“What?” Janine asked warily.
“Stalk him.”
She drew away and shook her head. “Of course not! That would be entirely inappropriate.”
“Oh, please, like you haven’t gone through every detail of his Facebook page at least twice by now. What’s the difference between cyberstalking and doing it in real life? Either way, you get intel.”
“I would never invade Luis’s privacy like that.”
“But I would,” I countered. “That’s kind of the point. Point me in the right direction, and Mission Janine-and-Luis is a go.”
She chewed her lower lip, considering my offer. Then: “Okay, fine. But if you get caught, I’m pretending I don’t know anything about it!”
“Deal.” I rubbed my palms together. “Tell me where you saw him last.”
Janine peered over the front desk. “Don’t you want to get dressed first?”
Lucky for me, Janine had practically memorized Luis’s schedule. He clocked in at eight am every morning, checked the maintenance ledger for items that needed to be fixed, and made his way down the list of work. His job mostly included unclogging toilets, fixing the heating units in guest rooms, and tending to the shoddy ice machine on the fourteenth floor, which, according to Janine, was hardly ever in working order.
Little did Janine know, I had no matchmaking plans to speak of. I waited until Luis’s last assignment before his lunch break then tracked him to the grand ballroom, where Marie would soon host her wedding reception. He balanced on an enormous A-frame ladder in the middle of the room and stretched up to the chandelier, replacing the candle-shaped bulbs one at a time. With alarming precision, he tossed the old bulbs into a waiting trash can below.
I didn’t catch his attention, merely watching as he completed his task. There was nothing inherently questionable about Luis, from the outside at least, but I got the feeling he was hiding something. For one thing, he never left the Saint Angel. A man had to go home every once in a while; where was Luis going? The ice machine mishap ticked a nerve too. He was the only person who might have been in the same place at Angelica at the same time.
After he’d exhausted his supply of fresh light bulbs, he descended from the chandelier, his legs sturdy despite the ladder’s unsteadiness. His shoulders flexed as he folded the ladder, swung it under one arm, and carried it to the far side of the ballroom. There, he pressed on a wall panel and waited. The panel popped out, and Luis opened the hidden door to reveal a large storage closet. Had I not watched Luis access the compartment, I never would have known it was there.
“What else is this place hiding?” I muttered to myself.
Luis stacked the ladder inside the storage room then sealed the compartment and dusted his hands. The entrance vanished once again. Checking his watch, Luis dragged the trash bin full of old bulbs straight towards my hiding spot in the hallway.
I leapt onto a windowsill and drew the curtains around me as Luis left the ballroom. Once his footsteps faded, I jumped down and followed him through the corridor, far enough behind to keep track of him without arousing suspicion. He led me into the hotel’s service area and out the back door, where he upended the trash into a large dumpster.
Boredom rooted deep in my soul as I watched Luis order a burger from the kitchen cooks, eat his lunch in the staff break room, and get ready for his afternoon shift. Maybe this guy didn’t have anything to hide after all.
As Luis finished up, I once again melted into the shadows, hiding behind a huge cart full of dirty sheets. Sighing, I watched as he headed toward the lobby to fix something else. This was a bust.
Then, Luis paused, noticing a ketchup stain on his shirt, and muttered something under his breath. With an abrupt about-face, he strolled deeper into the service area, passing me again. I waited until he was out of sight before darting off in the same direction.
The Saint Angel was full of twists and turns, but Luis never hesitated at the corners. The hallways grew cold as we sank deeper beneath the Chicago streets. Luis trotted down a stone staircase with mold growing in the wet corners. The smell of damp earth reached my nostrils. What on earth were we doing down here?
I peeled off my shoes and padded through the concrete corridors in my socks so Luis wouldn’t hear my footsteps. Within seconds, my feet were soaked and freezing. Luis wandered on, using his phone light to guide him. The aged sconces placed every twenty feet appeared too old to provide sufficient illumination.
At long last, Luis came to a halt. I flattened myself against the wall and peered around the corner. He fiddled with a warped wooden door, and when he opened it, my eyebrows lifted in surprise.
It was an old wine cellar, no longer in use for its intended purpose. Instead, a rickety metal cot with a thin mattress stood inside, along with a hot plate, a stack of canned foods with labels I recognized from the hotel kitchen, and a massive duffel bag full of unfolded clothes.
Still, I didn’t fully understand the situation until Luis drew off his stained shirt and threw it into a pile of dirty laundry. He took a fresh T-shirt from the duffel and pulled it on over his head. I stepped out from my hiding spot.
“You live here?”
Luis let out a choice expletive and shot to his feet. “What are you doing? Did you follow me?”
“So what if I did?” I asked.
“You had no right,” he said, shaking his finger at me.
I lifted my hands in innocence. “Look, I just have a few questions for you. That’s all.”
“This is none of your business.”
This time around, I was smart enough to pull my P.I. license out and show it to him. “I think you’ll find it is. I’m investigating
