Chapter 51
Livvy was at the dorm, on her lunch hour, stretched out on the sofa in the lounge watching television, when the front door opened. She peeked over the back of the sofa and saw Madelyn Eddings enter, carrying a large suitcase.
Parrish’s stepmother stood very still, looking around.
Livvy had seen Madelyn Eddings bustling around the hotel, fluffing pillows in the lobby, replacing faded flower arrangements, but she wasn’t exactly sure what her job title was.
“Uh, hi,” Livvy said, sitting up. “Mrs. Eddings? Is there something I can help you with?”
“What?” Madelyn, startled, dropped the suitcase. “Oh, Olivia. It’s you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Olivia said. “Did you need something?”
Madelyn picked up the suitcase and squared her shoulders. “My husband would like for me to gather together our daughter’s belongings and bring them home.”
Our daughter?Livvy thought.
She started walking down the hallway, her heels clicking on the vinyl floors, and Livvy jumped up to show her the way.
Madelyn pointed to the brass plaque with Parrish’s name beside her bedroom door. “If you don’t mind, I’d prefer privacy. This is… incredibly painful. For Ric and me.”
“Okay, sure.” Livvy turned and went back to the lounge, trying and failing to catch up with the show she’d been watching.
A moment later, Madelyn was back to the lounge. “Who’s been rummaging around in that room?”
Livvy felt her face flush. “After the deputies searched the room, well, it kinda looked like a bomb went off in there. Felice and me figured it would be pretty upsetting for her family to come in and find her room like that, so we packed up her things…”
Madelyn let out a long sigh and dabbed at her eyes with a crumpled tissue. “I’m sorry, Olivia. I didn’t mean to snap at you, or to imply that you did something wrong. That was very thoughtful of you two. I guess I’m still emotional about losing our girl. I know you and Felice were Parrish’s good friends. And the boys too, of course.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Livvy said. “We all miss her, a lot.”
“Thank you,” Madelyn said. “Were there any other things of Parrish’s, maybe things she’d left in your rooms, or in the common area, that didn’t get packed up?”
Livvy’s thoughts turned to the bitch book and she felt a twinge of guilt. “I don’t think so. Parrish was way neater than me, or Felice. It was really just a matter of picking up the stuff the cops flung around her room. We folded her bedspreads and stuff and left them in there.”
Madelyn glanced back into Parrish’s room. “Olivia? We don’t really have any twin-sized beds at our home. I was wondering—would you like to keep the comforter and pillows and the rest of the bedding? Maybe as a memory of Parrish?”
“Really?” Livvy was almost embarrassed at how readily she jumped at the offer. “If you don’t need them, then yeah, I’d love to have them. That’s so nice of you.”
Madelyn gave her a knowing smile. “I’m really not the wicked stepmother Parrish considered me, you know.”
“Uh, well, we didn’t really talk a lot about family,” Livvy lied.
“It was partly my fault. I’d never been able to have children of my own, so I desperately wanted Parrish to embrace me as a mother. Her own mother ran off when she was essentially a baby, so she had abandonment issues, and then, right when she’s a teenager, along comes this rival for her daddy’s affections. She resented me from the beginning, and I resented her for making things difficult in my marriage, for essentially forcing Ric to choose between us. It was always a power struggle, especially if we made the mistake of showing our affection to each other in front of her. She’d never had to consider her dad as a sexual being.”
Eeeewwwww,Livvy thought. Waaaayyy too much information.
“Must have been tough,” Livvy mumbled, anxious for the conversation to end.
Madelyn sighed. “I have so many regrets. And now it’s too late.” She studied Livvy intently. “You probably have a great relationship with your mom, right?”
“Yeah. She’s awesome. Raised me all by herself. We’re more like sisters than mother-daughter,” Livvy lied again. It was getting to be a habit.
“Hold on to that,” Madelyn advised.
Livvy texted Felice as soon as she got back to the hotel.
MEET ME IN brEAK ROOM, STAT!
She watched the little bubbles on her phone, waiting for Felice’s response.
CANT. LUNCH CRUSH. SEE YOU AT 3.
Livvy fed quarters into one of the vending machines in the break room and was munching on a PayDay candy bar when Felice finally strolled in shortly after three.
The chef collapsed onto a chair and shook her head when she saw what her friend was eating. “How do you eat that crap and stay so skinny?”
“Never mind that. Parrish’s stepmom showed up at the dorm while I was on lunch break.”
“Madelyn? What did she want?”
“She said she was there to pack up Parrish’s clothes and stuff. But she was definitely mad that we’d already packed everything up. Like, she tried to be all sweet and nice, but I didn’t really buy it, you know?”
“Why do you think she was really there?” Felice brought out a plastic container of fruit and popped a grape into her mouth.
“Maybe she was looking for the bitch book? She didn’t want me going into Parrish’s room with her. Said she wanted privacy because she was so sad. And then she asked if maybe Parrish had left any stuff out, like, not in the room.”
