both of them checked in here. I’m sure of it. I think I saw them checking out as well—Rachel was on the front desk that day, though, and I was running room service.”

“Then we probably need to talk to Rachel as well,” Laura noted. “Did you see them talking to one another?”

Joanna shook her head no. “It was a busy day, but I think they checked in at different times.”

“Yes, the system recorded them as checking in several hours apart,” the manager confirmed. “Looks like the checkout time was different, too.”

“Alright.” So, if they were really having an affair, they had taken steps to cover their tracks carefully. But there was one factor that they might still not have accounted for. Well, two. The surveillance footage was one. “Can I look at your camera footage?”

The manager winced. “This was just over a month ago, so I’m afraid it will have been overwritten by now.”

Laura resisted the urge to facepalm. That left just one avenue. “Do you know who cleaned the rooms on those days?” Laura asked.

The manager checked his list again. “Oh, yes. That was the same cleaner on both days. Luisa Lopez.”

“Great. Then can we speak to Luisa?”

“Um,” the manager said, and Laura’s spine tingled. “The thing is, we haven’t seen Luisa in a few days. She was supposed to come in for her shift, but she never did.”

Every red flag in Laura’s head went up, alarm bells screaming. That was incredibly suspicious behavior, and the timing fit perfectly. “Is that normal for her, to take off for a while?”

“Not at all,” the manager said, shaking his head. “If we had that kind of behavior on a regular basis, she would be fired. To be honest, if she does show up now, she’ll have a hard time keeping her job as it is. She had an exemplary record before now, but there are very few good reasons for not showing up without calling ahead to let us know. Being in the hospital is the only one I can think of.”

“Or being dead,” Agent Moore said, making a face that suggested the manager should have thought before he spoke.

“If she was dead,” he said, clearly not getting the same vibe of authority from her that he got from Laura, “we wouldn’t be giving her any more shifts either.”

“Alright,” Laura said, cutting them off before the conversation could descend into an argument or a battle of wits. “Do you have Luisa’s home address on record? I’d like to go and speak with her if I can track her down.”

The manager hesitated only for a second—probably wondering whether he was supposed to protect the privacy of his employees—before clicking something on the screen. Nearby, a printer whirred to life. Perhaps his protective instinct didn’t extend to those who had failed to show up for work for two days in a row.

Laura took the printout from his outstretched hand. “Any other records or data you have, make sure they aren’t deleted or overwritten,” she said. “It might be important to keep the surveillance footage, too. See if you can get onto the security company or someone who controls how often they reuse the tapes, so you can put a halt on it. We may need more dates looking into later.”

He nodded smartly. “Yes, ma’am.”

Laura turned, handing the paper to Agent Moore. “Let’s get that entered into the GPS,” she said.

“What do you think?” Agent Moore asked, as they stepped outside and away from listening ears. “She’s a suspect, right? This maid?”

“Yes, maybe no,” Laura said. “There are other possibilities. Maybe she saw something she wasn’t meant to see and the killer has gone after her as well. Maybe she was involved in the cover-up. Maybe she was threatened by the victims and decided to get them first—or maybe someone paid her off and she doesn’t need the job anymore.”

“Well, which is it?” Agent Moore asked with a frown as she got into the passenger side of the car.

Laura joined her in the driver’s seat. “There’s only one way to find out,” she said, switching on the ignition.