“Her hair’s different now,” Drue commented. While the women talked, Jazmin took a cell phone from her pocketbook and stashed it in the pocket of her jeans, then reached inside the locker again and pulled out a white baseball cap.

“Watch this part,” Hernandez commented.

Neesa and Jazmin were engaged in a spirited conversation, with Neesa making wild hand gestures, once even grabbing Jazmin by the collar of her smock. Jazmin appeared agitated too, shaking her head emphatically and poking Neesa in the chest with her forefinger.

“Looks like they were having a pretty serious argument,” Drue said. “Did you ask Neesa about that when you questioned her?”

“We did,” Hernandez said, stopping the video. “She claimed it was just some misunderstanding about scheduling. Said Jazmin had agreed to swap days off with her, and then backed out at the last minute. She also said the two worked things out later that night.”

“Did you believe her?” Drue asked.

“At the time, we had no reason not to,” Hernandez answered.

The detective restarted the video. Jazmin donned her baseball cap and left the room, pushing a housekeeping cart. Neesa, however, lingered. She pulled out her own phone, pausing to light a cigarette, before tucking the lighter in her pocket. The video showed the housekeeper walking toward the locker room door, opening it and waving the smoke outside.

“Wonder who she was calling?” Drue said.

Hernandez cued up the video and Drue watched for another hour as Gulf Vista’s security cameras captured the young housekeeper trundling her cart down narrow hotel hallways, pushing it in and out of rooms, and eventually, at the 7:30 P.M. mark, entering a drab room with vending machines and five or six tables and chairs.

“The break room,” Hernandez said. The video showed Jazmin entering, inserting coins into a soft drink machine and retrieving a drink. Then she sat at a table, alone. She removed her cap, talked on her cell phone, then appeared to be typing something into the phone.

“Did you find Jazmin’s cell phone after she was killed?” Drue asked.

“No.” Hernandez shrugged. “Unfortunately, Jazmin was in the habit of buying cheap burner phones at Walmart, because she couldn’t afford a contract. Probably the killer took that phone and destroyed it. We got Yvonne Howington to try calling it, off and on for the next three days, but there was never an answer.”

“Do you know who she texted that night?”

“It was a teacher at her daughter’s school. Nothing of interest.”

“No sign of Neesa,” Drue pointed out. “Which means she lied when she told me she and Jazmin got together during their break that night.”

The two women continued watching as Jazmin and her cart worked a route through the hotel hallways, each time stopping outside a room and consulting a printed list. Occasionally, Jazmin picked up a small handheld radio and spoke into it.

“Who’s she talking to?” Drue asked.