Free Board Stiff: A Dead-End Job Mystery by Elaine Viets Page A

sixty wastebaskets a day.
    The Full Moon had survived the twin tragedies because it was clean, quirky and affordable. The biggest quirk was Sybil herself. She and her husband had built the hotel in 1953 and added the homey touches in the lobby. They’d even picked up the display of creamy pink and white seashells on Lauderdale Beach.
    Sybil’s husband had checked out permanently years ago, but she inhabited a smoky cave behind the front desk. Helen didn’t recognize the desk clerk on duty this morning. The bronze-skinned young woman had dark hair pulled into a tight knot. Like all Sybil’s employees, she was polite. The clerk promptly showed Helen back to Sybil’s lair.
    Helen braced herself for the nicotine stink. The dirty, bitter odor of cigarettes in the manager’s rooms never seemed to seep out into the hotel. Sybil’s desk was a landfill buried under layers of ash. A wiry, yellowed woman, Sybil was a year younger than Margery, but she looked infinitely older. A lit cigarette burned in a butt-studded ashtray, like an offering to an ancient god.
    “Helen,” Sybil said, and a nicotine-stained smile split her thin face. “I heard you and your hunky new husband opened up a PI business.”
    “We did. I’m a partner in Coronado Investigations,” Helen said. “I wanted to ask you about one of your guests, Daniel Odell.”
    “That one,” Sybil said, twisting her face into a thunderous frown. “If he never comes back here, it will be too soon. You know what that rat bastard did? Yesterday—the day his poor wife died—he came in here and had the nerve to ask me for a room discount.”
    “Why?” Helen asked.
    “His reason was a real beauty: ‘Only one person will be sleeping in the room now,’ he says. ‘I’ll use half as many towels.’”
    She took a long drag on her cigarette and puffed out smoke like a small gray-haired demon. “Real broken up, he was, the cheap son of a gun.”
    “I gather you didn’t give him a discount,” Helen said.
    “Hell, no,” Sybil said. “Not a nickel off. I hoped he’d get mad and leave, but he didn’t. Mr. Odell won’t find another place this good for what he wants to pay.”
    “Did he tell you how his wife died?” Helen asked.
    “I saw the story on TV,” she said, “with that lovey-dovey photo. I don’t know where the station got that picture, but it sure wasn’t taken here. He made that poor woman’s life a misery. Hateful man.” Sybil crushed out her cigarette as if she was grinding it into Daniel Odell’s face.
    “Did they argue?” Helen asked.
    “Nonstop,” Sybil said. “And he started them all. Poor woman couldn’t do anything to please him. He bitched that she didn’t wear her makeup right. She didn’t do her hair nice. But mostly, he complained about her being fat. He supervised her breakfast like a prison guard. He’d bring her food to their table in my breakfast room. It was always the same: black coffee, one slice of dry wheat toast and half a banana.
    “I put out a good free buffet, but he wouldn’t let her eat anything else—no eggs, bacon or warm cinnamon buns. Not even a bowl of cereal.
    “I don’t know what they did for lunch or dinner, but I’m sure it was more of the same. That poor thing was starving. After he fell asleep, Ceci would sneak down here and stuff herself with candy bars from the machine. Drank Coke, too. She’d also leave a tip for the maids with the front desk. Her husband didn’t bother.
    “The last night, the night before she died, she snuck down, left two dollars for the maid at the front desk same as usual, then started to use the machine. Kelly, the night clerk, said, ‘Why don’t you order a pizza, Ceci? I’ll make the call.’ She got Ceci a large sausage-and-pepperoni pizza. Ceci was so grateful, she tipped Kelly five dollars for making a phone call. When the pizza arrived, Ceci took it into the hotel breakfast room and wolfed it down like she hadn’t had a solid meal in months. Probably