Page 78 of Summers at the Saint
“Yeah. I kinda do. It’s hot, sweaty, physical work, but I don’t mind that. The main problem is, we don’t have enough reliable help. You get someone good on the crew, and damn if, a few days later, they’ve gone to work someplace else, for more money.”
“How well I know,” she murmured.
Whelan liked this woman. She was easy to talk to.
“And what do you do, that you can afford to stay someplace as fancy as the Saint?”
“I’m in the hospitality business,” she said.
They’d reached the security gates at the Saint. Whelan pulled forward and lowered his window to address the security guard, a redheaded woman he’d seen around the property, although he still didn’t know her name.
“Got a hotel guest,” he started to say, but in the meantime, his passenger had rolled down her window and leaned out.
“Oh, hi, Micki,” she said.
The guard snapped to attention. “Mrs. Eddings! Sorry, I didn’t recognize your car.”
Whelan turned his head to stare. “So… you’re TraciEddings? My boss?”
She gave him an apologetic shrug. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Glad I didn’t say anything bad about my job here,” he muttered.
“I’m glad too. People think I’m exaggerating, but our staff is our greatest asset here. I want all our employees to be treated fairly and paid a living wage. But, as you say, it’s hard in a place like this with the cost of housing as high as it is.”
Whelan let his GPS guide him to her cottage. He’d seen the place, named Wisteria, while working around the Saint’s grounds, had even pruned some dead palm fronds at the front of her property, but he wouldn’t have guessed it belonged to the resort’s CEO.
Compared to some of the lavish multi-story, multi-million-dollar homes on the property, it was a fairly modest house: pale-pink- colored stucco in a Spanish mission style, low-slung with a terra- cotta tile roof, surrounded by a waist-high hedge of pittosporum.
“You can pull in here.” She pointed to a break in the hedge. The driveway bisected a smallish lawn of thick St. Augustine grass, with beds of palm trees and oleanders outlined with flowing borders of green and white caladiums and pale pink and white impatiens. There was an arched porte cochere to the left of the front door, and beyond that he could see double garage doors.
He stopped the car in front of the front door and waited.
“Thank you, uh, Whelan.”
“Ma’am?”
“Yes?”
“Did you have a car downtown?”
“Well, yeah, but I didn’t want to drive after having a couple glasses of wine, which is why I called for an Uber.”
“How are you going to get the car back tomorrow?”
“I guess I’ll ask someone on staff to go get it and drive it back here.”
He hesitated a moment, wondering why he should go out of the way to help her, and then pushed that thought aside.
“I was going to say, if you wanted, you could give me your keys tonight, and in the morning, when I come to work, I’ll drive your car here, and leave it for you up at the hotel.”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly impose on you like that,” she said.
“No trouble. I’m coming back in the morning anyway.”
She appeared to be considering his offer. “But… how would you get home tomorrow, after work?”
“Everybody on my crew lives on the mainland. One of them can give me a ride home.”
