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Rod clapped his hands once. “Go on, now. Get!”
The young man bolted.
Kristin snagged Tean’s sleeve and leaned in. “I haven’t seen Yesenia all day.”
“Neither have I.”
“And it’s been—well, it’s been a mess. Right?”
Tean didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure that he’d call the conference a mess, but it had certainly suffered its moments of disorganization. Now that Kristin called his attention to it, a mental list began to form: equipment missing from multipurpose rooms; water stations with no water; hotel staff trying to clear a ballroom so they could set up for a Bat Mitzvah. Every conference had its share of disorder, of course, but this one did seem…well, worse.
He offered a shrug in response to Kristin’s question.
Before either of them could say more, another man jogged across the room toward them. He was one of the stocky, bluff-faced guys who seemed overrepresented in the profession, and he wore a khaki shirt that was vaguely reminiscent of Boy Scouts. As he craned his head for a look around the lobby, he asked, “Seen Yesenia?”
“Is there a sign or something?” Tean muttered.
“No,” Heather said. “We haven’t seen her.”
“Because Anika and Wes are having it out about multipurpose room seven. Anika says Yesenia told her she could set up for tomorrow’s panel, and Wes said he’s supposed to have the room in the morning for his roundtable.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kristin said, rubbing her forehead.
Rod puffed up again. “Tell them we had to make some changes to the conference program. Tell them both to sit quiet until they get a new draft.”
“But—” the Boy Scout began.
“And if they don’t like it,” Rod said, “they can talk to me. You tell anyone who wants to know, I’m handling things while Yesenia is indisposed.”
The guy nodded, relief creasing his face, and he hustled off again.
“Yesenia isn’t indisposed,” Kristin said. “And you’re not in charge.”
Rod ignored her, his gaze fixed somewhere over her shoulder. But a moment later, he said, “Somebody’s got to do something. Or do you want to leave things like this, everybody running around, the whole lot of them like chickens with their heads cut off?”
“That’s not the point—”
“I think she’s dead,” Heather said. The expression on her too-thin face was hard for Tean to read—a grotesque imitation of distress, perhaps. “Missy probably killed her.”
Tean stared.
Kristin made a choked noise.
Rod laughed.
“I’m sorry,” Tean said. “What?”
“It makes sense,” Heather said. She shivered and chafed her arms. “Feel that? That’s death.”
“That’s air conditioning set to an unethical—and financially irresponsible—sixty-seven degrees,” Tean said. “What do you mean, she’s dead? And why would Missy kill her?”
“She’s not here, is she? Yesenia, I mean. Nobody’s seen her all day.”
“We don’t know—” Kristin began.
“And then the police show up, and they take Missy off for questioning, and the ether—”
Rod burst out laughing again.
