by Harper Lin
Ultimately, I decided to go with the indirect-direct approach. “Have you heard anything about when the spa will reopen?”
She shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry, I haven’t. You have a massage scheduled, don’t you? When is it? Tomorrow?”
I nodded.
She grimaced. “Hopefully it’ll be open again by then. It’s taking them a while to do the investigation, I guess.”
“Have you heard anything about whether they have a suspect?”
She looked at me a little suspiciously, with one eyebrow raised ever so slightly. “I don’t know.” Then her eyes flicked back and forth, and she leaned toward me. “If Garrett catches me talking to you about this, I could get fired.”
“So don’t talk to me about that,” I said casually. “Talk to me about Sophie.”
“Sophie?”
I nodded. “Yeah, Sophie from the patisserie.”
“Why do you want to talk about Sophie?” She looked even more suspicious now than she had before.
I shrugged like it was no big deal and had nothing to do with me trying to solve Gina’s murder. “Just curious. She doesn’t talk much, does she?”
The laugh that burst from her lips came so quickly that it was obviously genuine. “Sophie? God, no! Girl will hardly say boo to me, and we’ve known each other for like three years now. Don’t take it personal. She does what she wants when she wants and how she wants.”
“So, it’s not unusual for her to be a little…” I trailed off, partly for effect and partly because I wasn’t quite sure how to say what I wanted to say without, well, sounding like Sophie.
“Rude?” Whitney’s tone made it clear that I had nothing to worry about. “No, that’s just Sophie. She is who she is, love her or hate her.”
“And which way do you feel about her?”
She shrugged and shook her head with a half smile on her face. “It depends on the day. Some days she cracks me up and I love her, and others, I just… mmm.” She shook her head again, this time with less of a smile. “She is who she is.”
I wondered if that bad disposition fed into other bad behavior as well. But I didn’t think it was time to ask that yet.
“Good to know she doesn’t just hate me for some reason.” I thought for a second, trying to come up with something else to ask other than whether she thought Sophie could be a murderer. “That reminds me, I’ve tried to stop by the patisserie a couple times, and no one was at the counter. Is someone else supposed to be working there too?”
Whitney looked surprised. “Really? No one’s been there? Are you sure?”
I nodded. “We hung around for a few minutes one time to see if anyone came out, but no one did.”
“That’s weird.” She made a face. “Jacques’s a stickler about customer service. I don’t think he’d be happy if he knew she wasn’t there when she was supposed to be. You said it’s happened more than once?”
“Yup. A couple times yesterday and this morning before I talked to you guys outside.”
“Huh.” She drummed her fingers on the desk. “I thought it was weird that she was out there this morning, but with Sophie, you never know. The door was unlocked and everything?”
I nodded. “Wide open.”
“So weird.” She stared off into space, with her lips turned down in a frown.
I gave her a minute before asking my next question. “Did Sophie and Gina get along?”
Whitney looked at me with an expression that could freeze lava. “Is that what this is all about?”
I rushed to smooth things over. “No! I was genuinely curious about Sophie. I own a café, and if one of my employees ever treated my customers like that—” I stopped, realizing I was talking about, if not her friend, then at least someone she was social with. “I’m sorry. I was just curious about the dynamics.”
Whitney’s expression relaxed slightly, though she still looked wary. “If you say so.”
“What was Gina like?”
She looked like she was about to answer but then stopped. “Look, you seem like a nice lady and all, but if Garrett catches me talking to you about Gina, he’ll fire me on the spot. I can’t lose this job. It pays better than anything else around here, and I need the money for school. I’m sorry, but you should go.”
I searched my brain for a way to salvage the situation. So far, Whitney was my best resource, and I couldn’t lose her. But I couldn’t pay her like the hotel could either. At least for now, I had to move on. “I understand. Thanks for talking to me. I’m glad to know Sophie doesn’t just have some weird hatred of me.”
Whitney chuckled a little. “Nah, that’s just her. Don’t take it personal. But if she gets too rude, come tell me, and I’ll talk to her. I may not be able to get her to be nice, but at least she’ll know she’s not getting away with it.”
“I will, thanks!”
I turned and headed for the lounge to see if Matt had been any luckier in his information gathering than I had been, if he’d even bothered to actually talk to them about it at all.
I peeked in and saw him apparently engaged in an animated conversation with Tommy. I knew it was probably about sports, but on the off chance they were actually talking about the murder, I decided to leave them alone. I walked back to the lobby to try to figure out what to do next. I could just sit down and poke around on my phone for a while, but that didn’t seem like the most interesting or productive thing I could be doing.
“Looking for your boyfriend?” Whitney asked from the desk. “I think he’s in the lounge.”
“He is. He’s talking to Tommy, and I didn’t want to interrupt. I’m just trying to figure out what to do with myself for now.”
“Have you been upstairs?”
“Yes?” I replied in confusion. She knew my room was upstairs, didn’t she?
“Sorry, I mean in the original hotel.” She laughed.
I shook my head slowly. I hadn’t been, and I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant anyway.
