A Denial of Death (12 page)

Jack ducked into the back seat to retrieve Helen's abandoned yarn bag and hand it to her. Then he closed the back door and reached for the front handle. Helen put out a hand to stop him. "After you park the car would you ask around to see if any of the taxi or bus drivers have seen Angie?" Helen dug in her yarn bag for the envelope of pictures. As she pulled one out for him, she noticed Angie was even less conspicuous in the scanned copies than she'd been in the original prints. At first glance all anyone would see was the tall couple hovering over Angie. Still, it would have to do.

She folded Jack's copy so only Angie was visible and handed it to him. "Text me if you find out anything."

"Sure thing, Ms. Binney," he said. "I'll be at a pai gow tiles table after that if you need me for anything else."

Tate said, "We'll find you when we're ready to leave."

Jack looked insulted, but as long as he was inhabiting his formal chauffeur persona, he would never argue with a customer in public. Tate would learn soon enough that there was never any need to find Jack before departing; he would be waiting here with the car whenever they were ready to leave.

Inside, the place was as frenetic, dark, and confusing as Helen remembered from the VIP tours she'd taken with her ex-husband. She didn't expect any help from Tate, so she waved him toward the entrance to the gaming.

She adjusted the strap of her yarn bag on her shoulder and made her way to the front desk. A row of clerks stood in front of sleek computer monitors, assisting guests. After a brief wait, Helen was invited over to the far end of the counter by a young woman with the high cheekbones, coppery skin, and dark hair that Hollywood had adopted as shorthand for Native American. Rather than the stereotypical stoic expression, though, she had a professionally cheerful smile. Her name tag identified her as Deb W.

"I'd like to leave a message for a guest. Her name is Angie Decker." Helen spelled out the last name.

"Certainly." Deb peered into her monitor while she typed. "I'm sorry. We don't have a guest registered under that name. Do you know what room she's in?"

"Her sister told me she was here, but she didn't have the room number."

"I'm sorry," Deb said in a tone that sounded truly regretful, "but she's not in the computer."

"She was definitely here recently." Helen pulled out one of the pictures she'd printed, folding it so only Angie was visible. She pushed it across the counter. "Maybe you'd recognize her."

Deb took the picture and glanced at it long enough to at least give the impression of caring and then shook her head. "She doesn't look at all familiar."

"Maybe your paths just didn't cross."

"I might have missed her if it was a day trip and she wasn't actually registered in the hotel," Deb said. "It's easy to miss even close friends out on the gaming floor. But if she was staying in a room here, I'd have seen her. Hotel guests go past this desk several times a day, and I've been here for eight to ten hours a day, seven days a week, for the past month." This time her smile was genuine, if a bit rueful. "With the economy the way it is, who can turn down overtime?"

"She was registered here for a whole week," Helen said.

Deb seemed surprised and peered at the picture more closely. Finally, she returned it, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, but I haven't seen her. Maybe she was with someone else who did all the registering, and she stayed in the room or on the gaming floor the whole time."

"Her sister was with her for a day or two," Helen said. "After that, all we know is her credit card was used to prepay a whole week's hotel bill, and that was two weeks ago. She also used one of the ATMs here, around the same time."

"Oh, that doesn't prove anything," Deb said. "ATMs can be used by anyone who has, or can guess, the PIN. The industry regulators are on us about it all the time. Occasionally a gaming addict who's down on his luck will get his hands on someone else's credit card, and he'll use it to get enough cash to keep playing. If you check out the ATMs, you'll see notices about special limits on withdrawals, intended to limit that sort of abuse."

"I can see how that would be a big problem."

"Not as big as you might think," Deb said. "The media blow it all out of proportion. They claim there are thousands of reported cases a year, and even more that are unreported. There's no way to track that, of course, so it's all just speculation."

"Why wouldn't someone report a theft?"

"If there's one thing I've learned from working customer service," Deb said, "it's that there's no rhyme or reason to what people do."

