We met at the usual bar and I ordered another of those wonderful SW Casino microbrews. Lori was already sipping on a vodka & tonic when I arrived, even though I was a few minutes early. In fact, she was halfway through her glass, I realized, so she'd probably been here for a little while already. Still, if my previous drinking binge with Lori had been any indication, it'd take a bit more than one drink before she started losing it.
"All right," said Lori as I sat down, "I want to hear the whole story, not that short version you gave back there!"
I sighed in mock annoyance. "All right, if you insist," I replied, "just keep the obvious details to yourself, okay?"
"Sure," she agreed, sipping her vodka and looking at me expectantly.
I launched into my story, telling her all about the kidnapping and my eventual escape, leaving out anything that suggested I was anything more than a fellow casino worker. The way I'd used the nails in my boot interested her the most, and she also seemed most impressed about how I'd managed to use the computer to summon help.
"So you went to some kind of porn site?" she asked when I was finished. "That's kinda ironic, isn't it?"
"Not porn," I told her. "It's nominally a fetish site, but not really. I started going there to deal with my fear of getting shrunk, and it sure worked! Some of your suggestions helped too, but it was online where I really learned to come to grips with it. You should try it if it still bothers you."
"Oh, I don't know," she replied, sounding uncertain. "I don't like computers much. I'd just as soon not mess with them."
Oh yeah, I thought. That's right, Lori doesn't like computers. Why was that? Maybe as a runaway, she was afraid someone could track her down through any machine she tried to use. That would be difficult if not impossible, unless someone was able to see around her plastic surgery, but then again, she was probably just being overcautious. "Okay," I replied, not wanting to force anything on her. "It was just a thought."
It was getting difficult, though, to avoid blurting out that she should make up with her family and go home, even if it did blow my cover. After all, before I was kidnapped, Mark and I had identified Lori as the next potential victim. Fortunately for Lori, Heather had been chosen instead, but I felt it was only likely that Lori would be selected sooner or later. I wanted to tell her to run, to flee while she could, but of course I couldn't do that.
"I'm so glad you're back, Ashley," Lori said after a moment. "You and Heather were the only ones I really knew here, and I've been kinda lonely with both of you gone. I really had the blues all weekend, until I found out this morning you were back."
"Oh, come on," I said reassuringly. "You can't tell me someone like you wouldn't have any problem making new friends!"
"You'd be surprised," she replied, and for the first time I noticed she was indeed looking depressed. "I don't make friends easily, you know."
"What's wrong?" I asked concernedly. "You still seem pretty down."
"It's Heather," she replied. "I keep thinking about how abruptly she left like that. You know how much she loved this place. She wouldn't just leave, especially not without saying something to me!"
"Maybe she got scared," I replied, inwardly glad that Lori had started down this path without any prompting. It would make questioning her a lot easier, and that was something I'd already been planning to do, after all. "Maybe because I disappeared, she thought she'd be next," I suggested, carefully leading Lori down the path I wanted.
"That's just it," she replied. "Heather wasn't the slightest bit afraid! We talked a couple of times after you were gone. She kept saying how much she wished it'd been her who'd been abducted. She even joked about how she'd set it up for herself if she could just figure out how to do it without getting caught and fired."
I nodded. That fit exactly with the sort of things Heather had been saying in her diary. "She was a weird one, that Heather," I replied.
"Yeah," said Lori sadly. "She was freaky, but I liked her a lot. I miss her, you know. Wherever she is, I wish she'd call."
"It's still strange that she left so quickly," I said, not wanting this line of questioning to go away quite yet. "Did she say anything about meeting anyone or going anywhere?"
"Nah," Lori said, shaking her head. "All she could talk about was how much she was looking forward to poker that night. She was bouncing off the walls, you know. She just kept saying how much she wanted to be on that table getting picked up and moved around by giant hands. I even stopped by at the game to see what she was up to."
"Oh?" I asked, now really listening carefully. Lori might well have been the last person to see Heather before her disappearance!
"Yeah," Lori replied. "I knew she was on the afternoon shift, so after I got done with blackjack, I stopped by and looked in on her. She was so tiny! The man she was working for had her lying down on his hole card, and he kept reaching down and tickling her for luck. I've never seen anyone quite so enraptured like that, at least not without sex being involved!"
I laughed. It sounded just like Heather. She'd probably had the time of her life that night on the table!
"I didn't hang around long," Lori went on. "Just long enough to get her attention and wave. She looked so excited, I thought she was going to explode! It wasn't the way I thought someone would look just before they were going to quit their job and leave town."
"Too bad you didn't stay for the whole game," I said. "Maybe something else happened that convinced her to leave. Someone might've gotten too rough and scared her, or threatened her in some way."
"But why wouldn't Beth have told us?" Lori complained. "She would've had it on tape, right? Whatever happened must have been afterwards, when she went home for the night, because I know she didn't come back in to work the next day. I was watching for her so I could ask about the poker game."
I shrugged, unable to tell Lori what I knew, which was plenty. We'd checked Heather's phone records and found no incoming or outgoing calls, and she hadn't gotten online, either. She'd cleaned out her tip and bank accounts the next morning, and that was the last anyone had seen of her. I suppose Lori could've missed her arrival while distracted by work or something, but it still didn't wash. With Lori in the casino, even a distraught Heather would have at least taken the time to seek her out and tell her what was going on, especially after my own abduction. If nothing else, she wouldn't have wanted Lori to worry about her like she had about me.
So, at least now we'd narrowed down the disappearance a lot better than any of the other girls we were looking for. Lori had seen Heather sometime in the late afternoon during her shift at work, and after that, prior to the next day's shift, she'd vanished without a trace. It was still at least a twelve-hour range, but that was better than we'd had before.
I was now convinced there was no chance of any kind of coincidence here, or that Heather's departure had been voluntary. She had quite clearly been abducted, just as I had, only more quietly. What we still didn't know was whether or not Heather had been taken while shrunk, before leaving the casino, or if it had happened after she'd checked out for the day.
There was only one way to find out for sure what was really going on here, I thought. We had to get surveillance of the interior of the dressing room, where any of the girls coming out would change before leaving. If any woman went in to work her shift, and then never came out again, that would be clear evidence that what was going on was happening behind the walls of the casino.
But how was I going to get a camera in this place without Beth spotting me doing it? She always seemed to have an eye on everything, even the dressing room, and if not her, there was sure to be someone else watching.
I'd have to figure that out later, I thought, because now it was time to go to work.