The Hotel Nantucket — Chapter no 8

8. Lie, Cheat, and Steal

Grace tightens the belt of her robe and does her usual nocturnal sweep through the hotel, beginning with the room where Louie and Wanda are sleeping. They’ve been taking turns in each of the four bunks; tonight, they’re both in uppers. Wanda has her notepad tucked under her pillow, and Louie has fallen asleep in his glasses, clutching the white queen piece. Grace can hear Doug the dog snoring in the other room. He always lies in front of the door of the suite; if Grace goes anywhere near him, he’ll wake up and snarl.

Kimber, the mother, sleeps with her arms and legs in an X; she looks like a blue-and-green-haired angel fallen from the sky.

Grace floats out of suite 114 and pops in to check on the Bellefleurs in room 306—Oops, sorry to interrupt!—then to suite 216, where Mrs. Reginella is scrolling through the text messages on her husband’s cell phone, and then down to room 111, where Arnold Dash sleeps with the urn of his wife’s ashes on the nightstand.

Grace wishes there were more action. She hopes that as July gets closer, occupancy will increase. The hotel is so welcoming, the staff so attuned to every detail. What’s keeping the guests away? Maybe there’s too much competition or maybe it’s too expensive. After all, when this was a “family-friendly budget hotel,” it was jam-packed.

Maybe the hotel’s reputation is too damaged to rehabilitate. (Is that

her fault?) She wonders what ever happened to the article that that lovely young woman, Jill Tananbaum, came to write. As far as Grace knows, it hasn’t been printed.

Suddenly, Grace catches a whiff of something that smells like a passing garbage truck, and she realizes a new threat is about to enter the hotel. She swoops down to the lobby, which is warmly lit, with Norah Jones playing over the sound system. Lizbet is at her post at the desk, perusing summer dresses on the Alice and Olivia website. Grace can hear people in the Blue Bar, chanting “Don’t!

Stop! Believin’!,” which is par for the course. The disco ball dropped over an hour ago.

Everything seems to be in order, but nevertheless, Grace’s hackles are up. There’s a predator approaching.

She hears footsteps on the stairs. A figure walks through the

doors of the hotel.

Really? Grace thinks. This guy?

Lizbet is so tired when she interviews Richard Decameron—a fifty- four-year-old father of three from Avon, Connecticut, who has answered her prayers and applied for the job of night auditor—that the exchange has a dreamlike quality. He arrives at the hotel at ten thirty at night, fresh off the late ferry, but he’s as ebullient and chipper as a QVC host trying to sell you the leaf blower that will change your life. He’s dressed like it’s casual Friday at the hedge-fund office, in a navy-blue spring suit, a navy-and-yellow-checked shirt, and chocolate suede Gucci loafers without socks. He has a dad bod—a bit of a paunch—and gray hair thinning on top, but his smile and his

twinkling eyes are appealing. He gives Lizbet strong vibes of guys she knew in college, the fun, good-natured best friends of the hot- jock jerks everyone was in love with. Richard Decameron—he asks her to call him Richie—was the guy who actually stuck around to make sure you got in a cab after you did that last, ill-advised shot of tequila.

Lizbet prints out his résumé. He was an executive in the insurance business in Hartford for thirty years, and for the past two years, he’s been working for something called Kick City.

“This…Kick City? I’m not familiar with it,” Lizbet says.

“It’s a sneaker-broker website,” Richie says. “When athletes or rappers drop a limited-edition shoe, our brokers snap them up and resell them. I’m sure it sounds like kid stuff, but trust me, it’s big business.”

“What inspired you to make the switch?” Lizbet asks.

“I wanted a change from insurance, something with a little more

sex appeal.”

“And what brings you to Nantucket?”

Richie sighs. “I’m divorced, my ex-wife has recently started dating again, the new guy lives in the same town that I do, and it got claustrophobic, so I decided to treat myself to a summer at the beach. I’m a night owl by nature, so when I saw you advertising for a night auditor, I thought I’d reach out.”

“Do you have housing?” Lizbet asks. Please say yes, she thinks.

She wants a night auditor so badly, she might let Richie sleep in one of the empty rooms. (The rest of the staff would, no doubt, mutiny.) “I’m staying at the hotel out by the airport tonight,” he says.

“Tomorrow I have an appointment with a woman who’s renting a

room in her home on Cliff Road.”

