Chapter 6

Detective Stark marches out of Mr. Snow’s office, leaving Lily and Mr. Snow behind. I follow her as instructed, but she stops suddenly when the corridor opens in two directions. I nearly stumble into her backside.

“Which way to the tearoom?” she asks.

“That all depends,” I reply. “Would you prefer the more scenic route through the lobby or the fastest route through the back corridors?”

“Just get me there as quickly as you can, will you?” she replies, accompanying the statement with what I detect is a generous side serving of sass.

“Very well,” I say. “The early bird catches the worm.” I turn left and lead the detective through the back corridors, turning once more left then right then left, until we reach the Grand Tearoom, where caution tape is affixed across the entrance. A deep sense of unease haunts me once again, a growing apprehension about everything that transpired this morning. When I look inside the room, I gasp out loud at what I see.

“You get used to it over time,” Stark says.

She’s referring to Mr. Grimthorpe, whose body lies stiff in a black bag in the middle of the tearoom floor. Two uniformed officers are zipping the bag closed. But Mr. Grimthorpe’s corpse is not the cause of my shock. It’s the state of the room that’s disconcerting. After all my hard work, it’s now in utter shambles. The tablecloths are tea-stained and askew, the dishes jostled and toppled. The tiles under my feet are sticky. Here and there, finger sandwiches have been trampled and mashed into the floor. It’s a wonder nothing is broken besides Mr. Grimthorpe’s teacup, the shards scattered haphazardly around his body bag.

“As you know, Detective,” I say, “I’ve encountered death before.” What I don’t say is that I’m not terribly upset that Mr. Grimthorpe is dead and that sometimes fate has an uncanny way of delivering exactly what’s deserved. I also don’t mention my connection to the man in the body bag. If I’ve learned anything from Columbo and from past experience, it’s that living acquaintances of the dead quickly become suspects, and that’s the last thing I want to be right now.

I look about the room once more and feel utterly crestfallen. I was so proud of the way we’d transformed it from a dusty, old storage room to a dazzling, new event space. It’s then that it strikes me—how a room is just a container. Any space can be poisoned by the memory of what occurred within it. A tearoom, a library, a parlor…

I suddenly feel unsteady on my feet. The whole world tilts on an angle. Behind me, I hear sobs and sniffs.

“Is he really…dead?” a quivering voice asks.

Detective Stark and I turn.

Gathered in the corridor is a gaggle of middle-aged women pressed so tightly together it’s hard to tell where one woman ends and the next begins. They’re all wearing VIP lanyards and identical buttons over their hearts that read J. D. Grimthorpe’s #1 Fan.

“Who are you?” Stark asks.

“We are the LAMBS,” says a tall woman with curly gray hair at the front of the group. I recognize her immediately as the president of the LAMBS because of her small red flag. For days, she’s carried it, herding her brethren around the hotel, hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous writer himself, score his autograph, or, better yet, snap a selfie by his side.

“They’re a fan club,” I explain to the detective. “Ardent readers of mystery novels who specialize in the study of Mr. Grimthorpe and his oeuvre.”

“We’re not just a fan club. We are aficionados of mystery,” a different, rather buxom gray-haired woman says as she points to the #1 Fan button fastened to her lumpy brown sweater. The sweater is either made entirely of cat hair or so covered in it that the material underneath is largely invisible.

“Dead or alive, in sickness or in health, we devote ourselves to the master of mystery,” a petite woman sporting silver-gray hair with bright fuchsia highlights says from mid-huddle. “In our hearts and memories, J.D. lives in perpetuum.”

“Meaning: forever,” I say, recalling the moment when I first learned the phrase.

Several if not all of the LAMBS begin to sob in unison. A packet of tissues appears from somewhere in the huddle and is passed from one fan club member to the next.

“You’re a detective?” the tall, curly-haired president asks Stark as she points her red flag at her.

“Yeah,” Stark replies.

“Do you know the cause of death?” asks another woman mid-huddle.

“That’s what I’m here to find out,” Stark replies.

“Was it murder?” the petite woman with the shock of pink hair asks.

“I haven’t ruled out anything,” Detective Stark replies.

“I can help you,” the cat-hair-sweater lady offers. “I’m an expert on J. D. Grimthorpe.”

“I’ve already got more help than I want,” Stark replies as she looks at me. “And what I require from all of you right now is privacy. I’m going to ask you to clear the vicinity immediately.”

The president nods. “Of course. LAMBS—give the detective space.” She raises her red flag to rally the others. “Detective, we’re here if you change your mind and want background information,” she offers as she guides her group away from the tearoom entrance.

“Please don’t forget us,” says the tiny, gray-haired woman with the fuchsia highlights.

“I couldn’t if I tried,” Detective Stark replies.

The flag-bearing president leads her flock down the corridor and out of sight.

Once they’re gone, Detective Stark raises the yellow caution tape hanging across the entrance. “Go in, Molly,” she orders.

“How kind of you,” I say as I duck under the tape. Detective Stark follows after me.

The two male officers who were zipping up the body bag saunter our way.

“Findings?” Detective Stark asks.

“Urticaria around the mouth, angioedema under the eyes.”

“Meaning: swelling consistent with organ failure or sometimes cardiac arrest,” I say. “But what really causes a heart to stop? That’s always the question, is it not?”

The officers turn my way as though seeing me for the first time. “Who the hell is she?” the taller one asks.

“Molly. She’s just a maid,” Detective Stark replies.

