some choice rib eyes for a dinner party I’m having. Okay. I will. Thanks.”
She frowned as she hung up. “Liam’s out sick.”
We all headed outside and Ida Belle moved the SUV closer to the entrance but back from the motel so we could see all the room doors. We waited a good ten minutes, but no one emerged from the rooms.
“Maybe he’s staying put,” Gertie said.
“Or left before Tiffany did and we missed him,” Ida Belle said. “I don’t see his truck anywhere.”
“Or he could have ridden the moped over and left it in the woods,” I said. “The motel isn’t far from the butcher shop or his house.”
“So what now?” Gertie asked.
“Well, unfortunately for the clerk, I’m about to go back in there and see if he can identify someone for me,” I said.
“Do you have pictures of them?” Ida Belle asked.
I nodded. “One of the first things I do when we’re on a case is make a file with pictures of people we’re checking out.”
“Smart,” Gertie said.
“Stay parked here, just in case Liam comes out,” I said. “You don’t want to be right in front of him.”
I hopped out of the SUV and headed back for the office. The clerk looked up as I walked in and sighed.
“What now?” he asked.
I handed him the room key and he looked relieved.
“I saw a guest leaving when I walked out of my room,” I said. “She’s a suspect in a murder investigation.”
His relief turned to dismay. “Of course she is.”
“Since she lives in Sinful, I can’t see any reason for her to be here unless she was meeting someone.”
“Maybe she moonlights at a glitter job like you.”
“I’d like to show you some pictures and see if you recognize these people.”
“Do it. And hurry up about it. You know, I’m certain that all your questions are going to get me killed one day.”
“Maybe if you weren’t always renting to criminals, that wouldn’t be the case.”
“Then the place would go broke. Do you think the most upstanding of citizens stays here?”
I flipped my phone around with a picture of Tiffany on it.
He leaned forward and shook his head. “No. I’d remember her if I’d seen her. She’s totally my type. Shame about the murderer thing. Let me know if she’s not guilty. Maybe I can get her number. Who is she suspected of killing?”
“Her husband.”
He swallowed. “Okay, maybe skip the number. I don’t need a date that bad.”
I pulled up Liam’s picture and showed him. He studied it for a few seconds, then shook his head again.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “But he’s a really normal-looking dude. I mean, I don’t give dudes a big look, you know. Unless they have something out of the ordinary going on, most of them don’t register.”
“How full is the motel right now?”
“About eighty percent booked.”
“Really? I thought the parking lot looked fuller than usual.”
He nodded. “Fishing rodeo over in Mudbug. We get the overflow.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
I headed back out to the SUV and filled Ida Belle and Gertie in.
“Do you want to stay here longer?” Ida Belle asked.
“No,” I said. “Like you said, he could have left before Tiffany. And if she wasn’t meeting Liam, there’s no way we’d know who she was meeting—not with a bunch of fishermen staying here. He’d just be another guy in the crowd.”
“We could do a drive-by of the butcher shop and Liam’s house and see if the moped and truck are there,” Gertie said.
“It wouldn’t matter,” I said. “If he left before Tiffany, he’s had plenty of time to get home.”
“You know,” Gertie said, “we’ve been assuming Tiffany was talking to a guy, but what if it was a girl?”
I groaned. “Let’s not add more to this already convoluted mess.”
“I agree,” Ida Belle said. “Until we know differently, we’ll assume she was talking to another man. So, NOLA?”
I nodded. “Might as well, but can you get one of the Sinful Ladies to do a little reconnaissance for us?”
“Sure,” Ida Belle said. “What do you need?”
“In about twenty minutes, I’d like someone to see if Tiffany is at home,” I said. “At least that way we’d know that she was meeting that person here and there wasn’t another assignment.”
The last thing we needed was more people in the mix.
Because we had some hours to kill and also because we were starving, we had lunch when we arrived in New Orleans, then set out to look at some hot tubs. I had zeroed in on the one that I thought