Read Online Speed Dating With the Dead by Scott Nicholson - Free Book Online Page B

had concocted was that a cook had died of a heart attack in the kitchen and, since that fateful day, cutlery rattled whenever his spirit returned. No one had ever challenged her for a name in order to check the story’s historical accuracy, but after the rumor had taken root, it spread throughout the staff. In five years, seven reports of rattling cutlery and the specter of a funny little man in a chef’s hat had been written down in the ghost register, one by Janey herself but the rest by people who were unwitting accomplices in her deception.
    Now, with the place on the verge of closing, the effort seemed silly. It was already a museum despite the activity. Soon enough, it would be rubble fit only for the landfill. So much for forty years of dedication and faith.
    A sullen teen, whose name she hadn’t bothered to learn, was chopping barbecue, wielding a heavy cleaver and sending bits of baked pig flesh flying in the air.
    “Nice stroke,” she said, but the remark passed unnoticed.
    Dinner was still two hours away, but with 50 or more people expected for the conference, the kitchen was clanging. Vincent, the head chef, worked the gas grill as if he were forging mystical swords for the Roman fire god Vulcan. Phillippe, the new guy who actually wore a silly, poofy chef’s hat and had a culinary degree, browsed the spice rack as if filling a life-saving prescription.
    Janey resisted an urge to dip a spoon in a bubbling cauldron of something that looked like pumpkin stew. Much like a captain going down with the ship, she wanted her guests to enjoy their last meal. Despite her impulse to poison it.
    “Smells yummy, Phillippe,” she shouted over the clangor.
    “ Mal appetit, mademoiselle ,” he said.
    “And a Chucky Cheese to you.”
    She made her way to the laundry area that was appended to the back of the hotel. The narrow cinder-block alley that was so plain and familiar now took on a surreal quality, as if it were already becoming dust and air. The squeaking hum of the washing machines reverberated along the walls, growing louder as she entered the wash room.
    Rosalita, whose brown, leathery face was unreadable at all times, was folding table linens. Rosalita had started working in the laundry room at the same time as Janey, but she had the disadvantage of being Hispanic in a conservative rural area. In four decades, she’d missed only three days of work, each of them to bear a child. Janey had reported her once because Rosalita was running her cloth diapers through each load of sheets, a snitch that had moved Janey another rung up the laundry-room ladder. Janey had learned early on that by ratting out the hired help to the pinch-pennies and bean-counters who kept hoteliers around the world rich, she’d soon be management material herself. The trick was not in being moral and scrupulous, it was in not getting caught.
    But Rosalita had never shown any antagonism toward Janey. She’d also never shown any deference or friendliness. She might have been a carved Mayan idol for all the emotion she projected.
    “Good evening, Miss Mays,” the laundress said in her mild Spanish accent, not pausing in her routine of folding. Her spidery hands creased the fabric with geometric precision as she stacked the linen in a basket. The wash room had bare, gray walls and a concrete floor, with no heat besides that generated by the machinery. Janey still carried those long, late hours in her bones.
    “Are all the rooms ready?” Janey said, not bothering with a return greeting.
    “Yes, and we’ll have the dining room set in an hour.”
    “Have you noticed anything funny?” Janey asked.
    “Funny, ma’am?”
    “Unusual. You know. Have your people said anything?”
    Rosalita was so wary that she even hid her wariness. “Nothing. Steady business.”
    “The guests are looking for ghosts, and we wouldn’t want to disappoint them.”
    “We show them ghosts?”
    Janey gave a cracked laugh. “We don’t have to do any showing.