Murder With Reservations Read Free

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