xp_logs | The Journeyman Job, part 1 (Reply)

Doug takes Hope on a graduation excercise.

"Dress upscale, but to blend in," were all the instructions Doug had given Hope when he'd gone to pick her up to drive into the city. He imagined she had a lot of questions, but he had stayed uncharacteristically quiet during the drive, up until they pulled up in front of a boutique hotel and passed the car off to a valet.

Hope smoothed the black midi-skirt and rearranged the light cashmere sweater that was draped over her shoulders as Doug handled things with the valet. "The House of the Dunes..." She read the name of the hotel out loud. "I do not think I have heard of this hotel before." She remarked to Doug when he joined her.

"That's by design," he told her as they made their way to the lobby doors. "Everyone knows the big names, but some of the smaller luxury hotels value a level of anonymity. It allows them to select their clientele more, and offer things the bigger ones might not."

"The name is quite poetic." Hope nodded graciously at the doorman who opened the door for them, pausing just a bit away from the reception desk. "Do we have a reservation, Mr. Donald?"

"Not exactly." Doug steered Hope toward the bar area and a pair of stools that had an excellent field of view to the lobby and its goings-on. "Let's call this...a graduation exercise. A chance to put together some of the things you've been learning into a whole." He waved the bartender over, then leaned back to see what Hope would do next.

Hope surveyed the wine chart at the wall for a moment before turning to the bartender. "A Sauvignon Black and a vodka tonic, please." When she had received her wine, she took a sip before shifting into a position where she could take in the entire bar and much of the lobby area. She scanned both areas slowly, looking for anything that might be out of place.

Doug's drink arrived and he touched it to his lips, though a very close observation might have shown that he actually drank only the smallest drop of liquid from the tumbler. For the most part he watched Hope, seeing how she observed comings and goings and listened to snatches of conversation.

She quickly dismissed the two men talking at one end of the bar about what seemed to be an nearby strip club... A couple of an grey haired woman with a wedding ring and a young man with black hair with no wedding ring tucked away in a discrete corner. Most likely an affair then...

"She seems agitated." Hope finally commented in a low voice, gesturing with the chin to the grey haired lady who was standing at the reception desk." Her eyes narrowed as she slipped of her chair. Meandering through the bar, she found a position where she could hear her muttering about her diamond tennis bracelet and matching earrings having gone missing.

It almost felt too easy. Hope threw a glance over her shoulder though, raising her eyebrow as if to ask 'Is this what you wanted me to find?'

Doug raised a challenging eyebrow in reply. If this was to be a graduation type of exercise, he wasn't going to just provide easy answers for her. One of the things she still needed to learn was confidence in her own skills and judgment, since he wouldn't always be there to ask. He took another minute sip of his drink and grinned when she rolled her eyes at him.

Hope ignored the further words of the woman when she caught sight of two hotel employees arguing not to far away from the desk. They were out of sight by most of the lobby, but she could see them quite well from her standpoint. It were the words 'not another one' and 'he won't like us calling the police again' that caught her attention and she directed all her attention there.

The rash of jewelry thefts was indeed why they were there - a contact of his that worked at the hotel had mentioned the problem, and Doug had promised to look in on things. He'd immediately thought of Hope as he started to make plans to investigate - a relatively small scale sting would be just the thing to get her feet wet, start her seeing the bigger picture. He finally nodded once it was clear where her attention was. "Okay. Step one - identify the problem. What's your next move?" he asked.

"Research." Hope replied immediately. "I would need to get clear on five W's and the how before one can start drawing conclusions about a potential perpetrator. I'd also get a list of the staff as soon as possible and start running background checks on them if there is anything that jumps out."

Doug pushed a compact tablet over to Hope, a personnel roster already drawn up. "No time like the present," he told her.

"Do you have any data on the other stolen pieces as well?" Hope asked as she immediately started to page through the roster. "I means, if I want to establish opportunity... I need to know when they were stolen among other things."

"I have a few notes from my contact in that regard," Doug admitted with an approving smile, pointing out the document on the tablet. "Small, easily portable pieces, nothing distinctive - whoever this is, they're going at it smartly."

"Maybe nothing distinctive, but still worth quite a nice sum of money." Hope murmured as she tapped her way through the documents. "And that first fact might make them easy to fence." She fished a small notebook and a pen from her purse and scribbled down what was stolen, on which date and where exactly the piece had been before it was taken. "I need to see the shifts schedule for these dates." She tapped the page in the notebook.

Doug nodded. "Cross check, look for patterns. Smart." He grinned. So far Hope was definitely on the right track.