Yellow Mama E zine

The Housekeeper’s Vacation

​

Chris Fortunato

         

           Adeline had been raising her two daughters in the Hartford Avenue projects, when a friend who was a patient of Dr. Albertini’s told her the doctor and his wife needed a housekeeper. With the good fortune of her job with the Albertinis, Adeline was able to rent a ground-floor apartment in a triple-decker just a five-minute walk from the doctor’s house.          Eventually, her two daughters moved away, one to a job and one to marriage.

           Adeline enjoyed working in the Albertini household, dusting and vacuuming, doing the laundry, pressing the doctor’s shirts and preparing his lunch when he was between house calls and when Mrs. Doc was out grocery shopping or at a bridge party.  When the doctor was out of the house, and she didn’t have to make lunch for him, she walked to her apartment and indulged in a restorative sip of whiskey. Nobody was going to tell her she hadn’t suffered enough to have her reward, even if it came in a bottle.     

          Once, down in the laundry room, Mrs. Doc came in with a bag of groceries and moved close to Adeline. “Adeline,” the woman began, in a voice Adeline knew presaged an accusation of drinking on the job.

          Instead, Mrs. Doc said, “Did you manage to get that stain out of the tablecloth?”

          “Oh, yes,” Adeline said. “It came right out.”

          Adeline knew that Mrs. Doc decided at the last second not to make the accusation that was in her mind to make. She loved her for that.

          In another instance, Adeline’s noontime tippling caused a catastrophe with the brownies she baked periodically for the family. She prided herself on making them from scratch. The Albertini children loved them.

          On this day, she forgot the baking powder. She knew it was the whiskey that made her forget. And Mrs. Doc knew, as well. The platter of gooey sludge that emerged from the oven, though tasty to the youngest boy, was evidence enough for Mrs. Doc, who kindly passed it off as an innocent mistake.

          Soon after, Mrs. Doc made an offer. “Adeline, the doctor and I feel you deserve a vacation. I’ve already booked a week for you at the Harbor House out on Block Island. And here’s some extra cash.” Mrs. Doc handed Adeline an envelope full of twenties.

The next day, the housekeeper took the ferry to Block Island. The hotel van that met the ferry from the mainland took her up the crushed clamshell drive to the hotel, gleaming white with red shutters atop a hill. Adeline felt she had entered a strange yet wonderful world. She settled into a small room on the third floor of the hotel containing a twin bed, a chair with lace antimacassars, and a cherrywood bureau smelling of furniture polish. The warm sea breeze filled the sunny room.

          Adeline changed into a sleeveless sundress she reserved for weekends when she walked to the grocery store and the liquor store. Down in the lobby, she ordered a gin and tonic at the service bar and took it outside to the broad veranda that ran around two sides of the large hotel. She sat in a rocking chair and stared at the ocean. Adeline sipped her drink and focused on the vast sparkling ocean in all directions and the subtle fragrance of roses that lingered in the moist air. She ordered a second drink. Unaccustomed as Adeline was to relaxing, she wondered if there were places to go, and if she could possibly meet a nice respectable man, a doctor even. Maybe she could be a great lady like Mrs. Doc for the remainder of her life.

           She turned at the sound of a rocking chair being dragged across the porch floor in her direction.

         “Mind if I join you?” a woman said as she placed a chair next to Adeline. The tall, bronzed woman, wearing white shorts and a white T-shirt, leaned her tennis racquet against the porch railing. “What are you drinking?”

         “Gin and tonic.”

           “My treat.” The woman hurried off and returned a minute later. She introduced herself as Gina Padopoulos.

           Adeline placed her new drink on the floor of the veranda, knowing she had to pace herself.

          “You’d never believe it, but I was followed here by my husband’s lover,” Gina said.

           “Your husband’s lover?” Adeline repeated.

            “His lover while he was alive. He’s gone now. Good riddance. He was a cheat. Are you married, Adeline?”

