April 2023 Pass the Baton- Who will solve the mystery?

Marla:
She woke up exhausted.

As the wooshing in her ears subsided, she heard something feint and was not sure what it was, but it was unyielding but oscillated consistently. She recognized the sound, but didn’t.

She felt hungover and sore.

Sitting up, she could see her reflection in the full size mirror near the bed. Her hair was a mess, her crusty makeup from yesterday smeared from sleep.

As her mind started to come to life slowly, she realized that she didn’t know where she was.

Her ears perked up from the rush of adrenaline caused by the shock and she turned to the source of that sound. It was a man, and he was softly snoring.

Who was he? Where was she? What happened last night??

Christine:

With a feeling of dread, Yolanda rolled off the side of the bed, trying not to disturb the sleeping body next to her. This had happened before but in the past she could at least remember who she had spent the night with. Stiffly, she bent over to pick up the bit of her clothes that had been drunkenly tossed aside, and was heading toward the bathroom when she heard the man in the bed snuffle. She froze. She thought he was waking up, but he just rolled back over and continued snoring. She really wanted to get out of here before he woke up.

Quickly undressing from last night’s get-up Yolanda slipped under the hot water running from the rusty shower head. This wasn’t exactly the type of place she liked to stay at but if that guy out there was paying then it didn’t matter too much, it was his waste of money. It would’ve been nicer if the place had been really nice. She chuckled to herself and thought, “If this is all he’s going to fork out, I don’t want to know who he is or where he came from, cheap-ass!”.

Suddenly the door slammed open, the doorknob hitting the wall next to the shower hard enough to cause some damage to the sheetrock, and ….

Di’s bit:

a naked woman in her early twenties stood in the doorway.
‘Where the hell am I? and who the hell are you? Shit……… my head hurts………. I think I’m gonna…………….’
She dived for the toilet and Yolanda felt her own stomach churn at the obscene sounds echoing from the cracked bowl.
She grabbed her clothes, not bothering to dry herself on the tatty filthy towel on the rack.
‘I’ve got to get out of here’ she thought frantically.
The man in the bed had rolled over again and was now half in and half out of the covers.
What had happened here last night? He was not her type, and the young woman still throwing up in the toilet bowl was unknown to her. Why couldn’t she remember?
She looked around for her bag and saw it sticking out from under the couch. Bending down to retrieve it, she screamed as a hand grabbed her ankle…………………

Paula:

Desperately clutching her purse strap, Yolanda simultaneously kicked her foot in hopes of shaking off whatever beast had grabbed her, but no such luck. She was forced to stand back up and face the beast, who was in actuality a very handsome man, dressed in jeans and… nothing else. Or he would be handsome, Yolanda amended her thoughts, if he hadn’t been glaring at her in a rather scary manner.

“Who are you?” he growled. “And how did you drug me? Where are your accomplices and my laptop?”

What the eff? Yolanda tried to reassemble her memories of last night, but they were all jumbled up like a spilled jigsaw puzzle. “I’m Yolanda and, uh, oh hey! Weren’t we playing blackjack at the casino downstairs? And then one of the other players bought a round of drinks for everyone at the table.”

Beast ran his fingers through his messy dark hair, then rubbed his temples as though he had a headache. That made Yolanda aware of her own pounding head. “I’m pretty sure my drink was drugged too,” she said. “I’ve had plenty of hangovers, but they never felt like this. And that poor girl in the bathroom must have had double what we—”

“What girl in the bathroom?” Beast stomped across the room before Yolanda could reply. He flung open the door, and Yolanda peeked around him. The bathroom was completely empty, but the window was open, and a thin white curtain fluttered in the light morning breeze.

Jim

The beast said, “I gave been coming to this same Seminole Hard Rock hotel and casino here in Tampa every year to celebrate New Years and nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I am Tony and you are?” Tony waited for an answer. Yolanda spoke and said, “Well I am not a thief, and I don’t know anything about your laptop. Perhaps the naked girl took it before she ran out of here. I already told you that I am Yolanda, and I don’t like it when stupid guys forget my name. I guess she must have left out the window, but we are two floors off the ground, so maybe she passed out in the shower behind the frosted glass. They both heard groaning and Yolanda told Tony to leave, so she could get the naked girl a robe to put on.

The girls walked out of the bathroom together and Tony was on the phone with room service telling them to bring a pot of coffee and Danish up to his room. Yolanda told the blonde her name and she introduced him to Tony and then she asked who she was. The blonde saw her tannish purple dress laying on the floor and she asked how she got naked. Tony said, “Don’t ask me honey as I just woke up a few minutes ago after being passed out on the floor. Yolanda thinks that we all got roofied at the Blackjack table and the only thing that seems to be missing is my laptop.” The blonde said her name was Carla and then she asked Tony if his laptop was a Windows device. Carla said, “If it is a Windows laptop, you can go on your phone and use the Find My Device app, but it needs to be turned on before you can use it.”

Room service knocked on the door and brought in a pot of coffee and some pastry treats. Carla said, “Happy New Year, in case I didn’t say that last night.” Yolanda said, “I’m still pretty fuzzy about what happened last night but this coffee should help with that.” Tony said, “This is my first time being roofied, but at least I ended up with two nice girls.” Carla said, “Who said that we were nice?”

Carol Anne’s part;

The girls both laughed, it made Tony feel uneasy. “well, he stuttered, I guess I just assumed you were both nice, but hey, you could be axe murderers for all I know! Tony got up and walked across the room.

“I need to turn on that app on my phone, the find my device app”, he said. “That laptop has important stuff on it that I don’t want anyone looking at!”

“Like what?” Carla said, pouring herself another mug of coffee. “Well, Tony said, I’m working as a detective on a case where a criminal gang…..” he stopped dead all of a sudden!

“Hey!” He shouted! “I think I know who drugged our drinks! I think it was the head of that criminal gang! I was in the casino last night chasing down some of that criminal gang, who were also in there. I went undercover, so they wouldn’t know who I was or that I was a detective. It looks like they brought drugs in and drugged all of our drinks”.

Carla said “well, I did get talking to a man with spiky hair, who offered me drinks, first I refused, but he kept insisting I take a drink from him, so eventually I did…Does that guy you were chasing have spiky hair?”

“Yes, he does”, said Tony! “Right girls! I’m off. I need to report to my seniors. The laptop has all sorts of incriminating evidence on it. We need to get it back ASAP. I’ll see you both later!” With that, he drained his coffee mug and stood up, ran to the door and opened it. The two girls both looked on in silence.

Sadje’s part;

As the door closed behind Tony, both the girls started to make preparations to leave too. Nobody wanted to stay in the room where they were dumped last night. Who had paid for it and were the gang members still around, these were the thoughts going through both their heads as they too took off.

Meanwhile, Tony was in his office, telling his colleagues and seniors what had happened. His next step was to locate the laptop and try to recover it. He was quite at sea as to who were the culprits.

Yolanda, as she left the hotel, she took out her cell phone and called someone. When the voice answered at the other end, she started talking, “ I have the laptop. There’s enough incriminating evidence on it to put Tony and his cohorts behind bars. I’m coming over to the headquarters to deliver the evidence”

“Did Tony of the other girl suspected you?” Asked her boss. “ No, I gave a performance worthy of an Oscar” replied Yolanda. “Perhaps a promotion is due?”

Tony was arrested for charges of corruption, facilitating drug traffickers, and other heinous crimes that same day and Yolanda did get her promotion. As for Carla, she did receive a gift of a new cellphone from an unknown person a few days later. She was the innocent bystander who had been involved to give authenticity to Yolanda’s story.

~*~The end~*~