The Maid(75)

“Hello?”

“Good evening, Giselle. It’s Molly, Molly the maid. Your friend.”

“Oh my God, Molly. I’ve been waiting for you to call. I haven’t seen you at the hotel. I’ve missed you. Is everything all right?”

I don’t have time for niceties, and I do believe this is one of the few situations in life when skipping the rules of etiquette is entirely appropriate. “You lied to me,” I say. “Rodney’s your boyfriend. Your secret boyfriend. You never told me that.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line.

“Oh, Molly,” she says after a time, “I’m so sorry.” I can hear it in her voice, that little catch that tells me she is near tears.

“I thought we were friends.”

“We are friends,” she replies.

I feel the sting of this like a barb.

“Molly, I’m lost. I’m…I’m so lost,” she says. She’s crying openly now, her voice meek and scared.

“You made me move your gun,” I say.

“I know. I shouldn’t have gotten you involved in my mess. I was scared, scared the police would find it and then everything would point to me. And I figured they’d never suspect you.”

“The police found your gun in my vacuum. Everything’s pointing to me now, Giselle. I’ve been arrested on many charges. It was publicly announced a few minutes ago.”

“Oh God. This can’t be happening,” she says.

“It is happening. To me. And I did not kill Mr. Black.”

“I know that,” she says. “But I didn’t either, Molly. I swear.”

“I know,” I say. “Did you realize that Rodney would frame me?”

“Molly, I swear I didn’t. And the stuff Rodney made you do, cleaning rooms after his shipments? I only found that out on Monday morning. Before that, I had no idea. That black eye he has? That’s because I hit him when he told me. We had a big fight about it. I told him it wasn’t right, that you were an innocent, good person, and that he couldn’t just use people like that. I flung my purse at him, Molly. I was so mad. The chain whopped him right in the eye.”

That was one mystery solved, but only one. “Did you know that Rodney and Mr. Black were partners in illicit activity?” I ask. “Did you know that they were running an illegal operation through the hotel?”

I hear her shift and shuffle on the end of the line. “Yes,” she says. “I’ve known for a while. That’s why we spent so much time in this fucking hotel. But the part about you? About Rodney involving you in his dirty work? I didn’t know that until this week. If I’d known earlier, I swear, I would have put a stop to it. And I’m telling you, I had nothing to do with Charles’s murder. Rodney and I joked about it, sure, how we would fix our lives and finally be able to be together openly, just by offing his boss and my husband with the same bullet. We even planned running away together, far away.”

It clicks then. The flight itinerary, two one-way tickets. “To the Caymans,” I say.

“Yes, to the Caymans. That’s why I asked Charles to put that property in my name. I was going to leave him and run away, file for divorce from afar. Rodney and I were going to start a new life, a better life. Just the two of us. But I never actually thought…I didn’t know Rodney could actually be capable of…”

She trails off. “Have you ever felt betrayed, Giselle?” I ask. “Have you ever put a great deal of faith in someone who then let you down?”

“You know I have. You know it all too well,” she says.

“Mr. Black, he let you down.”

“He did,” she says. “But he’s not the only one. Rodney too. It seems I’m an expert at trusting assholes.”

“It may be something else we have in common,” I say.

“Yeah,” says Giselle. “But I’m not like them, Molly. Charles and Rodney, I’m not like them at all.”

“Aren’t you?” I ask. “My gran used to say, If you want to know where someone’s going, don’t watch their mouths, watch their feet. I never understood that until now. She also said, The proof is in the pudding.”

“The proof’s in the…what?”

“It means I won’t trust your words anymore. I won’t.”

“Molly, I made a mistake is all. I made a stupid fucking mistake in asking you to go back into that suite and do my dirty work for me. Please. I won’t let you go down for this. They can’t get away with it.”

Her voice is raw and real, but can I trust what I hear?

“Giselle, you’re at the hotel now? You’re in your room?”

“Yeah. A princess locked in the tower. Molly, you have to let me help you. I’m going to speak out, okay? I’ll tell the police it was my gun and I told you to get it. I’ll even tell them that Rodney and Charles were running a cartel. I’m going to get you cleared, I promise. Molly, you’re the only true friend I’ve ever had.”

I feel the rush of tears break over the banks of my eyes. I hope it’s true, I really do. I hope she’s a good egg caught in a rotten basket. It’s time to put her to the test.

“Giselle, you need to listen to me. You need to listen very, very carefully, okay?”