Dead Suite Part 1

DEAD SUITE.

by Wendy Roberts.

Chapter 1.

For most people, checking into a five-star hotel meant luxury and pillow mints. For Sadie Novak, luxurious accommodation meant blood spatter, maggots, and the occasional ghost. But it paid the bills.

Sadie was dressed in a skirt and heels as she rode the elevator up to the tenth floor of the prestigious Bay Eminence Hotel. She smiled sweetly at the businessman who got off at the convention level, and when the doors slid open on the tenth floor Sadie made her way down the hall and slid her key card into the door. Her sweet smile was long gone and she was all business.

Inside the room, Sadie sighed with brief longing as she took in the lavishly appointed s.p.a.ce with the stunning view of Seattle's Puget Sound bay. She could totally imagine the room being rented by a famous actress or a rock 'n' roller wanting to trash its lusciousness just for fun. Sadie glanced hungrily at the bed and wished she could sink into its tempting fluffiness. Too bad the room wasn't Sadie's for rest, relaxation, or rolling around in the king-sized bed. Instead the s.p.a.ce served only as a safe room that she used to don and doff disposable coveralls and where she would be storing supplies. Marring the elegant surroundings were large biohazard bins and containers holding all she needed to do crime scene cleanup.

Sadie slipped out of her fancy skirt and blouse and into sweatpants and a T-s.h.i.+rt. Next she promptly covered up in a hazmat suit, including booties and a respirator. With an armload of specialized cleaning solutions, she made her way to the door that connected this hotel room, which she used as a safe room, to another that had turned out to be not so safe for its previous lodger. Sadie opened the door and stepped inside the second room. It was equally prestigious and opulently appointed; or at least it would have been if it wasn't for the blood-streaked, naked hooker sitting on the edge of the cus.h.i.+ony king-sized bed.

"Ah geez," Sadie muttered from behind her respirator.

The job just went from normal mess and gore to an entirely more complicated and paranormal level.

Yesterday she'd been hired by the manager of the Bay Eminence to clean up an "unfortunate incident" in one of their rooms. Sadie had already read about it in the papers over the last few days. She didn't need the hotel manager to tell her the little event that occurred at this plush hotel involved the brutal butchering of a prost.i.tute. That kind of thing tended to knock a star or two off the five-star rating.

The Seattle Police Department had done its job removing the body and collecting evidence, but somebody had to tidy up the remaining ghoulish disaster of blood spatter. It was definitely far beyond housekeeping's usual job requirement. Sadie had promised the hotel manager, Herbert Sylvane, that she would be discreet. Management had done its best to minimize the appearance of the hotel name in local papers, impressively having it buried on page four instead of headlining the Seattle Times. n.o.body wanted Sadie's cleanup to cause Seattle tourists and convention goers to question their choice of accommodation.

Sadie had already arranged for hotel staff to bring up her supplies from the loading area, including heavy-duty air purifiers, and transport them into the adjoining room. They used linen carts and the freight elevators to make the delivery, and Sadie could hear them dropping off more gear in the other room while she took photos of the crime scene for the purpose of billing the insurance company. When she'd checked out the scene yesterday she'd thought the job would be easy-peasy-at least as uncomplicated as it ever was mopping up the dead-but there'd been no dead prost.i.tute welcoming her last night.

Sadie went to work around the naked woman, which was not as simple as it might sound. Whenever Sadie attempted to wipe away blood spatter or tried to spray emulsifiers on sloughed dried skin, the nudie-patootie working girl would leap in front of her, trying to get her attention. Considering the victim had slashes that made her previously model-like body look like b.l.o.o.d.y Swiss cheese, it was distracting to say the least.

Sadie had hoped to get the job done quickly and deal with any possible ghosts after the cleaning, or at least in the latter stages when she didn't have to make herself heard through a respirator, but the apparition before her obviously had other ideas.

"I really didn't want to do this right now," Sadie shouted through her respirator as she turned to face the attention-seeking spirit. In addition to the respirator m.u.f.fling her voice, the ozone generator air purifier created a noise of its own. She didn't want to turn them off even for a second because the ozone helped destroy odor molecules and also killed airborne bacteria. "What would you like to tell me?"

The lithe twentysomething redhead faced Sadie with a look of surprise and pointed to herself as if to say, "Who, me?"

"No. The twelve other ghosts in the room," Sadie responded sarcastically.

It would've been funny, except Sadie knew that for the dearly departed, this wasn't a humorous moment at all. Sadie took a step forward to punctuate her point with a tap on the ghost's shoulder. "Yes, dear, I'm talking to you."

When Sadie's fingers touched the apparition she was filled with the revulsion that always flooded her if she physically touched the dead. She shuddered, made a sour face, then shook off the wave of nausea that followed.

