“Very well,” I reply. “And how exactly do you intend to enter Ms. Sharpe’s room if she isn’t there? Did someone furnish you with a key? Mr. Snow, perhaps? And I presume you have a warrant, since you can’t just enter a guest’s room at will…unless, of course, you’re a maid,” I say as I hold up my master keycard.
Stark surveys the guests in our midst. Is it a trick of the light, or do I detect a tomato-red hue traveling up her neck to the apples of her cheeks?
“Fine,” she mutters under her breath. “You can come with me. And should anyone ask, technically, you’ll be the one entering that room, not me, got it?”
“As you wish,” I reply.
Then something happens that has never occurred in all my years as a hotel maid. The elevator doors open and guests standing near us step back, allowing the detective and me to enter first. When we do, they don’t even follow us in. I can hear them whispering to one another: “Who’s the woman in black? She looks like a plainclothes detective! Does this mean Grimthorpe was murdered?” The doors slide closed, and I push the button for the second floor. Stark and I ride in silence until the elevator doors ding open.
“This way,” I say, leading Detective Stark to Ms. Sharpe’s suite, number 201. I knock on the door while the detective waits a few paces back. “Housekeeping!” I call out in a firm but authoritative voice. “For once, I’m not here to clean your room. Rather, I have someone who wishes to speak with you.”
We wait, but there’s no reply. I turn to Detective Stark. “Strictly speaking, and according to my very own rule book, only Ms. Sharpe’s maid is allowed to enter the room, and that is not me. But I’ll make an exception just this once.”
“I’m eternally grateful,” Detective Stark replies, though the way she says it makes me question her sincerity.
I buzz in with my keycard and prop the door open. The detective remains outside, but her head juts in, pivoting this way and that. I know what she’s doing because I do it, too. She’s memorizing the details of the room, saving them in her mind’s eye to be studied later.
The bed is freshly made, tight hospital corners folded just so. The water glasses on the table are fitted with sanitation covers. The carpet is freshly vacuumed in Zen-garden rows, the pile perfect and pristine. Not only has this room been recently cleaned but also Ms. Sharpe is clearly gone. There’s no suitcase anywhere, no personal items at all on any surface.
“Is everything okay, Molly?” I hear behind me. “Did we polish everything adequately?”
I turn to see Sunshine and Sunitha, two senior maids, standing by a cleaning trolley in the doorway beside the detective.
“Have either of you seen Ms. Sharpe?” I ask the maids.
Sunshine shakes her head. “Reception said she checked out. We were told to clean this suite and Mr. Grimthorpe’s adjoining one. He’s checked out as well.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Detective Stark says.
“He’s dead,” I explain to the maids. “Very dead.”
Sunitha’s mouth falls open. Sunshine’s eyes pop wide.
“You hadn’t heard?” I ask.
“We’re short two maids, Molly, because you and Lily were assigned to the tearoom. This is actually Lily’s room to clean, but Cheryl told us to do it. We haven’t left this floor all morning,” Sunshine explains.
“Can I look through your trash?” the detective asks.
Sunshine and Sunitha exchange a look that can only mean they suspect this giant of a woman dressed head to toe in black of lunacy, perversion, or a medley of both.
“She’s here to investigate,” I say. “Please produce the bagged garbage from this room.”
Sunitha nods and rummages through her trolley to extract a small white garbage bag, which she passes to Detective Stark.
“Got any gloves?” Stark asks.
Sunshine grabs a fresh pair of disposables from the trolley and passes them to her.
The detective puts them on, opens the bag, fishes around for a bit, then produces something from the bottom, a crumpled note on Regency Grand stationery. She smooths it out as I read over her shoulder:
You are an angel.
Regards,
Your Chiefest Admirer
The penmanship is perfect, written with a fountain pen, judging from the finely tapered curlicues and loops. It looks so familiar, and yet I can’t quite place it.
“Is it Mr. Grimthorpe’s handwriting?” the detective asks.
“Definitely not,” I reply. I can tell that much immediately.
The detective stares at me, her brow furrowed. “What makes you so sure?”
My mind races. My heart pounds. The edges of the room start to darken. “I know because…because he signed books earlier, for me and for many others,” I blurt out. “This handwriting is not a match.”
“Hmm,” Stark replies.
Sunshine and Sunitha have been following the conversation between us as though it were a tennis match, but trained as they are to serve guests rather than question them, they ask nothing about what in good heavens is going on.
“Ladies, did Sharpe leave anything else behind in this room?”
“Yes,” Sunshine says. “Those.” She points to twelve red, long-stem roses in a glass vase perched atop her maid’s trolley. “Molly, we kept them. It seemed like such a waste to throw them out. We wanted to ask you—is that okay?”
I immediately sympathize with the conundrum faced by my well-intentioned maids. On the one hand, A Maid’s Guide & Handbook to Housekeeping, Cleaning & Maintaining a State of Pinnacle Perfection (an official rule book I conceived of and wrote myself) states that items left behind by guests shalt be delivered unto the lost and found at Reception. However, a subclause also says that if and when items left behind by guests are deemed discarded rather than forgotten, said items may be acquired by maids for personal use.
“You may keep the flowers,” I say. “Waste not, want not.”
“What about Mr. Grimthorpe’s room?” Stark asks. “Was there anything left in it?”
Sunitha shakes her head.
“Nothing in the trash?”
“Nothing in the room at all,” Sunshine offers. “No suitcase, no garbage, nothing. Just a downturned bed.”
“So her boss dies suddenly and she hightails it outta here, just like that?” Detective Stark squints. She folds the note from the rubbish and puts it into her notepad, then walks over to the trolley, dumps the garbage bag she’s holding into the bin, and discards her rubber gloves.
“That will be all,” she says as she starts down the hall.
“Where are you off to?” I ask, trailing after her.
“To the station.”
“So your investigation is finished?”
She turns suddenly, and I almost face-plant right into her.
“It’s far from finished. You better hope for your sake—and for the sake of your little sidekick—that everything in the tearoom comes up clean.”
“Oh, it will,” I say. “Everything will be spotless once I’m done.”
“I don’t mean cleaning, Molly. I mean the toxicology reports. I mean the tea on that cart.”
“I’m well aware of what you mean, Detective. Are you aware of what I mean?”
Detective Stark puts her hands on her hips. “Let me just ask you this very directly. Do you know of any maid or other hotel employee, be it yourself or someone else, who had a reason to hate Mr. Grimthorpe?”
I hesitate because I don’t know how to answer. The truth is that I do know of a maid who had a reason to hate Mr. Grimthorpe. But I also know that maid is dead.