“Up on the second floor, we have a few of the old rooms open and decorated in the way they would have been back when the hotel first opened. On the far sides are the basic rooms that regular people would have stayed in, and in the middle is the Grand Suite. That’s where the really rich people stayed. There are plaques up and stuff if you want to take a look. Oh, and we have a pamphlet somewhere.” At almost the instant she ducked down under the desk to look for it, Garrett popped out of a doorway beside me. I breathed a sigh of relief that Whitney and I hadn’t been discussing the murder. I could see why she was so nervous about it.
“Where is Whitney?” he bellowed immediately. He seemed to have a knack for appearing when she was looking for something, and I wondered if it was intentional on his part—if he watched her from somewhere and came out just to humiliate and scream at her. From what I knew of him so far, I wouldn’t have put it past him.
“I’m right here!” She stood up, with the pamphlet in her hand, and passed it to me. “Here you go. This has more details about the rooms and their history and some of the furniture and stuff in there.”
“And the artwork,” Garrett said. “We have some fine pieces of art in the hotel that I’m sure someone like you would enjoy viewing.” His head snapped toward Whitney. “Get her the brochure on the artwork.”
She took a deep breath and pursed her lips. I could tell she was trying not to say something she would regret as she knelt back down behind the desk to look for the other pamphlet. If Garrett hated her being out of sight while she looked for things, I didn’t know why he didn’t just arrange for the brochures to be moved up on top of the desk. Probably because then he wouldn’t have as much to yell at her about.
“I apologize for the poor service,” he said, louder than he needed to, as he turned back to me. “Good help is so hard to find.”
If I felt like he had already complained to me about that, it was because it hadn’t even been two hours since he’d last mentioned it. I wanted to tell him that it might be easier i
f he tried being a little more pleasant, but I didn’t really want to invite him to have a conversation about it, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Whitney has actually been wonderful. She’s very helpful. And friendly,” I said with a strained smile. As much as I wanted to ignore him, I wouldn’t have felt right not standing up for her.
He raised his eyebrows and gave me a disdainful look. I was almost surprised he didn’t tell Whitney to forget the art brochure since clearly I had no taste, but he mercifully didn’t say a word for once.
Whitney stood back up with the brochure in her hand. “Here you go. It talks about all the different pieces and has a list of them by artist and location so you can find them easily.” Her voice sounded pleasant enough, but after talking to her earlier, I could hear the strain in it now. The hotel must pay really well for her to put up with Garrett and all his nonsense.
“Thank you,” I said as I took the pamphlet from her. I made a point to keep my voice as warm and pleasant as I could. I didn’t know if it mattered to her, but I wanted to at least make an effort to let her know that someone appreciated her.
For a moment, the three of us stood there looking at each other. I didn’t really want to leave until after Garrett did, just because I felt bad leaving Whitney alone with him. Unfortunately, he didn’t look like he was going anywhere anytime soon, and I couldn’t think of anything else I needed at the moment. I’d already asked for extra towels.
“Is there anything else we can do for you?” Garrett asked, pretty much sealing the deal on me having to walk away.
“Nope,” I said reluctantly. I shot a sympathetic look at Whitney and turned to go before stopping because I actually did think of something. “Oh, Whitney,” I said, looking pointedly at her instead of Garrett. “If Matt comes out looking for me, could you tell him where I went?”
“Sure.” She smiled, but I could tell it wasn’t sincere.
“Great, thanks.” I felt bad leaving her, but I didn’t know what else to do. I cast one last look in her direction and headed for the old elevator.
Chapter Fifteen
I took a right as I stepped off the elevator on the second floor in the old part of the hotel. I’d taken that elevator once before, when Matt and I first arrived, but we’d gone straight to the third floor and over to our room. While the third floor had definitely had an early-nineteen-hundreds style, it was nothing compared to the second floor. This was like I had stepped straight back in time to an era when the wealthiest of the wealthy held week-long house parties for forty or so of their nearest and dearest, all of whom brought along their own servants because they couldn’t possibly be expected to get dressed on their own.
Old portraits lined the walls, some of which had subjects who looked familiar and all of which had nameplates underneath with the name of the artist, the person in the picture, and the dates they’d stayed in the hotel. I recognized even more of the names than I had the faces. I didn’t necessarily know what people like Enrico Caruso, J.D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan were famous for, but I’d heard of them.
As I walked slowly down the hall, looking back and forth at the elegantly posed pictures, I wondered whether the hotel had commissioned the portraits during the people’s stays or if they’d been acquired later. Either way, it seemed like a massive undertaking. I’d never had my portrait painted (and didn’t know anyone who had), but I was pretty sure it was a lengthy process that involved sitting very still for a very long time. Did these people really have time for that when they were on their vacations? Maybe things were different for the very, very rich, especially the ones who lived a hundred years ago.
On the other hand, if the hotel had acquired the paintings later, that had to be a lot of work—and a lot of money—too. There was at least one portrait in every wall space between the room doors, sometimes two, and in at least one place, I saw four. That whole family was apparently famous and important—or maybe egotistical—enough that each one of them had their own portrait.
