Hiding Behind Rags

Chapter 5

Finally after searching for the right room and all of her supplies, Ali had everything she needed for her first task and quietly knocked on Ms. Vier’s office door. The nervous feeling that she had in her stomach reminded her of the feeling she got when she was knocking at Mrs. Hazlet’s door not even two days ago.

Seeing there was no reply to her knock Ali entered the office and scanned the room. There were two filing cabinets, a book shelf, and a desk with a computer to the side. Ali knew that the information she needed was going to be in the computer and filing cabinets under lock and key. So, the trick was to make the room look clean then try to find the cabinet key and get the password to the computer.

‘This should be fun’

Ali started cleaning as fast as she could. Splashing water around the floor, spraying air freshener all over, she was doing the fastest but most minimal cleaning of the small office.

After the office looked at least clean-ish to Ali she started opening all the drawers she could checking everything for passwords or keys that could help her. Checking all of the drawers in the room she gave up on getting into things the easy way and pulled out a pin from her hair and started to work the lock on the filing cabinet closest to the door. It didn’t take long for her to hear a quick snap and for the drawer to start to roll open.

Just as Ali reached into the filing cabinet she heard a pair of heels clicking their way towards the office. Ali immediately recognized the sound as Ms. Vier’s heels.

‘Oh crap.’

 Without thinking, Ali picked up a random file that was laying in the drawer, wrapped it in a wash towel, and shut the filing cabinet door.

‘Please, please, please automatically lock back up.’

Running to the other side of the office Ali began washing the window with the towel/file as Ms. Vier opened the door.

“Oh hello Ali.” she said with a smile.

“Good afternoon Ms. Vier.” Ali replied. “Sorry to bother you but I was just finishing up. And with that Ali quickly left the room shutting the door behind her.

Heart still pumping Ali made her way up the main stairs and into the maid’s courters to drop of her “wash towel” into her suitcase deciding to read the file at lunch so that no one would see it then going back to the top of the main staircase to wash the rails and banisters.

For this Ali decided to take her time and make sure everything was clean and perfect, just so that she knew not to worry about the being fired aspect of it all… that would definitely not help the case.

Thirty minutes and millions of thin rails later Ali was tired, sore, and heading to her next job, hoping that it would be easier to get information out of Ms. Vier’s kids.

Walking around the mansion and wandering through several long and dark hallways Ali finally found the room she was looking for and knocked.

“Come in” a small voice whispered from the other side of the door. Ali slowly opened the door to find a bright pink room accompanied by white stained wooden furniture, a large walk in closet, her own bathroom, and on the large four-poster bed was a ten year old girl in a short pink dress drawing in a notebook.

“Hi, my names Ali and I’m just here to clean your room.” Ali said. Losing the formality not thinking the small girl would care.

“I’m Samantha” she said with a smile, clearly starting to like her new maid. “And you don’t have to clean if u don’t want to… I won’t tell my mom.”

Ali smiled back at the girl. “Well even though that’s very nice of you I think I should still clean… but maybe just… a light cleaning.”

Samantha giggled “Ok.”