Evans to Betsy by Rhys Bowen Page A

what are you doing here, I’d like to know?”
    “Missing person report,” Evan said, waving the flyer at her. “I thought this might be a good place to check out.”
    “Oh, yes, I believe that,” she said. “You came here to spy on me, didn’t you? Keeping an eye on me again.”
    “No, Betsy, I swear …”

    “When will you learn that I can take care of myself?” Betsy demanded. “I’m a big girl, you know. If you were my boyfriend, I could understand that you wanted to run my life for me. But you’re not, are you?”
    “Betsy, I came here on official police business. But I’m glad to see you’ve come up in the world. You’ve traded a tray of glasses at Harry’s for a bucket and mop.”
    Betsy tossed her curls defiantly. “That’s all you know about it. I’ve got the cushiest job here you could ever want. I have to help out in the dining room for lunch and dinner and apart from that all I have to do is to check on the spa—you know, making sure there are fresh towels. That kind of thing. I just decided to help Bethan with the cleaning because I’d got nothing else to do. So you can tell Harry that I’m very, very content in my new job. They pay me very well and they don’t work me to death.”
    “I’m glad you’ve landed on your feet,” Evan said.
    “I have to get back to cleaning the steam rooms,” the other girl said to Betsy in Welsh. “See you later, Betsy.”
    “I’m coming, Bethan.” Betsy smiled sheepishly at Evan. “Sorry if I yelled at you just then. I thought you’d come to convince me to come home again. I’m really happy here. Honestly I am. I can’t imagine working at a lovelier place and they say all kinds of celebrities come here. I might meet someone famous!” Her eyes were shining. “Got to go then. See you around, Evan.”
    She ran back into the spa building. Evan continued on up the path and through the archway to the main exit. Something wasn’t right here, he decided. The place seemed almost deserted and yet they’d hired Betsy to do very little work. If they had no customers, who paid all the staff it took to run this place?
    Blaine was still unsmiling as he nodded to Evan and pressed the release button on the electronic gate.
     
    Betsy found Bethan had gone into the steam room and was already wiping down the walls.
    “Nice-looking bloke,” she said as Betsy put down her pail and took out a sponge. “Friend of yours, is he?”

    “That’s right.”
    “Dating, are you?”
    “If I had my way, we would be,” Betsy said, giving the wall a savage scrub. “He seems to prefer the local schoolmarm, but I can’t think why. She never tries to make the best of herself, you know—no fashionable clothes, and no makeup, and her hair in a plait. Dull as ditchwater, if you ask me. What can he possibly see in her?”
    “It’s always the way, isn’t it?” Bethan said. “The good-looking blokes always seem to go for the plain women. I have the same trouble myself.”
    Betsy looked at Bethan’s large, cowlike face with its mournful brown eyes and said nothing.
    “You know it’s a funny thing,” Bethan went on, wiping the last of the wall with a grand flourish, “but I think I’ve seen that girl before. You know—the one on the poster he was carrying.”
    “You have—where?”
    “She looks a lot like a girl who worked here earlier this year. She was only here for about a week, so I can’t say I got to know her, but it does look a lot like her.”

Chapter 9
    Excerpt from The Way of the Druid , by Rhiannon
     
     
    What Druids Believe
     
    The ancient Celts perceived the presence of supernatural power in every part of the world. The sky, the sun, the dark places underground, every mountain, river, spring, marsh, tree, were endowed with divinity.
     
    They believed in the concept of AWEN—the liquid life force, essence, inspiration that flows through all living things.
     
    They also worshipped the triple Goddess of the waxing, full, and waning moon and