“You mean amazing?” Beth said.
Megan put a hand on the girl’s arm. “I really do mean amazing. I don’t look the same at all.”
“And you have a different ID and everything.” Nico handed her the Georgia driver’s license with the name Betty Lou Baker on it.
Megan looked at the ID. “Are you kidding me? Just how backward do y’all think we are? This license is so obviously a fake.”
“We don’t know what your strange Southern ways are,” Nico said. “It’s enough for the interview at least.”
“This is so cool.” Beth was nearly bouncing. “It’s like I’m working for the CIA or something.”
“Not the CIA,” Megan said. “And not cool. This is a necessity, and it’s dangerous. I would not be doing any of this if Detective Bisset had been able to get a legal warrant to search Dolphin Cove Resort.”
“You mean La Delphine?” Beth put on a French accent and batted her eyelashes. “Ze most elegant and sophisticated resort in ze—how do you say?—backwater of Moonstone Cove?”
Megan looked at Nico. “The sarcasm is strong in this one. You must be proud.”
Nico patted Beth’s head. “Exceedingly.” He looked Megan up and down. “You ready for your interview, Betty Lou?”
“I am getting you back for that.”
“Are you telling me there isn’t a single Betty Lou in your family?”
“Not born in the past seventy years!” Megan stood and lifted her chin. “We may have our Sarah Janes, our Ella Laurences, our Ginny Roses. We have James Faulkners, Reese Faulkners, and James Reeses. But we do not have Betty Lous.”
“I feel like there’s probably a reason and I’ve broken some social norm, but I don’t really want to know why.” Nico took her hand and started walking toward the front door. “Come on, Atlanta. You can yell at me in the car.”
It was Monday, and while the previous two days had passed quietly, it was only because Drew had been stymied at every turn investigating Angela Calvo. The judge turned down his request for phone records. He also failed to get a warrant to search the grounds of the hotel.
In addition to all that, the State Bureau of Investigation had given Drew’s captain a call and asked what his interest was in the daughter of a sitting state representative and the niece of the governor.
“So the powers that be want to protect Angela Calvo.” Nico opened Beth’s car door for Megan. “I don’t suppose they want much about Alice Kraft getting out either.”
“Seeing state law enforcement rally around Angela makes me wonder if it was useless to even try to convict Alice Kraft of anything in the criminal courts.” Megan watched him walk around to the driver’s side of the old Honda. She continued when he opened the door. “The university ethics committee is probably the only body in authority who’s ever held either of those women accountable.”
“It makes me wonder just how much Whit Fairfield told Calvo about his plan to steal my caves too.” Nico glanced across the car at her as he drove down the hill. “We only have her word for it that she wasn’t in on everything. By the time the truth came out, Fairfield was dead and there was no one to contradict her.”
“She doesn’t mind using people,” Megan said. “She could have easily manipulated Ruben Montenegro like she’s manipulating Rodney right now.” Ruben was the foreman who’d ended up killing Whit Fairfield, though he claimed the bullet was in self-defense after Fairfield threatened him.
“The only way to find out is to color outside the lines a little,” Nico said. “And I think you, Toni, and Katherine are pretty good at that.”
Except it was just Megan coloring outside the lines. Toni was heading home from the hospital, and Katherine felt like something was stifling her visions. She’d been trying to meditate for days and nothing was happening.
So Southern manners and brute force it was.
“Your résumé is impressive.” The housekeeping manager, Mrs. Courtney Vink, smiled at her. “And your experience with historic homes is extremely important at La Delphine. Much of the hotel is a historic landmark.”
“I read that in the brochure!” Megan folded her hands in her lap and poured on the charm. “You know, when you work at a place like that—like when I worked at the Biltmore Estate—it almost feels like a privilege to care for that space. Not like a job at all. Like a mission.”
Mrs. Vink’s eyes were nearly teary. “I feel exactly the same way.”
I knew you would. Megan kept her smile cheery and her expression guileless.
Mrs. Vink continued, “And I love that you speak French. Though obviously in this area, Spanish is much more widely spoken—”
“I’m working on that.” Megan laid the accent on thick. “I pick up languages very easily, so I am definitely working on Spanish.”
“Your accent is so charming. We don’t get many people from the South here.” Her smile froze a little. “Not everyone has as keen an ear as I do, so you may have to repeat yourself every now and then.”
“Oh, that’s just fine,” Megan said. “I don’t mind at all.” She looked around the windowless office. “I don’t suppose I could get a tour of the place, could I? I’d love to take some pictures for my mama and get a better idea of what kind of establishment it is.” Megan squinted her eyes and said, “S’il vous plaît, Madame Vink?”
“Well of course.” Mrs. Vink rose and motioned to the door. “I have lunch in ten minutes, so I could show you around a bit. Enough for some pictures anyway. You understand I’ll have to check your references and all those formalities before I can make you an offer for the assistant housekeeping manager position?”
Which will show up as completely false, so we’d better get a move on!
“Oh, of course,” Megan said. “Could we walk around the gardens? My mama is a big gardener.” Megan decided to add some honey. “Why, this time of year, her whole yard smells of magnolia blossoms and gardenias.”
“That sounds lovely.”
“She lives out in the country. Never had much education, but I think that’s why she valued ours so very much.”
Mrs. Vink was into it. She frowned and nodded thoughtfully. “I think that’s often the way it is. We value that which was unattainable in our own lives.”
“I think so.” Lord, her mother would be giving her the stink eye in her Georgetown alumni sweater if she ever heard Megan in that moment.
They walked out of the building and into the garden courtyard that overlooked a rocky bend of the Central Coast shoreline. Dolphin Cove was known for two reasons: the incredible whale watching off the point and the immaculate Mediterranean gardens terraced from the hill when the resort had been built in the 1930s as a luxury Mediterranean getaway for a rich industrialist from Los Angeles.
The two arms of the hotel hugged the coastline, and gardens flowed down the hills below. The formal pool was central and bordered by long fountains running north and south of the garden, lined by sculpted bronze dolphins spouting water from their mouths.