THEN a couple days later I heard from classmate Chayci Peck （’21）， who’s the concierge at Round Pond in Kennebunkport, Maine. Chayci had a woman come in with an ID that said Miranda Priestly and who went through the same motions with room upgrade, list of requests, and sourcing questions in order to get free merch. A day after “Miranda Priestly” checked out, she called Round Pond claiming to have left behind a gold Tiffany-T bangle, and when the housekeeping staff couldn’t find it, they too replaced it, free of charge.
This woman is NOT SHELLY CARPENTER! She’s a con artist! I’m posting this so that no other hotel falls for her ploy. Shelly Carpenter has the dubious distinction of becoming such a phenom that she now has an imitator.
Could this day get any worse? Edie wonders. She too tosses her ice cream and goes to knock on Lizbet’s office door.
Lizbet reads the Facebook post and groans. “Are you kidding me?”
When Chad hears the news, he can’t wait to tell Bibi: Claire/Maybe-Shelly, the woman who stayed in the owner’s suite, was an impostor and there was no missing Gucci belt, it was a scam.
“So now you believe I didn’t take it?” Bibi says.
“I’m sorry,” Chad says. “I just couldn’t figure out…and I know you like nice things…”
“I’m not a thief, Long Shot,” Bibi says. “I have a daughter. I need to set an example.”
“I thought maybe you did it because you needed the money.”
“I do need the money,” Bibi says. She narrows her eyes at him. “If it was a scam, then where did the belt that Ms. English found in the laundry come from?”
Chad is tempted to say, Must have belonged to someone else, but instead, he blurts out the truth. “That belt was my mom’s. I took it from her and planted it in the laundry because I didn’t want you to get in trouble.”
Chad isn’t sure what kind of response he’s expecting—maybe a thank-you, maybe “Aren’t you sweet”—but Bibi just barks out a hard, one-syllable laugh. “Who’s the thief now?” she says.
20. Here Comes Trouble
Edie sends out ten résumés to other hotels, including the Little Nell in Aspen （Edie’s mother, Love, worked there in the nineties） and the Breakers in Palm Beach. Edie has decided to work somewhere else only for the winter season because she wants to come back to the Hotel Nantucket next summer. Lizbet has told her they’re already full for certain weeks in June and July. Zeke said he’s coming back next year as well—he’s going to spend the winter surfing in Costa Rica—and Adam and Raoul are returning.
The only person who hasn’t committed to coming back is Alessandra. Maybe she’ll turn tail and run back to Italy, Edie thinks—although she has to admit, Alessandra has mellowed a bit recently. Adam told Zeke that Alessandra has been staying in every night, eating dinner in her room with the door closed.
“Something happened with her, I think,” Adam said. “But she won’t tell us what.”
Edie is on the desk one gloriously hot and sunny afternoon by herself. Alessandra is at lunch and everyone else is at the beach or the pool or biking to Sconset for ice cream or hiding from the sun at the Whaling Museum. Edie has a moment to check her phone just to see if all ten of her cover letters and résumés went through on her e-mail—and that’s when she sees the Venmo request from Graydon for a thousand dollars.
Edie huffs out a short, indignant laugh. The nerve of him. No, really, the nerve! Edie isn’t sure why—maybe because she now has a plan for her future, maybe because working the desk has made her more confident, maybe because she has Lizbet as a role model—but she decides in that moment that she has had it. She will be bullied no longer! She deletes the Venmo request and sends Graydon a text: We’re finished. Leave me alone.
Three dots surface on the text stream immediately and Edie gets a hot, prickly feeling as she imagines Graydon typing.
His response: Pay me or I’ll send the videos to all of your prospective employers.
Edie gasps softly and looks around the lobby. It’s cool and serene; Jack Johnson is singing about turning the whole thing upside down. Edie hears splashing from the family pool and a moped going by out on Easton Street. She starts to shake. How does Graydon know about her résumés going out?
Well, he must have access to her e-mails and maybe her texts as well, maybe her entire cloud. Did she ever give him the password? No, but it wouldn’t be difficult to guess: Nantucketgirl127 （her birthday）。