by Elaine Viets
“Yep. A dirty one. People use those spreads for diaper-changing stations, among other things.” Rhonda pulled off the bedspread and piled it with the clean pillows on a chair.
“Yuck,” Helen said. “Shouldn’t we throw the spread in the wash?”
“No. Our bedspreads get cleaned every two weeks.”
Helen’s stomach lurched.
“Hey, we’re better than most hotels,” Rhonda said. “But I’d sooner sleep in a Dumpster than on a hotel spread.”
“Why didn’t they put the diaper in the wastebasket?” Helen said.
“That’s on top of the TV to keep it away from the baby.”
“Well, I’m glad this room is a mess,” Helen said. “There’s less for us to clean. We can’t dust around all that junk. How do you want to divide the work?”
“I’ll make the beds. You take the bathroom.”
Rats. Helen hated cleaning bathrooms. Half the human race wasn’t housebroken, and people shed worse than long-haired dogs. This bathtub was a hairy horror. Wet towels turned the floor into a swamp. Helen picked them up by the corners and prayed the brown stains were makeup. She didn’t have much time to brood. Helen and Rhonda had exactly eighteen minutes to finish each room.
The next room was a checkout. The smell of sweat and smoke slugged them when they walked in the door. Cigarette-butt mountains overflowed the ashtrays. Helen counted eighteen beer cans tossed near the wastebasket. Two made it into the can.
“A male smoker,” Rhonda said. “The worst kind of slob.”
“How do you know it’s a guy?” Helen said.
“Look at the john. I swear I’m going to paint targets on the toilets. Oh, man. This is so disgusting.”
“What?” Helen asked.
“The guy ate peanuts and threw the shells on the floor. Peanut shells take forever to vacuum out of the carpet. You know, I can understand people thinking, ‘I’m on vacation and I’m going to enjoy myself.’ So they behave like total slobs and wreck the room. But if they’re going to indulge, at least tip. Some women leave a couple of bucks for the privilege of throwing their towels on the floor. But men expect to be picked up after. Men are pigs.”
“The men in this hotel are,” Helen said. She didn’t think Phil was a pig, but this was no time to praise her nearly perfect boyfriend. Rhonda wanted to rant. Helen didn’t mind. A raging Rhonda cleaned faster. The two women had the room done in eighteen minutes flat, peanut shells and all.
They spent the next two hours companionably cleaning and complaining, until they were in the zone. That was when they moved through the rooms, swift and wordless, creating their own tidy ballet. Rhonda did the beds. Helen did the bathrooms. Rhonda dusted. Helen cleaned the mirrors. Rhonda vacuumed. Helen mopped. The room was done and they were on to the next one.
By two o’clock they had three rooms to go. One was a checkout. One was occupied. The last was 323, the hotel’s most notorious room. Whenever anything went wrong, it was always in 323. This was the room with the loud parties. Wives caught unfaithful husbands and started bitch-slapping battles in 323. People did drugs and threesomes in that room. One man killed himself with pain pills.
Some staffers thought the room was jinxed. Others believed the problem was the location. Room 323 was near the back exit to the parking lot, so guests thought they could sneak in and out. But the security cameras caught them lugging in giant coolers or hiding little Baggies, smuggling in old hookers or underage girls. The guests in 323 were drunk, loud, rude—or all three.
Room 323 was a smoking room, and even on a quiet day it was the dirtiest of all.
“Wonder what’s waiting for us today,” Rhonda said.
“It can’t be any worse than the dirty diaper on the bedspread,” Helen said.
“Trust me, it can,” Rhonda said.
Before they could find out, there was a walkie-talkie squawk from Sondra at the front desk. “The woman in 223 says there’s water running down her walls,” she said.
“Did you say water on the walls?” Rhonda shook the walkie-talkie, in case it had garbled the words.
“You heard right,” Sondra said. “She thinks it’s coming from the room upstairs.”
“That would be 323,” Rhonda said.
“Of course it would,” Sondra said.
“I’ll look into it,” Rhonda said, with a martyred sigh.
She knocked and pounded louder than ever on room 323, but the only response was silence. This wasn’t a peaceful quiet. It felt ominous. But Helen knew the room’s deadly reputation.
