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The egg has reappeared. I can’t quite believe it. It doesn’t make sense. But that’s what Mr.Snow told me just now on the phone. He’s sent someone to pick me up from home and bring me to the hotel, so I head out of my building and wait on the sidewalk for a car to appear. I’m expecting a taxi, but what arrives is a police cruiser.

Detective Stark rolls down her window. “Hop in,” she says. “I’m going where you are.”

And so, not for the first time, I find myself heading to the Regency Grand in Detective Stark’s police car.

“Why would the egg suddenly reappear?” I ask the detective as she drives.

“I have no idea,” says Stark, “but we’ll find out more once we get there.”

When we arrive at the hotel, Mr.Snow is pacing anxiously on the red-carpeted stairs.

Speedy lopes over and opens my car door. “Molly! Your egg’s got legs. It ran back to you,” he says with a strange grin on his face.

“Speedy,” says Mr.Snow, “are you the doorman or the town crier?”

“Is it really true?” I ask as I exit the car and head into the hotel with the detective.

“It’s true,” says Mr.Snow.

“Where was it found?” Detective Stark asks. “And who found it?”

“It was…a team effort. You’re about to hear the entire story.”

Mr.Snow escorts us to his office, where I’m surprised to see several of my colleagues gathered. Angela, Sunshine, Lily, Cheryl, and even Juan are standing in a row, looking very much like a policelineup of usual suspects. On Mr.Snow’s desk, twinkling mischievously, is the object that has caused me both great elation and immense consternation—the Fabergé egg. Perplexingly, next to Mr.Snow’s desk is my maid’s trolley.

“Why is my trolley in here? And what is everyone doing in this office?” I ask, since no one has volunteered a word.

“Your answer is on the desk,” Angela says as she points to the elephant in the room, which in this case is egg shaped.

“Mi amor,” says Juan. “I think you should sit down.”

“I think I should sit down,” says Detective Stark as she saunters over to Mr.Snow’s desk, removes a notebook from her pocket, and settles in. “Let’s start with who found it,” she suggests.

“It wasn’t me!” Cheryl exclaims, hands in the air. “I had nothing to do with this.”

“For the love of dill pickles,” Angela exclaims.

“If there wasn’t a copper in this room,” Sunshine adds, “I swear I’d—”

“For once, Cheryl’s not lying,” Juan says. “Technically, she didn’t find the egg.”

“It’s not about who found it,” says Lily.

“Exactly!” Angela replies. “It’s about who put it there in the first place.”

My head is swiveling so quickly amongst speakers I fear I might get whiplash. The more they bicker, the less I understand. I slide into one of Mr.Snow’s leather armchairs.

“Cheryl,” says Mr.Snow, “let’s start from this morning when you arrived at work.”

“Fine,” she says, crossing her arms. “But let the record show that I ain’t done nothing.”

“Double negative. We know what that means, right, Molly?” Angela says.

“Stop!” yells Detective Stark. “You’re wasting time.” She sighs and puts her elbows on Mr.Snow’s desk, which only heightens my anxiety. “Cheryl, say something relevant—and fast,” the detective demands.

“When I got here this morning, I met Mr.Snow in the hallway outside of the housekeeping quarters,” Cheryl says. “He told me Molly wasn’t coming in, and I was thrilled to be Head Maid for the day.”

“I never said you were Head Maid,” Mr.Snow clarifies. “You assumed.”

“At least we know who puts the a-s-s in that word,” says Sunshine.

“Cheryl, please continue,” says Mr.Snow.

“I grabbed Molly’s trolley and made my way upstairs,” Cheryl says. “Then I—”

“Wait, why did you take Molly’s trolley instead of your own?” Stark asks.

“Molly wasn’t coming to work,” Cheryl replies with a shrug.

“That’s not why she took it,” says Lily. “Molly replenishes her trolley at the end of every shift.”

“And if there’s a shortcut,” Sunshine adds, “you can be sure Cheryl will find it.”

“What’s the big deal?” Cheryl says. “Fair and square, the maids all share.”

As she quotes A Maid’s Guide & Handbook, I officially want to join the bandwagon of colleagues lining up to throttle her.

“Can we get to the point?” Stark asks.

“I’m trying to, but this lot keeps chirping me,” says Cheryl. “I went upstairs and started cleaning rooms. I took off a bunch of sheets, and my laundry bags were full by the time Sunshine found me.”

“Correction: I didn’t find you. I found Molly’s trolley blocking the hallway, and you’d disappeared.”

“Let me guess, ‘taking a load off’?” I say.

“It was break time,” Cheryl replies.

“When I spotted Molly’s trolley,” says Sunshine, “I thought I’d lend a hand by taking it downstairs. I left the bags at the laundry, then spotted Cheryl ‘taking a load off’ in the change room. She told me Molly wasn’t coming to work, which means I’d just inadvertently done Cheryl a favor by bringing her back the trolley.”

