The Case of the Guest Who Stayed Over (The M.O.D. Files Book 1)

by K. W. Callahan

  I gave her a raised eyebrow. “Are you sure? I thought you were just having one.”

  She grabbed our waitress by the muumuu just as she was leaving, “Cancel that drink order. Sorry.”

  She turned back to me and smiled, “I was having so much fun that I almost forgot we had to work tonight.”

  “Glad you’re having a good time,” I smiled. “Between the food and the drinks, we’ll be lucky if we haven’t slipped into a coma by midnight…or turned into pumpkins.”

  “Ugh,” Kristen groaned, falling back against the thickly padded lime green vinyl upholstery of her chair and gripping her belly. “I FEEL like a pumpkin. I’m stuffed. That may have been one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten.”

  “Too bad we have to work. We could keep the party going up at Carlisle’s, but duty calls.” I took a deep breath, still digesting. “It’s almost ten. Ready to get to it?”

  “Not really,” she sighed. “But as you said, ‘duty calls’.”

  ***

  Compared to Friday, Saturday night was a walk in the park. Many guests did their partying and socializing outside the hotel on Saturdays, and if they brought the party home, they typically took it upstairs, leaving security to deal with the majority of the resulting issues.

  R & T Plumbing Supply Company was hosting their employee appreciation party in the Grand Ballroom as the finale to their week-long company conference. From the music and laughter coming from inside the ballroom, it sounded like a good time, but they were a pretty self-contained bunch. It definitely looked like there were some hard drinkers among the crowd, but they seemed to be able to hold their liquor. Most were family men and woman.

  The rest of the ballrooms were silent tonight except for the gaggle of facilities and banquet personnel breaking down setups and cleaning up after a week of heavy use. This left Kristen and me with some time to explore.

  At this point in my time at the Lanigan, I had seen just about every niche, corner, and hidey-hole the hotel had to offer. I had made it a personal goal to investigate as many of the Lanigan’s old nooks and crannies as possible. It was just something I liked to do in my spare time – a hobby of sorts. Kristen however had been stuck behind the front desk for the majority of her time with the hotel, so she had yet to see many of the lesser known spots.

  I felt that it was important for managers – especially night managers, who had a smaller support staff – to know the ins, outs, and quirks of a hotel the Lanigan’s size…plus, some of these places were just damn cool to see and explore.

  I checked the “View Totals” page of the hotel’s computer system before we set off. At 10:53 p.m. we only had 19 arrivals left, with 32 “Vacant Ready” status rooms to sell and four that were off the market, listed as “OOO” or “Out of Order.”

  “Ready for the grand tour?” I asked Kristen as we headed for the hotel service elevators.

  “You betcha. I want to see all the cool spots that other people never get to see or know about.”

  “Well, besides old Tom Hanson and maybe a couple of guys in the property operations department, I doubt there are many people who know as many long-forgotten spaces inside the Lanigan as I do.”

  We started on the roof. There I showed Kristen where the old general manager’s penthouse suite used to be. From there, we headed down to housekeeping on the 25th floor where we perused the equipment rooms and I showed her where to pick up a few cleaning supplies were she ever so completely bored on a slow night that she decided to do some back office cleaning.

  After that, we skipped the guest room levels and made a stop on the fifth floor. It was here that the old accounting offices of the hotel used to be located. The spaces were now converted into several storerooms for the property operation department, some employee locker rooms, and the purchasing department. There was also a section of empty brick-walled rooms. These small bathroom-sized spaces were located in a hallway that ran between the hotel and the attached parking garage and that was used to access some part of the hotel ventilation system. They looked more like they should have been used as secret CIA torture chambers. Most of them were completely devoid of any furniture, had dusty concrete floors, and were equipped only with a single dim light bulb that dangled from the ceiling on a thin cord.

  I had a metal master “skeleton” key that allowed me access to about 90% of the hotel’s public, food outlet, office, and storage spaces. I also checked out a master keycard from security each night that provided access to any room with an electronic key lock, and I had access – again through security – to the keys necessary to enter any other portion of the building that I might deem necessary…or just felt like exploring.

  “Why are these rooms here?” Kristen shivered as we walked down the hallway in near darkness.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Certain parts of the Lanigan have been altered, rebuilt or restructured so many times throughout the years that I think some of them just get walled over or forgotten about.”

  I unlocked a side door entering into one of the tiny chambers where I flipped a light on. A single wooden chair sat in the center of the room.

  “I think that now some of these spots just serve for sleeping spots when the guys from property operations want to sneak away for a few winks. I caught one of the housekeeping floor techs down here once. He’d made off with a metal master key years ago and was using it to find all sorts of random spots around the hotel in which to sleep.”

  I flipped off the light and closed the door. “I just kind of like exploring these spots and wondering what they once were. It’s kind of creepy, but it’s fun at the same time.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Kristen said, hugging herself, “it’s just plain creepy to me.”

