“Damn,” she said, pointing at the key card slot. She tried the doors, but as expected, they were locked. Drue looked around, hoping a guest would appear with a key, allowing them to tag right along, but nobody was around. She glanced upward and saw a small video camera pointed in their direction.

“The laundry room should be around here somewhere,” she mused, moving away from the doors and out of camera range. She pointed at a narrower, concrete walkway that led toward the back of the wing. A discreet sign tucked into a mass of ferns proclaimed: SERVICE AREA. TEAM MEMBERS ONLY.

“I love a company that refers to employees as ‘team members,’” Drue said, following the walkway toward the rear of the building. When Corey didn’t reply, she turned to see him still standing in front of the guest wing.

“Come on,” she called. “Let’s check it out.”

“Is that wise?” he asked, joining her reluctantly.

“If one of the ‘team members’ comes along, they’re not going to shoot us,” Drue said impatiently. “We’ll say we got lost. It’s not like it’s the hotel vault we’re trying to break into. It’s only a laundry room.”

“I bet they have some really high-thread-count sheets and towels here, though. Probably Egyptian cotton,” Corey said.

As they progressed around the building the impressive landscaping gave way to cracked concrete and weedy-looking pine straw. The sidewalk ended abruptly in front of a set of solid-looking steel doors with a key card reader.

“Damn it,” Drue fumed. She looked up at the security camera pointed toward them, and pivoted quickly in the opposite direction with Corey following closely this time. A few yards away, she stopped and peered around the branches of a bedraggled-looking hibiscus. The grass beneath it was beaten down and littered with cigarette butts.

“Looks like we found the team’s smoking lounge,” she told Corey.

“But did you find any clues to who could have killed the girl?” he asked.

Her shoulders slumped. “No. If I could just get inside…”

“Forget it,” he advised. “I want to buy my fiancée a drink at the tiki bar.”

21

“Hi, handsome. What’ll you have?” The bartender batted her eyelashes at Corey and completely ignored Drue.

“Just an unsweet iced tea,” Corey said.

“Got it.” She turned to go.

“And I’ll have a margarita, no salt,” Drue called after her.

She studied Corey. “So you really don’t drink at all?”

“No. I figured out not long ago that I make poor choices when I do, so now I don’t.”

“Um, yeah,” she muttered. “Poor choices. Big-time.”

The server brought their drinks and set a bowl of popcorn in front of them. Drue noticed that she had a lanyard around her neck with a key card dangling from it.

“That’s what I need, damn it,” she whispered to Corey.

“What? Fake eyelashes?”