            “I was abandoned years ago,” Adeline said, happy to find a common bond with this woman who played tennis and possessed the glossy confidence of the women who came to the house to play bridge with Mrs. Doc.

          “The mistake I made,” Gina said, lowering her voice, “was to confront the girl at her place of employment. She sells perfume at Shephard’s department store.”

          Adeline nodded. Ever since she started cleaning house for the Albertinis, she had enjoyed her once-a-year excursion downtown with her daughters to shop at Shephard’s for their school clothes.

            Adeline decided to start on the third gin and tonic. “Did you let her have it?” She knew that in her younger days she would have taken a swing at the woman.

           “I let her have my husband, that’s what I did. I told her, and I admit maybe I shouldn’t have done this, that it was worth ten thousand dollars to me to see him gone from my life forever.” She settled back in her rocking chair, sipping her drink.

           “I used to take my girls to Shephard’s every August,” Adeline offered, thinking of nothing else to say

          “Here’s what happened,” Gina began, pausing to establish that whatever Adeline added to the conversation was to be ignored. “My husband, the cheat, died in her crummy little apartment down near the rubber plant. He had a heart condition, but the girl didn’t have to know that.”

            “I’m sorry,” Adeline mumbled.

            “Then, get this, the little prole called me up and demanded ten g’s, saying that’s what I offered her to kill off my husband.”

            “That’s an awful lot of money,” Adeline said.

           “You don’t understand,” Gina barked. “She followed me out here to demand the money. Essentially, she is admitting that she killed him, not that I’m unhappy about that. She might try to kill me.”

           “Maybe you should call the police,” Adeline said. She didn’t know what she could say that would please this woman.

          “The police!” Gina exclaimed. “Do you know what passes for the police out here?”

          “Sorry, I don’t,” Adeline said. She waited, stared at an ant traversing the red floorboards, but the other woman didn’t tell her what passed for police out here on the island.

           “Another?” Gina asked, holding up her empty glass.

           “Oh, no, thank you so much for this one.”

            Gina departed for the service bar, leaving Adeline to stare at the ocean and let the alluring fragrance of roses fill her lungs. She wondered why this bronzed, athletic woman had chosen her to be the recipient of her woeful tale. Mrs. Doc never shared gossip with her, suspecting, perhaps, the unreliability of a person who tippled in the afternoon.

           Gina returned to her rocking chair, and her aroma of sweat and perfume wafted over Adeline, mingling with the delicate rose fragrance. Adeline wondered if Gina had purchased perfume from the perfume salesgirl.

           “Now, where was I?” Gina said, sitting down.

          Adeline couldn’t remember where Gina had been in her diatribe. “I have a question,” she said. “If this perfume salesgirl followed you out here, where is she staying now?”

             “She’s at the Skyview, about a half mile from here. Very low rent.”

          “Why don’t you go talk to her and work things out?” Adeline said.

         “I am going to do just that. But I will work it out on my terms.”

           “What is her name? I know some of the salesgirls at Shephard’s.” That was not true.        Adeline didn’t know anyone who worked at Shephard’s, but she wanted to project confidence equal to someone who seemed so self-assured, willing her husband to be killed.

            “Her name is Irene Belvor. Ring a bell?” Gina looked hard at Adeline.

            “I suggest you go talk to her,” Adeline said.

            “Do you play tennis?” Gina asked.

           “I’m afraid I don’t,” Adeline said.

           “What made you come out here?”

           “I love looking at the ocean,” Adeline said, intending never to mention the lovely Mrs. Doc.

           Finally, Gina drained her second drink, stood up, and grabbed her tennis racquet. “I’m off. I have a dinner date. I’ll see you around.”

           For four days, Adeline didn’t see Gina in the dining room or even on the porch. Each morning, though, she saw Gina at the tennis court at the bottom of the hill, either hitting balls against the backboard or batting the ball back and forth with an older woman.