“Ah, wonderful. And you’re familiar with FreshBooks? You’ll be fully responsible for preparing guest invoices…”

“I have all kinds of systems-software experience,” Richie says.

“I’m a numbers guy. I was a math major at UConn back in the day.”

He pumps a fist. “Go Huskies!”

She likes his energy, especially so late at night. “How comfortable are you with guest interaction?”

“I talk to everyone. My kids find it embarrassing.”

“How old are your kids?” Lizbet is asking just to be polite. She’s going to hire this guy.

“Kingsley is thirteen, Crenshaw is eleven, and Millbrook is eight.”

He pulls out his phone. “Here’s a picture of our family in happier times.”

Grace hovers above so that she can scrutinize the photo. There’s a slightly younger version of Richie posing next to a pretty brunette with three smiling children arranged in front of them. There’s a river, a waterwheel, trees aflame with color—it’s autumn. The youngest child is holding a basket of apples.

This family looks happy. Grace notices Richie’s hand trembling ever so slightly as he gives the phone to Lizbet, who beams at the photo. Is she, like Grace, wondering what happened to the marriage?

“Will your children get a chance to visit Nantucket this summer?”

Lizbet asks.

“Haven’t gotten that far yet,” Richie says. “I’m just trying to get a viable situation in place.”

“Well, if this helps, I’m happy to offer you the position of night auditor. It’ll be six nights a week, I’m afraid. I can only cover one night and still keep my sanity.”

“I’m happy to work seven nights,” Richie says. “I’d prefer it. It’ll keep me out of trouble. It’s best that I keep busy so I don’t miss my kids as much.”

Lizbet exhales with obvious relief and looks right at the space that Grace is occupying. For the first time, Grace wonders if maybe Lizbet is supernaturally sensitive and can see a stolen hotel bathrobe and her missing Minnesota Twins cap floating in the air.

Definitely not, Grace thinks. The poor woman is merely exhausted.

But even so, Grace rises a bit.

Lizbet says, “We have a family in suite one fourteen, a mother with two children. They’re paying their bill in cash. You’ll invoice them every week, and then Kimber, that’s the mother, will bring down cash, which you can just keep in the safe until I find time to go to the bank to deposit it.” She smiles. “I can trust you with the safe combination?”

Richie laughs. “My references will all vouch that I’m a perfectly average good-enough guy.”

“Have you ever done any marketing?” Lizbet asks.

“I sat in on all the meetings at Kick City.”

Lizbet frowns. “Occupancy at the hotel is below fifty percent, and I just don’t understand why. The hotel was, admittedly, mediocre for a long time. I’m not sure if it’s the lackluster reputation we’re grappling with or…”

“Or?”

“Well, some people say there’s a ghost.”

Richie hoots. “The hotel is haunted? That’s fantastic! I would think that would draw people to the hotel rather than keep them away. You

should be promoting the ghost story.”

“We should?” Lizbet says.

“Absolutely yes,” Richie says. “Advertise the ghost! Market the ghost!”

Hmm, Grace thinks. There’s still a stench coming off Richie Decameron—something’s wrong; she can’t say what—but she’s willing to plug her nose and ignore it because it sounds like Richie is interested in her story. Hello, Richie! she calls out nasally, though of course he can’t hear her. I’m here! I was murdered!

Everything Alessandra Powell owns fits into two (knockoff) Louis Vuitton duffels that she bought at the Mercato di Sant’Ambrogio in Florence.

Michael told Alessandra that his wife and children were due on island on June 18—but Alessandra had wormed her way so deeply into Michael’s psyche that she thought, just maybe, he would decide to leave his wife. It would be quite a coup, though not her biggest (that would be Giacomo, who gave up both his runway-model mistress and his heiress wife for Alessandra). From what Alessandra can tell, Heidi Bick is the kind of wife and mother who meets her besties for yoga every morning after dropping the children off at their progressive and obscenely expensive private schools, then swings by the organic grocery on her way home so she can whip up

whatever eclectic dish Sam Sifton has recommended that day in his New York Times cooking column. (On Wednesday, maybe a tahdig…) Heidi not only takes care of the four Bick children, she’s also the point person for Michael’s father, who has Parkinson’s.

Alessandra met Michael Bick on the fast ferry back in early April.

