“Pshaw!” she said. “We have all the time in the—”
“We’d better be on our way,” I repeated, elbowing her in the ribs.
“It’s cool,” Daniel said. “I probably should go too. It was nice to meet you, though.”
“The pleasure was all mine,” she said dramatically.
He walked backward and called out to me, “Think about what I said and let me know. Remember what Elvis told you.”
“Right. Fate.” I tried for a casual laugh, but it came out sounding nervous.
“Maybe I was wrong about fate. See you at work,” he said as he jogged away, leaving me alone with Aunt Mona.
“Oh,my,” she murmured, watching him go. “And just what did the boy say that you are supposed to be thinking about, hmm?”
I shook my head. “Not a date, so don’t get your hopes up.”
“My hopes are always up, darling,” she said. “And by the way...” She made a sign in the air and set a reverent hand on my head. “Blessing conferred.”
“I’m nosy.”
—Jessica Fletcher,Murder, She Wrote(1984)
7
The hotel staff meeting was boring and unnecessary. I spent most of it trying not to think about Daniel and what happened at the market, but it was difficult, because his eyes kept flicking toward mine from across the break room, and every time our gazes met, my pulse went a little erratic and my heart became a trapped rabbit, pounding on my ribs and begging to be set free.
Stupid, silly rabbit.
When our shift started, I was relieved to throw myself into work and was promptly inundated with late-night guest requests. One of them involved discussing a luggage issue outside the entrance with Joseph, which was completely awkward, because now he wouldn’t look me in the eye, and that made me feel guilty... and I wondered just how much Daniel had told him. I thought about the expression on Daniel’s face after Aunt Mona had opened her big mouth—I’ve heard about you—and then only a few moments later how he said that maybe he was wrong about fate. Did that mean he only wanted to be friends? Was that possible, after what we’d done?
Apart from me obsessing over interpreting Daniel’s emotions, nothing else notable happened for the first part of the night, and when a lull came, I skipped my ten-minute break after feeding five unrented goldfish at midnight and instead used it to search archived guest ledgers.
I needed to see if Daniel’s story about Raymond Darke coming into the hotel was plausible, so I searched records from this past Tuesday at seven p.m.
Huh. There was a check-in around that time, at 6:55. Not Raymond Darke, but a listing for “A. Ivanov.” In fact, when I went farther back in the archives, this Ivanov appeared twice before, both times on Tuesday nights at 6:55 p.m. And last month, the same thing. And again, farther back, in the late winter.
His Tuesday-night check-ins were brief. He never stayed the night, but instead checked back out within the hour. A few of his stays were only fifteen minutes long.
Interesting.Veryinteresting.
I pulled up a web browser and googled A. Ivanov to find... everything. And nothing. It could be any number of students. An athlete. A dead painter. Several doctors. Or a whole lot of Russians. Without a first name, it was impossible to narrow anything down.
I scanned the information we had on him in the system. The room reservation was made over the phone every Sunday. The room number was requested—the same room each time, on the fifth floor. Our VIP floor, usually reserved for Emerald Service Loyalty Program members.
In our system, the man’s address was listed as being in San Francisco. I googled that, and when the pinpoint on the map popped onto my computer screen, I stilled.
The company that owned the Cascadia was Seattle-based, but I remembered from my training that they had invested in two other hotels: one in Portland and one in San Francisco.
Mr. A. Ivanov’s address? It was the same address as our San Francisco hotel.
If Daniel hadn’t insisted this person was Raymond Darke and I’d stumbled upon this on my own, I’d have guessed this Ivanov was someone from hotel management, making routine trips to other hotels for one reason or another—perhaps one of those “secret shopper” types that companies hire to test their customer service.
And maybe he was.
Or maybe Daniel was onto something.
Could it really be? If so, it was monumental. Maybe not a 1938 unsolved murder, but Tippie Talbot was long forgotten and Raymond Darke was very much not. He was a celebrity of the book world. And he might be walking right under our noses every week.