          Every hour of the day that Adeline was out of her room, wandering about the lobby and grounds, doing one circuit around the hotel after another, often pausing to look at wildflowers or gaze at the ocean, she came to recognize her apartness from other people at the hotel. In the tall lobby mirror, Adeline saw how gaunt and careworn she had become, lacking the brisk vitality of the people heading off to the beach in the morning with children and picnic baskets full of beverages and treats. Each afternoon, a tall woman with a pile of red hair coiled atop her head sat down at the baby grand in the ballroom and played Beethoven and Debussy. Adeline had never heard such lovely music. She saw a sign in the lobby announcing the woman’s recital on Saturday night, the night before she was to leave. She would attend and have something to tell Mrs. Doc when she returned.

           One day, while gazing at the vegetable garden out behind the hotel, she spotted Gina near the kitchen door speaking to a short man with a crew cut and wearing checkered pants.  She motioned to a young chambermaid walking by and asked her who the man was.

           “That’s Johnny, the cook,” the girl said. She introduced herself as Olivia.

           “Why would anybody be talking to the cook, I wonder?”

            “It beats me,” Olivia said. “Rumor has it that he took one of the guests, a man named Lester Penny, fishing last week and pushed him overboard. None of us like being around him.”

            “Didn’t the police do anything?”

            “That kind of thing is hard to prove when you’re a mile offshore.”

            “That’s terrible,” Adeline said.

             The girl added, “The guy he killed pretended to have some business deal pending and he got some of the old lady guests to give him a thousand dollars. Turns out, Veronica, the lady who plays the piano, considered him her boyfriend. She’s very upset.”

             “I can understand why she would be,” Adeline said.

           “If you want to know, the cook is romantically interested in Veronica, which is why he killed her boyfriend.”

            “You know so much,” Adeline observed.

             The girl shrugged. “How could I help it? The guests talk to me. I’m also a junior detective. I help one of the cops on the island. I’m good at finding lost cats and things.”

            “Isn’t that something,” Adeline said. “Do you know Irene Belvor?”

            “Yes,” the girl replied. “She’s staying at the Skyview. She calls the front desk here once or twice a day asking for Gina.”

            “And Gina never speaks to her?”

            “I don’t think she does,” the girl said.

            “Do you think Gina is planning something with the cook?”

            “Ma’am, you should be a detective, too. If you’re friends with Gina, you should tell her not to do anything in partnership with the cook.”

            Knowing that Irene Belvor was a salesclerk at her favorite department store made Adeline feel a kinship with her. She was sure Irene Belvor wasn’t a bronzed tennis player.

Adeline asked the girl how to get to the Skyview Hotel.

             “Down the road to the town. At the statue of Rebecca, turn left and go a few hundred yards. You can’t miss it. It’s a dump. I think you should visit Gina first. She’s in room ten in the annex. I’m the chambermaid for that corridor.”

             “Of course,” Adeline said.

             After dinner, Adeline knocked on the door to room ten in the annex.

             A voice called from inside. “Johnny?”

             Before Adeline could answer, the door opened and Gina stood there.

            “What are you doing here?”

             “I wanted to talk to you,” Adeline said. “I want to help you and tell you some things about Johnny.”

            “You know nothing,” Gina snapped.

            Adeline pushed her way into the room.

            “Johnny is a killer,” she said. “You shouldn’t associate with him. You should go talk to Irene Belvor. I can help you.”

             Enraged, Gina placed her hands around Adeline’s neck. “I was foolish to ever speak to you. You need to leave right this second.”

             “You’re squeezing too hard,” Adeline choked. “Please let go.”

             “Don’t involve yourself in my affairs,” Gina snarled. “Understand?”

             “But you involved me. I was just minding my own business when you sat down next to me.” Adeline could barely get out the words.

             Gina squeezed harder, and finally, with all her might, Adeline punched Gina in the jaw. Gina fell back, and her head hit the side of the bureau. She landed on the floor and was still.

