“No official role, but it was strange how involved she seemed to be. Whenever there was a function or an event she’d get dressed up and head off. I first thought she was just a leech who enjoyed partying on Reed Leisure’s dime. But I then decided Mr. Reed didn’t seem like the kind of person to give anyone a free lunch, not even his sister, so I decided there must be some kind of trade-off.”
“What else?” May said, feeling encouraged.
“She made a lot of travel arrangements which Reed Leisure paid for. She was forever going off to exotic places like Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania.”
“Is that so?” May asked. “For work? Or for vacation?”
“I think they were charged as recruitment trips, but I have no idea why.”
May filed that information away. Something about it was niggling at her mind.
“Anything else?” she asked. “Anything about Danny? He was also killed. Can you think of anyone who’d have a motive?”
Christa thought about that for a few moments.
“He did have a fight recently. Someone from the hotel called us because Danny ended up shouting and swearing that he was going to take them down. We are always called to mediate in those situations”
“Who was it?”
At last, May thought, they seemed to be getting somewhere.
“It was the personnel manager. Lewis Brooks. They had a fight over a woman. I think she worked for the hotel, and she was Lewis’s girlfriend, and Danny made a pass at her. But I might be wrong about that. It was definitely something to do with a woman who worked there, though. They came in here for mediation and both of them were yelling at each other so I overheard some of what they said. But I don’t know more than that. My private opinion, just between you and me, is that Danny is quite a womanizer. He’s flirted with me in a nasty, entitled way when he’s been in here. You shouldn’t speak badly of the dead, but I didn’t like how he made me feel.”
“I would also have felt uneasy,” May sympathized. “The fight between them. How serious was it?”
“Look, to me it was just one of those things. We handle conflict issues fairly often. It wasn’t as serious as some have been.”
But Danny had ended up being murdered in a strange way, May thought. Something, or someone, had certainly thought that what he’d done had been serious enough.
They had now reached the police department and she couldn’t think of any more questions. She didn’t think Christa had more information to give, but was grateful for what she’d obtained.
“Thanks a lot. You’ve been so helpful. And I’ll make sure it stays under wraps,” she said.
She climbed out and closed the door.
Owen was climbing out of her car, so she walked over to him. The sun was setting and a fresh breeze was cooling down the warm summer air. What passed for rush hour in this small town had already come and gone, and the streets were quiet.
“Did you get anything from the receptionist?” he asked.
“Yes. But I don’t know how helpful it’s going to be,” May admitted. “I found out that the sister is a bit of a freeloader, but she does do some work for the hotel.”
“She does?” Owen asked.
“Yes. I don’t know what work it is, but I am wondering if she maybe sources cheap labor for the hotel. As she seems to travel on ‘recruitment trips’ to Eastern Europe frequently.”
“Is it legal to do that?”
May shrugged. “It would depend if it’s done correctly. For all I know they are using a loophole to save on costs somewhere down the line. That might be worth investigating, though. I mean, two people have been killed in a very strange way. So there has to be something underhanded or wrong going on. There really does.”
Again, something niggled at her mind. She wished she could pin down what was bothering her.
“What are we missing, May?” Owen asked.
“I can’t stop thinking that there must be something I’ve seen or heard recently that’s relevant to this. I hope my brain puts two and two together.”
“Maybe we should run all of those people through the system?” Owen asked. “Madeline Reed, Danny Charter, and Lewis Brooks? Perhaps one of them has some sort of record. That could take us further.”
“Good idea,” May said.