The woman blinked at Sadie with a look of uncertain confusion.

"Okay, I'll start," Sadie shouted, but her voice was m.u.f.fled by the apparatus over her face. "I'm so sorry to tell you this, but you're dead. You were killed here in this room by some crazy guy. This might be news to you. My friend with Seattle police, Detective Petrovich, told me you were most likely drugged, so there's a very good chance that you don't remember being killed." Sadie glanced over the woman, taking in the multiple stab wounds, and slowly shook her head. "If that's true, you should be grateful for that one small comfort."

The woman looked down as if seeing her mutilated body for the first time. She shrieked in horror before vanis.h.i.+ng into thin air.

"She'll be back," Sadie mumbled to herself.

With a scrub brush in hand, Sadie turned and tackled the blood-spattered wall. It had been a few days since the Seattle PD investigators had gotten what they needed from the room and left the rest. Maggots were having a social gathering in the sludgy congealed blood puddles on the floor. Unfazed, Sadie tackled the job in systematic stages. She worked like a frenzied machine of clean, using emulsifiers to soften dried tissue and blood and then scrubbing and wiping them away. What couldn't be cleaned-such as sections of carpeting, underlay, and mattress-she cut away and placed into medical waste containers. Blood was cleaned, maggots were swept up and flushed away, and Sadie tackled it all hour upon hour until every muscle in her body screamed from the exertion.

In fact, it was nearly six hours later when Sadie surveyed the room and p.r.o.nounced it reasonably ungory, unb.l.o.o.d.y, and, generally, unmaggoty. The first stage of the cleaning was always the toughest because of the amount of gear required. Beneath her hazmat gear she was covered in a fine sheen of sweat. Slipping into the adjoining safe room, Sadie doffed her gear, stripped to her bra and panties, and stood in front of the air-conditioning vent for a couple minutes.

It was after midnight but Sadie was positive that she could complete the second stage of cleaning before morning. This confidence came from the fact that the manager of the sw.a.n.ky Bay Eminence was paying her triple her usual going rate to accomplish the task within twenty-four hours. Things had been slow for Sadie's trauma-clean company, Scene-2-Clean, so she didn't mind sacrificing sleep to get the job done. She might even be able to make her mortgage payment this month.

Herbert Sylvane told her she could order whatever she wanted from room service for as long as it took her to get the job done. That was one of the better perks she'd ever been given. Her stomach growled as she picked up a leather binder and flipped through to peruse the room-service menu. Normally Sadie would've grabbed a sub or burger on the way home from a job. The Bay Eminence menu was a tad more refined. She went with the lobster bisque to start and the fennel-crusted salmon as the main course. Instead of dessert she decided to order lots and lots of coffee. The cost of the meal was about how much she usually earned on a job, so it was no small bonus. She called the order into room service and asked them to bring it directly into the room since she'd be in the bath.

She filled the tub with hot water laced with the girly-scented bath products provided. She stripped off her undies and slid blissfully beneath the bubbles, then picked up her cell phone from the edge of the tub and called her on-again-off-again boyfriend, Zack Bowman.

"Hey, how's it going at the Eminence?" he asked, answering on the first ring.

"It's a real hards.h.i.+p." Sadie sighed as she slid deeper into the bubbles. "I'm soaking in a Jacuzzi filled with rosemary-mint bubbles while I wait for room service to deliver my lobster bisque and salmon. I may never come home." She added, "By the way, I'm naked."

"You are?"

Sadie rolled her eyes. "Yeah, that's how I usually take my baths."

"You're killing me." But he laughed and sounded distracted when he said it. "Guess I could hop in my car and be there in a couple hours."

Sadie's heart jackhammered in her chest. She wished he meant it. He'd spent a number of weeks at Whispering Groves Rehab Center but had been home for months now and they'd been living like roommates, not lovers. With business slow, she'd been channeling all her pent-up s.e.xual energy into jogging. If she didn't have s.e.x soon she was going to have to seriously consider entering the Seattle marathon.

"Do it. Climb in your car and drive up for the night," Sadie said and hated that it sounded like she was begging. "Take your time so I can get the job done. You'd be breaking every speed limit to get to Seattle from Portland in two hours."

"It would so be worth it."

"I wish you meant that." Sadie's annoyance peaked. She wanted to tell him to act like a boyfriend and make love to her. Instead she muttered, "I'm working through the night in Seattle and you're working the rest of the week almost two hundred miles away, so stop teasing."

"Guess we'll have to stick to the weekend."

Since the economy had gone south and Sadie's trauma-clean company had it tough, Zack had taken a job as a rent-a-cop in Portland. It helped out financially, but it was doing nothing to add spark to their diminis.h.i.+ng love life.

"How about we go out for dinner and a movie when you're back?" she suggested.