Alessandra had feared it would be slim pickings as far as male prospects were concerned—nearly all the men were sporting Carhartt’s and work boots and dropping their r’s—but then Alessandra spied Michael with the Vacheron watch and his master- of-the-universe posture. At the ferry snack bar, he ordered a Sam Adams and a clam chowder, and Alessandra popped behind him in line and ordered the same. She took a seat one row over facing him and pulled out her well-worn copy of The Sun Also Rises. She drank her beer, let her chowder cool, and—surprise, surprise!—caught Michael staring at her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not every day I see a beautiful woman drinking a beer and reading Hemingway.”

By the end of the ride, Michael had moved into the seat across from Alessandra and bought them another round of beers; their respective chowders had gone untouched, and Alessandra’s book lay facedown, forgotten. They had both stretched the truth about their situations. Michael said he was “taking some time apart from his wife,” who was “back in Greenwich with the kids.” Alessandra said she had been living in Europe for the past eight years and was “treating herself” to an American summer.

“The Riviera gets old after a while,” she said, making them both laugh.

He invited her over to his place for a drink. She told him she had to check into her Airbnb (she didn’t have one booked). He insisted, spinning her Cartier love bracelet and saying, “Unless your heart belongs to the person who gave you this?”

“Uh, no,” she said, regarding the bracelet as she might a handcuff. (Giacomo had given it to her a few weeks before he was sent to prison.) “Great!” Michael said. “Then come for a drink.”

“I really can’t.”

“Just one. Please?”

The house was more than Alessandra could have hoped for. It was one of the huge old family “cottages” right on the harbor that they’d passed on the ferry. It had a long, elegant pool that fronted their tiny private beach and a tennis court in the side yard. (“Do you play?” Michael asked. “A little,” Alessandra said.) The inside of the house was tasteful and fresh, magazine-worthy—lots of white wainscoting and exposed blond beams and a massive stone fireplace and a table laden with silver-framed photographs (the wife he was supposedly taking some time apart from and the four children) behind the wide, deep sofa.

Michael kissed her outside on the deck, right away biting her lower lip. He wrapped his hand in a length of her hair, tugging a little to let her know who was in charge. (He, erroneously, thought this was him.) He slid his mouth down to her neck, lingering in the kill spot just below her ear; good boy, he’d been well trained by wifey, though Alessandra would bet a schmillion dollars he no longer kissed Heidi Bick this way. He unbuttoned Alessandra’s blouse slowly, his pinkie just barely grazing her nipple, and Alessandra felt a

pulsing between her legs that was replicated by the ruby beacon of Brant Point Light in the distance.

He had her panting—shirt open, breasts exposed, jeans unzipped —when he turned and walked back into the house.

Alessandra waited a second, wondering if he was having a crisis of conscience. She chastised herself; she had made a poor choice.

When she finally followed him inside, she had to let her eyes adjust to the dark. There was milky moonlight through a window, blue numbers on a cable box—and then hands grabbed her waist and she screamed, genuinely frightened, and realized she wasn’t in charge at all. She also realized Michael Bick had, very likely, brought home women he didn’t know before. Possibly he did it all the time.

But in the pearl-gray light of morning—fog covered the harbor like a layer of dust on an antique mirror—Michael traced one of her eyebrows and said, “Where did you come from, Alessandra Powell?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? Alessandra was originally from San Francisco, where her mother, Valerie, waited tables at the storied Tosca Café in North Beach. Valerie and Alessandra lived in a building down the street from the restaurant. Valerie kept their apartment clean, didn’t drink too much (wine occasionally), and didn’t do drugs (weed occasionally); there was always enough money for groceries and for Alessandra to get ice cream down on the pier or go to the movies or, when she was older, take the bus to Oakland and thrift-shop. But there was something a little off about Alessandra’s upbringing. While Alessandra’s friends were opening presents around the tree on Christmas morning, then sitting down to a rib roast, Alessandra was home alone watching R-rated movies on cable while her mother worked a double. She and her mother

opened their Christmas presents on the twenty-sixth with eggs and a tin of osetra caviar and Springsteen singing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” On Easter, while Alessandra’s friends were going to church and hunting for eggs and slicing into honey-baked ham, Alessandra was watching R-rated movies on cable and eating straight from a bag of jelly beans that her mother bought as a nod to the holiday even though she didn’t celebrate Easter at all.