“Molly the maid? You’ve gotta be kidding me,” says the shorter one.

“Wish I were,” Detective Stark replies sotto voce, but not sotto voce enough to escape my ears.

“What’s a maid doing at the crime scene?” the tall one asks.

“Are you assuming this is a crime scene?” I ask. “When you assume, you make an A-S-S out of U and ME.” For some reason I cannot fathom, Detective Stark rolls her eyes, while the mouths of both her officers fall slack.

“Ignore her,” Detective Stark says. “She’s my problem. Just get back to work.”

“But I need to clean this mess up,” I tell the detective. “It will take some time to return this room to a state of perfection.”

“Not a chance. No cleaning,” Stark says.

I realize only then what a foolish impulse this was.

The two officers go back to the mess at the front of the room.

Stark removes a small notebook from her pocket. “Okay, let’s get this over with. I want you to describe the room as it was before the event. Can you tell me who and what was where the moment before Mr. Grimthorpe took to the stage? No detail is too small. Do you understand?”

“I understand perfectly,” I reply as I turn back time to this morning and call to my mind a portrait of the tearoom in its full glory, populated with guests awaiting Mr. Grimthorpe’s entrance.

“At a quarter past nine, all the guests were seated. Porters, waiters, and maids stood on the sidelines. I was right there, near the front of the room, right beside Lily. The photographers and journalists were behind us.”

“And that table?” Stark asks.

“The booksellers were behind it. And Lily was manning Mr. Grimthorpe’s tea cart.”

“Is that his cart there?” She points to a cart at the front of the room.

“It is,” I reply. “I mean, it was Mr. Grimthorpe’s tea cart.”

“Boys!” Detective Stark calls out. “That one’s the Grimthorpe cart.” They nod and begin inspecting it with gloved hands.

“Was Grimthorpe in the room when you entered?” Stark asks.

“No. He was behind the hidden paneled door in the wall. Ms. Serena Sharpe, Mr. Grimthorpe’s personal secretary, knocked. Then Mr. Grimthorpe emerged. The room went pin-drop silent as he walked onto the stage and placed his cue cards on the podium.”

“Right. The cue cards. Boys!” she calls out. “Did you locate any cue cards?”

“No, ma’am,” the tall officer replies.

The other shakes his head.

“And what happened next, Molly?” Stark asks as she scribbles on her notepad.

“Mr. Grimthorpe cleared his throat and asked for a cup of tea, which Lily poured for him and rushed to the stage.”

“We’ll be testing the tea in that teapot.”

“No need,” I say. “It was English Breakfast. I know that for a fact.”

“I mean testing for toxins, Molly. Do you get that? We want to know if someone, like that half-wit in Mr. Snow’s office, put something in the writer’s tea.”

“There’s no need for name-calling,” I say. “And as for Grimthorpe’s tea, there most certainly was something in it: honey.”

“Honey,” Detective Stark repeats.

“Yes. From the honey pot I placed on the tea cart earlier. As I mentioned, right before the big event, I inspected the tea cart myself and realized there were qualitative faux pas. Mr. Grimthorpe takes his tea with honey, not sugar. I straightened an off-kilter doily, then switched out the sugar bowl for a honey pot.”

“Boys!” she calls out again. “Locate the honey pot on that cart.”

The gloved men search for it but fail to find it.

“It’s got to be there,” I say. “A high-quality silver pot with a small cutout in the lid for a Regency Grand spoon.” I march over to the cart, but when I arrive, all I see is a bare doily on the silver tray.

“The honey pot is gone,” I say. I look about the room. There are sugar bowls on every table but no other honey pots because they’re not a part of our regular tea service.

“How strange,” I say. “Mr. Grimthorpe walked off the stage himself to add more honey to his tea.”

“Did he drink from that cup that’s broken on the floor?” Detective Stark asks.

“Most definitely. We all saw it. He took several sips right away and a few more when he got back onstage. Then he put the cup down and started to speak. He was about to reveal a secret—he said as much—but before he could, he began to sway, appearing almost inebriated. Suddenly, he tipped forward and then crashed onto the floor on top of poor Lily.”

“And his teacup went flying,” Stark notes.

“It did,” I reply, eyeing the shards on the floor. “And so did the spoon and the saucer.”

Detective Stark walks over to the broken cup and saucer on the floor, gingerly crouching by the shards. She turns to her officers. “Boys, did you bag a spoon from the floor?”

“No,” says the tall one, and the other shakes his head.

She writes something down, then turns a page on her pad. “What happened after Grimthorpe collapsed?” she asks.

“Everyone rushed to the front of the room. There were calls for help, people jostling. I pushed my way forward, then I extricated Lily from underneath Mr. Grimthorpe. Mr. Snow and his personal secretary, Ms. Serena Sharpe, were trying to revive him.”

The detective’s head jolts up from her pad. “Where do you suppose she is now, that secretary?”

“In her room, perhaps?” I offer. “It adjoins Mr. Grimthorpe’s on the second floor.”

“Adjoining rooms? With her boss?” the detective says. She turns to her men. “Did it occur to either of you to detain and question the personal secretary?”

The two men avoid her eyes.

Detective Stark snaps her notepad shut. “Time to hustle,” she says as she marches toward the exit.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“To find Serena Sharpe.”

“You’re dismissed. Go do whatever it is you do here,” Detective Stark announces as she presses the Up button with a good deal more force than is necessary. “But don’t leave this hotel yet, Molly. You hear? And don’t let that sidekick of yours go anywhere either.”

“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:

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.