“Why did the chicken cross the road?” Detective Stark asks out of nowhere.

Everyone shrugs.

“To find out where the hell the egg was !” she yells as she slams a hand on Mr.Snow’s desk. “Can we please get to the point?”

“I realize this story is taking a circuitous route,” says Mr.Snow as he adjusts his crooked glasses, “but you’ll see why once we get there. Sunshine, continue.”

“I told Cheryl to get back upstairs, then left the change room,” says Sunshine.

“And I took Molly’s trolley to the kitchen,” says Cheryl, “leaving it in the hallway while I dropped off a bin of dirty dishes I’d collected from guests’ rooms.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Juan asks. “You took a little something on your way out of the kitchen.”

“Oh yeah. Some sweets on a tray,” says Cheryl. “They looked like crap, but I scoffed one down and it wasn’t half bad.”

“That wasn’t crap. That was a prototype marzipanimal!” Juan says. “You have no idea how hard it is to make a giraffe out of marzipan! And here’s where my part comes in, Detective,” Juan continues. “I stopped mixing icing and went out to the hallway to give Cheryl a piece of my mind, but then I saw Molly’s trolley there. I knew it was hers the same way everyone else did: no one stacks toilet paper like Molly does—a perfect pyramid. Then Lily appeared in the hall, so I asked her why Molly’s trolley was outside the kitchen when Molly herself was at home.”

“And I said not to worry,” Lily interjects. “I told Juan I’d take care of Molly’s trolley. I was planning to bring it back to the housekeeping quarters, but first I went to the Social, because Angela needed tea towels.”

“I can corroborate that,” Angela replies. “I was behind the bar, but Lily has this way of sneaking up on you, stealthy as a ninja. I was pouring a cranberry soda, and bam, she spooked me, and the drink went flying, making a big pink mess of Molly’s toilet paper pyramid. ‘Shite on a kite!’ I said to Lily. And together we started pitching the soggy rolls into the trash.”

“When we got to the middle row, we both saw it,” says Lily. “The egg was nestled right in there. I screamed. I couldn’t help it.”

“I swore,” Angela says. “Do you wanna know what I said?”

“Some things are best left to the imagination,” Mr.Snow suggests.

“We were both in shock,” says Angela. “We covered the egg with a tea towel, then I picked up the phone and called Snow right away.”

“And shortly after, I called you, Detective, and then I called Molly,” says Mr.Snow.

The detective removes her cap and rubs her forehead. “You could have just said the egg was found in Molly’s trolley.”

“No, we couldn’t,” Angela replies. “You needed to hear the whole trajectory. Because the Fabergé was either in that trolley from the very beginning of the day or someone along the way put it in amongst the toilet paper rolls. Those suspects are all here in this room.”

Detective Stark nods slowly, making a note on her pad.

“I didn’t do nothing,” says Cheryl. “You can’t arrest me just because my co-workers hate my guts. You gotta have proof.”

“Thanks for the legal lesson,” says Detective Stark, though her tone seems to suggest a lack of sincere gratitude.

“If I were the thief,” Cheryl offers, “why would I go to all the trouble of stealing the egg just to return it?”

“Don’t know, Cheryl,” says Angela. “Why don’t you tell us ?”

“I never took it in the first place!” she snaps.

“But you ate my giraffe,” says Juan, “and these maids can probably fill the detective’s notebook with tales of your creative pilfering.”

“True,” says Sunshine, “but this doesn’t have Cheryl’s signature paw prints on it. Her swindles are always sloppy and self-serving. This one isn’t her style.”

Amazingly, everyone nods along to this, including Cheryl. There’s nothing about the heist or the egg’s curious return that seems remotely Cherylesque. In fact, no one in this room seems at all suspect to me.

“It’s a plant,” says Stark. “Whoever put the egg in Molly’s trolley did it last night. The heist was a professional job, and for whatever reason, so was the return of the egg. It was Molly who was supposed to find it.”

“Look on the bright side,” Angela offers. “At least you’ve got it back, Molly. Now you can sell it and get rich!”

I suppose she’s right, but everything about the Fabergé now terrifies me. My mother warned me about the egg being found, and now, here it is.

“What happens next, Detective?” Mr.Snow asks. “Since there’s no longer a crime?”

“The crime of theft remains, but it becomes harder to prove when stolen goods are returned, not to mention harder to understand,” says Stark. “I’m guessing you checked the trolley to see if there was a note this time?” She directs the question to Angela.

“I didn’t think of that,” says Angela. “I didn’t want fingerprints all over things.”

“Bit late for that,” says Stark as she walks over to the trolley. She looks down into the middle row of the pyramid I built just last night. There’s a hole in the center where the egg must have been. She reaches for something, picking it up gingerly between two fingers. It’s a single square of two-ply toilet paper with writing on it.

Detective Stark reads aloud:

Dear Molly,

Sell the egg or you die.