Hidden Meanings by Carolyn Keene Read Free Book Online Page A

“Well, thanks for trying. Anyway, what’s next on your schedule?”
    â€œI’m supposed to bus tables at a buffet dinner tonight,” George said. “They need extra help. And I’m meeting Bess for dinner in the employee cafeteria. Why don’t you come along and see how the other half lives?”
    Agreeing, Nancy went with George back up to their room to change and relax for an hour or so. Then George led Nancy into the seventh-floor service corridor. “This is the route we workers have to take,” George announced with a grin. Nancy recognized the area as the corridor Rosita had shown her. The two girls took the big, clunky service elevator down to the subbasement.
    A hallway lined with metal lockers led from the elevator. Sidestepping a rolling hamper filled with dirty green coveralls, Nancy and George entered the cafeteria, a cement-floored room with harsh lighting. Paul Lampedusa waved to George from a table, and George waved back eagerly.
    George and Nancy filled their plates and joined Paul. Bess soon arrived. As they all ate and chatted, Nancy decided Paul was funny, smart, and charming. She gathered that he was working here part-time to help pay his college tuition.
    After dinner Paul gave the girls a tour of the hotel’s immense kitchen, also in the subbasement. Gleaming white tile stretched for yards, along huge steel cooking ranges, counters, and banks of ovens. The walk-in refrigerators were as big as rooms. “The hotel has three restaurants and four banquet rooms,” Paul explained. “On a good night, they could serve two thousand meals out of here.”
    Suddenly a man in a white coat leaned through a door. “Buffet ready—servers upstairs!” he barked.
    Excusing themselves, Paul, George, and Bess jogged over to a small service elevator. Nancy noticed trolleys loaded with platters of food already on the elevator. The waiters stepped on and headed upstairs.
    Nancy turned back again to marvel at the kitchen. A steel counter beside her was piled high with warming plates, ready to go up to the buffet. She noticed rice pilaf and a pile of shish kebabs—cubes of meat and vegetables cooked on long sticks.
    Then Nancy saw a pile of slim peeled twigs beside a platter with more chunks of meat. Frowning, she picked one up and broke it open. A milky white sap came out.
    Nancy rushed to find the nearest chef, a woman in a mushroom-shaped white hat. “Excuse me—where are those sticks from?” Nancy asked urgently.
    â€œI don’t know,” the chef replied. “The shish kebabs are for the high-school kids. The menu theme was Wild West, but an hour ago the conference director sent us a note to make it Middle Eastern, too. He sent these wooden skewers down, saying they’d be more authentic.”
    â€œBut you can’t serve these shish kebabs,” Nancy announced.
    â€œWhy not?” the chef asked, frowning.
    â€œThose skewers are made from the oleander bush,” Nancy said. “They’re deadly poisonous!”

Chapter

Six
    T HE CHEF’S FACE FROZE in horror. “But we already sent up two platters of those shish kebabs,” she said with a gasp. “They’re upstairs now—being eaten!”
    There wasn’t a second to waste. Nancy raced to the service elevator and pounded the button with her fist. “Call upstairs and get someone to take those shish kebabs away!” she called back to the chef. “And then destroy the rest of those twigs—but not by burning them. Even the smoke is poisonous!”
    Just then the elevator doors opened. Nancy strode in and pushed the button for the second floor, where she knew the banquet room was located. The elevator climbed upward at what seemed like a snail’s pace. Nancy rapped on the wall in frustration.
    Finally the doors opened onto a small pantry. Nancy saw no shish kebabs on the counters. A phone on the wall was ringing—the chef must