Chapter 12

I’ve excused myself from my breakfast with the LAMBS and am leaving the Social when Angela stops me at the front of the restaurant.

“Molly, you were amazing!” she says. “Those ladies totally believed you were a detective, bought it hook, line, and sinker!”

“That was humiliating and deceitful,” I say. “And I’m not sure I uncovered anything of value.”

“Sometimes what sounds like nothing at first becomes the key to unlocking the mystery. You just have to know how to piece things together.”

“I’m not interested in piecing things together, Angela. I’m interested in doing my job—my job as a maid,” I say.

“Okay,” Angela replies. “Don’t bust a gasket. Go be a maid. Ignore the shite-fest going on all around you. But, Molls, be careful, okay? And if you hear or see anything suspicious, will you let me know?”

“Yes,” I say. “May I go now?”

I don’t wait for a response. I simply march my way out of the restaurant and head for the lobby, where Mr. Snow spots me and beckons me to the reception desk. “Where are you going, Molly?”

“Angela’s done with me,” I say. “And vice versa. I’m going back to my real job now if that’s all right with you.”

“Very well,” says Mr. Snow. “The maids upstairs will be happy to see you.”

I make my way to the back staircase and head to the fourth floor. My stomach is turned inside out. I know exactly why I’m so distressed. During breakfast with the LAMBS, I pretended to be something I’m not, and even though Gran has no eyes to see it, I know my behavior would not make her proud. I’m a fraud and a hypocrite, two things she never taught me to be. Why didn’t I just speak up and tell the truth? Why didn’t I insist to the LAMBS that I’m just an ordinary maid?

As I reach the fourth floor, I find Sunshine in the hallway with her trolley and an overflowing bag of laundry.

“Oh, Molly,” she says the moment she lays eyes on me. “Please tell me you’re back to work with us. We can’t keep up. New Boss Lady is in the staff lounge ‘taking a load off,’ and Lily—well, let’s just say I don’t know what’s going on with her today. We’re exhausted. Look at Sunitha.”

Sunitha appears from the guest room next door, dragging a laundry bag full of soiled sheets behind her. She’s glazed over like a frosted tea cake melting in the sun.

“The dream of clean works best as a team,” I say. “Remember?”

“The team is nonexistent right now. Molly, something’s up with Lily. I know yesterday was a shock, but she’s acting stranger than usual and won’t say what’s wrong. Plus, she keeps disappearing. When we were cleaning a room earlier, I turned around to ask for paper towels, and poof! She was gone. Just like that.”

“Where is she now?” I ask.

“Down there,” Sunshine says with a nod down the hallway.

“Thank you,” I say as I walk to the end of the corridor and find a door propped open with a trolley. Lily’s inside, standing stock-still by the window with a bottle of cleaning spray in one hand and a cloth in the other.

“Lily?” I say, and she jumps halfway out of her skin. “Are you all right?”

She stares at me in a way that does not match any expression I have ever collected in my mental catalogue of human behaviors. “Who’s the boss?” she asks, her voice a shaky whisper.

“What do you mean?” I reply.

“Is it Cheryl or you?”

“Today, Cheryl is Head Maid. Tomorrow things will return to normal. Is that acceptable?”

She shrugs.

“Lily, if ever you have a problem, you can come to me.”

“Can I?” she asks. “Is that how it works?”

“Of course that’s how it works,” I say.

“But loose lips sink ships. You said so yourself when you hired me. ‘Discretion is paramount at the Regency Grand.’ ”

“Lily, you’re the last person I would ever accuse of indiscretion,” I say. “It’s taken me weeks to get you to speak at all. Please don’t go mute on me now.”

“I’m trying. But…it’s not easy. I’m counting on this job, Molly. I got fired once before, and I can’t have it happen again.”

This is the first time she’s mentioned a previous job loss, and the news comes as quite a shock. I swallow my surprise and gently ask, “What happened?”

“I was a cashier in a grocery store before this,” Lily says.

“I remember,” I say. “You had that on your résumé.”

