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Previous chapters of the Vista Falls story:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
How should the story continue? Voting is open on the current chapter!
Last time, the group raced out of the bistro to find Mr. Barrymore surrounded by a crowd. The display of antiques in the hotel lobby had been vandalized! Mr. Barrymore was so upset he was screaming. Chief Colbert and Officer Littlepoole addressed the situation in the capacity of official police business. The teens and Mr. Dinello noticed that none of the antiques had been broken or destroyed. The precious items (borrowed from the museum’s collection from the Westwick Mansion) had simply been carefully and gently disarranged. The real damage was that someone had painted on the wall. In big, dripping red letters, the words, “Home is where the heart is. Now, I have no heart,” had been scrawled. Mr. Dinello recalled the red paint that he had seen on Missy Merrick’s hands. The officers tried to calm down Mr. Barrymore who at first denied that Riley could have caused the vandalism as revenge for being fired, but then changed his story by suggesting that the damage was caused by Riley. This change in stories happened as soon as people in the hotel began to suggest the vandalism was caused by the Woman in Gray. This rumor was continued when Mina, one of the maids in the hotel, started to talk about what she had seen. Mr. Barrymore didn’t let her finish. Mr. Dinello and the teens went off to wait for the officers to finish their official investigation. However, as usual, Vera became impatient. What did they do? Here’s what you decided.
Chapter 16
Room Hates
Chief Colbert and Officer Littlepoole will be finished soon and they’ll tell us what they found out.” Ward smiled.
“Or we could do some investigating on our own.” Vera grinned.
“Like what?” Rick’s eyes widened with interest.
“Like sneak to the desk and find out what room Missy is in.” Vera giggled. “We could pay her a little visit and see if she has any paint buckets hanging around.”
“I like it.” Rick nodded.
“I don’t.” Mr. Dinello shook his head.
“Maybe then we should go look for Riley.” Delia suggested. “I’ll bet we could find his name and address online. I saw a sign advertising for free internet access in the business center upstairs.”
“No.” Mr. Dinello shook his head.
“What do you suggest then? Should we just sit here?” Vera asked.
Mr. Dinello thought for a few seconds, his memory flashing back to the red paint on Missy’s hands and her rather awkward excuse for how it got there.
“I’ve changed my mind.” He smiled. “Let’s visit Missy’s room.”
“Now, you’re talkin’.” Vera sprang up out of her chair.
“It’s just that I don’t like the idea of sneaking up to the front desk to look at the register to find out what room she’s in.” Mr. Dinello frowned. “It’s dishonest.”
“Not really.” Vera shook her head. “We’re not stealing anything, we wouldn’t be hurting anything.”
“Well, that’s sort of true, but also sort of a weak argument. The fact is we don’t belong behind the check-in desk. So, we’d be trespassing. Also, hotels don’t usually freely give out people’s room numbers. By keeping the person’s room number known only to the hotel staff, it protects the privacy of the guests. You know, people feel safer.” Mr. Dinello explained.
“We’re not going to hurt Missy.” Vera argued.
“Why don’t we just ask for her room number?” Ward shrugged. “What could it hurt?”
“Well, we can’t very well interrupt them. Mr. Barrymore seems to be the only desk person on duty and he’s in the back office with Chief Colbert.” Mr. Dinello shook his head.
“All the more reason to just go and look for Missy’s room number.” Vera stamped her foot. “It’s not a big deal.”
“It is kind of a big deal.” Kate shook her head. “If I were staying in a hotel, I wouldn’t want the staff just giving out my room number to anyone. I’d want them to call me and then ask if it was all right to tell someone where I was.”
“Well, there’s no one to call for us.” Vera grumbled.
“But, there are phones.” Rick pointed to a table near them. “Usually in hotels, if you pick up the internal phone and dial for the operator, you can say that you’d like to be connected to someone’s room and they’ll dial for you. We could ask to be connected to Missy’s room.”
“And, then we can ask her if she’d like to visit with us.” Delia smiled.
“And, it would also give her time to hide the bucket of red paint and all the other clues we’d be looking for. We need to sneak up on her!” Vera whined.
“Maybe she wouldn’t hide anything. After all, she doesn’t know we’re mystery solvers.” Delia argued.
“Yes, she does.” Lucy nodded. “She knows we were investigating the Woman in Gray. We told her in the woods.”
“See!” Vera snapped.
“Well, those are the only ways we can see her.” Ward sighed. “We can either sneak a look at the register or call the operator and ask to be connected to her room. Unless, of course, you’d want to go knocking on every door in the hotel until we find her.” Ward joked.
“Yeah!” Rick laughed. “We could dress up like maids and knock on every door and say, ‘housekeeping’ until we found her. You know, just like on that old TV show when the funny lady was looking for a celebrity in the hotel.”
“Hmmmm…” Vera thought for a moment.
“Oh no!” Rick shook his head. “I was kidding. We’re not going to dress up like anyone!”
“No, I know that. Finding a uniform in my size would take too long.” Vera sighed. “But, I was thinking that who would know better which guest was in which room than one of the maids? And, that maid, Mina, seemed more than willing to talk. Maybe she’d tell us where Missy is.”
“That’s not a bad idea.” TJ nodded. “We could also ask her what she was talking about with all that haunting stuff.”
“Are we agreed?” Vera asked.
“No.” Mr. Dinello shook his head. “Somehow I seem to have lost control here. Did you forget you’re being chaperoned?”
“No.” Vera smiled. “We just figured you’d agree with us.”
“I don’t know why Sam leaves me in charge.” Mr. Dinello muttered to himself. He took a deep breath, alright what are our options?”
What should they do?
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