Rhonda snicked open the door with her key card. They heard the running water the same time as it sloshed over their shoes in an icy wave. Cold water was roaring into the bathtub full force and rushing over the tub’s sides in a man-made Niagra. The bathroom floor was flooded.
Rhonda waded into the bathroom. “Look at this,” she moaned as she turned off the faucet. “We’ll be in here till midnight.”
Helen sloshed past the disaster area into the dimly lit bedroom. At first she wondered why someone had left a pile of pillows and a Persian lamb stole on the unmade bed. Then she realized she was looking at acres of white, doughy skin. A broad back and broader bottom were carpeted with curly black hair. The hair wandered down the backs of the meaty thighs and across the upper arms. There were little hairy outbreaks on the fingers and toes.
A naked man was lying facedown on the bed.
“Not another suicide!” Rhonda shrieked like a lost soul. “I can’t take it.”
Rhonda’s screeches jabbed at Helen like a rusty knife. The maid had turned into a creature from a horror movie. Her pale face was corpse white and her long red hair looked like a curtain of blood.
Rhonda couldn’t stop screaming, but her frantic shrieks did not wake this man. Helen didn’t think anything would.
CHAPTER 2
“Helen, call 911,” Denise said. “Tell them we need an ambulance.”
Helen’s supervisor seemed to materialize in the sopping chaos of room 323. Rhonda’s shrieks were hitting Helen like hatchet blows. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t move, but she wanted to run. The same two sentences chased each other inside her head: I’ve found another body. The cops will find me and so will my ex-husband.
A drop of sweat landed on Helen’s arm with a tiny plop. Soon it was rolling off her in the steamy room. The air conditioner was off, the window was sealed, and the temperature had to be ninety. Helen could almost hear the mold growing in the warm, swampy carpet. The air smelled foul, like something had d—
Helen put the brakes on that train of thought. She tried to avoid the monstrous sluglike body on the bed, but it seemed to glow and pulse in the dim light like an alien creature.
Denise put a motherly arm around the shrieking maid. “Rhonda, honey, it’s OK. Go downstairs to the breakfast room and get yourself some hot tea with lots of sugar.” Denise pushed Rhonda toward the door. The maid moved like an extra in Day of the Dead, but at least she’d quit screaming.
Helen was slightly dazed by the sudden silence.
“Don’t stand there, Helen,” Denise said. “Call 911 and get that ambulance. It’s hot in here.” She mopped her face with a wad of tissues, then turned on the room’s air conditioner.
She’s disturbing the crime scene, Helen thought. “We want homicide, right?” she said.
“What for?” Denise said.
“For the dead man,” Helen said.
Denise laughed, loud and hard. The barroom laugh sounded strange coming from this maternal white-haired woman. “He’s not dead. He’s dead drunk.”
Denise reached under the bedspread and fished out two empty fifths of Jack Daniel’s. “His pal Jack here knocked him out. I’m sending him to the hospital to protect our hotel from liability, in case he’s in an alcoholic coma or had a heart attack. Personally, I think he’s healthy as a horse. But Rhonda’s screaming could wake the dead, and it didn’t make him twitch, so we gotta have him checked. Besides, I want to make sure he’s well
enough to cough up the money to repair this room and 223. I hope we got his credit card imprint. Big Boy here will pay for your overtime.”
There was a ripping sound, as if a giant had torn the bedspread in two. The reek in the room grew worse.
“You’ll probably want to call from downstairs,” Denise said. “Hurry, before I kill this gasbag myself.”
Helen left. She would have laughed if she hadn’t been so scared. She would have danced down the hall if her knees weren’t so wobbly. The body on the bed wasn’t dead. The cops wouldn’t find her. Her ex wouldn’t know where she was. She was safe and snug in South Florida, where everyone was from somewhere else.
She’d still ask Sondra to call 911 from the front desk, in case the police showed up anyway. The Full Moon was in Seafield Village, a little community that fit into Fort Lauderdale like a puzzle piece. Helen figured the Seafield police must talk to the Lauderdale cops. She didn’t want them comparing notes about her.
