2 Dancing With Death (22 page)

    
Betty stood, intending to head out the door and start her search for Bill. Clarise called her back.

    
“Oh no,” she said. “You’re getting changed and brushing your teeth before I go anywhere with you. If you walk around like that people will assume you’ve gone off your rocker entirely.”

    
Betty looked down at her outfit, wondering what was wrong with it. Clarise rolled her eyes and dragged Betty in front of the vanity mirror.

    
“Oh,” Betty said. She did look rather… unkempt. She was still in her eveningwear from the night before, but now her dress was rumpled and her makeup smeared. Her eye shadow and mascara had blurred together, so that it looked like she had two black eyes. “When you put it that way,” she muttered. Clarise laughed and shoved her into the bathroom.

    
“Get washed up and dressed. Fifteen more minutes won’t make much difference.”

    
When Betty had straightened up and dressed herself in jeans and a light green sweater they were ready.

    
They decided that the best place to start would be the lobby. If anyone in the hotel would know what was going on with the investigation, and where to find the investigating policemen, it was most likely the concierge on duty.

    
They took the elevator to the first floor.

    
Ding.

    
The elevator doors rumbled apart. They opened on chaos.

CHAPTER 26

    
Hotel staff ran to and fro with carts laden with food trays or empty plates. Guests stalked about, demanding to know why they weren’t allowed to avail themselves of the hotel’s advertised skiing and snowmobiling activities. The hotel staff, dressed all in burgundy and gold livery, swarmed through everything. They smiled and nodded and refused all requests for exit. They offered cups of coffee and juice on trays, waiting hand and foot on the hotel guests in the hopes of keeping them happy. And there, in the middle of it all, was Harry Berch’s girlfriend, demanding a new room away from that “wretched man!” She had a tiny dog in a large purse bedecked with rhinestones and glitz on her arm. Tacky didn’t begin to cover it, and as Betty and Clarise edged closer to overhear her words the tiny dog’s yapping began to rise over the general hubbub of the room.

    
“Kristina Lisee,” Harry’s girlfriend said, enunciating clearly, and loudly. “I don’t care if I have to sleep in a hole in the wall on a cot! Just find me another room!”
    
The harassed-looking receptionist murmured apologies and clacked away on her keyboard. Kristina turned away with a huff, leaning against the desk with her back and facing the hall, where she immediately caught sight of Betty.

    
“You,” she said. “You’re the girl Harry was flirting with.”

    
Betty shrugged, thinking fast. “He didn’t seem my type,” she said.

    
Kristina let out a bark of laughter, and her hand came up to pet the tiny dog hanging from her arm. “Good. He’s real scum, you know?”

    
“Really?” Betty asked, feigning surprise and walking over so that she was standing closer Kristina. Clarise hung back. “Why do you say that?”

    
“This was supposed to be our big weekend together,” Kristina complained. “Just us, he said. No work, no anything.” She looked at Betty, tears shining in her eyes. “I thought he was going to ask me to marry him. But I’ve hardly seen him this entire weekend! He’s always on the phone with this guy who can’t even speak proper English, or he’s off somewhere else. And this morning, he actually yelled at me to leave him alone!”

    
That confirms it, Betty thought. He’s talking with Xerxes. Kristina wiped her eyes.

    
“I don’t know what’s come over him, but I’ve had enough. I’m not wasting my best years on some jerk who can’t even appreciate me.”

    
“Good for you,” Betty said firmly, meaning it. For all that Kristina appeared to be a pampered princess, she seemed like a nice person. She deserved better than Harry. Much better.

    
“Excuse me, Miss Lisee?” George the concierge asked, appearing behind the ranting woman. “You’re old room was number 127, correct? Our staff will pick up your bags and move them to your new room.”
    
“That would be wonderful,” Kristina said. “I have them all packed. It’s the matching Louis Vitton bags on the bed.”

    
Betty’s eyebrows shot up into her hairline for a brief instant. Louis Vitton luggage? Well, however bereft the woman might be, she could always sell her luggage and have enough to live on for a couple months.

    
George handed Kristina a new key, explaining that a footman would arrive with her luggage shortly. He apologized for not being able to take her to her new room himself, but gestured at the frantic lobby as an excuse. Kristina smiled.

    
“I understand. Thank you for your help.” She turned back to Betty “Thank you so much,” she said, reaching out impulsively to hug Betty. When she pulled back, she had a slight smile on her face. “It’s nice to know that us girls stick together, isn’t it? And don’t let Harry get his hooks into you.”

    
“I won’t,” Betty promised. It wasn’t even a lie. Harry might be handsome, but she preferred men of the non-homicidal variety.

    
Kristina headed towards the elevators, while George turned to Betty with amusement in his expression.

    
“You’re everywhere, aren’t you?” he asked. “And again, you’re helping with the guests. Are you quite sure I can’t offer you a job?”

    
Betty shook her head. “No thank you,” she said. She gestured for Clarise to join them, and pulled George to a relatively out of the way corner. “I’m glad I ran into you though,” she said. “I’ve found out some things tonight that you might want to know.”