“But what I didn’t tell you is that when I reported a theft by another cashier, it was blamed on me, and I was fired. I figured if I told you, you’d never hire me. And now, I’m scared to say anything at all. Molly, who should I trust?”

“Me,” I say. “You’re supposed to trust me.” As I look at Lily, it’s like seeing my old self in a mirror. When I started at the hotel, I trusted no one, and there are times to this day when that unsettling feeling returns.

“Molly, one day you’re my boss, and the next day you’re not,” Lily explains. “And a man I served tea died in the tearoom.” She turns away from me to obliterate some smudgy fingerprints on the window.

“Lily,” I say. “If you’re worried about a murderer in this hotel, I can tell you with complete sincerity there’s no reason to believe there is one.” My stomach does a flip-flop, because what I’m saying is not an irrefutable fact.

Lily turns and stares at me, her eyes expressionless and dull. “The maid is always to blame,” she says, then returns to cleaning without another word.

I can’t help it. I’m feeling quite exasperated by this conversation, and I sigh out loud. Honest to goodness, I am trying my best, but I don’t know how to help this girl. It occurs to me that perhaps the best way is without words, by working with her side by side.

I tackle the bed in silence, removing the dirty sheets and putting on new ones. A tidy bed calms the head, I think to myself. But it’s not working. My head is nowhere near calm, and it’s clear that Lily is in her own state of dishevelment.

I take the soiled sheets over to her trolley and am about to bag them when I notice something in her recycling bin—a folded banker’s box with the name Serena written clearly in black marker on the lid. It’s the box that disappeared during the fire alarm yesterday.

“Lily,” I say.

She turns to face me.

“Did you put this box in your trolley?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“Do you know who did?”

She shakes her head again, then stares at me with those dark, glassy eyes.

“Tell me, Lily. I implore you.”

She has only one thing to say: “Loose lips sink ships.”

---

—My nerves are frayed. As I help Lily clean Room 429, I feel desperately unsettled. I know the true source of my malaise. It is not really Lily, though of course I’m concerned about her. It’s not even Mr. Grimthorpe’s death or the strange occurrences in the hotel. It’s the fact that I’ve become embroiled in a lie, and the very notion shakes me to the core of my being.

Tell a lie once and your truth becomes questionable.Gran’s voice keeps echoing in my head, and I can’t make it stop.

“Lily,” I say. “It’s lunch hour. Time for a break.”

She nods, puts down her spray bottle, and quickly leaves the room.

I suddenly know what I have to do, and there’s not a moment to lose.

I leave the room in a state of imperfection and hurry down to the lobby. I exit the hotel, making my way to the bottom of the plush, red-carpeted stairs. Mr. Preston spots me and stops me.

“Molly,” he says. “Where are you off to in such a rush?”

“An errand,” I explain. “I’ll be back later.”

“I’ve got one to run myself,” he says. “Now, Molly, about that dinner we were going to have this Sunday, I was thinking—”

“Mr. Preston,” I say, interrupting. “Can our dinner please wait until Juan Manuel returns? I’m barely managing as it is, and I just don’t think I can handle anything more right now.”

Mr. Preston’s face falls like a cake taken out of the oven too soon, but before he can say anything else, some businessmen with luggage in tow wave him down. He jumps to their service while I make my hasty retreat.

I head toward the next street over. I walk briskly, turning left, then right, then left again. I arrive at the police station in exactly fifteen minutes. I take a moment to survey the building from across the street—a gray, brutalist block with tinted windows.

I cross the busy street and enter through the main doors into the police reception area.

A blond woman with long purple nails greets me. “Yes?” she says.

“I’m here to see a detective,” I explain, trying to keep my voice steady.

“Complaint? Tip-off? Or are you turning yourself in?” the woman asks.

“The latter,” I say.

She pauses. “You know ‘the latter’ means the last thing I said, right?”

“Yes,” I reply. “I have a flair for vocabulary.”

She of the Purple Talons stares at me with strange, unreadable eyes.

