in, taken the case and run off with it without her hearing a thing, all in the span of about a minute and a half?
She looked around, thinking someone must have moved it for some reason. It was no place obvious. She ran upstairs to check Beatrice’s room and her own, where she left the rest of her things. When she came back downstairs, she asked the girl at the check-in desk if someone who worked there had taken it to a back room, but she was only met with a blank stare and a contention that “We don’t have a back room for suitcases.”
“Is there a manager on duty?” Josie asked the girl, trying valiantly to keep her voice courteous even though she wanted to scream at the girl to wake up.
“There’s the owner. I guess you’d call her a manager.”
“Good,” Josie said, trying to take control of the situation. She thought of the check for Beatrice. The letter from her editor. “Would you please ask her to come speak with me?” she asked, her voice rising.
“Maybe she can help me get this sorted out.”
“Okay.” Smile. Nod.
Every muscle in Josie’s body tensed. “Could you do it now?”
“Oh. Okay.” She disappeared into a room behind the desk, and Josie took another look around the lobby. She covered the whole thing, everywhere she’d been. It was nowhere. She was about to go outside and check the wide wraparound front porch, when she was interrupted by a gentle Southern voice, like that of a character in Gone With the Wind.
“Excuse me, Ms. Ross?”
She turned to see a woman standing at the counter who looked like she was playing a Southern dame in a movie, her fingertips touching the forearm of one of the most shockingly handsome men Josie had ever seen.
“Ms. Ross, I’m Myrtle Fairfield and this is Dan Duvall,” the woman said, in that quiet, sweet voice steel magnolias tended to have. “He’s with the police. I understand you’ve had a little problem with your suitcase. Mr. Duvall is here to help.”
She wouldn’t have pegged him as a policeman. He looked more like a movie star. He was tall, with wavy dark hair and clear eyes the blue of a summer sky. Faint lines fanned out from the corners, giving him the pleasant expression of a man who smiled a lot.
“Thanks for your concern, Officer,” Josie said, all too aware that she hadn’t had the chance to go to her room and freshen up since the two-hour flight and three-hour drive here this morning. Alarm bells went off in her head, giving her the foolish impulse to primp and make herself more presentable for this Adonis, even as she realized that she shouldn’t care what he thought of her personally. She wasn’t only irritated by her reaction to him, she was surprised by it. It had been ages since she’d felt that stir in her chest, but this kind of guy—one so gorgeous you just knew he had a stable of women to choose from—was not the kind of guy she wanted to start thinking romantic thoughts about.
He smiled, showing even white teeth and a dent that could almost be called a dimple. “Call me Dan,” he said. “Please.”
She swallowed. Hard. “All right, Dan.”
He took a step closer to her. He smelled good. Like Ivory soap and clean clothes. Somehow Josie found that reassuring.
“So your bag was stolen,” he said. “Were you hurt in the attack?”
“No, no, there was no attack.” She tried to will her pounding heart to calm down. “I wasn’t there.”
“You weren’t there.”
“No. Well, yes.” He had her flustered. This was bad. “I mean, I was just a couple of feet away. See, I set it down for a moment while I tried to make a call at the pay phone off the lobby. The phone didn’t work, so it couldn’t have been longer than a minute or so, but when I hung up, it was gone.” She tossed an apologetic look to Myrtle. “I’m sorry to trouble you with this. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation.” Please, please, please let there be a logical explanation, she prayed, returning her thoughts to the more important problem at hand.
“It’s no trouble,” Myrtle answered, but she looked very troubled.
“You say you left it over there?” Dan asked, indicating the hallway, where now there was a small crowd of people, apparently having a contest to see who could toss the most peanuts in the air and catch them in their mouths.
“Yes,” Josie said. “Right there where all the peanuts are on the floor now.”
Dan Duvall’s voice grew about one hundred and five percent less sympathetic than it had been when he’d first walked over. “And you weren’t keeping an eye on it?”
She swallowed a terse retort. “I got a little distracted for just a minute. But, as I said, I was only a couple of feet away.”
“You shouldn’t have left your things unattended. Anyone could come along and pick ’em up.”
“That seems obvious now.”
“Did you see anyone suspicious hanging around?” Myrtle asked, kneading her crepey hands.
“I’ll get the details,” Dan said, patting the older woman’s thin shoulder. “It looks like Lily Rose needs some help at the counter now.” He gestured toward the girl at the check-in counter, who was now looking fretful and fluttering her hands like birds in front of her as she tried to help an increasingly long line of impatient guests.
Myrtle gave an exclamation and bustled over to help poor Lily Rose, muttering about beer drinkers.
Dan Duvall smiled after her, then turned back to Josie, his smile disappearing, and asked for a description of the missing items.
She gave it to him, noticing that he didn’t bother to write any of it down. “There was an envelope in the side pocket that was clearly marked with the name Beatrice Beaujold,” she explained. “It occurred to me that maybe someone at the hotel had taken it up to Beatrice’s room, thinking it was hers, but it wasn’t there when I looked.”
“What was in the envelope?”
“Nothing very interesting to anyone but me. Beatrice’s bio and picture, and some flyers and information about this contest. My own notes.” She took a short breath. “A check for Beatrice. Her appearance fee from the brewery.”
“Well, it’s not like someone else could endorse it and cash it.”
“Maybe not, but she’s expecting to pick it up when she gets here.”
“I understand. You didn’t lose any cash?”
“No.” She tried to sound calm.
“Well, that’s good. I’m afraid I’m not sure how much we can do to help you,” he said, looking as if he didn’t want to do anything at all to help. “But we’ll certainly be on the lookout.”
There was the sound of smashing glass in the corner and Dan Duvall’s eyes jerked to the scene. His mouth went tight.
“’S’all right,” someone called, waving a feeble hand. “’N’accident.”
A
