“Are they okay? You will find them?” she asked with concern.
“We’ll find them,” Michael said. He wasn’t going to think aboutnotfinding them, or what his friends might be going through at this moment. He had people to interview, answers to find. Failure wasn’t an option.
He would not fail his friends.
Don’t think of Matt and Kara as friends. They are trained and competent. Colleagues.
If he made this personal, he wasn’t going to get through the next hour, let alone through the day.
He asked Mrs. Quiroz, “Did you see anyone loitering outside their cottage?”
“Like I told Mr. Valdez, no. No one.”
“Not necessarily a stranger—maybe a staff member?”
“No one,” she repeated. “I delivered the cart, went back to the kitchen. I didn’t see anyone except George and his new hire, I don’t remember his name, working in the flower beds on the path.”
Michael looked at his notes. He didn’t have George on his list, so he made a note that he wanted to talk to him as well.
He then showed her the printout of the individual in the maintenance uniform that Ryder had given him. There was no clear shot of a face, barely a profile, but right now, it was the best they had.
“Do you recognize this person?”
She took a long look, frowned, shook her head. “No. Why?”
“We need to talk to everyone who worked Sunday morning, and we don’t know who this is.”
“Carlos, the head of Maintenance, would. Or Mr. Valdez. Maybe he’s a new hire? I know I haven’t seen him before.”
Him, Michael thought. She assumed male. Maybe Ryder’s instincts were wrong on this. The idea that a woman partnered with a killer... not unheard of, but not common.
“Thank you,” he said. “You may send in the next person.”
When she left, Michael texted Brian that he would like to talk to George in Maintenance who worked on Sunday morning. Brian responded that George didn’t work Mondays, so he’d call him in.
Michael next talked to housekeeping. Two women, both young, were responsible for turning the room. Beth was the senior staff member and Anna didn’t speak English, so Beth spoke for them and translated for Michael. “There was a Do Not Disturb sign on the door, so we didn’t enter. We went back twice, but it was still there.”
Michael confirmed the times they went to the room and asked if they saw anyone loitering. They hadn’t.
“During your second pass you collected the room service trays.”
“Yes. When we walked down the path to the next cottage, we noted that there was a room service cart outside the patio door. We collected the items.”
“Was the door open?”
“No, it was closed.”
“Did you look inside?”
“No, not specifically.”
“But you would have noticed if people were in the room.”
“If they were in the living area,” Beth said. “We wouldn’t be able to see the bedroom from the slider.”
Michael made note of that. “Was there anything odd or unusual when you collected the plates?”
“No, except that one of the champagne flutes was broken, it probably fell over in the wind.”