            “Gina,” Adeline whispered. “Gina, are you okay?”

            No response came from Gina’s inert body. Fearing the worst, Adeline struggled to breathe. On the bureau, she saw bottles of gin and tonic and a freshly made drink. Poor Gina, Adeline thought. She was just as lonely as me. She took down the drink in a few gulps and felt much better. Then she checked the athletic woman’s pulse points but detected no signs of life.

Her heart thundering in her chest, Adeline shut Gina’s door and raced out of the annex to the crushed clamshell drive, looking in all directions to see if someone might be observing. She determined she would leave the body for Olivia to discover the next morning. It was a terrible burden to place on the young girl, but she had no alternative.

            On the main road, she turned back to glance at the annex and saw Johnny the cook emerge from a path behind the annex and trudge up the front stairs. Maybe some of the kitchen personnel had observed his conference with Gina earlier in the day. As Johnny was thought to be a killer already, pushing Lester Penny overboard, what was one more rumor of murder?

           Walking hurriedly,  Adeline came to the Skyview Hotel ten minutes later.

##

             Irene Belvor put on her robe and ventured to the bathroom down the hall and gingerly stepped into a shower stall that had reached a point of such grittiness she was sure her feet would contract an infection and fall off. In the mirror, she inspected the scrape under her eye from that man pushing her down and hoped it wouldn’t develop into a purple bruise.

             Back in her room, she put on a terrycloth robe and wrapped a towel around her hair. She regretted making a big deal out of the ten thousand dollars, but she resented being questioned by the police over the death of another woman’s husband. That alone made her feel that she deserved the money. People were always promising things and never coming through.

Jerry Padopoulos used to promise nights on the town and visits to restaurants where the waiters wore tuxedoes. But all he did was sit around her apartment going over his foolish reports and watching the Red Sox on television while eating Chinese take-out

           Checking in at the Skyview Hotel, Irene lay in bed day after day reading magazines. She had never had an affair with a married man before. Was this how it always ended?

At the sound of knocking, Irene roused herself from the bed and spritzed Wind Song into the air.

           “Who is it?” she called.

           “I am here to help you get your money,” a female voice said.

            Irene stared at the woman in the doorway who was wearing a sundress and white sneakers and looked slightly drunk.

           “Who are you?” Irene demanded.

            Adeline introduced herself. “Gina is dead. I thought you should know.” Adeline recognized in the very instant of Irene flinging the door open that speaking as though Gina was still alive would be more trouble than it was worth. The girl did not look like someone you could lie to easily.

            “How did that happen?” Irene asked.

           Adeline stared at the girl, admiring the girl’s glossy red nail polish and the gorgeous silver pumps housing her narrow feet. The girl, who seemed to be in her early twenties, had piercing eyes and possessed the lean, skittish look of a fox on a suburban street.

Impatiently, Irene spoke again, changing the focus of her question. “Are you a friend of Gina’s?”

            “I only met Gina at the Harbor House. She told me what happened between you two. I went to speak to her just before walking over here and found her dead on her floor.”

            “Did you tell the police?”

            “No. I’m not sure I want to get involved.”

            “Then why are you here?”

            “It’s lonely being on vacation. I wanted to make a friend. What happened to your face?”

            “She was going to give me five hundred dollars if I went away. She told me to meet some man in the cemetery. He even showed me the money. Then he pushed me down, and I hit my face. It was some guy in checkered pants.”

            “That’s the cook,” Adeline said. “Did it just happen?”

            “A little while ago.”

            That explained why Adeline saw Johnny going to the Annex. Adeline hoped someone else saw him.

            “Why did she send the cook to meet me?”

            “I don’t know,” Adeline said. “I heard the cook killed someone last week.”

            “He probably killed Gina so he could keep her five hundred dollars,” Irene said.

