The Maid (15 page)

I could tell the shopkeeper felt sorry for me when he handed over the agreed-upon sum. The tight lips. The smile that wasn’t a smile. I’m beginning to understand the nuances of smiles, their cornucopia of
meanings. I save each smile in a dictionary that I keep alphabetized on a shelf in my mind.

“I’m sorry things didn’t turn out the way you’d hoped,” the shopkeeper said. “With your man, I’m mean.”

“With my man?” I replied. “On the contrary,” I say. “For the first time in a long time, things are going well with him. Very well indeed.”

I walk briskly the entire way back to the hotel, checking the time frequently. I’m making good progress. It’s now five to one, and I’m nearly at the hotel, my time estimation almost exactly right. I’m a bit flushed from the walk, and the wad of bills over my heart is slightly damp, but no matter.

It would appear the hotel has cleared out a bit since the morning; there are fewer guests about. Mr. Preston is alone at his doorman’s podium. When he sees me approaching, he steps out from behind it, his arms oddly stiff by his sides. I wave and rush up the stairs, but Mr. Preston calls down before I reach the top.

“Molly,” he says, his voice a tense whisper. “Go home.”

I stop on the third stair. His expression is odd, as though he very much needs a washroom break.

“Mr. Preston, I can’t go home now. I’m only halfway through my shift.”

“Molly,” he calls down again. “Use the back door.
Please
.”

“Are you quite all right, Mr. Preston? Do you need assistance?”

It’s only then that it comes into focus—the absence of guests in the grand entrance, Mr. Preston standing too formally at the podium, his strange, whispered orders. Through the glass of the revolving doors, I
can make out Mr. Snow and beside him, a looming, shadowy figure. Detective Stark.

“My dear girl,” Mr. Preston says. “Don’t go inside.”

“It’s quite all right,” I say as I march up the remaining steps. “A few more questions won’t kill me.”

I push through the doors. Before I can take more than one step into the lobby, Mr. Snow and Detective Stark block my path. There’s something about Detective Stark’s posture that I don’t like—the way her arms are bowed and her hands outstretched, as if I’m a varmint she’s determined to catch before I take flight. I see Cheryl out of the corner of my eye, standing a few trolley-lengths away, but there’s something different about her too. It’s the first time I’ve seen a genuine smile on her face—a look of anticipation and excitement.

“Excuse me,” I say to Mr. Snow and Detective Stark. “I must not dillydally. The rest of my shift begins in approximately three minutes.”

“I’m afraid it doesn’t,” says Detective Stark.

I look to Mr. Snow, but he can barely meet my eye. His glasses are cantilevered to one side. Beads of sweat have formed at his temples. “Molly, the detective is taking you back to the station for more questioning.”

“Can’t I answer questions here and then get back to work? I have a heavy workload today.”

“That won’t be possible,” says Detective Stark. “There’s an easy way and a hard way to do everything. And the easy way is best.”

It’s an interesting comment, but it’s dead wrong. In my line of work, the easy way is the lazy way, not the best way at all. But since we’re in the hotel and that technically makes the detective a guest, I will be polite and bite my tongue.

I look around the lobby again and notice that more people have begun to gather. They’re not milling about, heading to and fro the way they usually do. They’ve formed little clusters—by the reception desk, in the lounge chairs, on the marble landing by the grand staircase. They’re oddly static. And quiet. They’re all looking in one direction. Their cold eyes are looking at me.

“Well, Detective Stark,” I say. “I’ll accept the easy way.” I look at Mr. Snow and add, “But just this once.”

Detective Stark gestures for me to lead the way out the revolving doors, which I do, as she follows too closely behind me. As I pass, I take one glance back and see all eyes tracking my departure.

Mr. Preston is outside the door at the top of the stairs. “Here,” he says, taking my elbow. “Allow me to help you, Molly.”

I’m about to tell him I’m quite all right, but as I look down at the stairs, the red carpet undulates in a vertigo-inducing wave. I hold tightly to Mr. Preston’s arm. It feels warm. Comforting.

We are at the bottom of the staircase.

Detective Stark says, “Let’s go. It’s time.”

“Molly, take good care,” Mr. Preston says.

“I always do,” I reply, not entirely believing my own words.

The car ride is silent. This time, I’m seated in the back of the police cruiser instead of up front. I don’t like it back here. The vinyl upholstery squeaks under me every time I make the slightest move. A bullet-proof glass barrier separates Detective Stark from me. It is smeared with grubby fingerprints and dark-brown blood stains.

Imagine you’re in a limousine, sitting in the back seat, being driven to the opera.

Gran reminds me that entrapment is only a state of mind, that there’s always a way out. I join my hands in my lap and breathe deeply. I will admire the view out the window. Yes. I will concentrate on that.