“It’s Detective Stark I must speak with,” I say. “She knows me. I’m a maid at the hotel where Mr. Grimthorpe dropped dead.”

The woman stands then, very slowly. Still facing me, she opens a door behind her and yells down the corridor in a tremulous voice, “Detective Stark! Come quickly! Please?!”

She doesn’t go back to her desk as I expect her to do. Rather, she just stands there, pressed up against the wall, eyeing me like I might steal something or pull a gun.

Heavy boots trudge down the hall, and then Stark, wearing all black as usual, is standing in the doorway. “Molly?” she says. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“She’s turning herself in,” Ms. Purple Talons whispers.

Detective Stark’s eyebrows jolt up. “Come with me,” she says.

I thank Ms. Talons, then follow the detective down a corridor to a room I’ve visited once before under circumstances I don’t care to think about. The room is exactly as I remember it—with offensively bright fluorescent lights and covered in a layer of criminal filth and grime.

“Have a seat,” Stark says, pointing to a dirty black chair in front of a smudged white table. I sit in the revolting chair. The detective takes a seat across from me.

I’m not exactly sure how to begin, since I’ve never confessed to a crime before, so I wait silently for some sort of cue. A red light flashes in the corner of the window behind the detective.

“Did you want a coffee?” Stark asks. “Would that make this easier?”

“It would not,” I reply. Last time I was here, she brought me water, not tea, as I’d requested, and she delivered it to me in a squeaky, ear-offending Styrofoam cup. If that happens again, I don’t think I’ll be able to get my words out.

The detective stares at me. “Well,” she says, “you said why you’re here, so you might as well have out with it. You’ll feel better after, I promise.”

I take a deep breath, then exhale. “I couldn’t live with the deception,” I say. “I feel sick. It’s eating me alive. I’ve been thinking about my gran and how disappointed she’d be if she knew what I’d done. Which she doesn’t know. Because she’s dead.”

“You’re doing the right thing now, Molly. And I’m ready for your confession,” Stark replies.

“I’ve committed a crime,” I say.

“Yes. I know. But you need to be more specific. You need to say out loud that you killed Mr. Grimthorpe, that you poisoned him.”

“What?” I exclaim. I cannot believe my ears. “I did no such thing! What do you take me for, a murderer?”

“You said you’re here to confess.”

“To fraud, not murder!” I reply. “I impersonated an officer of the law, and I’m deeply remorseful. I tried to tell the truth about who I am, but the LAMBS wouldn’t listen. Don’t you see?”

“No, I don’t, Molly,” Stark says. “Because as usual you’re not making sense. I don’t know why that even surprises me anymore.”

I take a moment to collect myself, then start from the beginning, explaining to Stark in minute detail how the LAMBS mistook me for a detective working incognito at the hotel and how despite my protests, they refused to believe the truth—that I’m really just a maid.

“So you see,” I say as I come to my conclusion, “I committed identity fraud. And perhaps obstruction of justice, too. You can charge me now. I deserve it.”

“Charge you?” the detective says. “Because a bunch of middle-aged book freaks mistook you for a detective?”

It’s only then that what Detective Stark said earlier sinks in. “Wait,” I say. “Was Mr. Grimthorpe poisoned?”

Detective Stark sighs. “We got the autopsy and the toxicology report. Ethylene glycol. In his tea. This isn’t public knowledge yet, but you’d have found out soon enough since we’re holding a press conference in an hour. Any idea how ethylene glycol got in his teacup, Molly?” Stark asks as she leans forward in a way that most certainly feels like a space invasion.

“How would I know how antifreeze got in his tea?” I reply.

Stark puts her elbows on the table in front of me. “I never said anything about antifreeze,” she says.

“That’s what ethylene glycol is,” I explain. “Frankly, I’m shocked that an officer of your stature does not know this.”

“God help me,” says Stark as she brings her hands to her forehead. “Molly, I never told you ethylene glycol is antifreeze! And that’s not exactly common knowledge, now, is it? Can you see how that makes me think you’re Grimthorpe’s killer?” She’s squinting at me now in a manner that is most unbecoming.

