The Hotel Nantucket — Chapter no 12

12. Graveyard Shift

Grace can’t believe it. She can’t believe it!

It has taken an entire century, but someone is finally doing the digging necessary to arrive at the truth about Grace’s death.

This someone isn’t Lizbet Keaton, and it isn’t Richie Decameron, who showed such enthusiasm about a ghost in his interview and then promptly forgot about it. This someone is eight-year-old Wanda Marsh. Wanda has become, in modern parlance, obsessed with the hotel’s ghost. Zeke mentioned the ghost in an offhand remark while Wanda was searching for a mystery to solve, and Wanda seized on the topic. She begged Kimber to take her to the Nantucket Atheneum, where she and librarian Jessica Olson dug into the archives of the Nantucket Standard and found the article published on August 31, 1922. Jessica made a photocopy for Wanda, who tucked it into the back of her notebook.

Chambermaid Dies in Hotel Fire

Island coroner Wilbur Freeman reported on Monday that there was one fatality in the fire that engulfed the third floor and attic of the Hotel Nantucket. Grace Hadley, age nineteen, a chambermaid at the hotel, perished in her bed, a death that went previously unnoticed because no one—not even the hotel’s general

manager, Leroy Noonan—realized that Hadley was living in the attic.

“The room she was occupying was an overflow storage closet that she’d managed to outfit with one of the hotel’s cots and was using as a bedroom, unbeknownst to anyone on the staff,”

Noonan said. “Had we known Grace was living up there, we would have informed the Nantucket Fire Department immediately so that they might have tried to rescue her. Grace was known for her quick sense of humor, her willingness to take on even the most arduous tasks, and her dedication. We will mourn her loss.”

As reported in our pages last week, the hotel caught fire at two a.m. on Sunday, August 20, following a spirited dinner dance held in the hotel’s ballroom. We have now learned that the cause of the blaze was an “errant cigarette of unknown origin.” Hotel owner Jackson Benedict and his wife, Dahlia, were asleep in their suite at the hotel; however, both the Benedicts escaped without injury.

Miss Hadley was predeceased by both of her parents and her brother, George Hadley, a commercial fisherman.

Wanda shows the article to her mother (who finds Wanda’s interest in Grace’s untimely death a bit disquieting), then to Louie (who doesn’t understand or care to), then to Zeke (who indulges Wanda and listens to her read the entire article aloud), then to Adam (who doesn’t indulge Wanda), and finally to Edie (who suggests that Wanda write an article that Edie will help her submit to the Nantucket Standard).

The truth is right there between the lines! Grace thinks. No one realized Grace was living in the attic. (Jack hid her up there!) Grace was known for taking on the most arduous tasks. (Working as Dahlia

Benedict’s lady’s maid!) The Benedicts had escaped without injury. (Dahlia set the fire, then ran out of the building!) Grace is flattered that Mr. Noonan mentioned her sense of humor.

And her dedication. She’s dedicated, all right. It’s a hundred years later, and she’s still here.

On July 2, in the darkest hour of the night, the door to the fourth-floor storage closet creaks open, and Grace—who isn’t asleep, who never sleeps, never rests, though it’s all she wants, please, someday— sees Wanda poke her little blond head in.

“Grace?” she whispers.

Oh, for heaven’s sake, Grace thinks. Be careful what you wish for.

“Are you here, Grace?” Wanda asks.

Yes, sweet child, Grace thinks. Now go back to bed.

“Can you give me a sign?” Wanda asks. “Can you…knock?”

Grace considers this. She can knock—but what if this leads to trouble? What if it makes Lizbet actually hire an exorcist? Wanda might think she wants Grace to knock, but when Grace does knock, Wanda might scream, faint, or be scarred for life.

There is, apparently, no one more persistent than an eight-year-

old.

“Please, Grace?”

Fine, Grace thinks. She knocks, three short, matter-of-fact raps that cannot be mistaken for anything other than the supernatural.

Wanda drops her pad and pencil and claps her hand over her mouth.

Now I’ve gone and done it, Grace thinks.

Wanda whispers, “I knew it. Thank you, Grace!”

Grace follows Wanda back to her room. Wanda takes the elevator all the way down to the level where the wellness center is and creeps up the back stairs. So this is how she avoids the lobby! Wanda opens the door to suite 114 with the key card she has tucked into her notebook and returns quietly to bed. Tonight she has chosen the lower bunk closest to the door, and Louie is on the upper bunk farthest from the door. Clever girl.