We are at the station in what feels like seconds. Once inside, Detective Stark leads me to the same white room in which I was questioned before. On our way there, I feel more eyes upon me—uniformed officers who gawk as I pass, some of them offering a nod, not to me, but to Detective Stark. I hold my head high.

“Have a seat,” the detective says. I sit down in the same seat where I sat before, and Detective Stark sits across from me. She closes the door. She doesn’t offer me coffee or even water this time, which is a shame. I could use some water, though I know if I ask for some it will arrive in a dastardly Styrofoam cup.

Shoulders back, chin up, breathe.

Detective Stark has not said a word. She’s sitting there in front of me, watching me. The camera in the corner blinks its red eye at me.

I’m the first to break the silence. “How may I be of service to you, Detective Stark?” I ask.

“How can you be of service to me? Well, Molly the Maid. You can start by telling the truth.”

“My gran used to say that the truth is subjective. But I’ve never quite believed that. I believe the truth is absolute,” I say.

“Then there’s something we agree on,” Detective Stark replies. She leans forward and puts her elbows on the scuffed white table between us. I wish she wouldn’t. I disapprove of elbows on the table. But I don’t say anything.

She is close enough that I can see tiny gold flecks in the irises of her blue eyes. “Since we’re talking about truth,” she says, “I’d like to share with you the results of Mr. Black’s toxicology report. No autopsy report yet, but we’ll have that soon enough. Mr. Black had drugs in his system, the same drug that was on his bedside table and strewn on the floor of his bedroom.”

“Giselle’s medicine,” I say.

“Medicine? Benzodiazepine, laced with some other street drugs.”

It takes me a moment to change the picture in my head from Giselle at the drugstore counter to her acquiring something illicit in a sordid back alley. Something isn’t right. It doesn’t make sense.

“Anyhow,” Detective Stark says, “It wasn’t the pills that killed him. He had a lot in his system, but not enough to kill him.”

“What do you believe killed him then?” I ask.

“We don’t know yet. But I assure you, we’ll get to the bottom of it,” she says. “The full autopsy report will determine if the petechial hemorrhaging was due to a cardiac arrest or if something more sinister happened.”

It comes back to me in a flash. The room starts to spin. I see Mr. Black, his skin gray and taut, the little pinprick bruises around his eyes, his body stiff and lifeless. After I made the call to the front desk, I looked up. I caught my reflection in the mirror on the wall in front of the bed.

Suddenly, I feel clammy and cold, like I’m about to faint.

Detective Stark purses her lips, bides her time. Eventually, she says, “If you know something, now’s your chance to be on the side of good. You do understand that Mr. Black was a very important man? A VIP?”

“No,” I say.

“Excuse me?” Detective Stark replies.

“I don’t believe that some people are more important than other people. We’re all very important in our own way, Detective. For instance, I’m sitting here with you—a lowly hotel maid—and yet clearly there is something very important about me. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have brought me here today.”

Detective Stark is listening carefully. She zeroes in on my every word.

“Let me ask you something,” she says. “Does it ever make you angry? Being a maid, I mean? Cleaning up after rich people? Taking care of their messes?”

I’m impressed by this line of questioning. This is not what I was expecting at all when I was escorted here.

“Yes,” I answer truthfully. “I do sometimes feel angry. Especially when guests are careless. When they forget that their actions have an impact on others, when I’m treated like I don’t matter.”

Detective Stark says nothing. Her elbows remain on the table, which continues to grate on my nerves even though it’s only officially a breach of etiquette when there’s a meal being served.

“Now let me ask
you
a question,” I say. “Does it ever bother
you
?”

“Does what ever bother me?”

“Cleaning up after rich people. Taking care of their messes,” I say.

The detective pulls back as though I’ve sprouted the head of Hydra and one hundred serpents are hissing in her face. What pleases me, though, is that her elbows are no longer on the table.

“Is that how you see this? That my job as a detective is to clean up after a man has died?”

“What I’m saying is that we’re not so different, when it comes down to it.”

“Is that so?”

“You want this mess cleaned up, and so do I. We both seek a tidy closure to this unfortunate situation. A return to normalcy.”

“What I’m seeking is the truth, Molly. About how Mr. Black died. And right now, I also want to know the truth about you. We’ve uncovered some interesting information in the last forty-eight hours. When we spoke the other day, you said you didn’t know Giselle Black particularly well. But as it turns out, that’s not true.”

I won’t give her the satisfaction of flinching. Giselle is my friend. I’ve never had a friend like her before, and I’m acutely aware of how easy it would be to lose her. I consider how to protect her and tell the truth at the same time.

“Giselle has confided in me in the past. That doesn’t mean I know her as well as I’d like. Mr. Black definitely had a temper. It was hard not to notice Giselle’s bruises. She confessed he was the cause of them.”

