Free Double Trouble (Dev Haskell - Private Investigator Book 10) by Mike Faricy

it was barely half full, still, I figured there were too many witnesses and so I left.
     
     
    Chapter Nineteen
     
    I waited in the lobby with an eye on the elevators. I was sitting in a comfortable leather chair reading my newspaper when I wasn’t watching people walk past toward the elevators. The foot traffic seemed to have a definite flow, people coming into the hotel were either picking up their key at the front desk then heading toward the elevators, or coming into the hotel and heading directly toward the elevators. Not a lot of folks seemed to be leaving the building.
    I was seated in one of three groupings of brown leather couches and chairs. The lobby was wide and very long with white marble floor tiles covered by large, thick oriental rugs and period floor lamps. The walls were paneled in dark oak to a height of about five feet then painted a sort of gold color with stencil designs running just above the paneling and just below the elegant plaster molding bordering the fourteen-foot ceiling.
    At the far end of the lobby, closest to the bank of elevators, a large marble fireplace had a nice fire blazing. Maybe a half dozen people were gathered around it drinking glasses of wine, laughing, and chatting.
    Ashley exited the elevator some hours later. By now the lobby was quiet, the crowd by the fireplace had dwindled down to just two people. I watched Ashley as she made her way to the barroom, oblivious to me almost asleep in a chair. I scanned the lobby, but couldn’t see anyone paying any attention, well, except for the guy by the fireplace, but he only gave her a passing glance. She didn’t appear quite as well put together as she had when she arrived. I glanced at my watch before I followed her into the barroom, it was after midnight.
    She hadn’t been more than a minute ahead of me and was already locked in an argument with Tony when I entered the bar.
    “Look at you, God, you’re high again, all screwed up,” he said. Then took a sip, he’d apparently switched from beer to bourbon or Scotch somewhere during the past three and a half hours.
    “You don’t know,” she said then ran a hand through her hair and steadied herself by grabbing hold of the back of a bar stool.
    “Ash, you still got some blow on your lip, please don’t tell me that’s how you got paid, again, Jesus.”
    “Well, you’re drunk.”
    “That’s because, your thirty-minute little love-fest with the boss man went on for about four hours,” Tony said then focused on me just coming into view behind Ashley. “What the hell do you want? I thought you left.”
    Ashley turned and attempted to focus on me, her pupils look dilated and idiot Tony was right, she did have powder under her nose. She seemed to weave back and forth in place for a moment then said, “Did you get the bastard?”
    “He didn’t get shit. Didn’t get the guy. Didn’t see the guy. Nothing, just like I told you.”
    She spun around and half shouted, “Shut the fuck up, Tony.” Then she turned back toward me. “Tell me you got him.”
    “Nope. Didn’t see a thing. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t here. Maybe he still is for all we know.”
    Tony glanced around the room. There were only four other people in the place, a table of three involved in an animated conversation and a guy sitting off by himself in a distant corner focused on some college football game on the flat screen.
    “You gotta be kidding. You didn’t see him, nothing?”
    “Not that I could determine.”
    “What in God’s name have you been doing all night? What the hell am I paying you for?” Ashley snapped.
    “Yeah, what are we…?”
    “You’re not paying me, either one of you,” I said looking directly at Tony. “You didn’t do what I told you to do. Simple as it was, you didn’t follow the plan. You arrived almost a half hour late, Ashley. And Tony, you didn’t drop Ashley off where we planned, and now you’re wondering why I couldn’t spot some individual who probably got