Page 41 of The Mystery Guest

“The dream of clean works best as a team,” I say. “Remember?”

“The team is nonexistent right now. Molly, something’s up with Lily. I know yesterday was a shock, but she’s acting stranger than usual and won’t say what’s wrong. Plus, she keeps disappearing. When we were cleaning a room earlier, I turned around to ask for paper towels, and poof! She was gone. Just like that.”

“Where is she now?” I ask.

“Down there,” Sunshine says with a nod down the hallway.

“Thank you,” I say as I walk to the end of the corridor and find a door propped open with a trolley. Lily’s inside, standing stock-still by the window with a bottle of cleaning spray in one hand and a cloth in the other.

“Lily?” I say, and she jumps halfway out of her skin. “Are you all right?”

She stares at me in a way that does not match any expression I have ever collected in my mental catalogue of human behaviors. “Who’s the boss?” she asks, her voice a shaky whisper.

“What do you mean?” I reply.

“Is it Cheryl or you?”

“Today, Cheryl is Head Maid. Tomorrow things will return to normal. Is that acceptable?”

She shrugs.

“Lily, if ever you have a problem, you can come to me.”

“Can I?” she asks. “Is that how it works?”

“Of course that’s how it works,” I say.

“But loose lips sink ships. You said so yourself when you hired me. ‘Discretion is paramount at the Regency Grand.’ ”

“Lily, you’re the last person I would ever accuse of indiscretion,” I say. “It’s taken me weeks to get you to speak at all. Please don’t go mute on me now.”

“I’m trying. But…it’s not easy. I’m counting on this job, Molly. I got fired once before, and I can’t have it happen again.”

This is the first time she’s mentioned a previous job loss, and the news comes as quite a shock. I swallow my surprise and gently ask, “What happened?”

“I was a cashier in a grocery store before this,” Lily says.

“I remember,” I say. “You had that on your résumé.”

“But what I didn’t tell you is that when I reported a theft by another cashier, it was blamed on me, and I was fired. I figured if I toldyou, you’d never hire me. And now, I’m scared to say anything at all. Molly, who should I trust?”

“Me,” I say. “You’re supposed to trust me.” As I look at Lily, it’s like seeing my old self in a mirror. When I started at the hotel, I trusted no one, and there are times to this day when that unsettling feeling returns.

“Molly, one day you’re my boss, and the next day you’re not,” Lily explains. “And a man I served tea died in the tearoom.” She turns away from me to obliterate some smudgy fingerprints on the window.

“Lily,” I say. “If you’re worried about a murderer in this hotel, I can tell you with complete sincerity there’s no reason to believe there is one.” My stomach does a flip-flop, because what I’m saying is not an irrefutable fact.

Lily turns and stares at me, her eyes expressionless and dull. “The maid is always to blame,” she says, then returns to cleaning without another word.

I can’t help it. I’m feeling quite exasperated by this conversation, and I sigh out loud. Honest to goodness, I am trying my best, but I don’t know how to help this girl. It occurs to me that perhaps the best way is without words, by working with her side by side.

I tackle the bed in silence, removing the dirty sheets and putting on new ones.A tidy bed calms the head,I think to myself. But it’s not working. My head is nowhere near calm, and it’s clear that Lily is in her own state of dishevelment.

I take the soiled sheets over to her trolley and am about to bag them when I notice something in her recycling bin—a folded banker’s box with the nameSerenawritten clearly in black marker on the lid. It’s the box that disappeared during the fire alarm yesterday.

“Lily,” I say.

She turns to face me.

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