And then there were the men. Every week, Valerie would bring home married men who frequented the Tosca bar while they were in the city on business. These men would arrive after Alessandra went to bed, but she heard them in the shower the next morning while Alessandra’s mother ransacked their wallets in the bedroom. Every once in a while, one of the men would stay for breakfast and listen as Valerie played her favorite CD and sang along: Torn between two lovers, feeling like a fool.

Alessandra knew better than to follow in her mother’s footsteps but it was the only example she had. When Alessandra was eighteen, she seduced Dr. Andrew Beecham, the father of her best friend, Duffy. After Alessandra and Drew had been sleeping together for a few weeks, Alessandra realized she could cash in on the power she had—the power to tell Duffy and Drew’s wife, Mary Lou—and get something valuable in return. Drew was the chair of the romance languages department at Stanford. Alessandra audited a full year of classes—Italian, Spanish, French literature, art history—and then demanded a one-way plane ticket to Rome, which Drew Beecham was only too happy to buy for her.

Where did you come from, Alessandra Powell?

Alessandra answered Michael in her prettiest Italian. “Poiché la tua domanda cerca un significato profondo, risponderò con parole semplici.” She smiled; she had no intention of translating. “That’s Dante.”

Michael Bick kissed her tenderly. She was making progress. She stayed the next night and the next.

She made Michael milk-braised pork with hand-rolled gnocchi in sage and butter and a salad of bitter greens. She made coq au vin.

She made scrambled eggs the way her mother used to make them for other women’s husbands—with double the yolks (double-the-yolk scrambled eggs after a night of whiskey, Valerie used to say, felt a lot like love). Alessandra beat Michael soundly in tennis. (In Ibiza, she had taken lessons with Nadal’s first coach.) When they made love, she screamed out in Italian. She didn’t complain that they never went anywhere together—not to dinner or coffee, not for walks on the beach or in the state forest, not for drives to Great Point or Sconset.

When the guy came to fix the internet, she greeted him in French and told him she was the au pair.

Secretly, Alessandra secured a job at the Hotel Nantucket that would start in June, though she hoped by then Michael would have fallen so deeply in love with her that he would tell Heidi their marriage was over and Alessandra could simply slip into Heidi’s place. She would go to Surfside all day while Michael worked at home on his laptop (while he was sleeping, Alessandra had hacked into his computer and learned that he traded petroleum futures and in 2021 had reported $10,793,000 in income), and she would accompany him to Cisco Brewers to hear live music and to his standing Thursday-night reservation at Ventuno. She would become

best friends with the Laytons next door; the families were so close that they had a set of keys to each other’s house. She would bewitch everyone in Michael’s life exactly the way she had bewitched him.

But this didn’t quite happen. A few days before Alessandra started work, she overheard Michael on the phone with Heidi and his kids, his voice sweet and upbeat and guileless. “How was the game, Colby, did you hit the ball, did you swing? Hey, buddy, did you see Dustin Johnson sink that putt on the ninth?…I love you, I love you, I love you more, kisses, can’t wait to see you all, only two more weeks! I’m getting the boat ready; Coatue, here we come!”

Alessandra felt most affronted by this last bit. She hadn’t realized Michael had a boat.

She went to work at the hotel on opening day, disappearing from the house while Michael was on the phone, and she ignored all his calls. Let him wonder. When she walked in the door that evening, he was visibly shaken. “Where were you?” he said.

She narrowed her eyes and tried to read his face. Why did he care? How much did he care? She shrugged. “Out.”

A tirade followed; it was the first time she’d seen him angry (other than when the Wi-Fi went down, but that was different), and it interested her. Worried sick, went driving around looking for you, you just left without a word, the only way I knew you were coming back was your luggage was still here.

Do you love me? she wondered. She thought the answer might be yes, but it wouldn’t be enough.

“I got a job,” she said. “Working the front desk at the Hotel Nantucket.”

Michael’s face turned pill white. “What?”

Alessandra stared him down.

Michael said, “Our…my friend Lizbet Keaton is working there.

She’s the GM, I heard. Is she the one who hired you?”

“Yes.”

Michael nodded slowly, then backed away half a step, as though Alessandra were holding a gun. “You didn’t tell her where you were living, did you?”