The paramedics turned up twelve minutes later in a shiny red ambulance. No police cars were in its wake. Helen felt her heart flutter when three tanned hunks rolled a stretcher into the lobby.
“Where is he?” the hunk with the broadest shoulders said.
“Up on three,” Helen said, leading the hotties to the elevator. It was a tight fit with the strapping men and the stretcher. That was fine with Helen.
“Naturally,” the hunk with the wavy blond hair said. “They’re always on the top floor. I bet he’s overweight, too.”
“And naked,” Helen said.
“How come the good-looking guys are never naked?” the third hunk with the sapphire eyes said. The other two paramedics nodded. Helen’s fantasies were DOA before the elevator doors opened.
By the time the corpulent, crepitant occupant of room 323 was loaded up and wheeled out, Rhonda had recovered from the shock of seeing his undead body. She was back in the room, pale as old paper and bristling with resentment.
Denise bustled in with two portable fans. “Run these to dry the carpet around the bathroom door,” she said. “Wipe down all the surfaces, strip the bed to the mattress, send the spread to the laundry, and mop up as much water as you can in the bathroom. At least you won’t have to clean the tub.”
Denise grinned. Rhonda didn’t laugh. She waited till Denise left, then wielded the mop with vicious swings, slopping more water on the already wet carpet. “This is the last straw,” she said. “If she thinks I’m going to clean that nasty Jacuzzi tomorrow, she’s got another thought coming. She can go ahead and fire me. I don’t care. Where’s she going to find another hotel maid in South Florida who speaks English?”
Helen threw the room towels on the bathroom floor, hoping to absorb the water before Rhonda flung it on the carpet. “The Full Moon has to be the only hotel around here where the staff speaks English.” Helen was eager to change the subject.
“That’s Sybil’s doing,” Rhonda said. “You met the owner yet?”
“Just when I was hired.” Helen picked up the dripping towels and carried them to the dirty laundry sack. The water wasn’t sloshing around on the floor quite so much.
“They don’t make ’em like Sybil anymore,” Rhonda said. “She and her husband, Carl, built this hotel in 1953. They found all those seashells in the lobby on the Lauderdale beach. Carl died years ago and she runs the place by herself. Sybil doesn’t want a lot of scared illegals working for slave wages. She only hires people who speak English well enough to answer her guests’ questions. That costs her more. You have to admire that.”
“I do,” Helen said. She knew the three little words whispered most often in South Florida hotel rooms were, “No speak English.” Cowed and confused maids scuttled out, avoiding guests’ desperate pleas for towels and lightbulbs.
Helen had to admit Sybil had a knack for hiring people. Her employees stayed, another unusual phenomenon in rootless Florida. Denise had worked at the Full Moon eight years. Cheryl had been there six. Sondra had run the front desk for three years, and Rhonda had cleaned rooms for two. Helen got her job only because Naomi, a sixty-six-year-old maid, tore her rotator cuff making beds. They met on Helen’s first day, which was Naomi’s retirement party. “I’m just like that baseball player, Ozzie Smith,” Naomi had declared. “We got the same work-related injury.”
“Sybil seems like a good person,” Helen said. “I’m lucky to be working for her. But I have to say, room 323 outdid itself today.”
Damn. She could kick herself. She’d brought Rhonda back to the topic Helen wanted to avoid. She braced herself for another tirade. But cleaning seemed to drain the anger out of Rhonda. Her skinny body was electric with energy as she mopped the floor, then ripped the linens from the bed. She pulled and pounded the new sheets and pillows into place.
Helen was dusting when Rhonda went back to finish the now-dry bathroom. In the dresser mirror, she saw Rhonda wipe the toilet seat, then use the same rag to clean the in-room coffeepot. Helen’s stomach lurched. She’d be drinking tea for a while.
Finally the room smelled fresh and looked clean, though the carpet still squished. The maids closed the door to the quiet whir of the drying fans and carried the dirty linens downstairs to the laundry room.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” Rhonda said.
It was more like fifteen. Rhonda returned with dust bunnies in her hair and a black, oily smudge on her right cheek.
“What happened to you?” Helen said. “I thought this hotel was too new for a coal chute.”
