Danielle Steel - Hotel Vendome

Heloise’s favorite pastime on the weekends that her father worked was slipping quietly into wedding receptions in the hotel’s ballroom and mingling with the guests. She loved looking at the brides and watching them cut the cake. Hugues had caught her eye once as he walked past the ballroom himself and saw Heloise lined up with the single women to catch the bouquet. He had rapidly signaled to her and beckoned her out of the room.

“What are you doing in there?” he scolded her. “You’re not a guest!” She looked highly insulted when he said it.

“They were very nice to me. They let me have a piece of cake.” She had put on her best party dress, with a pale blue satin sash, and her shiny black patent-leather Mary Janes, and she looked crestfallen when he made her leave. “I helped make the bouquet.” Her father shook his head, led her down the hall, and took her back to his office so she couldn’t sneak back into the room. And Jennifer kept her busy after that and showed her how to use the Xerox machine. She liked Jennifer a lot, almost like an aunt.

Jennifer was a little older than Hugues. She was a widow and had two children in college, and she was very sweet to Heloise, and brought her small thoughtful gifts from time to time, like barrettes for her hair, or a game, or a pair of funny mittens with faces on them, or fluffy earmuffs. Her heart went out to her, and Hugues confided in her at times how painful it was that Miriam left Heloise out of her life now. His parents had been right, she wasn’t a good wife, and she was an even worse mother, to Heloise anyway. She was far more interested in her two children with Greg Bones and her new rock star life with him. She was in the press incessantly as she followed him around. She had stopped modeling, and was constantly on tour with him, although she promised to have Heloise come to London for Christmas that year when they got back from a concert tour in Japan.

Heloise still hadn’t heard from her by Thanksgiving. It was always a busy time at the hotel. The hotel was full, and several families were staying there. They had two weddings scheduled in the ballroom. A famous actress was staying at the hotel with her assistant, her hairdresser, her current boyfriend, her bodyguard, her two children and their nanny, and they had a block of suites on the tenth floor. And when she helped the maids turn down the room, Heloise had been excited when she caught a glimpse of the actress, Eva Adams. Heloise thought she was even prettier than her pictures. She had two Chihuahuas with her, and she had been very nice when Heloise asked if she could pet the dogs. She had wanted to ask for her autograph but knew that was against the rules, and that was one rule her father never permitted her to break. No one in the hotel was ever allowed to ask their celebrity guests for autographs, and he was intransigent about it. He wanted guests to feel at home and protected, not invaded by employees requesting autographs. And of course they weren’t able to ask for photographs either. And no one ever broke those rules. It was one of the reasons why celebrities felt so comfortable at the hotel, because their privacy was respected, according to Hugues’s orders to his staff.

“She’s really pretty,” Heloise said happily as she chatted with Ernesta when they made the rounds.

“Yes, she is, and she’s a lot smaller than she looks on screen.” The movie star in question looked tiny and delicate, and had a dazzling smile and enormous blue eyes. She had been lounging in the suite with her entourage when they came in, and she was very pleasant to the maids and thanked them for what they did, which wasn’t always the case with movie stars. Heloise had heard many stories about how badly they behaved and how rude they were sometimes. But this one had been warm, friendly, and polite.

Heloise was still talking about her when she and Ernesta went down to the laundry with a rolling basket full of towels from the tenth floor. As Ernesta handed over the basket, Heloise noticed something sparkle in the heap of towels, and she reached in and grabbed it just before Ernesta dumped it into the big bin. Much to everyone’s surprise, Heloise held up a diamond bracelet in her hand. It shimmered enticingly and looked very expensive. It was about an inch wide and was solid diamonds all the way around.

“Wow!” Heloise exclaimed as everyone stared at what she’d found.

“You’d better call security,” the head operator of the laundry told Ernesta, and she nodded and reached for the phone, but Heloise shook her head, still holding the bracelet.

“I think we should call my father.” It looked like a very fancy bracelet, even to her, and Ernesta didn’t disagree. She wanted to get it into the right hands as quickly as possible. Someone was going to be reporting it as lost or stolen very soon. Guests often misplaced their valuables, and the maids were always the first to be accused. Ernesta wanted none of that. Heloise dialed her father’s office, and Jennifer answered, and when she heard the story, she told them to come up. So far no one had called.

Hugues was in his office, signing some papers at his desk, when Ernesta and Heloise appeared, and his daughter held out the bracelet, and his eyes grew wide.

“Where did you find that?”

“In the towels,” Heloise said as she handed it across the desk to him, and he took a closer look at it. There was no question, it was real, and a valuable piece.

“I’ll put it in the safe. Someone should be calling about it very soon.” He smiled at Ernesta then and thanked her for her honesty, and she looked at Heloise.

“I didn’t find it, sir. Your daughter did. She pulled it right out of the towels. I didn’t even see it.”

“I’m glad she did,” he said, and handed it to Jennifer to put in the safe. “Let’s see what happens,” he said quietly, and much to everyone’s surprise, no one called for two days. He had gone down the list of all the guests on the tenth floor, but none of them had reported the bracelet missing, and he had to wait for someone to call so it didn’t wind up in the wrong hands. He wondered by then if it had been a visitor to the room and not a guest.

Then finally Eva Adams called, the movie star with the large entourage. And unlike most celebrities, she didn’t report the bracelet stolen, she said that she had lost a bracelet somewhere in the last two days, and didn’t know if it was in the street or at the hotel, and she wanted to let Hugues know in case someone found it. He said that a bracelet had been found and offered to come to her suite. He asked her to describe it, and it was clearly the one Heloise had found in the towels from her floor. He brought it to her room immediately, and she was thrilled. He didn’t ask but guessed that it was worth half a million dollars or more. Maybe a million. The diamonds were large and the bracelet wide, it was a major piece of jewelry to lose, although he suspected it was probably insured. And she was ecstatic to get it back.

“Where did you find it?” she asked him as she put it back on her wrist with a look of gratitude and relief. He smiled, conscious of Eva’s beauty. He had a weakness for women who looked like her, and for actresses and models in general, which had been his downfall once before.

“My daughter saw it in the towels in the laundry room. We knew it was from someone on this floor, but we had to wait for your call.”

“I had no idea where I’d lost it. I called everyplace I’ve been in the last two days. I didn’t want to accuse anyone of taking it. I was pretty sure it must have fallen off my arm. What can I do for your daughter?” she asked, assuming that she was older than she was. She didn’t make the connection with the little girl in braces who had come in with the maids two days before and asked if she could pet the Chihuahuas. She had assumed she was the maid’s daughter, maybe following her mom at work over the holiday weekend. Eva hadn’t paid much attention to her, although Heloise’s impression was that she had been very nice. “I’d like to give her a reward,” Eva Adams said immediately.