Murder With Reservations (2 page)

“Suspicions confirmed,” Sondra said through the electric crackle.

Rhonda started wailing like a storm siren. “Oh, no. I’m not cleaning whipped cream
and
chocolate out of their Jacuzzi.” Angry brown freckles stood out on her pasty face. “The whipped cream alone took me a solid hour. I had to climb inside the tub to clean it. I’m calling in sick tomorrow.”

“The honey on the sheets was bad enough,” Helen said. “Sticky stuff put me off my breakfast toast. How many more nights are the food lovers here?”

“A whole week,” Denise said. “Maybe now that they know we know, they won’t use the whipped cream and chocolate.”

“They’ll use it,” Rhonda said. “Once a couple gets on the sauce, they won’t stop.”

“At least they’ve stayed clear of the produce,” Denise said. She reminded Helen of a vegetable goddess. Her broad bosom was twin cabbages, her tight white hair was a cauliflower, and her powerful arms were blue-ribbon zucchini.

“Maybe they’ll have a fight,” Helen said hopefully.

“Hah,” Rhonda said. “Those types never do. They just bring in weirder and grosser stuff, and we have to clean it up. And they never tip.”

“If you want your job, you’ll be here tomorrow at eight thirty,” Denise said.

The head housekeeper silenced any further discussion with a glare. Her massive arms maneuvered the cart out the door. “Helen and Rhonda, take the third floor. Cheryl will work the second floor, and I’ll do one.”

“I hate three,” Rhonda said, when Denise had trundled out of earshot. “It’s the hottest and dirtiest floor in the hotel.”

“And we’re the newest workers,” Helen said. “After two years, I’m entitled to some consideration,”

Rhonda said. She yanked their cleaning cart so hard it smacked the door frame. “Denise saves the best jobs for herself. She cleans the lobby and the free breakfast room. They’re easy.”

“I don’t think mashed bananas in the carpet are any easier to clean up than whipped cream in the Jacuzzi,” Helen said. “The lobby’s white marble and glass show every scuff and fingerprint, and people leave disgusting things in the fountain. They’re supposed to make a wish and throw in money, not half-eaten candy bars.”

“You missed the kid who threw in his baby brother and wished he’d drown. Sondra had to leap the front desk and do a lifeguard rescue in the lobby. Ruined her good blouse.”

The memory of Sondra’s loss cheered Rhonda. The woman ran on resentment. She was an odd creature with a round white face like a cocktail onion. Her vibrant red hair seemed to suck the color out of the rest of her. Helen thought she was plain, but she saw men stare at Rhonda. They found something about her bony body compelling.

“We’re not going to get anything done standing around yammering,” Rhonda said. “Might as well get started.”

“What’s the room count today?” Helen said.

“Full house,” Rhonda said, checking her sheet. “All twenty rooms on this floor are occupied: seventeen queens, two kings, and the honeymoon suite.” Thirty-seven beds and a foldout couch, twenty refrigerators, twenty-one toilets, twenty tubs, and the dreaded Jacuzzi. Sixty-five mirrors and sixty wastebaskets.Twenty carpets to vacuum and twenty-one bathroom floors to mop.

“Checkouts versus stay-overs?” Helen asked.

That was the crucial question. After the guests checked out, the rooms required a deep cleaning. Even the insides of the drawers were dusted. For stay-overs, the maids scrubbed the bathrooms, made the beds, and emptied the wastebaskets. If they were lucky, guests piled suitcases, clothes and papers on all the furniture, and it couldn’t be dusted. More stay-overs meant a shorter cleaning day.

“Six stay-overs,” Rhonda said.

Fourteen checkouts. A long day. More sore muscles. Helen had worked at the hotel one week and she was just beginning to get over the back pain and muscle aches. She still winced when she had to kneel at the tub or reach for a mop. Cleaning hotel rooms required back-breaking amounts of bending, stooping and lifting. After her first day Helen went home at three thirty in the afternoon and curled up with a heating pad and a bottle of Motrin. She woke up at seven the next morning, feeling like she’d been stomped in an alley.

Helen figured she was combining work with working out. She wouldn’t have to waste time exercising when she got home. She’d have more time to sit by the pool and drink.

“Our first room is a stay-over,” Rhonda said. She maneuvered the cart so it blocked the door, then knocked. “Hello? Anyone home?” Rhonda pounded and shouted until Helen thought she overdid it.

“I’m not taking any chances,” Rhonda said between shouts. “Not since I surprised that naked geezer getting out of the shower. He was too deaf to hear me knock.”

“Ever see any flashers?” Helen asked.

“All the time,” Rhonda said. “It’s always the guys with the little weenies. A man with something worth seeing never shows it.”

Satisfied that the room was empty, Rhonda opened the door with her passkey card. The room looked like an explosion at a rummage sale. Dirty clothes and smelly shoes littered the floor. Shirts and shorts spilled out of suitcases. Hamburger bags and drink cups cluttered the dresser. Something crunched under Helen’s foot.

“What’s that?” Helen asked. She was afraid to look.

“Cheerios,” Rhonda said. “Usually means there’s a baby in the room. People with little kids are big slobs.”

“Is that a diaper on the bedspread?” Helen said.

“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.

H
elen, 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.”