“Yeah. The dude was drunk when he checked in and he stayed drunk the whole time. And disgusting. You wouldn’t believe the things people do in hotel rooms. He messed himself in the sheets, puked in a trash can and left it for me to clean up. And didn’t even leave a damn tip. Like, at all. So when I found that money, I tipped myself. Just a hundred-dollar bill. Which I earned, right?”

“Damn straight,” Drue agreed. “But what? You got caught?”

“Yeah,” Neesa said bitterly. “The guest called the front desk and said he’d left eight hundred dollars in the bathrobe, and he’d better get it back or he’d call the cops. The security chief called Herman in and Herman called his bluff. Said one of the housekeepers had turned in five hundred dollars and the guest must be mistaken, because he was drunk.”

Drue couldn’t help asking, “What happened to the missing money? Did you get to keep it?”

“I got the hundred bucks and he got the rest. And a couple weeks later, Herman got laid.” Neesa stared out the window at the rain streaming down the passenger window. “He has a room at the hotel for when he works late.”

“That sucks,” Drue said, meaning it. She could see the lights of a shopping center a couple blocks ahead. She needed to cut to the chase before she ran out of time with her edgy passenger. She took a deep breath and just went for it. “Do you think this Herman guy could have been the one who killed Jazmin?”

Neesa suddenly sat up straight, knocking her keys and cell phone in her lap to the floor of the Bronco. “You ask a lot of questions, you know that?”

Drue tried to calm herself in order to calm her passenger, who was now fumbling around, trying to retrieve her belongings.

“Sorry. I guess I sympathize with you and your friend, having to put up with sexual predators like this Herman guy. Men like him, they see girls like us, girls working as housekeepers, waitresses, cashiers, and they don’t see us as real people. We’re just a piece of meat to them.”

“I know that’s right,” Neesa said, sighing. “We got no power, so what’s to stop these dudes from doing whatever they want to us?” She pointed to the fast-approaching shopping center half a block away. “That’s the Walmart up ahead. Hang a left there, then make a quick right.”

The apartment complex was called Sherlock Forest, but the only trees Drue saw were tall, skinny pines. Neesa directed her to a two-story building with brown cedar siding. “That’s me,” she said.

Drue pulled up in front of the building.