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The upside of working the graveyard shift on the concierge desk was that most of the guests were asleep by two in the morning, which meant Jean could do her own thing without anyone breathing down her neck.

Unless she was scheduled with Pauline, in which case she was treated to a private concert, because Pauline was physically incapable of not singing along with the soft background music that piped through the lobby’s hidden speakers.

Even though they were instrumental tracks, and Pauline wasn’t known for her sense of melody—or her memory.

“Be the raft in the storm of my heart, na na na na,” Pauline warbled, butchering the chorus of an Adriana Asebedo song so popular there were probably babies all over the world who’d absorbed the lyrics into their DNA while being conceived to that tune.

She paused to look over Jean’s shoulder. “What’s that?”

“A logo. For a client.” Who was also one of Jean’s best friends, but “I’m jazzing up my buddy’s food truck menu” sounded less impressive.

Pauline studied the ballpoint figure Jean was doodling on a piece of hotel stationery. “That’s pretty good. The little pineapple guy, on the surfboard. You should be an artist or something.”

Jean opened her mouth to explain that she already was an artist, thank you very much, but the resort-issue polo she was wearing didn’t exactly scream “future Frida Kahlo.”

“Yeah.” She thought about leaving it at that, but then Pauline would start singing again. “I almost got a job as an illustrator. For a magazine.”

“Cartoons and stuff?”

“No.” Jean spoke with conviction, although she wasn’t totally sure this was true. “Like the front cover.”

Pauline frowned. “Isn’t that usually a real picture? With a camera?”

“Reality is overrated.” Jean scowled at the surfing pineapple, adding a dripping whisk.

The song changed, but before Pauline could join in, the phone rang.

“Dolphin Bay, how can I make your dreams come true?” Pauline half sang into the receiver. The standard greeting landed a little differently at this time of night. Less luxury, more brothel.

Jean set down her pen, swiveling her chair to face her coworker. The other benefit of the late shift was that if something did come up in the middle of the night, it was more likely to be weird. And in Jean’s experience, nothing made time fly like an infusion of freakiness.

“I’m very sorry to hear that, sir. Of course we’ll send someone right over. It’s no trouble at all. Have a great day at Dolphin Bay.”

It was a little late for that unless she was talking about tomorrow, but Jean didn’t care about the semantics. “What is it this time—a live tiger? Somebody wants to store their pile of raw diamonds in the main safe? Smuggling in a team of acrobats? Pancake emergency?”

“What’s a pancake emergency?”

It was typical of Pauline to seize on the least interesting question. “Somebody who wants a big stack of pancakes delivered to their room five minutes ago, still warm.”

“Oh. No, nothing like that. Sunset Cottage needs more towels.”

Towels! Talk about the beige of problems.

It was a good thing Jean hadn’t taken the call. There was no guarantee she would have won the struggle not to comment. Is that the best you can do, Richie Rich? Extra towels ?

The sad truth was that money couldn’t buy flair, Jean reflected as she grabbed a stack of fluffy white bath sheets from the supply room.

Hence the swarms of trust funders desperate to carry the same bag or wear identical shoes.

If Jean had that kind of cash, she’d go bold.

Distinctive. Eyeball-searing. None of this clean-cut, party-line, herd mentality.

There was a slim chance he wanted the towels for something like mopping up a pool of blood.

That would be unexpected. But if there was a body to dispose of, surely Sir First World Problems would have asked for a tarp and ropes, or a shovel?

Dolphin Bay did advertise itself as a full-service guest experience, especially if you were loaded enough to afford one of the private cottages.

The promise was right there in the blandly luxurious, allergic-to-color marketing materials.

Where Dreams Come True: Find Your Paradise at Dolphin Bay, an Exceptional Holiday Experience on Oahu’s North Shore .

It was only a matter of time before someone called the front desk asking for hookers and blow.

Expecting an underpaid stranger to help you clean up a crime scene wasn’t that big of a leap from some of the entitled behavior Jean had witnessed at her parents’ restaurant, back in the day.

Although there was only so far you could push it at a golf course snack bar.

Ooh, you’re so daring, making your teenage waitress bring you more maraschino cherries!

The island breeze shifted the palm fronds overhead, reminding her that she wasn’t in Wisconsin anymore.

