Cinderella and the Cyanide Read online

  A quick peek under the bed informed her it was clear and clean. She straightened the curtains. I could have avoided this whole mess.

  I wouldn’t have even seen that poor woman, dead on the kitchen floor.

  Poisoned.

  How horrendous!

  She stuffed the paper towel roll and the bottle of glass cleaner into the cleaning cart and pushed the cart toward the door.

  With a flip of the light switch, she made the room dark and ready for its guest. She exited and made sure the door locked behind her.

  On to room 105.

  If only Helena hadn't been into sampling goods she wasn’t meant to sample, Cinda thought as she reached for the feather duster and attacked the king-sized bed’s headboard.

  There was a fine layer of dust on it, and with one swipe she removed it all.

  But then what? The sparkling cider bottle would have remained closed—the seal must have been open, seeing as Serena did put the powder in—but it would have been closed up and full, ready to be poured out for the toast at five.

  Then what would have happened?

  She moved to the bathroom, which was in good shape. The arrangement of towels was a bit haphazard, so she walked over and straightened the stack.

  A tray of drinks would have been served to the three contestants—Serena, Chanel, and Pete.

  Serena and Chanel would receive champagne.

  Pete, due to his abstinence, would get a glass of the poisoned cider.

  Cinda moved to the sink and spritzed the chrome faucet, which was already almost perfectly sparkling but with one small smudge, with a cleaning solution. Before she wiped it dry, she closed her eyes and imagined Serena, nervously watching Pete accept the glass. She’d think that the cider within contained the sleeping medicine.

  And how would Pete be feeling?

  There are two likely possibilities, based on what Sara and I have uncovered so far, Cinda realized. She opened her eyes and began swiping her paper towel across the faucet rigorously.

  Option one: he’d know that his drink was tampered with, and he’d be eagerly awaiting busting her for it. Maybe he’d claim the drink tasted odd, and would then have it tested for poison, knowing perfectly well that the clues would lead back to Serena.

  But he and Chanel were in the hot tub area between 7:00 and 8:00 the night before, which gave them an alibi during the time when the poison had turned up in Evian’s room.

  Unless Evian got the time wrong... or lied. Cinda’s head was starting to spin.

  If Pete was somehow in on framing Serena to get her out of the running, it meant he was a pretty terrible person.

  I don’t know him, Cinda admitted to herself. Maybe he is. Maybe I don’t have good instincts about people after all.

  She walked out of the bathroom and tossed the crumpled paper towel into the trash bag hooked to one end of the cleaning cart.

  I only just met him.

  It’s impossible to really know a person you just met.

  The still small voice inside of her spoke up: But his eyes—the way he looked at me.

  It was easy to ignore this voice. It was so quiet, compared to the loud churning of her logical mind: There’s a chance Pete could have set the whole thing up, with Chanel as an accomplice.

  She finished up in the room and moved on to the next. It was 4:30.

  Within the next fifteen minutes, she completed the next room.

  While she was dusting the light fixtures in the third room of the evening, her mind crawled over the scene in the kitchen that she’d experienced earlier.

  Helena’s body—collapsed on the floor.

  It was so tragic.

  If Pete and Chanel really wanted to get Serena out of the picture, couldn’t they have done it in a safer way? It seemed unnecessary to use actual lethal poison. Someone could get hurt—and indeed, someone was: Helena—an innocent bystander.

  True, she sampled the drink and shouldn’t have—but that didn’t warrant the consequence that she’d suffered.

  And she had diabetes, too, thought Cinda. That was a hard enough disease to struggle with. She probably went through so many challenges just to maintain her health, only to be taken down by something completely unrelated to the disease.

  Cinda remembered the way her coworkers had been so sure that it was a seizure. That made sense, since people with diabetes were susceptible to seizures. Since the coworkers had reported it as a seizure, that’s what everyone thought.

