Hotel Nigh

Chapter 20

Trap Door

Grasping Melina's wrist, I made a beeline towards the dining room with Melina stumbling after me.

"I'll just get on with my jobs then?" Danny called out, but more of a suggestion. Of course, he should get on with his jobs considering this is his current job and if he doesn't do well, then Mr. Perry may just sack him. The Army didn't work out for him, so what will he have to fall back on if he loses this job?

"You've never been in the kitchen before, have you?" I asked her, stepping into the dining room. Mercifully it was vacant of any presence, so we continued straight ahead to the kitchen door.

"No, but I'm guessing you have." She paused for a moment and then asked rhetorically, "I thought only staff were allowed in the kitchen."

I didn't care for a shrug in response. Frankly, I didn't care for any response, because I opened the door to the kitchen slowly and peered round through the crack. First, I tried to listen out for any sounds such as shuffling of feet or scrunching of packets or opening of boxes. But nothing. Nada. So, I opened the door further and stepped in. Rose wasn't in here.

Letting go of Melina's wrist, she lingered at the door to make sure it shut softly and quietly. Good thinking, because if I'd have been on my own, I would have allowed it to slam absent-mindedly. My eyes were fixated on the combination lock mechanism attached to the door at the back, and all other preoccupations were shifted to the back of my mind.

"Three-one-one-eight," I muttered to myself as I punched the numbers in on the lock.

Melina joined me by my side. "Are we sure Rose isn't in here?"

I didn't think of that. "I don't know."

Nothing happened after I just entered in the numbers, but I noticed that there was an ENTER button, so I pressed that quickly. There was a click and something changed with the door. I opened it up, yanking it towards me. In my haste, I completely disregarded Melina's suggestion of whether Rose was in this room or not. My curiosity was piqued, and I was not surrendering until I'd appeased my curiosity.

At first glance, the room appeared to be a pantry. Emphasis on the word appeared. When Melina and I stepped into the room, closed the door and began looking at all the items on the shelves, we realised that it wasn't much of a pantry for current use. Sure, the items were cans of foods that were non-perishable items, but they were covered with a good three layers of dust. Some of these cans also appeared quite outdated. I evaded the dust knowing it would induce me to a sneezing-fest.

"Why lock a pantry full of foods like these?" Melina wondered aloud.

"I'm not sure, but I'm guessing there's something else in this room. Just keep looking around."

We did. We looked around for a perilously long time. If Rose really was sorting out the food for dinner, then with each passing second, the likelihood of her marching in on us was heightening. I didn't like to push the limits of things too far, but Ethan's, Kimberly's and Matt's murderer (I was certain they were committed by the same people) had purposefully lead me to this room. Either there was a trap I would discover, or something more valuable for Melina and I in uncovering the identity of the murderer.

"There's something here," Melina announced using a quiet tone.

Darting to her, I realised almost immediately what she was referring to. Through the spaces of the foods and the gap from the cans and the higher tier of the shelf, there was what appeared to be a crack going through the wall in almost a straight line. It was somewhat high up. It came to about my hips. When I stepped past Melina onto her other side, the crack began descending to the ground. Back to my original position. There wasn't much of a crack this side.

"Trap door," she said. "Well, like a trap door. We had one in our house when I was growing up. The people who lived there before us obviously put it there. It was like this. It had a lock too." She bent down and muttered, "So does this one. But it's another combination lock."

"What was through the door?" I asked softly.

Melina stood up, and suddenly she seemed closer than ever. When she turned her head to me, even she seemed astonished by the proximity. Her dark flamingo-pink lips parted quietly without that purposeful pop people do when they're attempting to emulate fish. Instead, she kept her eyes on mine, and I kept mine on hers. Well, I tried to.

Her lips were all that I wanted to stare at and when she inclined her head minutely to the side, it made me wonder if it was an invitation to kiss her. Maybe she wanted me to kiss her. Maybe she was waiting for me to be the one to make the first move. Maybe she preferred chivalrous guys. I had absolutely no idea. Truth be told, I didn't know much about Melina.

This made me sadder than feeling like I did want to kiss her, so I turned away. I wanted to know more about Melina.

To avoid the awkward tension, I picked up a can of soup and accidentally tipped it towards me. The dust came flying off as I said, "Yeah, because this stuff really proves that this place is the RITZ." Some famous and prestigious hotel in London, England. This hotel wasn't even somewhere popular but on the outskirts of some small American town.

Inadvertently, because the dust had tipped off in the direction of my nose, I hastily put the can of soup back on the shelf – nearly dropping it to the floor in the process – and sneezed twice. Dust and I don't mix well at all. For as long as I can remember I've never been immune to the allergic reactions of dust.

Ethan always got it worse though. If he was in direct contact with dust, he'd be sneezing and sniffing and driving our parents mad for days. Mum used to get so frustrated that she'd make Ethan use the vacuum every time he had to clean his room to remove the dust and avoid him sneezing and driving us insane. It worked, though. Only when he could be bothered, mind you.

A lump formed in my throat abruptly and it became harder to breathe. I didn't want to show any leakage of emotion, so I stared at the can of soup I'd just put back on the shelf. This didn't help. It only brought back the memories of Ethan and his loud sneezes that you could hear anywhere in the house.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," I said, sniffing once. "I think we ought to get out of here. We're pushing time."

"Okay," she said.

There was no lock to exit the room, but we did have to be careful just in case Rose was loitering in the kitchen. It occurred to me that she possibly would have been cleaning everyone's rooms and taking over the duty of being the maid of the hotel. I gulped. I really hoped she wasn't going to perceive the red scrawling on the wall in my room. She was the chef also. She would know in a matter of milliseconds that the numbers three-one-one-eight made up the combination to the lock on the pantry door and possibly on the trap door in the pantry – if she knew about it.

She had to know about it. She was the chef! How many times would she have gone through into the pantry and picked out food? She must know every single can of food that occupied those shelves. There was categorically no way that she would not have seen the cracks and the lock and figured out that it was a trap door into something more.

The kitchen was clear. "I think we should come back in the night," I concluded. "It'll be quiet and aside from Danny working in the bar, everyone should be in their rooms sleeping."

Melina nodded. "Agreed."