    
“Oh?” George asked, frowning. As Betty explained about her suspicions and proof that Harry was in cahoots with Xerxes, the furrow in his forehead deepened.

    
“That’s… disturbing.” George said. “Mr. Berch and Mr. Klient are some of our best customers. And Mr. Berch has a first-floor room during the competition. If I’m not mistaken, it’s one of the rooms with its own doors to the outside.” At Betty’s surprised look, George explained, “We have them for celebrities and wealthy customers who want to be able to make discrete exits from the hotel. They…” the blood drained form his face. “They open up onto the back parking lot. Which has just been plowed.”

    
Betty traded panicked looked with Clarise. That meant that Harry could leave the hotel at any moment. They had to get to his rooms. Now.

    
“You get Bill,” Betty said in a rush, already starting to move. “George and I will try and delay Harry.”

    
“Bill won’t like it,” Clarise said.
  

    
“We don’t have time for what Bill will or won’t like,” Betty snapped over her shoulder. “Just get him there! Come on George,” she said, striding towards room 126. “We have to pick up Miss Lisee’s bags.”

    
But when they reached Harry’s room no one answered their knocks on the door. Betty and George traded looks, and George fished a master key out of his pocket. “We’re
 
here to pick up the bags,” he called as the door opened.

    
As it turned out, there was no need to announce their presence. The bags had been removed from the bed already, and there was no one in the room. The ground floor door stood open, letting in the cold winter air. Already, the wind had blown a slight dusting of snow into the room.

    
Footprints trailed away from the door towards a storage shed at the far end of the parking lot. Next to her, George gasped.

    
“I’ll… I’ll go get Officer Park,” he said, before turning to dash from the room as fast as his legs would carry him, his belly wobbling as he ran. “There’s a snow mobile in that shed.”

    
Betty eyed the tracks. There was only a little snow on the floor, so Harry couldn’t have left long ago. It could’ve been minutes. She glanced back at the door behind her. Even if Bill and Officer Park got here in a few minutes, it could be too late.

    
With a snow mobile, Harry could easily go where police cars couldn’t follow. She eyed the vast expanse of blurry mountains visible from the open door. With her poor vision, it looked endless. He could get lost there for days, maybe even weeks. There were enough caves and crannies… If he’d come earlier and stocked one with provisions for a hide out…

    
They’d never find him.

    
And that, Betty decided, was unacceptable.

    
She headed out into the cold. If no one else was here to stop Harry’s escape, she’d have to do it herself.

CHAPTER 27

    
The moment she stepped out of doors, Betty regretted that she was only wearing sneakers and a light sweater. Sweaters were only effective if they were a final layer in thermal protection. As it was, the wind off the mountains blew through the tiny gaps in the weave, leaving Betty shivering within moments. And, just as quickly, snow toppled into her socks and the tops of her shoes, rendering her feet soaked and chilly. Soon they’d be half frozen. Thankfully, it seemed like the storm had left a relatively warm winter day in its wake, so she wasn’t as cold as she could have been. But for the wind, it would’ve merely been a bracing chill. Icicles hanging from the edge of the hotel roof were already starting to melt, dripping holes into the snow piled almost two feet deep.

    
Betty was careful not to step into the footprints Harry had left, knowing that they could contain some sort of important evidence. Instead, she veered away from the trail, making for the edge of the parking lot instead of the shed. She reasoned that she’d be able to move more quickly on the recently plowed ground.

    
At least she wouldn’t need to visit the gym that morning, Betty thought grimly as she trudged through the snow. Before she was half-way to the parking lot, she felt like she’d been doing high kicks for a half hour. Her legs were tired, her calves soaked, and her sweat was turning cold.

    
She kept moving through it all, keeping the image of Miss Knolhart’s assistant lying in the freezer in the forefront of her mind. Harry didn’t deserve to get away with that, and she wasn’t about to let him just because she was a little cold and tired.

    
She stumbled through the snow bank left by the plow onto the cement of the parking lot. Her foot caught on a piece of ice and she fell, scraping her hand on the hard ground. Betty picked herself up, brushing her sweater off as she continued forward. Her hand stung, but she ignored it. Already, the snow was starting to melt, pooling into slushy puddles and running in rivulets towards the edges of the lot. Betty sloshed forward.

    
Now she could see the shed as a definite shape, instead of a blurry splotch. And she could see a dark figure opening the door.

    
She wasn’t going to make it in time.

    
Betty glanced frantically around and caught sight of a golf cart a few yards ahead, parked right next to Wes’s car. It had the logo of the hotel on the side. It must have been used to chauffer guests about the ground in better weather. Its top and seat were laden with snow, but as Betty came up next to it she could see that it still had the keys in the ignition.

    
It would do.

    
Betty brushed the snow from the seat and around the foot pedals, thought a small prayer, and turned the key. The cart sputtered for a moment, and Betty felt her heart stop. Surely the hotel wouldn’t have left the cart out in the snow if the snow would destroy it? But, before she could reach full panic mode, the golf cart was humming properly.