Page 61 of Fresh Old Bounties

FIFTEEN

“You know how to find him?” I asked excitedly.

“I had Shane follow him,” Ian said.

I clapped my hands. “Genius!” Then I frowned, remembering Shane leaving after the stranger and Alex’s sad puppy eyes. “Next time you should use Alex, though.”

“Alex is good at other things.”

“Gotta let your boys fly, Ian.”

“Are you going to lecture me on how to employ my workers while you dump your stray on me?”

Key was totally not my stray, but I got his point. “We better get going before your ex-partner’s fake son realizes his robber got caught.”

“If they’re related,” Ian reminded me. “It could be coincidental.”

I patted his arm. “Sure. Where is he?”

We left the hotel and made our way back toward the narrower streets full of shops and restaurants and tourists. We reached Guiles and Romary, but rather than going deeper, we took another street and arrived at a fancy hotel built out of three old mansions merged together. It reminded me of the Three Sisters, if they had ended up in the same family rather than different ones.

Haunted for sure.

The man behind the gleaming reception desk smiled at us.

“Welcome to Hargrove House. I’m afraid we’re booked full tonight, but we might have some openings for next week. Would you like to make a reservation?”

I expected Ian to transform into a super friendly tourist and charm the man with friendly smiles and an overdose of honey, but he retained his usual serious, inscrutable expression.

Bounty hunter, I reminded myself, not smooth chameleon spy.

“We would like to leave a message for Joe Miller,” Ian said.

“Room number?”

Ian turned toward me, as if it was the most natural thing in the world that his girlfriend would know about it. Look at that, the man did have some acting chops after all.

“I’m not sure,” I told both of them, scrunching my forehead for added effect. “I don’t think he mentioned it, did he?”

“Let me see…” The man began typing on a keyboard hidden from view. After a few minutes of scowling at the computer screen, his expression cleared and his mouth drooped with the weight of bad news.

“I’m sorry. Mr. Miller isn’t a guest at this moment.”

Mystery Man must’ve given Ian a fake name. I touched his arm, all outwardly worried. “Oh, no. How are we going to find him?”

Ian brought out his phone and browsed through his pictures. When he settled on one, he showed it to the hotel man. “Are you sure he’s not here? Perhaps he made the reservation under his company’s name.”

The man squinted at the phone, then shook his head. “I don’t recognize him. I’m sorry.”

“Perhaps someone else booked him?” I asked, adding a hopeful note to my voice I didn’t even need to fake.

I was so good at this.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m the only one here at the moment.” His eyes narrowed with slight suspicion, as if only now he was finding our questioning odd. “Can I help you with anything else?”

We thanked him and left the hotel.

“Fake name,” I said. “He anticipated you being suspicious and went to a random hotel, just in case.”

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