True to Your Service by Sandra Antonelli

Author:Sandra Antonelli [antonelli, sandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sandra Antonelli

Chapter Thirteen

Two men, wait staff from the Michelin starred restaurant on the ground floor, arrived to move furniture. Mae showed them to the dining room. The shorter, browner-skinned man nodded at her, saying something in another language that might have been Malay or Indonesian to the taller, thinner man with pale brown eyes. The thin man shifted two dining chairs out of the way as Shorty manoeuvred the table apart. Together, they inserted a leaf hidden below into the space. Then they departed after returning the chairs to the table.

Mae shook out the tablecloth and laid the table with Delft plates and silverware for five. Shortly before six, the doorbell rang. Felix barked, ears pricking at the chime. Mae led him to her bedroom, shut him inside, and returned to open the suite’s door to two men. One, smartly dressed, mid-sixties, had white-blond hair that set off tanned, somewhat leathery skin and very white, very straight teeth He held a folio case under his arm. The other, a tall and wiry dreadlocked black man, smiled a smile that didn’t touch the brown eyes behind small, wire-framed glasses. He wore messenger bag across his chest. He’d been in the lobby earlier this afternoon, sitting near Llewelyn with the messenger bag in his lap.

“Good evening.” Mae said.

“Hoi, Kurt Albert. Roger Llewelyn is expecting us.” He pointed, “This is Hans Weed.”

“I’m Valentine. Please come in.” Mae said, stepping aside to let them pass. “May I take your coats?”

Albert handed Weed the case and shrugged out of a raincoat as Llewelyn made a stage entrance, sauntering into the sitting room, leaving the door to his bedroom open wide. “Kurt, my God man, don’t you age?” he boomed.

“As per our mutual deal with Satan, not any more than you do, Roger,” Kurt Albert said with an accent that had mastered the difficult th sound of the English language.

The two men laughed and shook hands, Llewelyn saying, “I ordered a rijsttafel, you know, ‘when in Rome’ and all that.”

“Brave of you. Some dishes can be devilishly spicy—and I love spicy food!” Albert fanned a hand in front of his mouth and turned to Weed. “My minion.”

“If you don’t mind, I prefer demon, sir,” soft-spoken, deep-voiced Weed said, and went on smiling his fixed, flight attendant smile, handing Albert the briefcase and Mae his damp coat. He wore a black roll-neck sweater, a dark grey jacket, an old-fashioned digital watch—the kind with a calculator—and amethyst beads that he pulled down from the right sleeve of his jacket and adjusted on his wrist. His dark eyes remained fastened on her, amiable, phony smile cemented in place. It was unsettling.

With creeping disquiet, Mae returned his ersatz grin with a nod, turned about, set the coats on a chair near Llewelyn’s bedroom, and adjusted hair that fell into her eyes. Earlier, she’d tended to her hair quickly when it was damp with rain, but it had dried with a mind of its own. Loose hair was an impractical irritation when

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