The phone in the night office rang for the fourth time since midnight, and Rhea knew exactly who it was, even without asking.
The guest in 512 had called first to say that his radiator was too hot.
Later, he had called to say it was too cold.
Then he had wanted to know why it was making a noise like somebody knocking on the pipes.
Mimi had been patient with him every time, which was more than Rhea would have managed tonight.
Ever since Graff had given her the shift schedule, she had been trying to figure out how to have it both ways: to do her duty as night concierge and still follow her deepest wish, to retrieve all seven pieces that had gone missing from this hotel.
So far, though, she had nothing.
Through the open office door, she heard Mimi pick up.
“Good evening, sir. Yes, sir. I understand, sir.” There was a long pause.
“Of course. One moment, please.”
Rhea waited for Mimi to call her over, since at that hour, the night desk was practically another word for complaints.
She was used to it by now.
Instead, the next voice that came out of the office belonged to Graff.
“Graff speaking, Chief Concierge. I understand the radiator in 512 is not to your liking, sir.”
Rhea looked up from the logbook and straightened her badge without thinking.
Graff had gone home at eleven, yet there was no mistaking his voice.
Whatever the guest said in reply, it was much shorter this time.
“Not at all, sir,” Graff’s voice went on.
“I shall have someone look at it in the morning. In the meantime, the Voss is at your service. Good night.”
Out by the Birdcage, Gus had straightened up at the first sound of Graff’s voice too.
He raised his hand to his forehead and gave the office phone a salute.
A moment later, Mimi leaned out of the office with the receiver still in her hand.
Gus looked at her, then slowly lowered his hand.
Yet his face didn’t change at all, which by now was exactly what everyone expected from Gus.
Mimi burst out laughing.
“You should see your face,” she told Rhea.
“Both of you.”
“How did you do that?”
“In the afternoons, I do voices for cartoons. Nowadays it’s a rabbit, mostly. Sometimes the rabbit’s grandmother.” Mimi hung up the receiver.
“Graff is easy. Three years of handovers, and you only have to sound a little disappointed in everyone. Works like a charm.”
“Can you do anyone?”
“Anyone I’ve heard often enough.” Mimi lifted her chin and tried a French accent.
“Darling, this radiator is simply impossible.”
It was the countess she had talked about the night Graff handed out the shift schedule, and she sounded like she had been practicing too.
Rhea laughed for real when she heard Mimi put on that accent, then looked at the desk phone.
If Mimi could sound like Graff, she could surely sound like Rhea too…
right?
So even if Graff called the desk every hour on New Year’s Eve, as long as he heard Rhea’s voice, he would have no reason to come looking for her.
It wasn’t the most solid plan, but it was something.
“Could you do me?” she asked.
Mimi considered her.
Then she picked up the desk phone, held it to her ear and spoke into it, pretending someone else was on the line.
“Good evening, night desk.”
It was Rhea’s voice, exactly.
Mimi listened to nobody on the other end, then nodded.
“Certainly, sir.”
It was very strange to hear her own voice coming out of someone else.
Rhea hadn’t realized how formal she actually sounded until now.
“You say ‘sir’ a lot,” Mimi said in her own voice, putting the phone down.
“It’s a hotel, what do you expect?”
Rhea glanced toward the revolving door, where Samson was busy with a taxi, then lowered her voice anyway.
“On New Year’s Eve, if Graff calls while I’m away from the desk, could you answer as me?”
Mimi’s eyes went wide.
“Away from the desk? On the night of the ball? Graff said…”
“I know what Graff said.”
“Then where would you be?”
Rhea couldn’t tell her about the comb.
Apart from Lola, nobody could know about that, or about the bigger plan she was working towards.
She needed a good reason Mimi would accept without asking for too many details.
“There’s someone I need to see at the ball,” she said.
Mimi stared at her.
“A man?”
Rhea hesitated, and that was enough for Mimi to build an entire love affair in her mind.
“A secret lover,” Mimi whispered, pressing both hands to her chest.
“At the Sylvester Ball. I knew it! You’ve been looking at your phone all week.”
Rhea was annoyed to find herself blushing, which only made Mimi surer of her new and wonderful theory.
What Mimi didn’t know was that she had in fact been watching Coco’s account, but Rhea didn’t correct her.
A romance was the one thing Mimi would understand without needing to know anything else.
The one secret she’d be happy to help keep.
Still, the idea of lying to Mimi weighed on Rhea.
Mimi had been kind to her since her very first night.
“Is he a guest?” Mimi asked.
“I can’t say.”
“Does Graff know him?”
“Definitely not.”
“Good.” Mimi was already thinking it through.
“What if Graff asks me something only you would know? How many guests are waiting at the desk, for instance?”
“Tell him two. It’s always two.”
“And if he comes out of the ballroom to check?”
“Then I’ll have to be faster than Graff.”
“Nobody is faster than Graff.” Mimi dropped into his voice again.
“A concierge does not run, Miss Ellis. It alarms the guests.”
“I’ll do it,” Mimi said in her own voice.
“On one condition.”
“Which is?”
“You tell me everything afterward.”
Rhea promised, happy that she finally had what looked like a plan, or the beginning of a plan.
The desk itself would still be empty while she was gone, but Samson had promised to keep the worst of the guests away from it, so she could only hope that would somehow work in her favor.
And she would have to be extremely lucky as well.
Mimi was on her way back into the office when she turned around.
“What are you going to wear?”
“I haven’t got that far yet.”
Mimi went back into the office, humming to herself, and Rhea turned to the next problem.
That was the gown.
She would have to change in a hurry, probably more than once, so it needed to be hidden somewhere close to the desk.
The only place that came to mind was the Birdcage, just a few steps away, which meant asking Gus.
She had been avoiding him for weeks, but she had no better idea, so she crossed the lobby to the lift, where he stood beside the lever with the gate folded open.
“Floor, miss?”
“No, thank you. I wanted to ask you something.” Rhea kept her voice low.
“Could the Birdcage hold a garment bag?” When he didn’t answer at once, she added, “For a friend.”
He looked at her for a while.
“The Birdcage holds everything, miss.”
He nodded at the narrow cupboard under his seat.
“I keep my coat in there. There’s room for another.”
Rhea looked inside.
It was indeed deeper than it seemed, easily deep enough for a gown folded into a bag.
He didn’t ask which friend, or what would be in the bag.
“Don’t you want to know who it’s for?” Rhea asked.
“No, miss.”
Rhea thanked him and gave him a warm smile.
Gus rarely showed much on his face and said even less, but he had always been kind and gentle with her.
Still, it unsettled her a little that he hadn’t asked a single question about her unusual request.
On her way back to the desk, she thought about the gown itself.
She didn’t own anything that would remotely work for a ball, let alone the Sylvester Ball.
Lola would know someone, though.
Lola always knew someone for this sort of thing, so Rhea texted her.
*I need a gown.*
Lola answered at once.
*Finally.*
When she got back to the desk, Mimi was leaning out of the office again.
“One more thing,” she said.
“Is he handsome?”
“He’s a menace.”
“Oh, I’m so thrilled!”