The Scratch on the Ming Vase Read Online Free Page A

checked her face. “Always look your best, Yin,” she added. “There are lots of millionaires in this place, and plenty of them are single. That’s how I’m going to escape one day. On a yacht. Hopefully before I’m thirty.”
    â€œYou turned thirty last year, didn’t you?” Ellen tapped her fingernails against the wringer bucket. “Only way out of here before you’re sixty-five is in an ambulance. Or a coffin.”
    Dolores glanced at Nicki.
    â€œYou’re too young for this. You should try for something better. If I had it to do all over, I’d become an actress or a hairdresser or something. Something glamorous.” She pulled out a pair of rubber gloves and snapped them on. “So where do we start, girls?”
    â€œHow about the eighth floor?” said Nicki.
    â€œSounds good,” said Ellen. “That way I can talk to that handsome police guard.”
    â€œSomeone tried to murder the man who was staying in 813,” Dolores told Nicki. She felt around in her pocket, then handed the girl a staff keycard. “This will work on any door in the hotel, but remember, every time you use it, it’s recorded on the computer downstairs. The room number, the time, and the fact that it was your card.” She smirked. “That way, if a guest can’t find her pearl necklace, they’ll have somebody to blame.”
    The service elevator opened, and they lifted the cleaning cart out and started down the hall. Ellen smiled at the policeman when they passed room 813.
    They walked to the far end of the corridor and pushed open the door to a recently vacated suite. “Looks like they’ve been having some fun in here.” Dolores tossed a load of clean linens onto the bed.
    Toppled wine and liquor bottles oozed out their dregs onto the rug, half-eaten plates of shrimp and lobster slopped over the dresser, and honey from the breakfast tray coated the TV remote. The bathroom was even worse.
    Slobs , she thought.
    â€œStart with the bed,” said Ellen. “I’ll face the bathroom.”
    Nicki threw off the quilt, stripped the bed down, and reached for the fresh sheets. She threw one over the bed and started to jam the edges under the mattress.
    â€œWhat the heck are you doing?” Dolores leaned her dust mop against the wall and called Ellen out of the bathroom. “Will you look at this? The girl has never made a bed in her life!”
    Ellen laughed. “Here’s how it’s done,” she said, starting with a fitted sheet and smoothing it out from the middle to each end. “Everything has to be tight as a drum, and remember that the flat sheet always goes good side down, so when you fold it back—and it must be exactly one-third of the bed—the right side will face up.”
    â€œGot it,” said Nicki.
    â€œOh Yin,” said Dolores. “Don’t forget the chocolate on the pillow.”

    Dolores checked out the room. “Not bad, not bad at all. You catch on fast,” she said. “We’re going on our break now, Yin. Take fifteen.”
    â€œYou can join us if you want,” said Ellen. The staff lunchroom is in the basement, next to the laundry.”
    Dolores made a face. “The vending machine spits out stale sandwiches and warm juice, but if you give it a swift kick, it returns your coins.”
    â€œNot mine,” said Ellen.
    â€œYou’re not lucky like me.”
    â€œRight, Dolores.”
    â€œThanks, but I don’t want anything right now. I’ll see you later,” said Nicki.
    She watched from the end of the hall as the two women headed for the elevator. Ellen stopped to chat with the cop and Dolores joined her. This was Nicki’s chance and she took it.
    I just hope Newman isn’t watching the surveillance camera.
    Dragging a mop and pail, she shot up the hall to room 813.
    â€œI heard a scream,” she told the guard at the door. “A