“Obviously not.” Alessandra didn’t tell Michael that Lizbet had followed her home. Thankfully, Alessandra had spied her in the bike’s mirror before she’d turned into the driveway.

Relief softened his face. “Okay, good. I wouldn’t want people to get the wrong idea.”

“What you mean,” Alessandra said, “is that you wouldn’t want people to get the right idea. Which is that you’re keeping a lover even though you are still fully married. Your wife has no idea you needed space. She thinks you came up here to switch out the storm windows for screens and tackle a ‘top secret project’ for work, which seems outrageous, but she doesn’t question it because she trusts you and she’s probably enjoying the time apart—she feeds the kids pizza three nights a week and goes out with her girlfriends to the new wine bar and flirts with the cute bartender and then goes home and curls up with her vibrator.” Alessandra stopped to breathe.

“You’re a liar and a cheat.”

Michael cleared his throat. “They’re coming up on the eighteenth,

so you’ll need to go.”

“Will I?” Alessandra said.

There was fear in his eyes. He was the one who had chosen poorly. “Baby, please.”

“I’m not your baby, Michael. I’m a grown woman whom you’ve treated like a concubine.”

“You knew what you were getting into,” Michael said. “You can’t tell me you didn’t understand what this was.”

He got everything backward. He was the one who didn’t understand what this was.

“I’ll go quietly the day before your family arrives,” Alessandra said.

“On one condition.”

Alessandra walks from Michael’s house to the hotel with a knockoff Louis Vuitton bag in each hand. It’s a stylish walk of shame—or it would be if Alessandra felt any shame. What she feels most is regret. Michael Bick is the complete package. He has looks, money, intelligence, humor, and even a basic decency (if you ignore the obvious). He asks questions; he listens to the answers; he’s generous and curious and thoughtful. The sex was mind-blowing; Michael is the only man Alessandra ever met who didn’t need to learn a thing or two in bed. And they are so compatible. Oh, well. It has been Alessandra’s experience that men like Michael Bick get scooped up early, in college or the first years of living as an adult in the city.

She also feels triumphant. In her suede Bruno Magli clutch is a cashier’s check for fifty thousand dollars. Michael asked her to name her price and she did so judiciously, unsure of what she could get away with, but now she wonders if she could have asked for double.

She won’t worry about it. During their first week of sinful bliss, Alessandra watched Michael punch in the passcode to his phone,

and later, while he was sleeping, Alessandra copied Heidi Bick’s number. She also took pictures of herself in different spots throughout the house—in the pool, weighing herself on Heidi’s scale (a trim 105), cooking in the kitchen, even sprawled across the master bed (although they’d never had sex in that room, Michael’s one nod to fidelity).

If Alessandra doesn’t find another situation, she’ll simply text Michael the pictures and ask for more money.

As Heidi Bick is checking things off her packing list in Greenwich —Colby’s inhaler, Hayford’s putter, her Wüsthof tomato knife— Alessandra will be paying for a 1980 CJ-7 in “mint condition” that she found listed in the Nantucket Standard classifieds. The Jeep costs twenty grand; Alessandra will pay cash, then she’ll write the bellman Adam a check for twelve grand, which is her share of the summer’s rent now that she’s moving in with him and Raoul on Hooper Farm Road. She’ll throw ten grand at her credit card bills and still have a bit of a financial cushion.

Alessandra is growing weary of seducing men, then extorting them; she would far prefer to find a permanent provider.

She marches up the front steps of the hotel, trying to carry herself like a hotel guest checking in. Except she’s wearing her uniform, and Adam says, from his spot behind the lectern, “You look like a high- class hobo.”

Alessandra doesn’t respond. She pictures Michael frantically cleaning the house, sweeping up every strand of her hair, wiping her fingerprints off the wineglasses, checking the drawers for an errant pair of panties. But will he notice the Chanel eye shadow that Alessandra left in Heidi’s makeup drawer in the bathroom? (Heidi

wears Bobbi Brown.) Will he check the shoe tree in Heidi’s closet, where Alessandra has left a pair of size 6 crystal-studded René Caovilla stilettos winking coyly among the size 8 Jack Rogers sandals and Tory Burch ballet flats? Will he find the positive pregnancy test that Alessandra tucked into the copy of Jennifer Weiner’s Good in Bed that sits atop the stack of novels on Heidi Bick’s nightstand?