"I know why people don't report the misuse of their debit cards," Tate said from behind Helen, startling her. "In most of the unreported cases, the alleged thief was a family member. The victim doesn't want him or her to go to jail, and the family thinks they can deal with the problem privately. They're usually wrong, but by the time they figure that out, it's too late to do anything about it."

Family members. Like Charlene. Who had financial troubles, and by dint of driving Angie to the casino, would have been near Angie's purse and her credit card. Charlene probably knew Angie well enough to guess at a PIN, assuming Angie hadn't actually given her the number.

"I thought you were going to play some poker," Helen said to Tate.

"I wanted to be sure you didn't get arrested before I could even find a seat."

"I'm not getting arrested. Deb here is being very helpful." She nodded toward the entrance of the gaming floor. "Go find your game. I'm just about done here."

"I can spare a few more minutes."

Helen looked down at the folded picture in her hands, trying to think of what else to ask the clerk. She turned over the folded paper to the side where Charlene was visible. If the clerk hadn't seen Angie, maybe she'd seen her sister.

Helen handed the paper back to the clerk and pointed to Charlene. "What about this other woman? Have you seen her in the last month?"

Deb barely glanced at the picture this time, but there was a glint of recognition in her face before she handed the picture back. She didn't meet Helen's eyes as she said, "I'm sorry, but we can't release any information about our guests."

"So she
was
a guest at some point," Helen said. "Do you remember seeing anyone with her?"

"I'm sorry," Deb said primly, "but we can't release any information about our guests."

Helen refolded the picture once again to reveal Ralph and showed it to the clerk. "What about the man in the picture?"

Deb took it from her again and shook her head. "I've never seen him before. I'd have definitely remembered him."

No more hedging and refusing to answer, so Ralph probably hadn't been here for either a torrid love affair with his sister-in-law or a murderous row with his wife.

Before Helen could come up with another question that might get an answer, Tate tapped her on the shoulder. "I'm ready to go over to the poker room now. Are you coming with me?"

Helen started to shake her head, but Tate bent down and whispered, "That wasn't really a question. You
are
coming with me or at least stepping away from the front desk. The security staff are getting suspicious. We've been standing here for too long without actually checking in."

"Right. We'd better be going. Tate's got games to play, and I've got…" She didn't have anything in particular to do. Not without more of a lead on Angie. "I'm sure I can find something to do here. Something more interesting than watching Tate play cards. It is a vacation destination after all."

As they left, Helen handed Tate the picture she'd retrieved from the clerk. "Just in case the opportunity arises for you to ask around."

"I'm here to keep you out of trouble, not to get us both kicked out of the casino," Tate said, tucking the picture into his jacket's inner pocket. "Poker players take their gaming seriously, and they don't like to be distracted from the cards. They're not interested in looking at any women who aren't queens."

"So tell them you've got a queen to show them, and see if they recognize her."

"Yeah, I'll let you know how that works out when I meet you back here in two hours." Tate took a couple steps and then turned around. "Stay out of trouble."

"That's no fun." Unfortunately, nothing the resort offered seemed like fun. Not compared to searching for Angie.

Helen wandered past the banks of slot machines and the various tables, trying to get a good look at all the women's faces. She couldn't really imagine someone like Angie, who enjoyed being the center of attention, sitting anonymously at a slot machine, so Helen didn't bother to go up and down all of the rows. One of the more boisterous game tables might be more Angie's speed, except she'd likely find no mere human being could outshine the game itself.

Even if Angie didn't have religious objections to gambling, this just didn't seem like a place she would enjoy. A dance floor or a bowling alley or even an open mic night at a club all seemed more like places she'd be drawn to. There, she had a chance to stand out and not be just another sparkly figure in the crowd.

After about half an hour of searching, the ache in Helen's hip couldn't be ignored any longer. She'd have been fine if all she'd been doing was walking, but she kept jarring her hip when her yarn bag stuck out too far and snagged up against a slot machine, or her cane caught on the carpeting or a chair leg. She couldn't tell how much of the game floor she'd already searched or how many nooks and crannies she might have missed along the way, but she needed to take a break. Maybe if she sat in the lobby where there were fewer distractions and obstacles and the lighting was better, she might catch Angie on the way to or from her room.