  Next, I took her down to the fourth floor where an old restaurant used to be but that was now hidden behind the freshly plastered walls of the Shared Resorts world marketing division that had recently relocated to the Lanigan. Then we popped into the old Street Light Club on 1B before heading down to 2B (the second sub-basement level). Here, we passed the linen sorting room and more employee locker rooms before moving into a section where the hotel connected with the old vault and basement portion of a jewelry store that had its storefront up on street level. The space was divided by a huge oak-planked door which always remained locked.

  “We don’t have access to this portion…for obvious reasons. But there is a cool room over here,” I said, pointing to an adjacent space.

  I unlocked a door that was nearly hidden behind several housekeeping linen carts piled high with freshly folded towels, and we walked inside.

  “What the heck is this place?” Kristen asked, peeking her head inside.

  The room was filled with stacks of old leather-bound books.

  “Old ledgers,” I pointed to the stacks around us. “The accounting department ad front office used to store their paperwork down here. The oldest ones I’ve found so far are from the 1920s. Some of them are pretty cool. Old handwritten accounts – all done in pencil – with paycheck amounts next to employee names, expense reports; that kind of stuff. Takes you back to when things were a lot more personal.”

  “And a heck of a lot more work,” Kristen said, flipping through one of the dusty ledgers. “Pretty neat though. What else you got to show me, Indy?”

  “Indy?” I frowned.

  “Yeah, you’re like the resident archeologist of the hotel, adventuring around and finding all this cool old stuff.”

  “Well, I don’t want to reveal all my secrets on the first tour, but I will take you to one last spot. Ever been to 3B?”

  “We have a 3B?” she said, sounding surprised.

  “They don’t let you out of your cage much, do they?”

  “Guess not,” she said, shaking her head.

  After making sure to point out where the property operations department was located and where the electricians’ office was, I led Kristen down a set of stairs to the sub-sub basement and over to a huge sliding stee
l door that accessed the machine room that contained the hotel’s huge boilers, massive backup generator, and pump system.

  I pressed a red button just to the left of the door that rang a buzzer inside the operator’s office within. Moments later, the steel door slid open and we were greeted by a blast of hot air and a sound akin to what I assume sailors must hear in the heart of a large ship’s engine room – a loud roaring of various equipment, machinery, blowers, and whatnot.

  Bill – one of the hotel’s third shift engineers who manned this portion of the Lanigan’s lower levels – stuck his head out from within. It was a head that was instantly recognizable. Even though Bill didn’t get out much, somehow he always kept his face darkly tanned, which was in stark contrast to his bright, almost chalk-white head of short cropped hair.

  “Hello, come on in!” he shouted over the din and grinning from ear to ear.

  Bill didn’t get many visitors, and he was always happy to have a surprise visit from the world above.

  “Why do you have to press the buzzer?” Kristen shouted.

  “They don’t want people just wandering in here,” I said. “It can get dangerous.”

  “You on the grand tour?” Bill called back over his shoulder as we followed him inside.

  “Yeah,” I bellowed back, “this is Kristen, the front desk supervisor. I wanted to show her around a bit.”

  Bill stopped and turned around, sticking a hand out to her, “Ah, the infamous Kristen. I’ve heard your voice over the radio many a time. Glad to finally put a face to the name.”

  “Likewise,” Kristen called back, shaking his hand.

  “Well, Robert, you know your way around down here pretty well, so you guys don’t need me. I’ve got a crossword I’m itching to get back to. Feel free to explore…just be careful.”

  He nodded to Kristen, “Nice to finally meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you, Bill,” she called back. And with that, Bill sauntered back to his office.

  “He’s a great guy,” I hollered to Kristen. “Not much of a talker though.”

  “I can see that,” Kristen nodded. “But I can also see why,” she said, wiggling a finger in her ear.

  “Come on, I want to show you something.”

  The roaring faded a bit as I led Kristen past a row of huge boilers and around the massive backup generator.

  “They had to take the sidewalk out to lower that thing down here,” I pointed at the generator. “If the power ever goes off, it kicks on automatically so that all our main hotel systems continue uninterrupted. Wouldn’t want housekeeping to have to reset 1800 alarm clocks, would we?”

  Kristen looked up at the ceiling over 30 feet above us. It was covered with heavy steel lattice. Suddenly we could see a pair of feet walk over it.

  “Is that the street?” she asked.

  “Yep,” I said. “They left it open for access after taking up the sidewalk for the generator. Most people never glance down to realize they’re walking over the Lanigan’s basement.”

  We continued on until we reached a waist-high railing stopping us from walking into what was a gapping 75 by 75 foot wide pit that was at least 15 feet deep.

  “What the heck is this?” Kristen asked, not really believing what she was seeing in a section of the hotel that until ten minutes ago she hadn’t even known existed.

  “Sump pit,” I nodded. “See that?” I said, pointing to another pit within the pit, circular in shape and about seven feet wide and five feet deep. A large piece of machinery sat within its center; an anaconda-sized hose snaked its way from one side.

  Kristen nodded.

  “Remember, we’re in Chicago, just blocks from Lake Michigan. Hundreds of years ago, this was all marshy swampland. That pump keeps the Lanigan from reverting to its natural landscape.”

  “What’s that over there?” Kristen asked, pointing to an arched opening about six feet high and five feet wide in one wall near the corner of the primary sump pit. Small gauge rail tracks led from the hole, continued across the floor of the pit, and exited into a similar opening in the opposite wall.

