Chapter 3 - Nineteen Days Earlier
Nineteen days before Vivian pushed me into the fountain, I arrived through the loading dock carrying a thrift-store backpack and a pair of rubber-soled shoes.
My badge said NORA BENNETT, TEMPORARY HOUSEKEEPING. That was my real name. The lie was in what the hotel thought the name meant.
Six years earlier I'd sold the staff-scheduling company I built with two friends. It hadn't made me famous, but it had made me wealthy enough to choose how I spent my days. I spent the next three years buying troubled service businesses and rebuilding them with their workers instead of on their backs.
The Aster Grand was supposed to be our biggest turnaround. My investment group, Northline Holdings, had acquired a controlling interest after the hotel's lenders demanded a rescue. The existing management contract kept Graham Vale in charge until the new board's review. I was supposed to attend a formal meeting, vote, and go home.
Then an unsigned letter arrived at my office.
THEY STEAL OUR TIPS. THEY LOCK THE FIRE DOORS. ASK WHAT HAPPENED TO ROOM ATTENDANT CELIA MORENO.
The letter ended with a question I couldn't ignore: WOULD YOU BELIEVE US IF WE WERE WEARING A SUIT?
I took a temporary housekeeping assignment under my own name through an agency. Northline's beneficial ownership wasn't public, and the Vale family had never met me. Dana, my attorney, hated the plan.
"You're the majority investor, not an undercover cop," she told me.
"Then maybe nobody will listen to me unless I stop looking like an investor."
On my first shift, a woman named Ana Morales taught me how to fold a fitted sheet in less than thirty seconds. She had worked there for eleven years and wore a brace on her wrist.
"Don't ask about your tips," she warned. "They'll call you difficult."
"Who will?"
Ana glanced at the security camera. "Everybody with a better badge."
By day four I found shifts missing from timesheets. By day eight I knew staff tips had been rerouted through a fake vendor. By day twelve I found a maintenance report marked CLOSED without the repair ever being made.
On day nineteen, as I mopped the fountain, Ana slipped a folded note into my cleaning cart.
May you like
It contained four words.
THEY FOUND CELIA'S FILE.