After a few wrong turns in the maze of the gaming floor, Helen caught sight of the front entrance. She hadn't noticed before that the space was almost entirely open, without the usual hotel-lobby seating arrangements for casual conversation. She finally found a pair of plush upholstered chairs tucked away in a corner and settled there to watch the passing foot traffic. It didn't take long to confirm what the clerk had said about how all paths led past the front desk. Despite the large numbers of people, it seemed unlikely any guest could go unnoticed if she was here for a week or more and wasn't confined to her room.

While keeping one eye on the people in the lobby, Helen checked her phone for messages. By now, Lily should have dug up some information on SLP, but to Helen's disappointment, there were no texts or voicemail messages waiting for her. Not even the usual daily forwarded message from Laura about the latest scientific study on pregnancy or parenting.

Helen put the phone away, feeling like she'd wasted her day by coming here. She hated to admit Tate had been right about the futility of her search. It would take a massive bit of luck to find Angie in these crowds, assuming she was even here, which, considering what the clerk had said, seemed increasingly unlikely. At least Jack and Tate were enjoying themselves.

She watched the passing crowds for a while longer but quickly grew bored. She needed to
do
something. The people passing through the lobby probably all had interesting stories, but without actually talking to them, they seemed incredibly dull. They didn't have any of the glamor or the fascinating aura of the crew of
Ocean's Eleven
or any other fictional casino. Despite the luxurious setting, the people themselves were just your average, everyday tourists who could just as easily have been at a campground or shopping mall.

Of course, there was the occasional odd duck waddling through the lobby, like the woman who'd just arrived, wearing an odd little hat that looked like Helen might have crocheted it: misshapen and hard to identify as being an item of apparel.

The thought reminded her of her yarn bag tucked into the seat beside her. As long as she wasn't going anywhere for a while, she might as well get some practice in with her crochet hook.

Helen pulled out her project and checked the last few stitches she'd made while in the car. They weren't too bad, actually. Of course, it didn't bode well for her enjoyment of the hobby if she had to become nauseated before she could do good work. She had enough physical issues to deal with, thanks to her lupus, without intentionally making herself sick.

Maybe it wasn't the nausea that had improved her work. Maybe she'd finally gotten the hang of maintaining the yarn's tension. Helen picked up her crochet hook and forced herself to do ten consecutive stitches without looking up from her work. Then she allowed herself a perfunctory scan of the lobby, looking for Angie. Finding no one even remotely the right size, shape, and sparkle, she bent her head to do ten more stitches. Helen repeated the process—ten stitches, look for Angie, ten more stitches, and another look—and the rows began to accumulate.

Eventually, a woman about twenty years older than Helen came over to the little seating area. She was as short and petite as Helen, with visibly arthritic fingers, but she was spry enough not to need a cane. She wore jeans and a V-neck T-shirt that had a rhinestone fireworks design similar to the one on Angie's tank top in her picture. It was apparently a popular design from one of the resort's boutiques, since Helen had seen it on several other women in a variety of sizes and styles.

The woman flopped into the chair with a muffled oof, which suggested her arthritis wasn't limited to her hands. "What are you making?"

"A chemo cap," Helen explained. "For a patient who lost her hair during cancer treatment."

The woman nodded. "It looks…warm."

At least the woman hadn't said it was pretty. If she had, Helen would have known she was lying. She could see now that the last row she'd done had gone off the rails somehow. The cap was ugly, despite the lovely yarn and the pattern that came out so well in Josie's hands.

Helen sighed and scrunched her mess of a project up in her hand. "I'm new to crochet, and I'm just not getting it."

"Here, I can fix it." The woman reached across the arms of their chairs and gently took the lumpy mess out of Helen's hands. She immediately began unraveling it, just like Josie usually did. At this rate, Helen thought, she'd never finish this cap. On the plus side, if she kept remaking one project, it would be an extremely inexpensive hobby, and she wouldn't have to worry about the supplies cluttering up her cottage the way Tate's collection of wood blanks did to his workshop.