“Hedy was at the Orient last night. This morning, we found her dead in her room. They say it was an overdose.”
Madame gripped the desk with a fury that blanched the tips of her fingers.
“Whosays?” asked Madame through gritted, veneered teeth.
“The police. But I’m not so sure.”
“I’m guessing you aren’t here only to deliver the news. What do you want?”
“The name of Hedy’s last client,” said Sterling.
“She was off yesterday.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Madame shoved the appointment ledger towards her, and waved at her illegible scrawl. Hedy’s appointments were in the first row.She was the top girl. Yesterday’s box was empty. Madame flipped back to earlier weeks, showing Hedy took every Wednesday and Thursday night off. She slapped the ledger shut. “I don’t know who he was. But I’ll find out. Tell me everything you know.”
Sterling told her most of it. She finished with mention of the bracelet. “He was rich and wearing one of those ridiculous Cartier bracelets with screws.”
Madame’s eyes softened with concern.
“What’s this about a bracelet?” she said, staring over Sterling’s shoulder towards an unseen horizon, as if squinting at a distant memory.
Sterling described the gold and sapphire jewelry in more detail. Madame listened, winding pearls around her hand until they left reddened depressions in her flesh. When Sterling mentioned the Loos Bar, Weiss clenched her fist so tightly, the necklace snapped. Pearls clattered in every direction. A few bounced across the desk and jumped down Sterling’s blouse. She fished them out, then bent to collect the rest.
“Leave it,” snapped Weiss, biting back a sob that sounded almost genuine. She wrung her hands, then took a sharp breath as if settling her thoughts. “I don’t want this news reaching my girls tonight; they should hear it from me after I’ve decided how best to deliver it,” she said, whatever flicker of emotion Sterling imagined she’d seen now vanished from her face.
Madame pinched her cuffs, tugging her sleeves. She smoothed her blazer as she strutted to her filing cabinet, kicking aside stray pearls. She hummed as she unlocked the drawer and combed through yellowed files with her red claws.
Madame returned to her seat and opened the folder to read, humming louder as she flipped through. Sterling recognized the song. One of Hedy’s favorites.
Weiss shook her head as she leaned back. “Hedy was my biggest earner. How ever will I make up that loss?” She peered over the folder. “Perhaps, the person at fault for her death should bear responsibility.”
“I didn’t kill Hedy.”
“I doubt anyone in the Hotel had more reason than you to hate her. She was under your protection, and you failed her.”
Sterling bit her lower lip to hide its trembling. Madame unclipped a thick envelope from the folder, and tossed it over. It swished across the glass and stilled. The ink-rubbed outline on the envelope revealed its contents. A passport. Without peering inside, Sterling knew it was hers. The real one, that had been collecting dust for fifteen years.
“The police already suspect you. Imagine if they learned who you really are,” said Madame, pulling a paper clip off a stack of pages. She dropped it. It pinged against the glass.
One by one, Madame laid sheets down before Sterling, humming all the while. Highlights from a background check. Starting with a photo of an aging colonial farmhouse deep in Virginia, far off the public roads. The slack-roofed house she’d escaped over half her life ago, at fourteen, with help from Aunt Serafina’s employer: Madame.
Next up was a black-and-white photocopy of a page from a phone book. The musty scent of the Virginia white pages was burned into Sterling’s memory, summoned forth even by the sight of the grayscale scan. The circled landline number was equally unforgettable. Her mother made her memorize it when she was five in case she ever got lost far from home.
Madame dropped the next sheet. An article from a small-town newspaper, the sort of place where the fire brigade were volunteers but the gossips were semiprofessional. The headline was about the manhunt for a missing teenager. Wanted for murder.
The girl in the photo smiled wide, her arms wrapped around the waist of a man whose head was cropped out of frame, noted in the caption as her father. Sterling had forgotten how charming her nose used to be, crooked from when she’d kissed her kindergarten crush and his jealous twin sister socked her in response. Madame’s surgeon had refined the bridge and swiped away her fingerprints with months of weekly chemical peels. Madame insisted it would protect her. Instead, it had imprisoned her.
“Your father must miss you. Family issoimportant, Sterling. I can’t bear to see one torn apart. I might have to take it upon myself to contact him. He isn’t the only one looking for you, if I recall.”
“You. Wouldn’t. Dare,” said Sterling, knowing Madame would.
“My silence has a cost. Come work for me. Under my close supervision, of course,” she said, eyes running over Sterling’s curves. “A few months on a rigorous diet should trim you into shape, but once you’ve slimmed down, you might get me close to recovering Hedy’s lost earnings.”
Sterling lifted the lid of Madame’s peppermint jar and took one, then leaned back as she untwirled the cellophane. “I’m not going on a diet, and I’m not coming back,” she said, popping the candy onto her tongue.
Madame tucked the documents back into the folder, sighing theatrically. “It’s a shame. You’re giving away top-shelf product for free, sleeping around Vienna. But if you refuse to sell, perhaps you could provide me something of equal value…”