Grace is tempted to pull the covers up over Wanda’s shoulders and tuck her in, but she’s done enough for one night. She whisks out of the suite and down the corridor. In the lobby—oh, hello!—she finds Wanda’s mother, Kimber, leaning over the desk, deep in conversation with Richie. It’s so late that Raoul, the night bellman, has gone home. Richie and Kimber are the only two people awake in the entire hotel; this, Grace can sense. They’re eating bowls of soft- serve ice cream that Richie has obviously brought from the break room.

“Craig told me I was too critical,” Kimber says. “He claimed I was always harping on things that other people—such as my nanny—let ride. Do you know what happens when you let things ride?

Mediocrity.” She draws a spoon over the melting ridge of chocolate, then holds the spoon in the air before her mouth. “What about you?

Is there a Mrs. Richie?”

“I’m divorced,” Richie says. “Three kids. Unfortunately, we split while I was still at the insurance company, so my alimony and child- support payments are calculated on an income I no longer make. I

worked for a start-up sneaker concern when I left insurance, but my CEO was a twenty-two-year-old kid out of West Hartford whose parents were bankrolling him. He mismanaged the business and it

went under.”

“Ugh,” Kimber says.

“Big ugh,” Richie says. “I’ve tried to go back to court but I still owe my attorney money from the first go-round, so he’s not exactly eager to take my calls. I’m way behind in paying Amanda and she refuses to let me see the kids until I catch up.”

“Oh no,” Kimber says. “I’m so sorry.”

“Hearing my sad story probably isn’t helping your insomnia,”

Richie says. “Anyway, I try to be grateful for what I do have. I’m gainfully employed and I’m healthy.”

“And handsome and charming!” Kimber says.

Well! Grace thinks. That’s forward!

“Thank you,” Richie says. “You’re good for my ego.”

“I mean it,” Kimber says. She licks the ice cream from the spoon like it’s performance art. “You’re quite the catch. You could easily find a woman to date on this island.”

Richie laughs. “During the day,” he says. “I work every single night.”

“I’m here every single night,” Kimber says.

Audacious! Grace thinks. She’s making it very clear that Richie is her crush. How will he respond?

He clears his throat, blushes, stares into his bowl of vanilla.

“Wanda told me there’s a ladder to the widow’s walk up on the fourth floor,” Kimber says. “Want to check it out?”

“I shouldn’t,” Richie says. “I’m on the clock.”

“It’s one thirty in the morning,” Kimber says. “Nobody will need you.”

“Mr. Yamaguchi is checking out tomorrow,” Richie says. “He’s been here all week and I need to pull his bill together. Guy’s a big spender—and a big drinker. He’s ordered two bottles of Dom Pérignon every night, and as far as I know, he’s by himself.”

“Do his bill later,” Kimber says. “Come on.”

There’s no way Grace is missing this. She trails Richie and Kimber up to the fourth floor and watches as first Kimber and then, reluctantly, Richie clamber up the ship’s ladder to the widow’s walk.

Grace is confined to the inside of the building, but that’s okay because she knows what the view looks like. She used to ascend that very same ship’s ladder with Jack; they were standing together on the walk overlooking the harbor when he told Grace he loved her and that, in a few short weeks, he would divorce Dahlia and marry Grace. (Lies, all of it.) Back then, Grace hadn’t seen how she was being used, and she certainly didn’t know she would be murdered, and so the time on the widow’s walk looking over the water and the streets of sleeping Nantucket had seemed…magical, transcendent.

She had believed, in those stolen moments, that everything would

turn out okay.

Ha.

From what Grace can see, it’s a clear night. A crescent moon hangs just west of the white spire of the Congregational church.

Grace sees Kimber shiver—she’s wearing only shorty pajamas, a thin cardigan, and a pair of the hotel slippers, which is silly because Grace knows she has a perfectly good robe hanging on the back of her bathroom door. She may be exaggerating about how cold she is

so that Richie will put an arm around her, but he’s a good foot or two away, gripping the railing with both hands. His eyes are squeezed shut even though there is a sky full of stars. Then Grace realizes that Richie is afraid of heights.

“It’s breathtaking up here,” Kimber says.

“I should get back to the desk,” Richie says. He steps down the ladder and Kimber follows, looking dejected. Her romantic rendezvous was a bust. Grace thinks she might have better luck playing hard to get.

As if reading Grace’s mind, when Richie pushes the elevator button, Kimber says, “I think I’ll take the stairs. Good night, Richie.”

She disappears down the stairwell and both Grace and Richie can hear her slippers slapping against the concrete steps. Now Richie is the one who looks forlorn. Good move, Kimber! Grace thinks. She’s about to follow Richie back to the desk—something about him still bothers her—but then she feels a tug that lures her to the second floor. Grace arrives just in time to see the door to suite 215 open. Mr.

Yamaguchi’s room. A woman with long apricot-colored hair slips out,

holding her shoes in her hand.

It’s Alessandra.