The only problem with the Blue Bar, Lizbet decides, is that it’s open to the public, including people like Brad Dover from Everett, men who order Irish car bombs and call complete strangers “dollface” and “hot stuff.” It’s definitely time for her to go.
“I’ll take my check, please and thank you,” she says.
Petey raises her palms. “Everything is on the house.”
“You’re kidding,” Lizbet says. “Well, thank you, it was extraordinary.”
“You can’t leave yet,” says Brad Everett from Dover—or is it Brad Dover from Everett? She neither knows nor cares. “I just got here.”
Exactly, she thinks. She pulls out two twenties to leave for Petey as a tip, swivels away from Brad Dover, and comes face-to-face with the person who has taken the seat on the other side of her, and that person is Mario Subiaco. He’s in a white chef’s jacket and a White Sox cap, and he’s a little sweaty, which only serves to make him even hotter than she remembers.
“Hey there, Heartbreaker,” he says.
She reels back in surprise. “I thought you didn’t come out of the kitchen.”
“There’s an exception to every rule,” he says. “How was your food?”
“It was…it was…”
“That good?” he says.
“Better than that good,” she says—and to her mortification, she feels tears gathering. It’s the vodka, obviously; she’s had three Heartbreakers in just over an hour—who does that? A woman who is eating out for the first time in months, a woman who has had her shoddily stitched-up heart ripped apart at the seams again. It’s not Christina’s gloating that’s making her cry. It’s kindness—the food itself and someone caring what she thought of it.
Mario smiles into his lap. “Well, thank you. I know you have high standards, so I was trying my hardest. I wasn’t sure about the cafeteria tacos.”
Lizbet laughs and discreetly wipes under her eyes. “They were a hell of a lot better than the ones our lunch lady Mrs. MacArthur used to serve up.”
“Good, good,” Mario says. He clears his throat. “So, listen, I have the night of the fifth off and I was hoping I could take you to dinner.”
“Hey, buddy boy,” Brad Dover from Everett says. “Buzz off. I’m taking her out.”
“No,” Lizbet says to Mario. “He’s not. And yes, I’d love to have dinner.” She grins. There’s no point trying to keep her cool, if she ever even had any, because Mario Subiaco is asking her out, which is a sentence that should be punctuated by ten exclamation points. “Where shall we go?”
“I was thinking about the Deck,” Mario says. “How does that sound to you?”
Ha-ha-ha-ha! Lizbet thinks. Is this happening? Is this happening?
“Sounds perfect,” she says.
“That’s what I wanted to hear,” Mario says. “We have a reservation at eight.”
12. Graveyard Shift
Grace can’t believe it. She can’t believe it!
It has taken an entire century, but someone is finally doing the digging necessary to arrive at the truth about Grace’s death.
This someone isn’t Lizbet Keaton, and it isn’t Richie Decameron, who showed such enthusiasm about a ghost in his interview and then promptly forgot about it. This someone is eight-year-old Wanda Marsh. Wanda has become, in modern parlance, obsessed with the hotel’s ghost. Zeke mentioned the ghost in an offhand remark while Wanda was searching for a mystery to solve, and Wanda seized on the topic. She begged Kimber to take her to the Nantucket Atheneum, where she and librarian Jessica Olson dug into the archives of the Nantucket Standard and found the article published on August 31, 1922. Jessica made a photocopy for Wanda, who tucked it into the back of her notebook.
Chambermaid Dies in Hotel Fire
Island coroner Wilbur Freeman reported on Monday that there was one fatality in the fire that engulfed the third floor and attic of the Hotel Nantucket. Grace Hadley, age nineteen, a chambermaid at the hotel, perished in her bed, a death that went previously unnoticed because no one—not even the hotel’s general manager, Leroy Noonan—realized that Hadley was living in the attic.
“The room she was occupying was an overflow storage closet that she’d managed to outfit with one of the hotel’s cots and was using as a bedroom, unbeknownst to anyone on the staff,” Noonan said. “Had we known Grace was living up there, we would have informed the Nantucket Fire Department immediately so that they might have tried to rescue her. Grace was known for her quick sense of humor, her willingness to take on even the most arduous tasks, and her dedication. We will mourn her loss.”
As reported in our pages last week, the hotel caught fire at two a.m. on Sunday, August 20, following a spirited dinner dance held in the hotel’s ballroom. We have now learned that the cause of the blaze was an “errant cigarette of unknown origin.” Hotel owner Jackson Benedict and his wife, Dahlia, were asleep in their suite at the hotel; however, both the Benedicts escaped without injury.
Miss Hadley was predeceased by both of her parents and her brother, George Hadley, a commercial fisherman.
Wanda shows the article to her mother (who finds Wanda’s interest in Grace’s untimely death a bit disquieting), then to Louie (who doesn’t understand or care to), then to Zeke (who indulges Wanda and listens to her read the entire article aloud), then to Adam (who doesn’t indulge Wanda), and finally to Edie (who suggests that Wanda write an article that Edie will help her submit to the Nantucket Standard).
The truth is right there between the lines! Grace thinks. No one realized Grace was living in the attic. (Jack hid her up there!) Grace was known for taking on the most arduous tasks. (Working as Dahlia Benedict’s lady’s maid!) The Benedicts had escaped without injury. (Dahlia set the fire, then ran out of the building!)
Grace is flattered that Mr. Noonan mentioned her sense of humor. And her dedication. She’s dedicated, all right. It’s a hundred years later, and she’s still here.
On July 2, in the darkest hour of the night, the door to the fourth-floor storage closet creaks open, and Grace—who isn’t asleep, who never sleeps, never rests, though it’s all she wants, please, someday—sees Wanda poke her little blond head in.
“Grace?” she whispers.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, Grace thinks. Be careful what you wish for.
“Are you here, Grace?” Wanda asks.
Yes, sweet child, Grace thinks. Now go back to bed.
“Can you give me a sign?” Wanda asks. “Can you…knock?”
Grace considers this. She can knock—but what if this leads to trouble? What if it makes Lizbet actually hire an exorcist? Wanda might think she wants Grace to knock, but when Grace does knock, Wanda might scream, faint, or be scarred for life.
There is, apparently, no one more persistent than an eight-year-old.
“Please, Grace?”
Fine, Grace thinks. She knocks, three short, matter-of-fact raps that cannot be mistaken for anything other than the supernatural.
Wanda drops her pad and pencil and claps her hand over her mouth.
Now I’ve gone and done it, Grace thinks.
Wanda whispers, “I knew it. Thank you, Grace!”
Grace follows Wanda back to her room. Wanda takes the elevator all the way down to the level where the wellness center is and creeps up the back stairs. So this is how she avoids the lobby! Wanda opens the door to suite 114 with the key card she has tucked into her notebook and returns quietly to bed. Tonight she has chosen the lower bunk closest to the door, and Louie is on the upper bunk farthest from the door. Clever girl.