He will not, Alessandra guesses, because men don’t pay attention to the way women live, not really. Michael will suffer for this, and for his hubris. He thought he was making a clean (if somewhat costly) getaway.

She wonders if Michael misses her. After handing over the check, he kissed her deeply, and when she pulled away, she saw tears glittering in the corners of his eyes. Torn between two lovers, she sang in her head, feeling like a fool.

“Raoul says he’ll swing by around noon to get your bags,” Adam says now.

“Kind of him, thank you,” Alessandra says, though she wishes Raoul would come right away so she could avoid the inevitable questions.

Alessandra steps into the lobby and smells the deep roast of the Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee that Edie has percolating (they use a vintage percolator and the guests rave about the flavor). She hears Mandy Patinkin singing a Gershwin song: “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.”

She’s late due to the check, the kiss, the walk with the bags. She likes to arrive before Edie because she feels it gives her the upper

hand, and now, when Edie looks up and sees Alessandra and notices the luggage, she looks confused and just a bit superior.

“Good morning, Alessandra,” she says. “Taking a trip?” Edie’s voice is light and easy despite the fact that Alessandra is always chilly with her.

“Good morning, Edie.” It’s not that Alessandra doesn’t like Edie; she does. Edie is smart, self-effacing, and excellent with the Marsh children. (Both Wanda and Louie are terrified of Alessandra.) But Edie is also young, and the last thing Alessandra wants is for Edie to look up to her. Alessandra doesn’t want to lie to Edie about her past or her present, and hence, friendship between them is impossible. Alessandra has to push Edie away.

It’s for your own good! Alessandra wants to say, because she can see her brusqueness hurts Edie.

Alessandra drops the bags behind the desk and logs on to her computer.

Lizbet pops out of the back office for what’s probably her fourth cup of coffee; she drinks so much caffeine, Alessandra is surprised she doesn’t flap her arms and fly away.

Lizbet notices the bags because she notices everything. “What’s going on here?” she asks with an arched eyebrow.

Alessandra meets Lizbet’s gaze. “My housing fell through, so I’m moving in with Adam and Raoul.”

Lizbet moves for the percolator. “What happened to the place on Hulbert?”

Alessandra tries not to care if Lizbet has figured it out. Lizbet can’t fire her for what goes on in her personal life, though it might invite scrutiny later on, something Alessandra wants to avoid. She smiles

despite the bitter, nearly chemical taste in her mouth. “Oh,” she says, “that was just temporary.”

Chad has been assigned a cleaning partner named Bibi Evans who treats every room like it’s a crime scene. This might be because Bibi aspires to be a forensic scientist, or it might be because Bibi is what Chad’s mother would call a “nosy parker,” or it might be because Bibi is a thief. Chad doesn’t like thinking this last thing, but that’s what his gut tells him, because Bibi touches every single item in any room that might be worth stealing. She touches the things that Ms. English has expressly asked them not to touch, such as watches, jewelry, cash, and pills.

They’ve been working together for two weeks when Bibi lifts a diamond tennis bracelet out of a travel jewelry case and tries it on.

Chad is freaked out (and also somewhat impressed) at Bibi’s moxie; she doesn’t seem to be intimidated by Ms. English or the rules. Bibi holds her hand out so that the diamonds catch the sunlight coming in through the picture window overlooking Easton Street. “I was meant for the finer things.”

“You should probably put that back,” Chad says.

“You’re such a rule follower.” She says this like she’s calling him a pedophile.

It would be easy for Chad to shock Bibi with the ways that he’s broken the rules, but it’s nothing to be proud of. “The guest could walk in any second, Bibi,” he says. “Or Ms. English.”

Bibi waves her arm around as though showing off the bracelet to a roomful of admirers. It looks wrong on her pale, knobby wrist. Bibi

wears heavy black eyeliner and has a tattoo of a skull on the back of her neck, which Chad noticed when Ms. English insisted that Bibi gather her stringy dark hair into a ponytail. She’s nothing like the girls Chad went to high school or college with; Chad understands that she’s from a different “socioeconomic class.” Bibi is the mother of a nine-month-old girl, Smoky (that’s her actual name; it’s not short for anything). She told Chad that she took this “crappy job” because she wants to go to college, study forensics, and join the homicide unit of the Massachusetts State Police so that she can give Smoky a better life than the one she had growing up. Bibi’s life involved a drunk for a mother (Chad can commiserate with her there, though he’s not sure his own mother and Bibi’s mother have much else in common). Bibi often lamented that paying for child care and the ferry tickets from the Cape took more than half her paycheck. Chad made what he hoped sounded like sympathetic noises. He told her the baby was cute.

