Hotel Nigh

Chapter 09

The First Piece of Evidence

"Right," I said, stepping into the room quickly and closing the door after me but leaving it ajar slightly so it would rule out the chance of the door getting jammed, "look for newspaper articles and anything else that's interesting." Then something popped into my head. "Danny, you said Mr. Perry would be in the back area behind the desk, so that wasn't his office?"

Danny shook his head, marching up to the corkboard with images and papers attached to it. Some looked rather dusty to me, and I was allergic to dust, incidentally, so I hoped that Danny would not have the foolish thought of blowing dust everywhere just to get a better look at the stuff. "He has a room behind there. Quite large, actually. Larger than the normal guest rooms. There's a separate door to his office though from by the dining room entrance in that corridor. I just used that knowing he'd be in his room. It was pretty scary knowing he was right in the next room to me though."

Melina was near the desk, pushing papers aside to get a better glance at others. My attention was drawn to the cupboard in the corner that had cardboard boxes in before, though I didn't get a chance to peer inside of them, despite my gut feeling knowing there would be something in them.

"I found the Betty Tibet article explaining the shooting," Melina announced. "It's still really vague though. It barely explains anything except the shooter was looking for something."

"Danny, you know about the shooting thirty years ago, right?"

"Yeah, that's why it's been so hard to keep this hotel afloat and been difficult to find people to work at this joint and especially get a manager's job."

Danny must have been talking absently, but though I was about to look inside the first cardboard box, I turned around to him and so did Melina. "Can you just repeat that?" I prompted.

"Hey, you guys should look at these pictures. These hairstyles are absolutely crazy."

"Danny, what did you just say?"

"These hairstyles are absolutely crazy," he said monotonously this time, still gawping at the images of people on the corkboard.

"No, no. The bit before that. About the shooting."

"Oh," he said, turning around to us before being startled by the fact that we were both gawking avidly at him and have been doing so for the last minute, waiting for him to repeat what he just said.

Danny wasn't all up there, let's just put it like that. He used to be somewhat clever in high school, but I guess he forgot the majority of what he learnt when he decided to work for this place. I wonder how much he gets paid.

"This hotel has seriously struggled since the shooting. Mr. Perry put me in charge of tidying all the financial stuff since this place first opened and believe me, the numbers did not look good. Math wasn't always my strongest subject, but even I knew a loss when I saw one. Or several."

"And being a manager?" I supplied.

"Well would you want to be a manager at a hotel that's struggling and where a shooting happened? This hotel has been under a load of speculation. The only reason some residents decide to lodge here is because of the whole secrets concept. They believe that if they come here with secrets, they'll stay buried here. You should see those types of people. Without that concept around the hotel, it would have closed down years and years ago." He turned back round to the corkboard, shaking his head with an amused smile on his face. "They are always so worried when they first turn up that they can barely sign the logbook, and by the time they leave, they're shaking with happiness."