“Do you take me for an imbecile?” I ask. “I’ll have you know I’m quite knowledgeable about chemicals and poisons, and not just from Columbo. Angela once told me a true story about a woman who killed her first and then her second husband by baking common antifreeze into their scones. There was a made-for-TV movie about it—Black Widows, I think it was called. It’s one of her favorites.”

“Angela? Who’s Angela?” Stark asks.

“The bartender at the Social,” I reply. “The movie title is apropos, don’t you think?”

Detective Stark crosses her arms. “What I think is that if you know so much about poisons, you know exactly why antifreeze was used to murder Mr. Grimthorpe.”

“Indeed I do,” I say. “Because it tastes sweet. Very sweet. You can hide it in almost anything.”

“Exactly,” Detective Stark replies. “And how did Mr. Grimthorpe take his tea, Molly?”

“With honey,” I reply. “Lots of it.”

“That’s right!” says Stark in a gratingly singsong voice. “And who put the honey pot on his tea cart, Molly?”

“Me,” I say with grave authority. I realize only after the word leaves my mouth that this could be misconstrued. “But I didn’t poison Mr. Grimthorpe,” I clarify. “I had no motive to do so.”

“We found your prints all over his tea cart,” Stark replies.

“Of course you did. And I’m sure you found Lily’s, too.”

Detective Stark sniffs but doesn’t respond.

“I came here to confess to a crime you won’t arrest me for only to discover you once again want to peg me for a murder I know nothing about. Detective Stark, if you’re going to arrest me, then you better well have evidence that links me—without a shadow of a doubt—to the crime. You can’t detain me without a motive, some evidence, and a weapon. And so far as I can tell, all you’ve got at the moment is the crime.”

“So where is it, Molly?” Detective Stark asks. “Where’s the goddamn honey pot? Did you keep it as some sort of sick trophy? Or did you throw it in a dumpster?”

“Why not check the hotel?” I ask. “If I’m daft enough to poison a famous man, leaving my fingerprints all over the tea cart, it stands to reason I left the honey pot right in my locker, too.”

Stark guffaws. “Snow let me check your locker last night. Didn’t find much.”

I gasp out loud. “You went in my locker without my permission?”

“Are you serious?” the detective replies.

“Coming here was a terrible mistake,” I say. “You’ll never see me for what I am, no matter how hard I try. Are we done, Detective? May I go now?” I ask.

“I can’t very well stop you, can I?” Detective Stark replies. “But I’ll be watching your every move, Molly. I’ve got eyes in the hotel. I’ve got eyes everywhere.”

Unless she’s a dragonfly or a spider, this is patently ridiculous, but since it’s clear the detective is more than a little enervated, I decide not to question her ocular exaggeration.

Instead, I say, “Goodbye, Detective.” Then I curtsy deeply and leave.

---

—It is only once I’m out of the station and back on the other side of the street that I start to breathe again, and as soon as I do, the gravity of the situation sinks in. Mr. Grimthorpe did not die of natural causes. He was murdered in cold blood. Someone poisoned him, and whoever did it is probably still in the hotel. I have to get back and tell Mr. Snow before the news becomes public.

I pick up my pace, rushing back as fast as my feet will carry me. I’m only a few blocks away when something across the street makes me stop in my tracks. I’m kitty-corner to the local pawnshop, the one with the big glass window display and the neon sign that blazes 24/7.

Mr. Preston is standing outside the shop. He’s studying something in the display window. He saunters into the store, and I hear the chime of the doorbells as he disappears inside. This in itself is not remarkable—Mr. Preston, my friend, the hotel doorman, browsing the neighborhood pawnshop. That is not concerning at all.

The problem is what he held in his hands when he entered. That dark, wooden door and the single eye peeking through the keyhole—even from a distance, I could make out the cover design quite clearly.

It was a rare first-edition copy of The Maid in the Mansion, by J. D. Grimthorpe.