  If only I’d gotten there earlier, Cinda thought, as she positioned water bottles on the side table just so, with a little “Welcome to The Palace” placard propped up between them. I could have told the medics about the poisoned drink right when I arrived, and perhaps they could have pumped her stomach immediately—before the poison had a chance to affect her heart.

  Just as she was thinking this, her phone rang.

  It was an unknown number.

  “Hello?” she said, as she switched off the lights and exited the room.

  “Miss Rella?” It was a female voice with a Southern accent—Serena. She sounded upset.

  “Serena, is that you? How are you holding up?” asked Cinda, clutching the phone.

  “I’m in trouble,” Serena said, her voice trembling with fear. “I’m calling you because I tried the front desk, and Marcus gave me your number. He said he’s seen you running around working on figuring out who killed Helena. He said I should talk to you. I really didn’t know who else to call. I’m sorry, it’s just—” She stopped short, and took a jagged breath.

  “What is it?” Cinda asked. She reached room 117, unlocked it, opened it, and held it open with her hip as she dragged the cart inside.

  “I can’t get ahold of Evian,” Serena said.

  “I’m not surprised,” Cinda said. “Serena, I spoke to Evian earlier. She’s on her way back to Europe. She’s intent on looking out for herself, and I’m not sure she’s planning on helping you at all. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but I don’t think Evian’s going to call lawyers on your behalf.”

  Serena sobbed. “I should have known it,” she said after a moment. “I don’t know why I let her push me around so badly. I knew she didn’t have my best interests at heart—I just knew it. And now look where it’s gotten me... in jail for murder.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cinda said. “I wish I could help.”

  “You can,” Serena said. “I overheard the police talking. They said that the forensic tech discovered cyanide... something... cyanide sodium, I think? In Helena’s blood. I swear, I thought that I was drugging that stupid cider with sleeping medicine, not cyanide. Evian told me it was just a crushed up sleeping pill.”

  “I believe you,” Cinda said. “But without proof, I’m not sure who else will.”

  “You have to help me prove it,” Serena said. “Please.”

  “Serena, did Evian say anything about where the bag of powder came from?”

  “She said she bought the pill at a drugstore and crushed it up.”

  “Okay—I think that was a lie. She told me that it turned up in her room out of the blue with a note attached. The note was written on Chanel’s stationary. Can you think of a reason Chanel would do something like that?”

  “Chanel wants to win,” Serena said. “We all did. But the three of us—Pete, Chanel, and I—we were all clear that we had to play fair. I don’t know why Chanel would suddenly act so unethically.”

  “Is there anyone else you can think of who might have put the poison into Evian’s room?” Cinda asked.

  Serena let loose another sob. Then she said, “No, no, I can’t think of anyone. Please, keep trying to find answers, Cinda. I need help. I don’t want to stay here forever.”

  “You did drug that drink, though,” Cinda said. “I’m sorry. I know this is difficult for you right now, but I just don’t get it. Why’d you do it? You could have said no to Evian.”

  “I couldn’t,” Serena said. “Evian held my career in her hands. If she said
it was a good idea, I took her word for it. I was powerless to refuse her.”

  “Powerless,” Cinda echoed. “You’ve got that right. That’s definitely how you were acting. I don’t know how I can help you, Serena. All I can say is that you should think about being very honest with the police about how the events unfolded. That’s a way that you can help yourself. Okay?”

  Serena agreed.

  As they hung up, Cinda felt Serena’s desperate energy clinging to her. She finished up in the room, departed, and moved onto the next. She hoped that by immersing herself in her task of cleaning the final room, the nagging feeling of Serena’s trouble would dissipate.

  It did not.

  It only grew stronger.

  Serena was being held for murder, yet she had no idea about the true nature of the powder she put into Pete’s drink.

  She thought it was sleeping medicine—yet it was cyanide.