“You’re a complete squid, Long Shot,” Bibi said that first day.

“Long Shot” was the nickname Ms. English had given him and he’s secretly pleased because, on Nantucket, any name is better than Chad. “But I’d rather be paired with you than with those other bitches.”

She meant Octavia and Neves. They speak Portuguese and wear thick gold crosses around their necks. Ms. English refers to Octavia and Neves as the A-team and Chad and Bibi as the B-team, which is probably not a random designation. This might be what fuels Bibi’s dislike of the other girls (Chad doesn’t care; he knows he belongs on the B-team), although Bibi’s vitriol is so intense that Chad wonders if the sisters are mean to Bibi on the ferry. (He can’t imagine this.) By

her own admission, Bibi hates people. It’s the one thing, she says, that brings her joy.

Chad announces that he’ll clean the bathroom and deal with the floral bouquets if Bibi wants to vacuum and get started on the bed.

She grunts in the affirmative, though Chad was hoping for a thank- you, since he’s taking the more onerous tasks. The flowers are a surprisingly tedious job—he has to wipe up the blue hydrangea dust, trim the stamens of the lilies because pollen stains everything a bloody rust color, and change the smelly brown water in the vase.

But the flowers are a picnic compared to cleaning the bathroom. In the two weeks that Chad has been working at the hotel, he’s dealt with bloody pads and tampons in the trash (he appreciates anew that he and his sister never had to share a bathroom), and he cleaned up the puke of some bachelor-party dude who didn’t make it anywhere close to the toilet bowl. Only slightly less repulsive are the globs of toothpaste and stray hairs he has to scrub from the sink.

By dealing with the flowers and the bathroom, he achieves the dual purpose of punishing himself and sucking up to Bibi. Her approval matters, even though she’s not pretty and not sophisticated and not particularly well educated; despite her claim that she is “meant for the finer things,” everything about her demeanor suggests otherwise. She’s a twenty-one-year-old single mother (she hasn’t mentioned the father of the baby and Chad isn’t brave enough to ask), and Chad is both in awe of and afraid of her.

When Chad finishes scrubbing the shower and the tub—he does the tub conscientiously even though it’s clear it hasn’t been used—he

pokes his head into the bedroom. The bed has been stripped and remade, the pillows artfully arranged; Bibi always does a really good job with the beds. Chad doesn’t see Bibi, but instead of calling her name, he tiptoes around. He finds her in the walk-in closet, sifting through a suitcase. She holds up a belt first, then an amethyst silk negligée. He notices she still has the tennis bracelet on her wrist.

“Bibi?” he says.

She jumps. “Jeez, Long Shot, you scared me. What the hell?”

“What are you doing?” he asks. “You know we’re not supposed to go through personal stuff. And you need to take that bracelet off.”

“Who are you, the cleaning police?”

“I just don’t want you to get in trouble.”

“Why would I get in trouble? I’m just looking around. I’m not going to take anything. You probably think I’m a thief because I’m not rich like you, Mr. Eel Point Road. Mr. Range Rover.”

Chad blinks. He’s not sure how Bibi discovered what he drives or where he lives. He’s been careful to present himself as a normal-ish summer kid. He parks way up on Cliff Road and told her only that he lived on a “dirt road, out of town.”

“I don’t think you’re a thief, Bibi,” he says. He’s tempted in that moment to offer her part of this week’s paycheck because he knows she has to buy things like diapers and formula, but he’s afraid she’ll find it patronizing. “Do you want me to do the vacuuming?”

The next morning, Ms. English sends Octavia and Neves to clean suite 114—Chad is grateful they’re doing it, because being around Doug the pit bull makes him uncomfortable—but instead of giving

Chad and Bibi a roster of rooms and sending them out too, Ms.

English closes her office door and turns to them.

“The guests in room one oh five reported something missing,” she says. “A black-and-gold Fendi scarf.”

