That was a good sign. "On Mr. Clark's last night, the hotel sent a limousine and a driver to give him a tour of the city. He really enjoyed the ride and didn’t feel like he’d adequately thanked the driver. I was hoping you could give me his name as Mr. Clarke would like to formally thank him."
"Hmm. We don't normally send a limousine, but let me check."
I waited as she looked at whatever she needed to refer to. A few moments later, she said, "No, I don't see a request for a limo from Mr. Clarke on the last night of his stay."
"Oh, no, he didn't order it. He was told it was sent courtesy of the hotel."
"Really?"
Her surprise at that wasn’t a good sign.
“We don't normally do that."
Thinking she was just referring to the concierge desk, I asked, "Who at the hotel would do something like that to take care of your VIP guests?"
"I suppose you could talk to Guest Relations. They’re usually the ones who organize special packages for our most important guests. I've never heard of them sending a car out for someone on a whim, but who knows?” She gave me the number for guest relations.
It hadn’t occurred to me that the hotel hadn’t sent the car, but her response had me wondering. But if the hotel didn’t send the car, then who did, and why?
I called Guest Relations, but I got an answering machine and didn't feel comfortable leaving a message. I hung up, deciding I would try again later.
The concierge’s answer to my question was unsettling, but in working through the events of the night, she must've been right and Guest Relations was looking out to make sure Max had a good time and hopefully would spend some of his fortune in their casino. There really was no other explanation.
Accepting that the hotel had to have sent the car, the only thing left to do was to have Guest Services tell me who the driver was so Max and I could figure out what happened. Although, knowing that didn't matter in the scheme of things. We were still married and needing an annulment. Knowing how we got into this predicament wouldn’t change that. Still, I wanted to know about the missing hours of my life. It was unsettling not to remember getting married.
After that, my evening progressed as usual. I finished up some client work, answered a few emails to my staff, and then quit for the evening. I scrambled myself a few eggs with a piece of toast, poured myself a glass of wine, then plopped down in front of the TV to catch up on a baking show. I was three episodes behind, and by the time I finished all three, it was time for bed.
The next day, I went about my work as usual, but at eleven, I took a break to call the hotel again, and again, I pretended I was Max's secretary, asking who had been driving the car they sent the other night. Unfortunately, she told me she wasn’t able to give me guest information. I hung up feeling frustrated.
Maybe I should let it go, but it was really bugging me that I couldn’t remember the night. I waited until the afternoon to call back, and this time, I did something that I never, ever liked to do and that was use my name, or more exactly, my relation to my father, to get information. For one thing, it felt a little shady. Dropping names and acting important were the type of things my father did. Plus, I didn't always like to be associated with my father. In fact, I had spent a lot of my adult life trying to distance myself from him. I doubt it ever worked because my father was very well known in Las Vegas. But still, I liked to keep a quiet profile when it came to admitting I was related to him. With that said, because he was well-known and somewhat feared, I figured it might work to get me the answer I needed.
I called again and tried to change my voice so if the same person picked up, she wouldn't know it was me again.
"Hello, this is Amelia Dunsmore." I waited to see if the person on the other end would make the connection between my last name and my father's.
"Ms. Dunsmore. How can I help you?" Her tone told me she did.
"The other night, I was with a client at the Roarke, and a limo was sent to pick us up. I was hoping you would be able to tell me the name of the driver."
"I'm not sure how we would know that. Did you check with our concierge?"
"I did. The driver told us that the hotel had sent him. He made it sound like you were taking care of a VIP guest. Isn’t that something Guest Relations would do?"
The woman made ahmmsound and was quiet, presumably looking up information about Max.
A few moments later, she said, "I don't see us sending a limo to Mr. Clarke at the Roarke. Although we made several offers of VIP options, he didn't take advantage of any of them."
Okay, that was weird. “Are you sure? The driver was clear that he was sent by the hotel."
"Well, if we sent it, it wasn't registered in our system. To be honest, it's not something we would just do. Normally, guests would ask us or take us up on a package we offered. We don't normally send out cars without being asked."
I liked it better when I didn't know what was going on and I could pretend that the only thing that made sense was that the hotel had sent the car and that Max and I got drunk-married. But the concierge and Guest Services were both telling me they didn't send the car. If it wasn't them, who was it?
I got off the phone trying to make sense of it all. That's when I remembered that both Max and I couldn't remember anything from being in the limo up until the time we woke up the next morning. That meant the driver had to have been the culprit. But why would he want us to get married? How would he know that we would drink enough to black out? How could he arrange for the marriage? That was crazy.
So it had to be that Max and I had asked him to take us to the County Clerk and to a chapel, but that made no sense either. None of it made sense unless the driver was after something else.
I immediately grabbed my purse and rummaged in it to find my wallet. Going through it, I found my ID and all my credit cards. All my cash was still there. But that didn't mean he didn't copy my information.