"Maybe . . ."

"You were the one who said we should start going out on dates once you were out of rehab."

"I know. We will . . . eventually."

Sadie's heart tightened in her chest. She wanted to snap and tell him she was sick of his lack of commitment, but she was afraid it would make things worse. She heard the door to the room open up and a male voice announced he was leaving the tray on the table. She shouted "Thanks" in return.

"I guess I should finish up before my food gets cold," Sadie told Zack.

"Okay. Talk to you later," he replied, sounding all too okay with ending the call.

"You know, if you do decide to drive up for a visit you could head right up to the room, and by the time you got here I'd be done cleaning so we could . . . spend some quality time together." She hoped her voice sounded soft and s.e.xy and not as desperate as she felt.

"That's tempting, but . . . it's not such a good idea," Zack said haltingly. "We'd agreed I'd find my own place after rehab and take things slow."

"Like the dinner and a show I suggested?"

He didn't reply. Sadie bit her lower lip. He was the one who'd insisted on finding his own place but he'd delayed that move only because of her money situation. She knew Zack would've moved out immediately if she hadn't needed the help financially.

"Right," she replied, all business now. "Well, I should get back to work. Make hay while the sun s.h.i.+nes or, in this case, wash blood while there's blood to mop."

They ended the call with uncomfortable chuckles, and Sadie dropped her cell phone onto a stack of towels next to the tub. She sunk down until her face was submerged beneath the water and then screamed until all the air exploded from her lungs in a blast of bubbles.

After lathering and rinsing away the smell of body decomp from her hair and skin, Sadie reluctantly removed her pruning body from the Jacuzzi jets. She sat with a plush hotel housecoat wrapped around her damp body as she devoured the gourmet meal. It was delicious, but she had to admit that it still fell short of a burger and shake from d.i.c.k's Drive-In.

Sadie redressed in clean, casual clothes and washed the meal down with excellent coffee poured from a fancy carafe. Looking out the hotel window, she admired the startling beauty of Puget Sound. All in all, this job was one sweet ride. If you didn't mind ghosts and gore. Her gaze slid sideways to the connecting door and the room beyond. There was still work to be done.

Sadie didn't need the respirator for this next phase of cleaning and she was more than a little grateful. She still suited up in disposable Tyvek coveralls, gloves, and booties before pa.s.sing through the connecting door, but the respirator stayed behind. She brought with her an additional waste bin. She'd already removed large sections of carpet and underlay and placed them into rubber bins for proper disposal later.

It was in the wee hours in the morning when the redhead ghost reappeared, perching herself so that she hovered just a few inches above the edge of the bed. She watched Sadie for some time before saying anything.

"My name is May Lathrop," she said slowly, her bottom lip quivering with emotion.

Sadie glanced over and offered her a sympathetic smile. "I know. Your name was in the paper."

"It was?" She blinked rapidly as if she might cry and then swallowed her tears and began pacing the floor anxiously. "How did this happen? Who did this to me?"

"Sorry, I don't know, but I'm sure the police will try their best to find out," Sadie replied, then added, "I'm guessing you took a job here, right? At the Eminence? I imagine whoever hired you for an hour or a night . . . well, I guess he was messed up in the head." Sadie tapped the side of her own head.

"I have a corner off Union Street. This is a much fancier place than I'm usually at," May said. Her fingers reached to stroke the fabric of a fine high-back chair in the corner, but her hand simply dropped through the material without contact and May choked back a sob.

"Don't suppose you remember what you were doing here?" Sadie shook her head. "I don't mean what, I mean who. Do you remember who hired you or even where you were before coming here?"

"I remember getting a message from someone to meet for a private party. . . ." May shook her head. "I was getting out." May walked closer and sat back down on the hotel bed, but her shape hovered over it instead of sinking into the cus.h.i.+ony duvet. "I wanted to be an actress, you know. I even had a part a few years ago. I was a dancing toilet brush in a commercial for a toilet-bowl cleaner." She giggled at the memory and then hung her head. "I know that sounds lame."

"No it doesn't," Sadie said, even though it really did. "Look, we all make mistakes and bad choices."

"Yeah, but you're still alive so you at least get a chance to fix your mistakes," May protested.

There really was no arguing with that.

"So how come I'm still here, if I'm dead?" she asked. "Is it because I wasn't good enough for heaven?"

"I don't know exactly how these things work." Wearily Sadie plopped herself down onto the chair next to the bed and folded her gloved hands on her lap. "But usually if someone doesn't go right over to the hereafter once they're gone, it seems to mean that they have something they need to deal with in the here and now. Some kind of message, or final request they want to have delivered. That's where I come in. I can try to help you with that. You got family?"

"Somewhere. I haven't kept in touch. Last I heard they'd moved somewhere in Texas."