At least Mr. Oops I Took My Bath Towels to the Beach had given her an excuse to stretch her legs.

Maybe there was a business opportunity here.

A lot of Jean’s skills were tough to monetize, but setting up shop as a Doula of Bad Ideas had potential.

The voiceover for an imaginary infomercial played in her head:

Do people’s eyes glaze over when you tell “funny” stories?

Are you the human equivalent of a pair of pleated khakis?

Is your one life neither wild nor precious?

I can help you shake things up!

Rich people got plenty of ass-kissing. Some of them secretly enjoyed when you gave it to them straight—and not only with top-shelf liquor.

Leaving the main walkway that during the day carried droves of sunburned guests between the hotel’s main building and the private beach, she turned down a narrower path.

Past the koi pond and a row of two-person loungers Jean never wanted to look at with a black light, then through the trees until a series of slate pavers ended at the porch of a modest two-thousand-dollar-a-night holiday cottage, tailor-made for those who wanted to enjoy the amenities of a big resort without sharing an elevator with ordinary mortals.

There were half a dozen of these “cottages” scattered around the grounds.

Jean’s coworkers liked to speculate about celebrity guests registering under false names, but she doubted Dolphin Bay was pulling starlets and chart-topping musicians.

The young and hot would be hiding out at an eco-resort in Brazil or Vietnam or someone’s private Swedish island.

Dolphin Bay was a little too old school.

This was a place your rich parents could hang.

Or their parents. Paddleboarding was an option, but people mostly stuck with golf.

And no one was going to shame you for ordering a daiquiri instead of some obscure artisanal alcohol tarted up with twelve plant essences and a culturally appropriative name, served by a twenty-three-year-old with a Rip Van Winkle beard.

The Dolphin Bay clientele tended to be well preserved and tastefully dressed but not exactly tantalizing, because another regrettable fact about money was that it did not automatically turn people sexy.

In Jean’s experience, rich people often married hotness, first because they could, and second to give their offspring a fighting chance at having hair after thirty.

Even then they tended to stick with a very specific “my other car is the Mayflower ” style of attractiveness.

Young billionaires with gleaming abs might be thick on the ground in fiction, but in real life they mostly had the vaguely amphibious look of career politicians.

In other words, the odds of intrigue were not in her favor, even at this time of night.

Jean knocked on the door of Sunset Cottage. “Towel delivery!”

No one answered. There was a puddle on the outdoor table from the recent rain, and she couldn’t exactly leave clean towels on the ground, so Jean keyed the door open with her employee badge.

“I have your towels,” she said. “I’ll just leave them— oh .”

It turned out Jean was going to see a body this evening, only this one was very much not dead.

She’d heard of guests who got their kicks from exposing themselves to staff, but it was clear this guy wasn’t turned on by Jean’s presence—and not just because she could see the relaxed state of his man parts.

It was the yelp of panic that tipped her off.

And then the flush that traveled up his chest like a lava flow in reverse as he tripped over his feet, bumbling for something that turned out to be a pair of glasses with heavy black frames.

Only when he had them on did he think to cover himself with both hands.

“Nice snake,” Jean said after a silence so thick you could have spread it on toast. Someone had to break the ice. Or maybe not ice since the temperature in the room wasn’t exactly frosty. More like warm—and getting hotter by the second.

He looked down at the place where his hands met. “Are you referring to my… sexual organ?”

“No, the other one.” She circled a hand to indicate the rear view. “Your ink.”

As comprehension dawned, he looked profoundly relieved. Go figure, Jean thought, adding that tidbit to her mental sketch of Naked Guest. A guy who doesn’t want to discuss his junk.

“I like the color,” she added.

He glanced over his shoulder, as if to remind himself what was tattooed on the smooth round cheek. “It’s a green snake.”

“Uh-huh.” Somewhere between chartreuse and olive, Jean would have called it, but not everyone cared about those distinctions.

“That’s the name, I mean. Opheodrys vernalis.

Also known as the smooth green snake. Although some refer to them as grass snakes.

” He paused, and Jean got the feeling he was wondering whether he’d said too much.

She gave him her undivided attention, hoping he could see that she was fully engaged in the snake trivia.

That seemed to be the encouragement he needed to venture one more fact. “Green is my favorite color.”