             That made perfect sense, Adeline thought. For a moment, it seemed that neither of them had anything more to say.

             “You can go now,” Irene said. “I can take care of myself. I’m going to get that money that was intended for me.”

             Adeline was too lonely to be sent away so easily. “What is that you’re wearing?” she asked. “That scent.”

             “It’s Wind Song. Wait.” Irene retreated into her dark room and retrieved a small vial from her purse. “Here’s a sample.” She handed it to Adeline, who held it like a treasure. She hadn’t worn a nice perfume in years. She didn’t want to go away yet. This girl’s mission had become her own.

            “Tomorrow night there’s a recital at the Harbor House at seven. The cook has a room across a little passageway from the kitchen. I will distract him somehow. Show up about ten minutes before seven. We’ll get your money back.” She wasn’t sure how she would manipulate the cook, but she trusted Olivia’s report that the cook would attend the recital and leave the kitchen chores to an assistant.

            “All right,” the girl said quietly. “Then I’m going home. I can’t bear to stay in this dump a day longer.”

##

            The next day, Adeline walked the hotel premises countless times, nervously anticipating the evening’s events and counting the minutes until four when the service bar would open.

            The little chambermaid came up to her, excited. “Gina died in her room last night. The old cop I work for thinks she was killed, but he is going to treat it like an accident to protect the hotel’s reputation. That was my first dead body.”

             Adeline tried her best to look astonished. “That’s terrible.”

            “Weren’t you going to see her like I suggested?” Olivia asked, probing Adeline with her big brown eyes.

             “I thought I might,” Adeline said, turning away so the girl’s view into her soul would be obscured, “but then I decided to go directly to Irene at the Skyview.” Her words felt false as she said them, and she wondered if the girl had any reason to believe that she had visited Gina’s room.

            “I guess Irene doesn’t get her money now,” Olivia said.

             “She’s determined to collect it,” Adeline said. “The cook showed her the money, then pushed her down. I told her that before the recital might be the best time to get the money.”

             “You’ve got to soften up Johnny,” Olivia said. “He loves praise from women. Here’s what you should do. Go to lunch. Call him out of the kitchen and say one of his dishes was the best thing you’ve ever eaten. I swear, he’ll be putty in your hands.”

            At lunch, Adeline asked the waitress to have the cook come to her table.

            Soon, a short man in a white tunic approached her table. He walked from side-to-side as if his legs had been broken and set incorrectly. His damp face looked poached, and he managed a painful smile as he pulled up to Adeline’s table.

             “Last night your cod with turnip greens was the best meal I have ever eaten,” Adeline said. “It was just out of this world. I had to meet the man who prepared such a meal.”

             The cook stood up straighter, absorbing the compliment. “Johnny is so glad you liked it.”

             Adeline wondered who Johnny was and then realized the man standing before her was referring to himself as another person. Perhaps it was the other Johnny who pushed the man off the boat.

             “Are you going to the recital tonight?” she asked.

             “Yes, Johnny wouldn’t miss it.”

             “How about a drink beforehand in your room,” Adeline said. “I will bring some gin and tonics.”

             “No gin and tonics. Johnny drinks vodka. You come right before seven.”  He clicked his heels, turned, and headed back to the kitchen. Then he stopped abruptly and turned toward her. “You were a friend of Gina’s?” he asked.

            Other diners looked up, awaiting her answer.

            “I met her, yes,” Adeline said softly.

            “It is very sad,” Johnny said.

            “Yes, very sad,” she agreed.

            All that afternoon, Adeline stalked around the hotel grounds nervously, trying to convince herself that if she had not killed Gina, Johnny would have.

            At ten minutes to seven, Adeline found Johnny in his small room, standing in front of the bureau and contemplating a glass of vodka. He was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of dark trousers, having stripped off his white tunic and lain it on the gray bedsheets of his unmade bed.

            “Ah, the big performance,” he said. “Let me pour you a glass of vodka. It is nicely chilled.”

