Chapter 19
The hallway at the top floor had a little smoke that smelled to Laura like plastic, but there didn’t appear to be any fire. Laura’s hotel door was open, and several guests were milling about, peering in. She wondered briefly what the smoke smelled like to Tex’s keen nose, then elbowed her way into her hazy room past the housekeeping cart.
Marie was sobbing in the arms of Juan Lopez, who was trying to comfort her.
“I barely touched it,” Marie wailed. “I was just dusting up, and bang!”
Her desk was blackened, along with the curtains nearby and the ceiling above. The mangled wreck of Jenny’s precious laptop was shattered plastic and warped, exposed circuit boards. The paper stationery on the desk had burned away, and the cover of the 3-ring binder of resort details had melted into a grotesque puddle. The scene was smothered in a fine pale dust, and there was a fire extinguisher on its side by Juan’s feet. The fire alarm continued to wail.
“What is going on here?”
Laura wasn’t even sure how Scarlet had gotten there; she hadn’t been in the stairwell with them, but now she was right behind Tex, edging past the housekeeping cart into the room.
“We just got here,” Tex told her, as Marie protested, “I barely touched it!”
“My laptop,” Laura said weakly, and Juan scoffed, “I don’t know what kind of place this is!”
The fire alarm was still shrieking.
“Enough!” Scarlet said, holding up her hand.
Marie buried her face in Juan’s chest with a squeak, but the fire alarm, to Laura’s wry surprise, did not silence at her command.
“Tex, go turn off the alarm.”
Tex, beside Laura, stiffened, and Laura thought he was going to protest, then he agreed, “Can’t hear yourself think this way.” To Laura he said, “I’ll be right back.”
Laura didn’t have time to tell him it was irrelevant to her. For such a big man, he certainly moved quickly.
Scarlet pointed at Juan. “You, explain.”
Juan drew himself up, facing the challenge in Scarlet’s voice. “I was walking past when I heard the explosion and the scream. The door was open, and I went in to find the desk on fire. I used the fire extinguisher to put out the flames just as the smoke detector went off.”
“He saved my life!” Marie added at that point.
“Are you hurt?” Scarlet asked Marie briskly.
Marie shook her head vigorously, remaining in the protective circle of Juan’s arms. “No,” she said in a trembling voice. “I barely touched it,” she repeated. “I was just dusting.”
Scarlet frowned at the desk, and picked up a sooty pen that had rolled to the ground. “This isn’t how laptops usually fail,” she said dryly.
The fire alarm abruptly went still, and the silence seemed remarkable.
“Clearly this is another attempt on Miss Smith’s life,” Juan announced into the space it left.
Laura had been looking in despair at the black disaster of the laptop. All of her memories of Jenny were there.
But at Juan’s statement, she looked up, and the enormity of the situation crashed down on her.
Someone really was trying to kill her. And it was more the cartel’s style to slit throats in sleep, not poison lattes and blow up laptops. Someone else was after her. Or after Jenny.
“Jenny? Jenny?” Fred pushed into the room through the growing crowd, panting and sweating. “Are you okay? Oh, Jenny, what happened?”
Juan was happy to repeat his tale of heroics for him, while Scarlet thoughtfully took pictures on her phone of the mess. Tex returned during the tale, to find there was no space in the tiny hotel room for him to squeeze in. Laura was equal parts glad to see him sulk at the doorway and sorry not to have him at her side; Fred was a disappointing replacement, and even though she was furious with Tex, she felt safer with him at her side than with Fred.
“What were you doing cleaning the hotel room so late?” Fred asked Marie suspiciously.
Marie, who had finally stopped crying, burst into tears again. “I couldn’t get all the rooms done any earlier!”