“This is what Rooney was looking for when he broke in here,” Vikki said. She held out her wrist, around which was draped a heavy gold men’s wristwatch. “Is this the watch you said one of your regulars sold him?”

Joe slid it off her wrist and examined it. “It’s a Rolex Daytona, kinda like the one Paul Newman owned, and it’s monogrammed. Gotta be Trudi Maples’s watch. How did you even find this stuff?”

With her index finger, Vikki pointed upward, at the ugly water-stained dropped acoustic-tile ceiling. One of the square tiles was missing, exposing part of the aluminum framework, and shards of it were scattered among the pieces of jewelry on the bed.

“It’s the damnedest thing,” Vikki said. “I was in bed reading and out of the corner of my eye, I looked up at the ceiling, and I noticed one of those square things up there was sort of bulging. I was afraid maybe there was a leak in the roof and the whole thing might cave in on me. I stood on the bed and tried to move the tile, but I couldn’t reach it, so I went outside to look for a pole or something. I found one of those shuffleboard stick things, poked around, and dislodged the tile. When I did, all this stuff just rained down on me.”

Joe was kneeling on the floor, examining the treasure. He stood up and held out an iPhone. “Did this fall out of the ceiling?” He tapped the phone’s screen. “It’s locked.”

Vikki reached for the phone. There was a short knock on the door, and then it opened. “Hey Vikk, I think I left…” Alex Garcia, the FBI agent from Tampa, stopped short when he saw the other occupants in the room. His face reddened. “Well … shit.”

Joe DeCurtis struggled to keep a poker face. He held out the phone. “Is this is what you’re looking for?”

Garcia shoved the phone in the pocket of his jeans. “This is awkward as hell, so I am going to back out of here now, and we are all going to act like this never happened. Agreed?”

“Absolutely,” Joe said affably. “See you around.”

Garcia nodded at Vikki and left.

Joe waited until the threesome was alone again. “Not that it’s any of my business, but that cockamamie story of yours was never going to work anyway.” He pointed at the bottle of tequila, and the used glasses. With his toe, he nudged a torn foil condom wrapper that had been tossed on the floor beside the bed. “You forget I’m a trained law enforcement officer.”