Hotel Vendome

As soon as he got to his office, Bruce Johnson, the head of security, came to see him. Hugues assumed it was to discuss their arrangements and coordinate with the Secret Service for their foreign dignitary. Bruce was a huge man and had worked for Hugues since they opened. He had a tape from one of the security cameras in his hands and a serious look on his face.

“There’s something I want you to see,” he said quietly.

“Something wrong?” Hugues asked. Bruce looked more serious than usual, as he put the tape into a machine Hugues kept in his office. They had gone over tapes together many times when an employee was suspected of stealing, drinking, or taking drugs on the job, or had behaved inappropriately in some way.

“I’m not sure. You tell me. Back door, last night. I didn’t catch it till this morning. I came in early and I ran the tapes from last night. I think entry was right after seven P.M. Exit was just before seven A.M. this morning. I think we had an unexpected guest last night. I checked all the other cameras after I saw this, and I don’t pick him up anywhere. Whoever got him in and out of the hotel knows this place pretty well.”

Hugues’s blood ran cold as Bruce said it and he wondered if Heloise had sneaked a boy in last night and not been with the innocent Marie Louise. If so, a new day had dawned, and it was not one he was going to like. Hugues braced himself for what he would see.

Bruce Johnson turned the tape on, and they watched a disheveled, dirty-looking homeless man come in through the back door. He was accompanied by a slight figure in a hooded jacket who had turned her face away, and they disappeared rapidly up the stairs. They turned up nowhere else. And then the same two people came down the stairs that morning. The homeless man looked somewhat less untidy than he had the night before. He had a spring in his step; he was smiling, looked cleaner, and had combed his hair. And the person with him dodged the camera again. And that person came back into the hotel again a few minutes later and bounded up the stairs.

“What is that?” Hugues asked, looking upset. “Who is that? What the hell is going on? Am I running some kind of homeless shelter here? Do you think one of the kitchen people let him in?”

“Look again,” Bruce said softly with a slow smile. He was one of Heloise’s biggest fans and had carried her around when she was two so she wouldn’t get hurt while they were doing the renovations. “Does anything look familiar to you?”

Hugues stared at the screen with wide eyes. He was relieved that Heloise hadn’t sneaked a boy in instead of her friend, but she had done something far worse, and she could have gotten hurt in the process. Hugues shuddered as he looked at the man.

“Oh my God,” Hugues said with a horrified expression. “Are you telling me she brought a homeless man in? Where did he sleep?”

“Probably in one of the rooms.” Bruce picked up the phone and called housekeeping then, but they had no knowledge of Heloise using a room. And then he called room service, and they told him Heloise had ordered breakfast and dinner for 202, but the DND sign had been on, so they left it outside. He turned to his employer then and gave him the news. “She ordered a steak, mashed potatoes, chocolate mousse, and a hefty breakfast this morning of fried eggs and bacon and a pastry basket at six-fifteen.”

“I can’t believe she’d do a thing like that,” her father said in amazement. He called her on her cell phone then and asked her to come downstairs. She was in his office five minutes later, and she tried to look nonchalant when she saw Bruce and gave him a big smile.

“This is very serious,” her father said without preamble, with a somber expression. “Did you bring someone into the hotel last night? A homeless man?”

She could see the images on the screen herself. She hesitated for a moment and then nodded and jutted out her chin. “Yes, I did. He’s old and sick, and he was starving and it’s too cold outside. He couldn’t get into a shelter,” she said as though she knew him well.

“So you brought him here?” She nodded soundlessly as her father looked genuinely panicked. “What if he had hurt you, or another guest? He could have hurt you … or worse. Do you have any idea how foolish and dangerous that was? Where were you all night? In the room with him?” He looked even more terrified by that. What if he had raped her?

“I slept in the first aid station till midnight. And then I slept behind the ballroom curtains till six. He’s a good person, Papa. He didn’t hurt the room. I cleaned everything up myself.” Listening to her, Bruce Johnson was trying not to smile. She looked so earnest and so serious. He was well aware that she had taken a terrible risk, but at least she hadn’t gotten hurt. He was sure the Secret Service wouldn’t be comforted to know there were homeless people being sneaked in and sleeping in the rooms.

“I’m not going to let you have friends here anymore if you lie to me and do things like that,” her father said sternly.