I did not sleep well. I tossed and turned all night. I reached out for Juan Manuel, found him absent, missing, only an empty space left behind on the mattress. I thought of calling him in the middle of the night, telling him everything that’s happened over the last couple of days, but at such a distance, he can’t do a thing to help me. And what was I supposed to say to him?
No wonder I didn’t sleep a wink.
I cannot erase the unthinkable thoughts from my mind. What if Mr. Preston, my dear friend and colleague, a man whom I’ve considered the purest personification of a good egg, is a thief? And if he’s capable of stealing, what else could he do?
It’s ridiculous. Absurd. I hear Gran admonish me in my head—
She’s right. And yet there’s no refuting what I saw at that pawn-shop—Mr. Preston, selling a rare first-edition copy of J. D. Grimthorpe’s
I tear the blankets off me, jab my hot feet into my slippers, and stomp into the kitchen. It’s five in the morning, far too early to get up, but I can’t lie awake any longer. I grab a bucket from under the sink and fill it with water. I root around in the drawer for a reliable cleaning cloth, then I march into the living room and set my supplies down beside Gran’s curio cabinet.
I turn the TV on as a distraction, but sure enough, the news channel is replaying yesterday’s press conference in which Detective Stark declared Mr. Grimthorpe’s death a murder. I watch as reporters pelt Stark with questions.
“Detective, do you have any leads?”
“We’re following every lead we have,” Stark replies.
“Detective, is the murderer a guest or a hotel employee?”
“If I knew that, would I be here?” she replies.
“Detective, you said his tea was poisoned with antifreeze. Do you know how that could have happened?”
“We’re working on that,” she says. “We’re tracking an important piece of evidence.”
“Detective, do you have a message for the killer?”
Stark pauses. It’s as though she’s looking right through the TV at me. “You can hide the truth for a while, but it won’t stay buried forever. Just remember that,” she says, before walking away from the scrum.
I turn off the TV.
I pick up my cloth and carefully open the glass doors of Gran’s curio cabinet.
I furiously polish each trinket, then turn to the framed photos on top of the cabinet. There’s a new photo of me and my dear Juan Manuel with matching ice cream mustaches. There are older photos, too, of Gran and me. But it’s the photo of my mother when she was young that I study with care. Dark hair like mine and a porcelain complexion, bright apple cheeks, not wan and hollowed out like that strange young woman who stole the rent on the first day of the month so long ago. As a child, I had no idea who she was. I realized only when I was much older that Maggie—the stranger at the door that day—was my mother, and that one of the reasons she’d come was to see me. How I failed to put two and two together at the time, I do not know. Why is it always like that? Why do I understand everything too late?
Now, I put all of Gran’s treasures back in the cabinet. I shower, then scrub the washroom until my fingers pucker into dried prunes. I eat a crumpet at the worn kitchen table, chewing every bite exactly twenty times. Then I leave the apartment and head to work, anxiety powering me like a jet engine.
Now that everyone knows Mr. Grimthorpe was poisoned, this workday at the Regency Grand will be the furthest thing from normal. I have no idea what to expect.