“You do realize we’ve been talking to other employees at the hotel, right?”

“I would have expected as much, yes. I’m sure you’ll find them very helpful to your investigation,” I say.

“They’ve told us a lot. Not only about Giselle and Mr. Black. But about you.”

I feel my stomach twist. Surely whoever spoke to Detective Stark would have been fair in their commentary, even if I’m not their cup of tea? And if the detective consulted Mr. Snow, Mr. Preston, or Rodney, she would have received a glowing report on my employee conduct and general reliability.

A thought occurs to me. Cheryl. She was “sick” yesterday—though probably not so sick that she couldn’t make her way down to this very station.

As if reading my mind, the detective says, “Molly, we’ve been talking to Cheryl, your supervisor.”

“I do hope she was helpful,” I reply, though I highly doubt she was.

“We asked Cheryl if she ever cleaned the Blacks’ suite when they
stayed at the hotel. She said that for a while she did clean their suite alongside you. It was her way of maintaining quality control and keeping her maids sharp.”

The acid builds in my stomach. “It was her way of siphoning off tips that were meant for those who do the work rather than for those who stand around watching,” I say.

The detective ignores my words entirely. “Cheryl said that she observed a friendly relationship between you and Giselle, a kind of special kinship that was unusual between a guest and a maid, especially for you, since you don’t really have friends, so I’m told.”

I knew Cheryl was watching me, but I never realized just how much. I take a moment to collect my thoughts before I respond. “Giselle was grateful for my services,” I say. “That was the basis for our relationship.”

“Tell me, did you ever receive tips from Giselle? Or large sums of money?” she asks.

“She and Mr. Black tipped me well,” I answer. I won’t go into further details about the countless times Giselle placed brand-new $100 bills into the palm of my hand to thank me for keeping the suite clean. And I won’t mention her visit to my home nor the charitable monetary gift she left me last night. It’s no one’s business except mine.

“Did Giselle ever give you anything besides money?”

Kindness. Friendship. Help. Trust. “Nothing out of the ordinary,” I say.

“Nothing at all?”

Detective Stark digs in her pocket and takes out a small key. She opens a drawer in the table between us. She takes out the timer, Giselle’s timer, her golden gift to me. The detective places it on the table.

I feel a surge of heat rise to my face. “Cheryl let you into my locker. That’s
my
locker, it’s my personal space. That’s not right, invading someone’s privacy, touching their things without permission.”

“Those lockers are hotel property, Molly. Please remember you’re just an employee, not the owner of the hotel. Now, tell me: are you ready to confess the truth about you and Giselle?”

The truth about Giselle and me is something I barely understand. It’s as strange as a baby rhino being adopted by a tortoise. How am I supposed to explain such a thing? “I don’t know what to tell you,” I say.

“Then let me tell
you
something,” Detective Stark replies as her elbows reclaim the table. “You’re rapidly becoming a person of interest to us. Do you understand what that means?”

I’m detecting an air of condescension. I’ve encountered this before—people who assume that I’m a complete idiot just because I don’t grasp things that come easily to them.

“You’re becoming a VIP, Molly,” Detective Stark adds. “And not the good kind. You’ve proven that you’re capable of leaving out important details, of bending the truth to suit you. I’m going to ask you one more time: are you in contact with Giselle Black?”

I deliberate once more and find I’m able to answer this with 100 percent honesty. “I am not currently in contact with Giselle, though as I understand it, she remains a guest at the hotel.”

“Let’s hope for your sake that’s the truth. And let’s hope the autopsy report shows a natural cause of death. Until then, you’re not to leave the country or attempt to hide from us in any way. You’re not under arrest.”

“I most certainly hope not. I’ve done nothing wrong!”

“Do you have a valid passport?”

“No.”

She cocks her head to one side. “If you’re lying, I’ll find out. I can look you up, you know.”

“And when you do,” I say, “you’ll find that I do not have a passport because I’ve never left the country in my life. You’ll also find I’m a model citizen and that I have a completely clean record.”

“Don’t go anywhere, you understand?”

It’s precisely this kind of language that always trips me up. “May I go to my home? May I go to the store? To the restroom? And what about work?”

She sighs. “Yes, of course you can go home and to all the places you’d usually go. And yes, you can go to work. What I’m saying is we’ll be watching you.”

Here we go again. “Watching me do what?” I ask.

Her eyes drill into mine. “Whatever it is you’re hiding, whoever you’re trying to protect, we’ll find out. One thing I’ve learned in my business is that you can hide dirt for a while, but at some point, it all comes to the surface. Do you understand?”

“You’re asking me if I understand dirt?”

Smudges on doorknobs. Shoe prints on floors. Dust rings on tabletops. Mr. Black dead in his bed.

“Yes, Detective. I understand dirt better than most.”