The Resort by Bentley Little Page B

she’d thought of such a scenario. Her mother. Her mother had had a miscarriage, although by the time she learned of it Gloria was an adult and her mother was practically on her deathbed. It had been a girl, three years before Gloria had been born, and she’d felt sadness and also anger at her mother for depriving her of a sister with whom she could have grown up and shared secrets, and whose advice she could have sought during those troubled teen years. She knew intellectually that it was not her mother’s fault, that her mother had no doubt felt far worse about it than she did, but the anger was still there, and the only way to dissipate it was for her to imagine the gruesome circumstances of the miscarriage. Gloria had received no details from her mother—she had not asked for any—but she’d invented a whole mental tableau to which she had returned repeatedly over the years.
    And the end result always looked like the scene in their bathroom: a blood-spattered toilet.
    Ralph seemed confused. “What should I do, do you think? Flush it?”
    His indecision brought back her resolve, and Gloria was suddenly able to function again. “Don’t touch anything,” she snapped. “It might be a crime scene for all we know.”
    â€œThen—”
    â€œCall the lobby and tell them to send someone over here right now. Then help me with our bags. We are not staying in this room another second.”
    Â 
    â€œI’m very sorry,” the girl at the front desk was saying. She was obviously extremely dismayed. Her face was red, the space above her upper lip wet with sweat, but Gloria didn’t care. Something like this should not occur in a Howard Johnson’s, let alone The Reata. It was inexcusable.
    â€œI want to speak to the manager,” she said coldly.
    â€œRight away, ma’am.” The girl picked up a phone hidden just below their sight line and pushed a button. “Mr. Cabot? We have a guest emergency. Could you come immediately to the front desk?” She hung up the phone. “The manager will be right here.”
    Seconds later, a portly bearded man of obvious breeding strode around the corner and into the lobby, greeting Ralph with an outstretched hand and offering Gloria a courtly bow. He immediately looked familiar, though it took her a moment to place him.
    Mr. Cabot?
    He looked just like Sebastian Cabot, the actor who had played a butler on that god-awful television show Family Affair.
    For a brief instant, she thought that this might be the actor’s son or brother, but then a more sinister idea came to mind, and she was suddenly certain that this man was a fake and a phony, modeling himself after Sebastian Cabot and even going so far as to steal the man’s name. But why and for what purpose? Imitating a long-dead character actor was hardly the way to earn the trust of staff and customers. The feeling persisted that the manager was not what he seemed, and the banality of his disguise unnerved her, putting her on the defensive when she had come to excoriate The Reata’s staff for that horror back in her suite.
    â€œWhat seems to be the trouble?” the manager—
    Mr. Cabot
    â€”asked.
    Ralph looked to her, and she shoved her unfounded concerns aside to angrily describe what they’d found in their bathroom and demand to know how such a thing could have gone undetected in a resort that was supposed to have such a sterling reputation. She pointed to their suitcases, piled high on a luggage cart. “This is completely unacceptable. There is no reason my husband and I should have to vacate our room, particularly not for something as outrageous as this.”
    â€œI understand completely,” the manager said in a smooth reassuring voice, “and I can assure you that a full investigation will be conducted not only to determine how this occurred but how it could have gone unnoticed by our cleaning