I finally got to the end of the hallway with the first period-styled room that I could look into. The floors in there, like the hallway, were thin-planked wood in a parquet pattern. It must have taken an eternity for those to be installed, I thought. And the price would have been astronomical. But of course, it was probably cheaper than the marble tile in the foyer, and it was the Gilded Age, after all, when the super rich had money to burn and a deep desire to show off their wealth to all their equally rich friends.
Inside the room, the walls were covered with wallpaper in a simple floral pattern. The bed was a single with a plain blanket. The only other furniture was a dresser and a stand with a washbasin and pitcher. When Whitney said it was basic, she wasn’t kidding.
The room across the hall was also open and looked basically the same except for a different floral pattern on the wallpaper and a blanket on the bed that veered more blue than cream.
As I started back down the hallway to the next open room, I remembered the pamphlets Whitney had given me. Maybe they had something about where all the portraits had come from. I flipped through them as I made my way slowly down the hall. There was no one nearby, so I took my time, flipping the pages and keeping my eyes more on the brochure than on the doors around me. There was a whole page in the art brochure dedicated to the hallway. I stopped and leaned against the wall—in a rare spot where the deep-red wallpaper wasn’t covered by a portrait—to read it.
I was barely two sentences into the pamphlet when I heard quiet voices nearby. I glanced up and down the hallway, but I was alone. Probably someone in their room, I told myself. Most of the rooms on the hall still functioned as active guest rooms, not show pieces. I went back to reading but quickly realized that the voices weren’t hushed because they were behind a door but because their owners were whispering.
I looked around again, more carefully this time, and realized the door I’d stopped beside was cracked open. If I’d been standing even on the other side of the hallway, I wouldn’t have been able to hear them.
“Are you sure they don’t know?” one voice said quietly. It sounded like a female voice, but I couldn’t hear well enough to tell if it was one I recognized. Of course, there were lots of women in the hotel, so it wasn’t really likely that I would recognize the voice.
“They have no idea,” said a second voice. This one was lower, definitely male. “Trust me, they’re clueless.” He chuckled quietly.
“Stop laughing!” the female voice said. “It’s not funny!”
I didn’t want to eavesdrop, so I turned to walk farther down the hall, but then the female voice said something that stopped me in my tracks.
“Our lives will be over if they find out it was us!”
There were obviously a lot of things that could refer to, but one stood out to me—murder.
“They’re not going to find out,” the male voice said confidently.
I leaned back against the wall in a spot where I didn’t think they would be able to see me from inside the room. If it sounded like they were coming out, I would just book it down the hallway and hope they didn’t think I’d been listening.
“But they might. They’re investigating. They’re looking at evidence. They’re going to figure out it was us! That’s how these things work. Don’t you ever watch cop shows on TV?”
The man in the room chuckled. “Baby, it’s not like we’re being investigated by the NYPD. They’re not going to figure it out. We’ll be fine. Trust me.”
“I wish I could. Maybe we should just turn ourselves in.” I couldn’t hear her well, but her voice sounded choked, like she was crying.
“Baby, no.” His voice was even lower now, and I had to strain to hear what he was saying. “We just need to be careful for a few days. The heat’ll die down soon, and everything will be back to normal.”
She murmured something in response that I couldn’t quite make out.
“Yes, I promise,” he said.
Their voices fell silent or at least too quiet
for me to hear. I crept a couple steps closer. I needed to be able to hear better. I needed to be able to identify the voices. I was obviously going to tell Mike about what I’d heard, but it wouldn’t do much good if I couldn’t tell him who I’d overheard.
“I need to get back before they notice I’m gone.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. The man’s voice was louder and, if I wasn’t wrong, closer. I had to get out of there and fast. I wanted to see who they were, but it wasn’t worth the risk. If they so much as suspected I’d overheard them, I could be their next victim. I ran as silently as I could down the hall to the elevator. The hardwood floors were gorgeous, but I would have given anything for some nice plush carpet right then.
I punched the elevator button a couple of times, first the down button, then up, too, just in case that made it come faster.
I glanced back down the hall. They hadn’t come out of the room yet, but I was afraid they would any minute.
I hit both buttons again, more than once. I could hear the ancient elevator’s gears and cables groaning and prayed that the old, slow elevator would miraculously speed up.
I checked once more to make sure the coast was still clear then looked over the opposite way. I knew there was another elevator down there, but would it be any faster? Or at this point, should I just take the stairs? They were a long way down the hall, but maybe I could make it.
I heard a feminine laugh and looked again in the direction I’d come from. An elbow was poking out of the doorframe, and I knew it would be followed by a body with a head and eyes any second. I didn’t have any more time to wait for the elevator or to run for the stairs. I looked around one more time and saw an open door nearby. I didn’t know if it was someone’s room, and I didn’t care. All that mattered was that it would get me out of the hallway.
I turned and darted through the open doorway. I swung myself around behind the door and prayed that they hadn’t seen me.
Chapter Sixteen