Chapter 7 - The Repair Order No One Signed
The lamp threw too much light on the cut I'd made. The slit in the cream tufting had started to sag open a little wider, and every time the red LEDs blinked, I could see the glow catch on the yellow padding. I couldn't stop looking at it. It was wrong in a way that made my hands feel cold.
Mr. Moradi was still on the edge of the bed. He hadn't moved except to press his thumb hard into the side of his knee. Guard One stood at the foot, his gun lowered now but still in his hand, his eyes going from the headboard to me like he was waiting for me to do something else stupid.
I wiped my palms on my apron and tried to think like I did on a normal turnover. If a headboard looked like that — stiff in one spot, tufting pulled too tight — there had to be a reason on paper.
"Has anyone cleaned it?" I asked. My voice sounded thin in all that marble. "The headboard. In the last couple weeks."
Moradi glanced up. "What?"
"A deep clean, or a repair. The tufting." I pointed without touching. "That fabric doesn't get that stiff on its own. Somebody had to open it and close it back up."
He shook his head once. "No."
"Upholstery crew? The guys who come for the lobby chairs?" I kept my eyes on him. "Sometimes management sends them up without telling us."
"I didn't order any work," he said. His voice was flat. "I don't let people touch that bed."
Guard One shifted his weight. "Sir, with respect, building services comes through all the time."
"Not in here," Moradi said. "Not without me knowing."
That landed hard. I felt the room get smaller. If he hadn't ordered it, and housekeeping hadn't logged it, then someone had been in here quiet enough that even he hadn't caught it until his body did.
I stepped back toward the bedside table because I needed something to do with my hands. The lamp was on, warm light pooling over the marble top. There was a water glass with a dried ring under it, a folded TV remote, the little leather tray where his watch usually sat. Everything looked wiped down. Too wiped down, maybe.
"What about dusting behind here?" I said, mostly to myself. "We move the lamp every full clean."
Guard One watched me. "Don't touch anything else."
"I have to move it to check," I said. "I'm not cutting anything. I'm just looking."
Moradi gave a short nod, and that was enough.
I lifted the base of the bedside lamp with both hands. It was heavier than it looked, brass and solid. Underneath, the marble was clean except for a pale square where dust hadn't settled. Tucked right against the back of the base, half-stuck to the cord, was a folded slip of paper.
My breath caught.
"There's something here," I said.
Guard One moved fast for a big man. He came around the side of the table and held out his free hand. "Let me see it."
I didn't hand it over right away. I turned it so the light hit it. It was a work tag, the kind vendors leave when they do in-room service — thick stock, perforated edge, a printed logo I didn't recognize worn off at the corner. Folded twice. When I opened it, my fingers left a print in a thin layer of dust on the fold.
"What does it say?" Moradi asked from the bed. He was leaning forward now.
I read it out loud before Guard One could take it. "Cream tufted headboard. Gold frame detail. Padding service and re-secure."
No date. No signature. The lines for tech name and supervisor approval were blank. Just that description in blocky printed handwriting, and a checked box that said completed.
Guard One took it from me between two fingers like it might tear. He looked at the front, then the back, then held it up to the lamp.
"No work order number," he said.
"Let me see that," Moradi said.
Guard One hesitated, then crossed the two steps to the bed and handed it over. Moradi stared at it a long time. The circles under his eyes looked darker in the lamplight. His tattooed hand tightened on the paper until the edge bent.
"I didn't sign this," he said. "I never signed anything for this room."
"Could be old," Guard One said. "Left from before."
I shook my head before I could stop myself. "We pull tags on checkout clean. Every time. If a vendor leaves one, it goes in the housekeeping log and then to the front office. There's no way this sat behind that lamp through my cleans."
"How often do you move that lamp?" Guard One asked.
"Every full," I said. "Mondays and Thursdays. Polish the marble, check the bulb. I would have seen it."
Moradi looked at me, then at the tag. "So somebody put it there after your last clean."
The math hit all of us at once. That meant someone had moved that heavy lamp, done work on the headboard with the gold frame, tucked the tag behind the base like an afterthought, and gotten out without Moradi calling it in. Someone who knew the room well enough to know where we wouldn't look right away.
Guard One pulled his phone out with his left hand, snapped a photo of the front and back of the tag on the bedside table next to the lamp base for scale. The flash made the marble flare white.
"Don't fold it again," I said. "The dust on the fold — that's from back here. It proves where it was."
He gave me a look, but he slipped it into a clean pocket square from his jacket instead of his pocket. He didn't crumple it. He kept it flat.
Moradi was still holding his bent corner in the air where the tag had been. He looked at the cut in his headboard, then at the empty space behind the lamp.
"Who was in my room?" he said quietly. Not to me. To Guard One.
May you like
Guard One didn't answer. He glanced toward the door, then back at the headboard with the red lights still blinking inside the padding, steady as a heartbeat.
I put the lamp back exactly where it had been, lining the base up with the pale square in the dust. My hand was shaking a little. The tag was gone from its hiding spot, but I could still see the shape of it in my head — those blank lines where a name should have been.