             A bottle of vodka sat atop the bureau, next to bottles of aftershave and a pile of old newspapers.

            At that moment, a large woman in a green dress and a yellow corsage, her red hair coiled in a tight bun atop her head, thrust open the door to the room and stepped inside.

            “Ah,” Johnny said. “Will we hear the Polonaise tonight?”

            “You’re getting the Funeral March, you bastard,” Veronica said. She turned sharply toward Adeline. “What are you doing here?”

            Adeline remained mute as it would take too long for her to explain her presence.

           Veronica picked up the vodka bottle and smashed it across the back of Johnny’s head.                 The bottle broke, and the powerful woman swung the bottle again, this time across the front of Johnny’s neck. The ragged glass tore into the cook’s windpipe, and blood flowed onto his fat shoulder. He fell to the ground, his blood gushing onto the floorboards. His eyes stared at the dust in the corner of the room, showing surprise and fear, and then they closed.

            “That was for Lester Penny, the only man I ever loved,” Veronica said. “Now I’m going to my recital.”

            “Did I come here at the wrong time?” Irene Belvor asked, stepping into the room.

            “That depends,” Veronica said. She had never seen this girl before. “Do you work here? Why is everybody visiting Johnny tonight?”

            “Johnny has money of mine,” Irene said. “I came to get it.”

            “Johnny is indisposed right now,” Veronica said, dropping the remains of the bottle onto the floor. The girl carried an alluring scent about her. Veronica looked at the girl’s silver pumps and wished she was wearing such magnificent footwear this evening.

            “I’m going to check the drawers,” Irene said. “Maybe the money is there.”

            “I’ll leave you to it,” Veronica said. “I’ve got to get going. What is that lovely perfume you’re wearing?”

            “Wind Song by Prince Machebelli,” Irene said, carefully stepping over a puddle of blood to the bureau and pulling open the top drawer. “I have the spray bottle in my purse.”

“Just spray it for me, darling, and I’ll pass through the mist on my way to the door.”

Irene, now straddling the bloody body of the cook, withdrew the bottle from her small purse, squeezed the balloon pump, and a fragrant mist filled the room. Veronica swirled around, eyes shut.

             “That’s just what I needed,” she said.

              Irene rifled through Johnny’s bureau and found an envelope with the money.

             “Hundreds,” she said. “Five of them. Now that I have it, I realize it wasn’t worth the trouble.”

             Adeline followed Irene out the door, closing it behind her. The warm evening embraced the two of them, the bright lights and clamor of the kitchen just a few feet away.

             “Why don’t you stay for the recital?” Adeline asked.  

             “No thanks. My taxi is waiting for me.”

             Adeline followed Irene around to the crushed clamshell drive and saw a green Dodge with a lady filling the driver’s seat like a large beanbag.

            “Maybe we can have lunch sometime,” Adeline said. “I love coming down to Shephard’s.”

             The girl with the narrow fox face looked at Adeline. “I’m not the go-to-lunch type but come to the perfume counter anytime.” She opened her purse and withdrew a vial. “Here’s another sample. Diorella by Christian Dior.”

             She got into the back seat of the car, which proceeded down the drive.

             At a certain age, it is so hard to make friends, Adeline thought. At least she could take heart that a sixteen-year-old girl had always seemed pleased to see her. There was still the problem of the dead body in the small room behind the kitchen. Should she inform the lady who managed the hotel? But if she did, would she dare reveal who killed the cook? The big lady in the green dress had given her a look that suggested such a course of action would be unwise.

              The next morning, as Adeline waited near the crushed clamshell drive for one of the handsome boys to take her to the ferry in the van, Olivia came up to her and whispered,              “You’re leaving just when things are getting exciting.”

             “Oh, how is that?”

             “It seems that our cook did himself in or that’s what they want us to believe. Yet there was a distinct perfume smell in his room when I snuck into it late last night to investigate. And Veronica, our esteemed pianist, smelled of it, too. In fact, Adeline, you are smelling very nice this morning.”