May's eyes filled with tears and she ran her hot-pink fingernails through her hair. For the first time Sadie noticed the index finger on May's right hand was missing. That was a little something that hadn't made the papers. Obviously Detective Petrovich was keeping that tidbit to himself as part of his investigation.

"I was saving up to get out of this business. Had nearly a thousand put away already. Plus some jewelry a couple regulars gave me worth maybe a thousand more. What happens to that money?"

"Without a will . . ." Sadie shrugged. "I'm not sure."

"I worked hard for that money. I want to see something good come of it. There's a charity that helps women called WATS," May said. "It stands for Women Against the Streets. They were really good to me. When I needed medical help once, when a john got rough, they took care of me. Just a bunch of Good Samaritan volunteers, but they really cared, you know? They also helped me into my low-income apartment and got me into some free acting cla.s.ses." She got to her feet and stood with new determination. "I want WATS to have my money and jewelry. Maybe they can use it to help other girls."

"That's really nice of you."

"So you'll take care of that for me? Make sure WATS gets my money? It's in a shoe box on the top shelf of my bedroom closet."

"It's not that easy," Sadie said. "Your apartment will be taped off by police. I can't just barge in there and take something."

"But I'm giving you permission!"

"Somehow I don't think the cops will believe me when I tell them your ghost said it was okay for me to take your cash."

She giggled softly. "Okay, well, it's not like you even have to tell them."

"Breaking in isn't a specialty of mine either," I said.

"You don't have to break in. My apartment is in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a house. There's a large rock with painted yellow daisies in the flower bed next to the door and I keep a spare key under there. Twice I had my purse stolen on the streets. After that, the second time, I learned not to keep cash or keys on me." She rattled off the address of her place and Sadie got a pen and paper from the desk in the corner of the room and took down the information.

"Okay, I can't promise anything," Sadie said. "But I'll do my best to make sure this happens for you."

Then Sadie got to her feet and approached May.

"It's time for you to move on." And time for me to get back to work. "I want you to close your eyes and think about the most beautiful thing in the world. Think back to a time of peace and tranquility in your life and imagine a loving soul ready to embrace you. Let go of this place and all the ugliness and pain in this world," Sadie told her gently.

May did as she was told and exhaled a long, slow sigh before her body began to glow brightly. A s.h.i.+mmer appeared around the edges of her shape and then, after a few more moments, she'd vanished entirely.

Sadie smiled and her heart beat excitedly in her chest. This part never got old. The s.h.i.+mmer meant that May had moved on and wouldn't return. If they simply disappeared without a s.h.i.+mmer, it meant they were still here, just not visible. As much as Sadie could do without the drama of being a ghost whisperer, she had to confess she felt a small thrill at helping make someone's final wishes come to fruition. She figured she was somewhat like the Easter bunny or tooth fairy except she delivered messages from the great beyond instead of chocolate or cash.

At the end of the cleanup she notified the front desk so that they could discretely go to the safe room with linen carts and use them to haul all her stuff down through the freight elevators. They would deliver the bins and equipment to the back alley delivery entrance where Sadie's Scene-2-Clean company van was parked.

Sadie snagged all the little shampoos and soaps from the bathroom and then re-dressed into her blouse and skirt before she made her way downstairs to chat with the manager of the Eminence.

She knocked on Herbert Sylvane's office door and he called her to come in. The office wasn't as plush as the hotel itself. A large black desk monopolized the room, while bookshelves held a few hard covers but mostly knickknacks. The desk was tidy with a few papers stacked in an inbox at one end and a small statue of the Virgin Mary at the other. Herbert Sylvane walked and talked stiffly like he had a stick where the sun don't s.h.i.+ne. His skin was pale and his hair was dark. Aside from the fact that he dressed like he'd just stepped out of a GQ cover, he had a down-home warm smile that immediately put Sadie at ease.

Ever the gentleman, he got up from behind his desk and remained standing until she took a seat across from him.

"Cleaned up the mess already?" he asked her.

"Yes, basically it's done. I know you wanted everything finished by today but, if it's okay with you, I'm going to let the ozone generator run for a couple more days, just to be absolutely certain there's no smell."

"Absolutely." He steepled his manicured hands beneath his chin and smiled. "That's a great idea and I appreciate your thoroughness. Nothing says five-star elegance like the smell of rotting flesh."

He winked at Sadie and it triggered a memory.

"Have we met before?"

He frowned and shook his head. "Maybe . . . have you stayed here in the past? Thankfully, I haven't had reason to call a trauma cleaner before." He continued. "So everything went as expected? No surprises that caused you any delay?"

Sadie thought briefly of May Lathrop, then shook her head. "I've been doing this for a few years, so these kinds of messes no longer surprise me," she said.