Wrong Room: Sleeping With My Fiancé's Uncle novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Suspended

Romy's login is flagged for the leak and she's suspended in front of the office while Keely comforts her; then Dell reveals Ryland has been skimming the staff tips and her job is on a list of forty.

On Monday morning my key card didn't open the door on West 26th Street.

I swiped it twice.

The light stayed red.

The receptionist buzzed me in without looking up, which at the Meridian Guide is how they tell you something is wrong.

The whole office went quiet when I walked in.

Twenty desks. Twenty people pretending to read.

Keely was at our desk by the window.

She had a new black notebook open in front of her, the spine still stiff.

She jumped up and hugged me before I could take off my coat.

"Romy. Oh my God. Are you okay?"

She smelled like the perfume I'd smelled in suite 2002.

I let her hold me, then stepped back.

"Why wouldn't I be okay?"

Her face did something careful.

"She wants you in her office," Keely whispered. "I'm so sorry. I tried to tell her it can't be you."

The editor-in-chief's door was glass.

Everyone could see in.

She was sixty-four and had closed restaurants with a single paragraph. She didn't ask me to sit.

"November twelfth, nine fourteen at night," she said. "Your login opened the Kinsella schedule."

She turned her screen toward me.

My name. My password. A Tribeca address.

"I was in Chicago," I said. "At a dinner. My phone was in a locker."

"Your laptop wasn't in Chicago."

"No."

"Who else has access to your apartment?"

The answer was sitting in a robe in my head with a twenty in his hand.

I didn't say it.

If I said Ryland, I said it was my fault for having him.

If I said Keely, all I had was a notebook I'd stolen from a hotel room while dressed as a maid.

Behind me the glass door opened.

"Can I just say something?" Keely said.

The editor looked up. "Keely."

"I don't think Romy did anything on purpose." Keely put her hand on my shoulder. "But she is engaged to a Kinsella. She's been engaged to one for two years. Things get said at home."

She squeezed my shoulder.

"I'm only saying it because somebody else will."

The editor nodded slowly.

That was it.

Four years of shared desks, and that was the knife.

"You're suspended while we review this," the editor said. "Pending a decision. Leave your inspection notebooks and your card."

"My notebooks are my work."

"Your notebooks belong to the Guide."

I opened my tote and put three black notebooks on her desk.

Not the fourth one.

The fourth one was in the lining, where I'd sewn a pocket in my first year to keep my notes dry in the rain.

I walked out of her office.

Twenty desks went silent again.

Keely followed me with a box she'd packed for me without asking. My stapler. My mug. A photo of me and Dell at Coney Island.

"Call me," she said. "Seriously. Whatever you need."

I took the box.

Then I turned and faced the room.

"Somebody in this office sold a review," I said.

Nobody breathed.

"It wasn't me. I'll bring back the name."

Keely's smile didn't move.

But her hand went to her new notebook and closed it.

I rode the elevator down with the box against my chest.

On the sidewalk on 26th Street, I put the box in a trash can.

I kept the photo.

Then I took out the black phone with one number in it and typed.

"I can start today."

The reply came a moment later.

"Tomorrow. Six a.m. Staff entrance on 58th. Wear the shoes."

I spent the afternoon at Dell's, ironing the plain white blouse his office had couriered over in a Kinsella garment bag.

Dell came home at seven.

She didn't take off her coat.

She stood in the doorway with flour on her sleeves and her face swollen.

"Del?"

"I'm fine." She wasn't. She sat down on the floor right there by the door. "I'm totally fine."

I knelt next to her.

"Talk."

"You know how the service charge works? At the Kinsella?"

"It goes into the tip pool. Everybody shares it."

"Not since April." She wiped her nose on her wrist. "Our checks went down by a third. Every one of us. Ryland said it was the centennial. Upgrades. Everybody pitches in."

I thought about the bank envelope on the coffee table.

Fifty thousand dollars, fat, with his initials on it.

"There's a list," Dell said. "The head housekeeper saw it on the printer in his office. Forty names. The kitchen and half of housekeeping. The day after the gala."

She looked up at me.

"Ro. I'm on it."

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