              “It’s Diorella from Christian Dior,” Adeline said.

             “You made yourself a friend of the perfume salesgirl, I see. Don’t worry, I don’t think either of you had anything to do with Gina or our cook buying the farm.”

               Adeline worried that the cute chambermaid knew she had killed Gina. There was an easy solution to that. She reached into her purse, withdrew the envelope Mrs. Doc had given her and took out five twenty-dollar bills. She handed them to Olivia, who, with a practiced hand, tucked the money into the pocket of her chambermaid dress.

               “Johnny took care of Gina,” the girl said as if providing a receipt. “And we both know who took care of Johnny. But it will be our little secret.” She offered a cunning smile.

              “That it will,” Adeline said with relief as she stepped into the van.

              The following Monday morning, in Mrs. Doc’s laundry room, Adeline couldn’t help dousing herself with Diorella.

               “You smell so nice,” Mrs. Doc remarked. “How was your vacation?”

               “Oh, you wouldn’t believe all the things that happened,” Adeline said. “The hotel cook was murdered. But that was revenge for him having killed a woman’s boyfriend, who was also cheating people out of money. And then a woman I became friends with on the first day was being threatened by her dead husband’s lover who says she was owed ten thousand dollars.”

             “Wait a minute. Why would the lover be owed money? Did the husband promise it to her?”

             “No,” Adeline exclaimed. “The woman who befriended me, Gina, confronted the lover, who happens to work at the perfume counter at Shephard’s, which is how I got this nice scent, and Gina told the lover that getting rid of her husband would be worth ten thousand dollars.”

            “The lover killed the husband?”

            “No. His wife said he had a heart condition.”

            “Who killed the cook?” asked Mrs. Doc.

           “I am not at liberty to say,” Adeline said.

            “Who killed the lady whose husband was having an affair?”

           “We think it was the cook,” Adeline said.

            “Why would the cook …? Oh, never mind.” Mrs. Doc stepped closer to Adeline, wondering if whiskey was at play. “I have a lot to do this morning. Three ladies are coming over for bridge. I bought some ham salad at the deli. Could you make those finger sandwiches like I showed you?”

            “Certainly, Mrs. Doc.”

            Later, from the kitchen, Adeline overheard the ladies talking. Mrs. Doc’s voice rose above the others. Adeline heard her name. “We sent her away for a week of rest and she must have been drinking from morning till night for she came back with the most fantastic story about the hotel cook murdering someone and then getting murdered himself. And a perfume salesgirl who was shaking down another woman for ten thousand dollars. She recited it all in such a jumble. Somehow, she became friends with the perfume salesgirl, and she smells like a perfume factory right now. In the morning, nonetheless.”

            “Oh, my,” one of the ladies said. “Quite a story.”

            “I think I detect a very nice scent,” another one of the ladies said. “Nothing wrong with that.”

           “She does her job, though,” Mrs. Doc said. “I’m pretty lucky if she only forgets to put leavening in the brownies once in a while.”

           Adeline quietly slipped downstairs to the laundry room. If Mrs. Doc tried to send her away on vacation ever again, she decided she was going to stay home with a stack of magazines and the blinds drawn. It was much safer that way.      <end>

 

           Chris Fortunato, a native of Rhode Island, now resides in Dutchess County, New York. His short story collection, Deadly Guests, was published in 2024. Kirkus Reviews called it "fascinating and devilishly entertaining," and Thriller Magazine called it "intellectually stimulating." "The Housekeeper's Vacation" is his second story for Yellow Mama.

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       Cynthia Fawcett has been writing for fun or money since she was able to hold a pen. A Jersey Girl at heart, she got her journalism degree at Marquette University in Milwaukee and now writes mostly technical articles about hydraulics and an occasional short story or poem on any other subject.