Murder With Reservations Read Free Page B

last straw,” she said. “If she thinks I’m going to clean that nasty Jacuzzi tomorrow, she’s got another thought coming. She can go ahead and fire me. I don’t care. Where’s she going to find another hotel maid in South Florida who speaks English?”
    Helen threw the room towels on the bathroom floor, hoping to absorb the water before Rhonda flung it on the carpet. “The Full Moon has to be the only hotel around here where the staff speaks English.” Helen was eager to change the subject.
    “That’s Sybil’s doing,” Rhonda said. “You met the owner yet?”
    “Just when I was hired.” Helen picked up the dripping towels and carried them to the dirty laundry sack. The water wasn’t sloshing around on the floor quite so much.
    “They don’t make ‘em like Sybil anymore,” Rhonda said. “She and her husband, Carl, built this hotel in 1953. They found all those seashells in the lobby on the Lauderdale beach. Carl died years ago and she runs the place by herself. Sybil doesn’t want a lot of scared illegals working for slave wages. She only hires people who speak English well enough to answer her guests’ questions. That costs her more. You have to admire that.”
    “I do,” Helen said. She knew the three little words whispered most often in South Florida hotel rooms were, “No speak English.” Cowed and confused maids scuttled out, avoiding guests’ desperate pleas for towels and lightbulbs.
    Helen had to admit Sybil had a knack for hiring people. Her employees stayed, another unusual phenomenon in rootless Florida. Denise had worked at the Full Moon eight years. Cheryl had been there six. Sondra had run the front desk for three years, and Rhonda had cleaned rooms for two. Helen got her job only because Naomi, a sixty-six-year-old maid, tore her rotator cuff making beds. They met on Helen’s first day, which was Naomi’s retirement party. “I’m just like that baseball player, Ozzie Smith,” Naomi had declared. “We got the same work-related injury.”
    “Sybil seems like a good person,” Helen said. “I’m lucky to be working for her. But I have to say, room 323 outdid itself today.”
    Damn. She could kick herself. She’d brought Rhonda back to the topic Helen wanted to avoid. She braced herself for another tirade. But cleaning seemed to drain the anger out of Rhonda. Her skinny body was electric with energy as she mopped the floor, then ripped the linens from the bed. She pulled and pounded the new sheets and pillows into place.
    Helen was dusting when Rhonda went back to finish the now-dry bathroom. In the dresser mirror, she saw Rhonda wipe the toilet seat, then use the same rag to clean the in-room coffeepot. Helen’s stomach lurched. She’d be drinking tea for a while.
    Finally the room smelled fresh and looked clean, though the carpet still squished. The maids closed the door to the quiet whir of the drying fans and carried the dirty linens downstairs to the laundry room.
    “I’ll be back in a minute,” Rhonda said.
    It was more like fifteen. Rhonda returned with dust bunnies in her hair and a black, oily smudge on her right cheek.
    “What happened to you?” Helen said. “I thought this hotel was too new for a coal chute.”
    Rhonda laughed, but didn’t answer. She stood in front of the mirror by the time clock and scrubbed at the smudge on her cheek with a wet paper towel. Then she combed out the dust that grayed her fiery hair and started changing into her street clothes behind the rack of clean smocks.
    Helen threw her soiled smock in the wash pile. She’d walk home in her jeans and T-shirt.
    “Glad this day is done,” she said.
    “Do you want to go out for something to eat?” Rhonda called from behind the rack. Helen saw a flash of bright red hair, like an exotic bird darting by.
    “Sorry, I’m broke,” Helen said. “I had a root canal and it took a big bite out of my savings, excuse the pun.” Twenty-five hundred dollars was a nasty hit, more than a third