And I was going to work here.
Its unassuming entrance sat beneath an awning that sheltered the sidewalk. And beneath that awning, leaning against a hotel van parked at the curb, stood a Native American porter in a green uniform, perhaps a couple of years older than me. When I approached, he mistook me for a hotel guest, straightened, and opened one of two gold-trimmed doors. “Good evening, miss.”
“I work here,” I told him. “Tonight’s my first shift. Birdie Lindberg.”
“Oh.” He allowed the door to swing shut. “I’m Joseph,” he said, quickly looking me over until his gaze briefly lit on the pink-and-white stargazer lily pinned over my ear. “You’re a Bat, right?”
“I’m the new night auditor?”
“You’re a Bat, then,” he said with a smile.
Right. I remembered now. Melinda was the night manager, and “Bats” made up the graveyard crew. My position was basically just a glorified front desk clerk who worked graveyard shift at the hotel and, after midnight, ran the software program that tabulated all the room bills and settled accounts. I was being paid a dime over minimum wage.
“Been through training?” Joseph asked.
“Last week,” I said. “With Roxanne, during the day. I was hoping for midday shifts, but this was all that was open.”
“It’s almost always open. The only people who want to work graveyard are college students and nighthawks. Or people with no alternatives.”
“This is my first job,” I admitted.
“Well, welcome to the night crew, Birdie,” he said with a smile, opening the hotel’s gold entrance door for me. “Try not to fall asleep. There’s free coffee in the break room.”
More caffeine was the last thing my nerves needed right now, and I wasn’t a coffee fan. I thanked him, blew out a quick breath, and stepped inside.
The Cascadia’s Pacific Northwest style and vintage glamour was as dazzling as it had been the first time I’d stepped into the grand lobby. So dazzling, in fact, that it took me a moment to realize how different it was at night. No constant click of heels on the madrone wood floor. No dueling dings of the two gold elevators near the entrance, with their tribal salmon design covering the doors. And no tourists pressing their noses to the lobby’s giant aquarium, which housed a giant Pacific octopus named Octavia—maybe the best thing in the entire hotel.
As I walked past the softly glowing tank beneath a row of painted canoes hanging from the mezzanine, jazz floated over the lobby’s speakers. A well-dressed couple headed up to their room for the night, and a single businessman sat on one of the soft leather sofas, staring into the screen of his laptop.
Amazing to think that any one of these guests could be famous or important. Agatha Christie stayed here when she was touring the world with her husband. President Franklin Roosevelt gave a secret fundraising speech in the ballroom. Rock stars. Presidents. Mobsters. The Cascadia had hosted them all.
The hotel even had its own murder mystery: beloved Hollywood starlet Tippie Talbot had died on the fifth floor in 1938. Foul play was suspected but never proven, and her unsolved death had made headlines around the country. Who knows. Maybe I’d uncover some new clues on one of my shifts.
Anything could happen!
I felt supremely lucky. All that talk about “the boy” with Aunt Mona faded softly into the past. Nothing could spoil this. It was magical. And it was time to get to work.
The registration desk was deserted, so I made a beeline toward the hidden hallway behind it, which led to the back offices. Inside the employee break room, a single housekeeper sat on a battered couch, watching TV with her eyes closed. So I hurried into the women’s locker room and stowed my purse in my assigned locker. Then I shrugged into my forest-green hotel blazer, pinning a gold name tag to my breast pocket, and returned to the break room, ready for work.
During training I’d been cautioned about clocking in too early. And too late. Apparently the hotel was like Goldilocks and preferred their porridge just right. But as I stood in front of the old-fashioned time clock, wondering if I should use the same time card I’d already started for training, heels clicked behind me, and a strong chocolate-scented lotion wafted over the microwave-popcorn scent that permeated the employee lounge. When I turned around, the hotel’s night manager stood in front me, balancing an enormous baby bump while standing on insanely high heels.
“I’m Melinda Pappas,” she said, offering a hand to shake. Black hair was pulled back tightly into a flight-attendant bun, giving me the impression that she was all about professionalism and rules, and the dark circles hanging under her eyes told me she wasn’t sleeping, perhaps due to her pregnancy.
“Um, I’m Birdie Lindberg,” I said. “The new night auditor?”
She nodded. “You just missed a crew meeting. I added it to the schedule last night.”
A burst of panic fired through my chest. I frantically glanced at the schedule and said, “I didn’t know there was a meeting. I’m so sorry. I’m never late for anything, but Roxanne didn’t mention that my shifts might change. My last day of training was—”
Melinda held up a hand. “It’s fine. We had an incident with an animal rights group in the lobby yesterday. I’ll brief you about it, but it’s best to call in on your day off and get someone to double-check the schedule for you and make sure there aren’t any meetings.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m really sorry. Ma’am.”
“I’m thirty,” she said. “Not a ‘ma’am’ yet. Just call me Melinda. Come on. I’ll introduce you to the rest of the Bats.”
She gestured for me to follow her and proceeded to introduce me to the night staff one by one—kitchen staff, housekeeping, security . . . There were a lot of new names, but I was good with details, so I filed them all away, creating a mental map of their faces and roles as we made our way into the lobby.
“I assume you were trained about Octavia the Octopus,” Melinda said, tilting her head toward the big tank, where a red cephalopod clung to the glass by two tentacled arms lined with white suckers. Bright coral, rocky caves, and several starfish kept her company. “If guests ask, Octavia was rescued out of Puget Sound after a boat damaged one of her arms, and we have a biologist on staff who takes care of her.”
“We do?”
Melinda scrolled on her tablet. “That is what you tell guests. We have a biologist on call at the Seattle Aquarium who advises us if we need help, but there’s no need to go into that with guests. And as I told the rest of the Bats in the staff meeting earlier, if any members of SARG come into the lobby, then you call me immediately.”
“SARG?”
“Seattle Animal Rights Group,” she said, rounding the registration desk. “They brought signs and made a big scene here yesterday, claiming we are killing goldfish and abusing the octopus by keeping her in captivity.”
Melinda waved a hand toward a line of four round fishbowls that sat behind the desk. Each contained one orange goldfish that could be rented out by guests if they wanted a companion in their room. One of my duties included feeding any unrented fish at midnight and filling out the little standing cards in front of the bowls with goldfish names. When I found out about this, it was frosting on the proverbial cake, because I used to have fish at home.