Chapter 46

“All I have is the keycard,” he said, after listening to our entire sordid tale and our pleas. “They don’t leave me with a keyring or anything like that for, like, the kitchens or whatever. The event organizers, the cleaning crew, they’d have to get you in there.”

“You know anyone who wouldn’t ask too many questions?” I asked.

“My girlfriend does housekeeping,” Harold said.

“Does she?” I might have squeezed Angel’s hand a little too hard. “You think she might…come over?”

We made a deal. Harold’s girlfriend, Lena, was going to drive to the Forsythe and open the banquet hall kitchen and the larger one downstairs in the bowels of the hotel to look for the cake. In exchange, Angel and I were standing in the lobby to keep an eye on things while Harold and Lena spent an hour in a vacant room upstairs first.

“Something to tell their grandchildren someday,” I said, looking up at the ornate plasterwork around the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.