  “That’s one of the old tunnels. In the early 1900s they dug tunnels to connect a lot of the buildings in the ‘Loop’ section of downtown. They used railed carts to transport coal, food, and all sorts of supplies from one place to another without ever having to go up to street level.”

  “That’s awesome!” Kristen said, amazed. “I can’t believe they’re still down here. Can we go in them?”

  “No, sorry,” I laughed at her sense of adventure. “They’re sealed up about ten feet back. A few years ago, a section of the Chicago River’s retention wall broke and turned the tunnels into underground canals, flooding the basements of a bunch of the interconnected buildings and causing tens of millions of dollars worth of damage. Most places sealed them up after that.”

  “Darn!” Kristen huffed. “Oh well.”

  “And you call me, Indy,” I chuckled.

  ***

  When we got back upstairs, the front desk staff was running the night audit reports and things had settled down nicely for a Saturday night.

  Among the litany of reports being run was the “discrepancy report” – just one of many documents printed out on a nightly basis. This particular report indicated any rooms that weren’t matching up with their expected status. For example, if a room attendant cleaned a room and entered it into the housekeeping system as “VC” (Vacant/Clean), but the front desk system said the guest wasn’t due to check out for three more days and therefore noted that the room should be listed as “OC” (Occupied/Clean), this report would indicate the discrepancy. Either the guest had left early without stopping by the front desk to check out, or the room attendant had entered the wrong status into the system and the floor manager hadn’t caught the error. It didn’t happen often since housekeeping typically ran these reports as well before leaving for the evening, but every so often, one would fall through the cracks.

  I was getting ready to head upstairs since the hotel was quiet and I felt Kristen could finish things up when I heard one of the front desk agents mention that there was a discrepancy on the report. It was an “OC” (Occupied/Clean) status room that had been due to check out on Saturday. Since it was now Sunday morning, this inconsistency in room status denoted an error somewhere along the line. The particular room in question was 11-121.

  I guessed that the housekeeping manager for that floor was likely in a rush to get home or head out to the bars on a Saturday evening and something had simply been overlooked. The mistake in status would likely be easily remedied after a quick check.

  “Pull it up in the system,” I told Jerry, the desk agent who had discovered the issue. He typed 11-121 into the “Room” field on his computer screen.

  “Room is registered to an Allen Doddsman with the R & T group,” he said, clicking on the name to show room specifics. “Checked in on the 24th with the rest of the group and was due to check out Saturday. All his room charges are going to R & T’s direct bill, even food and miscellaneous charges, so he must be a group VIP.”

  According to the group resume notes that appeared at the bottom portion of the screen, non-VIPs with the R & T group had their room and tax charges covered by the company while incidental charges were to be billed to the guest credit cards on file. Only VIPs had all charges routed to the direct bill. This meant that Mr. Doddsman was likely someone high up on the R & T staff totem pole.

  “Go ahead and check him in for one more night,” I told the desk agent. “We can’t check the room right now, but it’ll screw up the rest of the audit if we don’t get rid of this discrepancy.

  Kristen was hovering nearby.

  “Hey Kristen,” I said, “go ahead and call security and have them send someone up first thing in the morning to check the room and find out what’s going on. It’s probably just a stay-over, but we have to be sure. Also, send an email to Marian, the director of housekeeping, and copy her assistant to follow up with the room att
endant that cleaned the room as well as the floor manager to ensure they understand proper procedure so that this doesn’t become a recurring issue. Also, send an email to Jay (Jason Altman was our director of front office) to let him know the situation and that we might have to adjust billing for that room in the morning depending on its actual status.

  It appeared that R & T had some deep pockets to be holding their company conference here, but I’m sure they wouldn’t care to be billed for a room night they didn’t use if in fact Mr. Doddsman had departed and this was indeed an error on our part.”

  “Got it,” Kristen nodded.

  “Good.” I stretched and yawned, rolling my neck to work out the late-night kinks. “Then if there’s nothing else, I’m heading up for the night.”

  “Okay, boss,” Kristen yawned back. “Thanks again for the dinner and great tour…Indy.”

  “No problem, Short Round.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  To: allstaff.lanigan@sharedresorts.com

  Subject: 10/29 M.O.D. Report

  THE LANIGAN HOTEL

  CHICAGO, IL

  MANAGER ON DUTY REPORT

  Sunday, October 29th

  Weather: 54/42 Partly Sunny

  Occupancy: 49%

  Arrivals: 348

  Departures: 1242

  Event Resume:

  6th Floor Meeting Rooms (8 a.m. – 10 a.m.) Oak and Elm - Departure packet handouts for Acorn Electric.

  Blue Velvet Room (10 a.m. - noon) - R & T departure buffet

  ***

  It wasn’t even nine in the morning when I was roused by the birdlike chirping of my M.O.D. phone singing its daybreak song.

  Sundays were usually pretty cut and dry; sure, it was a pain in the behind for housekeeping to clean all the dirty rooms and for the front desk to handle all the group checkouts, but that was standard fare, so I knew that something must be up if my phone was ringing this early.