  Cyanide! No wonder Helena dropped dead so quickly. Cinda didn’t know a lot about hazardous chemicals, but she knew enough to know that cyanide was fast-acting and deadly. She also knew that when it was mixed with other substances, maybe like the combination Serena had just mentioned, it came in powder form, and could have easily been mistaken for a crushed-up sleeping pill. Perhaps now that the police knew about the exact type of poison used, they’d be able to track it. It must have been sourced from somewhere. Someone purchased it—but who?

  Evian said that she left her room to go to the bar at 7:00. When she returned to her room at 8:00, the poison was there, waiting

  During that time, Chanel and Pete were in the hot tub.

  So who put the poison in Evian’s room?

  Who wrote the note?

  If the note wasn’t actually written by Chanel, why was it on her stationary?

  Cinda looked over the sink to make sure the proper little bottles of shower supplies were where they needed to be.

  Shampoo, check,

  Conditioner, check

  Body lotion, body wash, and a bar of soap: check, check, check.

  Who had motive to involve Chanel in the investigation?

  She could think of no one except for perhaps Pete, and even that was a fuzzy notion at best. “I feel like I’m banging my head against a wall,” she muttered under her breath, as she dusted the table and then straightened up a small stack of brochures. “And that wall might as well be named Pete.”

  Once again, she imagined how it felt to be in his room with him, her hand brushing against his.

  Why?! Why did she meet such a great guy, only to learn that he was taken, a liar, and a possible murder? Why? She blew out a frustrated sigh.

  Helena—dead.

  Her body on the floor.

  The image pounded inside of her skull.

  This is the last room, she coached herself. Just try to calm down and focus on the work at hand—cleaning. She pushed the cart into the hallway and moved to the next room.

  Then it happened.

  As she pulled the spray bottle from the cart, she had a thought.

  It was a thought that changed everything. The body was on the floor. Helena’s coworkers suspected a diabetic seizure. That’s what Marcus told me, when I was going by the front desk after lunch. I was behind schedule, but I went by the kitchen to see what was going on. I checked my watch when I arrived at the kitchen—I remember, it was quarter to one. I was there for a few minutes, and then I pointed out the cider, and suggested it might have been poisoned.

  Before I said that, they didn’t even suspect poison at all.

  Then why did Sara call me, all excited about a possible murder here at The Palace?

  Who tipped her off? She said she saw a tip on “24-7 News Leads.”

  Cinda started to work through the sequence of events logically. It would make sense if the 24-7 News Leads site listed Helena’s collapse as a medical emergency at The Palace, seeing as that’s what dispatch and the first responders thought. It was common for journalists to tap into dispatch so that they could get to fires and other emergencies quickly. But if that was the case, Sara would have thought that it was a diabetic seizure—not poisoning.

  She probably wouldn’t have even been interested in it.

  But as it was—she knew it was suspected poisoning. How? Cinda sat on the edge of the hotel bed and pulled out her phone.

  She dialed Sara.

  “Question for you,” she said, as soon as Sara answered. She could tell by the sound of people talking on the other end of the line that Sara was still in the bar.

  Cinda spoke up a bit as she said, “How did you know that Helena was poisoned? You said, when you called me, that you were coming to The Palace to do a writeup about the suspected poisoning—but how did you know that’s what it was?”

  “That’s how it came across the News Leads website,” Sara said. “I read it and knew it’d make a good article. Not stellar, mind you, but good. A solid story.”

  “You mean, the News Leads website had a tip that someone had been poisoned? Do you know exactly when that tip was posted?”

  “I don’t remember the exact time,” Sara said. “Is it important?”

  “It might be,” Cinda said. “Could you check?”

  “Sure. I just have to look at my phone. Hold on a sec...” There was a muffled sound of movement on the other end of the line, and Cinda waited. Then Sara came back to the line. “The tip was posted by someone with the username tips-for-you at 12:42.”

  Cinda narrowed her eyes, and tried to grasp what Sara was saying. “That’s impossible!” she said. “At that time, everyone thought that Helena went down because of a seizure. I was the one who brought up the possibility of poison, and I didn’t get to the kitchen until 12:45. I probably didn’t suggest poison until 12:48, or maybe even 12:50.”

