Hotel Nigh

Chapter 18

A Keen Snacker

I was starting to believe that it wasn't just any old tension brewing between Melina and I, but sexual tension.

Whenever we walked and she ended up a little in front, my eyes just seemed to wander and I didn't regret it once. Whenever she was talking, my gaze dropped slightly from her dark eyes to her alluring lips. Whenever it was just us two, all I seemed to want to do was kiss her, especially after we had the near-kiss inside my room, leaning back against the door.

Mr. Perry was busying himself by flicking through the logbook behind the desk in the lobby when we arrived downstairs. He grumbled as he looked up and spotted us two. "Lunch isn't ready yet," he muttered, averting his attention back to the logbook.

"We just wanted to talk to you first," I began, ignoring what I'd previously been thinking about Melina and trying to calm myself down. "If we could go somewhere private just in case there are prying ears about."

Now that his curiosity was piqued, and we could tell this because his hand was immobile in the air, a page was falling, his eyes were on us and his bushy eyebrows were raised. "All right," he sighed. "Come round." He gestured idly somewhere in the direction to our left.

Sharing a glance between us as Mr. Perry wandered out into the back room behind the desk, Melina and I wandered through the double doors towards the dining area. Luckily, they were unlocked (but I presumed they had to be with the recent events transpiring in this hotel and everybody with a sudden incentive for aimlessly traipsing around) so we walked right through and to the door we hadn't been through before.

He was leaning back against a door when we entered. The door on the right inevitably had to be to the front desk, and I was almost certain that the door he was leaning against was the door to his bedroom. There is nowhere else he would be sleeping in this hotel, and I was sure he'd be living in this hotel, especially with the storm. I could faintly hear the thunder outside, but there was yet to be any lightning.

"What do you want to know?" he asked in a dry tone.

"What do you know about the necklace?"

He crossed his arms over his chest and turned his head away towards the desk in the room. Then he turned back to me and said in the same tone, "Just that one day it was hidden in this hotel, and ever since, this hotel has been notorious for harbouring people's secrets and taking the burden away from them. The mystery of the necklace drives people insane with profound, unsatisfied curiosity and they just want to find it. They don't think that it's actually life-threatening. That shooting that transpired thirty years ago – it was because they wanted the necklace. Did he ever get it? No. I don't believe he did."

"That's all you know?" Melina asked incredulously.

"That and it's been both good and bad for business. Bad because people don't want to visit here because they know it's dangerous and so far out, but good because people want to leave their secrets behind."

"Have you never thought to find where it's hiding? This is your hotel after all, so you must know all of the nooks and crannies and hiding places."

He shrugged. "Never has it once piqued my interest to find it. If that's all then, I'm afraid I need to help Rose sort out lunch and I need to prepare what I'm going to say to everyone." He pushed himself up and began busying himself with his desk, but then he turned to us with his eyebrows raised. "Any leads on solving the mystery of the murders so far?" He seemed like he was mocking us.

"Not really," I confessed. "But we're working on it."

He scoffed with a twisted smile on his lips. "I don't doubt you are, kids."