“How would she know about the bitch book? And why would she care?” Felice asked.
“I don’t know. It was just a feeling I had. She kept looking at me this weird way. Like she knew I had a secret.”
“You watch too much television,” Felice said. “In the meantime, I got Charlie Burroughs all up in my grille. He’s been raisin’ hell with me because I fired our seafood wholesaler, which he then rehired. Which is crazy, because the guy’s fish and shrimp are trash.”
Livvy bit off a hunk of her candy bar and chewed. “He’s gunning for me too. He went to Mrs. E and showed her the crappy review Colonel McBee left on the hotel’s website.”
“You know what I think? I think Burroughs must be getting kickbacks from these jokers. There’s no other reason he’d insist we keep buying their shitty seafood and nasty produce.”
“You really think that?”
“Happens all the time in the restaurant and hotel business,” Felice assured her. “All kinds of sketchy deals go down.”
“But why would he have it in for me? I’m just trying to do my job. Do you think it has to do with McBee?”
Livvy picked up a grape and stared at it. “I’ll tell you, though, I do think there’s something odd going on with the hotel mattresses.
“Today, I actually went up and photographed the label on the mattress in McBee’s room after he checked out. And Sonja, the housekeeper, is supposed to send me pictures of the rest of the labels from the rooms on that wing.”
“Wasn’t there something about mattresses in Parrish’s bitch book?” Felice asked.
“Yeah. I need to go back and see if I can figure out what Parrish wrote.”
“We need to try to decipher her scribbles,” Felice agreed.
“And in the meantime, what do we do about Mr. Burroughs? I can’t afford to lose this job, and I can’t stand the idea of having to move back home with my mom.”
“I like it here too,” Felice said. “I’ve got a free, safe place to live, a great kitchen to work in, high-class clientele. Finally getting to use some of the skills I learned in culinary school.”
“And what about your new bestie?” Livvy teased. “Aren’t I part of what you like about working at the Saint?”
“You’ll do,” Felice deadpanned. “I’ll tell you what I’m thinking. Maybe we go see Mrs. E. She’s the one who hired us in the first place.”
“Don’t you think that’ll get us on Burroughs’s shit list?”
“Like we weren’t already?”
“Speaking of Mrs. E, here’s another weird thing. I think she was sitting in the lobby today, wearing a disguise!”
“What? Like a wig and fake glasses?”
“More like a golfer girl getup, with a hat pulled down low over her face, and sunglasses. She acted like she was reading a magazine, but I think she was kinda spying on me.”
“That is weird,” Felice said. “Come to think of it, she had lunch at the Verandah today.” She related how their boss had ordered three different seafood entrées and sent instructions through Garrett to take the grouper fingers off the menu.
Livvy looked at her phone and stood up. “I better go. If Mrs. E is running surveillance on me, I don’t want her thinking I’m some kind of slacker.”
Felice stood up too. “Oh, hey. I almost forgot. One of the servers heard some members talking about how Mrs. E’s father-in-law died today. So, was he Parrish’s grandfather?”
“Yeah. I think he’d been sick for a while.” Livvy shrugged. “That’ll make my mom happy. She’s got some kind of major grudge against the whole family.”
“Maybe you should call her and share the good news.”
“I would, but I’m currently not speaking to her.”
Felice rolled her eyes. “Talk about a grudge. Maybe you should get over being pissed at her. You don’t know how lucky you are that your mom is still around to be pissed at.”
Traci turned back to her computer. She checked the previous evening’s report. They’d been at 70 percent capacity, which wasn’t stellar, especially in what should be the Saint’s high season, but this weekend was already a sell-through, which was a relief.
When she looked at their occupancy trends she saw that midweek bookings were lagging behind the previous year’s data for the same time period.
The hotel’s marketing team were urging her to start some down-pricing offers, but she’d resisted the idea, because Hoke had drummed it into her head that the Saint kept its exclusive status because the hotel never discounted.
But times had changed, and there’d been a widely publicized unsolved murder on the premises, which she knew had prompted a rash of cancellations.
Selena, the head of marketing, was a proponent of dynamic pricing, a sliding scale that offered last-minute deeper discounts on unsold rooms, which would be promoted across social media. According to her, it would bring the hotel younger guests who might never have been able to afford a stay at a hotel like the Saint, and more important, as Selena kept repeating, “Traci, an empty room does us no good. We need heads in beds.”
Selena was right, she concluded, after studying long-range bookings for the summer. She clicked on her latest email and agreed to the new marketing plan, which Selena was calling “Come Summer at the Saint.” The plan wasn’t cheap—it included online advertising—but she remembered another of Hoke’s aphorisms, one she knew was handed down from his father. “Ya gotta spend money to make money.”
When she’d finally waded through as many memos and emails as she could stomach for one day, she looked up and it was nearly seven.
She called the Verandah and placed her dinner order. If she hurried, she’d have just enough time to pick up dinner, run home, shower, and change out of her golfing disguise.