Rhonda laughed, but didn’t answer. She stood in front of the mirror by the time clock and scrubbed at the smudge on her cheek with a wet paper towel. Then she combed out the dust that grayed her fiery hair and started changing into her street clothes behind the rack of clean smocks.
Helen threw her soiled smock in the wash pile. She’d walk home in her jeans and T-shirt.
“Glad this day is done,” she said.
“Do you want to go out for something to eat?” Rhonda called from behind the rack. Helen saw a flash of bright red hair, like an exotic bird darting by.
“Sorry, I’m broke,” Helen said. “I had a root canal and it took a big bite out of my savings, excuse the pun.” Twenty-five hundred dollars was a nasty hit, more than a third of her stash.
Rhonda didn’t ask if Helen had dental insurance. No one did at the Full Moon.
“My treat.” Rhonda held up a crisp fifty. Helen blinked. This was major money where maids hoped for two-dollar tips.
“Wow. Some big spender really tipped you,” Helen said.
“Are you kidding—at this place? It’s from my boyfriend.” Rhonda’s shrill voice softened. “He gives me walking-around money. He’s so considerate. He’s going to take me away from all this.”
Helen was glad Rhonda couldn’t see her face. Pale, skinny Rhonda did not seem like the kind of woman men took away from anything. She was born to wield a mop, a surly Cinderella without a fairy godmother.
“He sounds wonderful. I’d like to meet him,” Helen said.
Rhonda’s face appeared over the top of the rack. She looked foxy-sly. “He’s very shy,” she said. “But he’s so handsome. He listens to me. What man does that? He’s working on this plan. I can’t say anything yet. But when he makes his big score, I can tell everyone about us. I’ll have a diamond ring and everything.”
Rhonda held up her empty left hand, the nails dry and chipped from cleaning solvents. She saw the doubt on Helen’s face.
“He doesn’t have a wife,” she said quickly, though Helen had never mentioned one. “He’s single for sure. He’ll be real rich, real soon. He’s going to take me away, and we’ll live on the water and have a big house with a boat, like all the rich people in Florida.”
Her plain face lit up and turned a lovely pink. Her strange red hair glowed. For a moment Rhonda was almost beautiful.
She’s in love, Helen thought. She’s so far gone, she’s afraid to say his name, as if that ordinary act would destroy her dreams.
Rhonda shrugged. “It’s OK. I’ll eat alone. I’m meeting my boyfriend in an hour. Until he shows, it will be nice to sit in a booth and have someone wait on me for a change.”
“Amen, sister,” Helen said.
“Here, let me show you what else he’s done for me.” Rhonda dug into her shapeless black leather purse and brought out a plane ticket. “It’s to Mexico City. My mama’s wanted to go to Mexico all her life. She’s never been out of the country. My boyfriend said I could buy anything I wanted with his money. I saw these cheap fares in the paper and I thought, I can send my mama on her dream trip. All because of my boyfriend.”
“Sounds like you’ve got a good man,” Helen said. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and winced. “I’d better get home and clean up before I scare my guy.”
She poked her head around the corner to say good night to Sondra at the front desk. Sondra was on her hands and knees, using a screwdriver to remove the cover on a large air vent. It was a dirty job, and Helen wondered why the elegant African-American clerk was doing it herself.
“Sondra, you’re going to ruin your pretty outfit,” Helen said. “Why don’t you call maintenance?”
Sondra looked strangely guilty. Helen could see the flush under her milk-chocolate skin. Her neck and shoulders were suddenly rigid. “Uh, they’re busy,” she said. “They’re checking for water damage in 223. This vent isn’t working right. Sometimes paper scraps get sucked into it. Thought I’d take a look.”
Helen stared at her. “You’re wearing a white blouse. Why mess it up?”
“Think I don’t know how to fix things because I’m a girl?” Sondra said. There was an edge to her voice.
“Of course not.” Helen backed off. It wasn’t her business. “You don’t have school tonight, do you?”
Sondra was getting her degree in business administration. Her job at the Full Moon paid for her tuition.
“Nope. I’m here till midnight.” She smiled, her temporary snappishness gone. “What was Rhonda carrying on about?”