Chad closes his eyes. Room 105 was the last room they cleaned yesterday; it was a checkout. In room 105, Bibi had been suspiciously on task and Chad thought this was because the guests had left a forty-dollar tip, which Chad told Bibi she could take. Bibi had asked if he wanted to go down to the service kitchen to replenish the items that went in the minibar—the wine, the Cisco beers, the bluefish pâté and crackers—which was the best job of all.

The service kitchen was adjacent to the Blue Bar kitchen, where Beatriz was usually pulling a tray out of the oven—gougères or homemade pigs in a blanket or the pretzel bread—and she always offered some of whatever it was to the cleaning staff. Yesterday afternoon, Chad hit the jackpot because Beatriz was prepping lobster-roll sliders on homemade milk buns. Chad had eaten lobster growing up the way other kids ate peanut butter and jelly but he had never eaten anything like this slider before. The outside of the milk bun was crisply toasted while the inside was fragrant and pillowy; the lobster meat had been mixed with lemon zest, herbs, crunchy pieces of celery, and just enough tangy mayo. The lobster slider was so… elevated that Chad went back to room 105 feeling inspired. He wanted to do his job as well as Beatriz did hers. He wanted to clean the hell out of room 105!

But when he returned, the room was finished and Bibi was gone.

Chad peered out the window to see Bibi heading down North Beach Street toward the ferry with her backpack slung over her shoulder.

He was sorry she’d left—he’d brought a slider up for her—but also relieved that he’d survived another day with her.

“Did either of you see a black-and-gold scarf?” Ms. English asks.

“Because Mrs. Daley is sure she left one behind. She sent a picture of herself wearing it at Ventuno and she says it’s not in her luggage.

Did you find it and put it in the lost and found?” Ms. English pauses.

“Did you perhaps mean to put it in the lost and found and forget to?”

She’s giving Bibi a way out, Chad thinks. Because Bibi definitely lifted that scarf.

“I didn’t see any scarves,” Bibi says in a clear, steady voice that sounds so genuine, Chad believes her. “Did you, Long Shot?”

“No,” he says. “And we checked all the drawers like we were supposed to.”

“Yes, I double-checked as well,” Ms. English says. She studies their faces. Ms. English is a handsome woman who has never been anything but nice to Chad; even when she made him fold a hand towel for the sixtieth time, he felt like she was doing it for his own good. She has high standards and a dignity that Chad respects. He does not want to disappoint her.

“Did you look in the laundry?” Bibi asks. “Maybe Mr. and Mrs.

Daley were using the scarf in bed—you know, to tie each other up— and it got mixed in with the sheets.”

“Of course I’ve checked the laundry,” Ms. English says. She clears her throat. “I understand how tempting it is when you see something you covet and you think the guest has so many things that she might not miss something like a scarf…”

“It sounds like you’re accusing us of taking it,” Bibi says. “Which is not only insulting, it’s absurd. Chadwick has family money, plus a

dude would have no use for a woman’s scarf. And I would never take it, because scarves like that are for boomers. Sorry, for older women.

Plus I wouldn’t be able to tell a Fendi scarf from a Walmart scarf.”

That’s a lie, Chad thinks. Bibi loves designer stuff. She makes a game of identifying the designers of bags, belts, and shoes without checking the labels—Chloé, Balenciaga, Louboutin—and she’s always right.

Bibi says, “Besides, I would never steal from a guest. I have a baby at home. I’m a mother.” She pauses. “Did you ask Octavia and Neves if they’ve seen it?”

Chad lowers his gaze to the floor. He can’t believe she’s going there.

“The scarf was missing from room one oh five,” Ms. English says.

“That was your room to clean.”

“But they each have a master key,” Bibi says. “It’s not impossible that they took it and tried to make it look like it was us. They have some kind of weird grudge against me that you should be aware of.”

Ms. English is quiet. Chad is quiet. Bibi isn’t speaking but there’s a lot of disruption emanating from her. Or maybe Chad is projecting.

“I’ll let Mrs. Daley know that we haven’t found it but that we’ll keep looking,” Ms. English says. “Maybe it’s in Mr. Daley’s luggage or perhaps she took it off while she was out and left it somewhere. But I do hope nothing else goes missing.”

Chad and Bibi take their cart up to room 307 in silence. Bibi doesn’t touch anything in the room, and she offers to clean the bathroom

and do the flowers, which, Chad realizes, is as close to an admission of guilt as he’s going to get.