  “Apparently someone knew that she’d been poisoned before you made the suggestion,” Sara said.

  “What does the post say, exactly?”

  “It says ‘Intriguing murder attempt at The Palace: Kitchen worker goes down after being poisoned.’”

  “Intriguing... it says intriguing?”

  “Yeah, now that I think about it, the wording is kind of strange.”

  “Very strange, I’d say,” Cinda said. She bit her lip, trying to figure out why that word was ringing a bell in her mind. Then she said, “You know who else used that word—intriguing—just today?”

  “Who?”

  “Trixie Trent. She’s the head of PR for this place. She described the look they’re going for as 'intriguing elegance.’ Isn’t it weird that she used that exact same word?”

  “A little,” Sara said. “Are you thinking that maybe this Trixie woman is involved? What would be her motive?”

  “I’m not sure...” Cinda said. She got up off of the bed. With her brow furrowed, she started pacing. Why would Trixie plant the poison in Evian’s room?

  “You know that saying,” Cinda said. “The one that’s like: ‘there’s no such thing as bad press?’”

  “Oh, yeah,” Sara said. “It’s so true, too. Even scandals like this one can pay off in the end. Think about it: this grand opening party might not have even made it into the Dayton City Newspaper if it wasn’t for Helena’s death. But now I’m here, planning on doing a write-up. And if it was an even worse catastrophe, there’d be even more press here.”

  Cinda recalled how sad and upset Trixie looked in the kitchen. “This is a nightmare,” she’d said.

  “I thought she was sad for Helena,” Cinda said under her breath. “But she wasn’t—was she? She was sad that her plan didn’t work out as spectacularly as she wanted.”

  Cinda checked her watch. It was 4:50.

  “What’s that?” Sara said. “I couldn’t quite hear you.”

  “I’m not the only one who wants fireworks,” Cinda said.

  “What do you mean?” Sara asked.

  “Trixie wants them too,” Cinda said. “But not in a romantic kind of way—she wants the fireworks of a big, exciting scanda
l here at the hotel! She wants to create so much drama that the national—heck, maybe even international—news networks will be packing the street out front. But her plan didn’t pan out. She wanted one contestant, Serena, to be arrested for the murder of another contestant, Pete. Think about it—two sexy models pitted against each other—and then she even left clues that would lead back to Chanel—Pete’s lover. Trixie orchestrated an intriguing story, and waited for it all to unfold. If it had, it’d be splashed all over every news network in the country, and The Palace would burst onto the scene with exactly the branding she hoped for—intrigue. But Helena drank the poison instead of Pete, and the story fizzled out. You’re here, sure, but none of the big TV networks or anything. I bet she even—”

  “Hang on!” Sara said. “My phone just beeped. There’s a new post on ‘24-7 News Leads.’ What if it’s Trixie again?”

  “You’d better check it,” Cinda said.

  She waited while Sara checked.

  When Sara’s voice came back to the line, she spoke quickly. “It was the same anonymous poster—this tips-for-you person. It says that there’s about to be a second murder at The Palace at 5:30—exactly when the new Brand Ambassador is to be announced!”

  “Shoot,” said Cinda. “Maybe she’s going to try to follow through with her original plan, and she’s going to go after Pete again. We have to get into that party.”

  “We won't get past security,” Sara said. “Believe me. I watched almost everyone from the bar migrate over there, and the event staff is checking tickets carefully. They’re being really tight about security. There’s no way you’re going to get in without a ticket.”

  “I think I know a way,” Cinda said. “I’ll also try to call Pete and warn him.” With that, she hung up.

  She dialed Pete and paced nervously as she listened to Pete’s phone ring.

  No answer.

  It went to voicemail

  She didn't leave a message. Instead, she hung up and dialed again. Maybe if he saw two calls from her right in a row, he’d know it was urgent.

  Still no answer. She left a voice message, warning him that his life might be threatened within the next ten minutes. Then, she sent a text with the same information.