Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief

Sammy lives in a fifth-floor apartment with Grams. An elderly woman named Mrs. Daisy Graybill lives down the hall, and Sammy considers her “the nosiest person who ever lived” (3). Sammy has few possessions, so her options to entertain herself are limited. Through her binoculars, she observes local businesses, including the Pup Parlor, the Bargain Books owned by Mr. Bell, and the Heavenly Hotel. Grams considers the hotel a disreputable place, but Sammy didn’t observe anything interesting the one time that she went into the hotel’s lobby.

One day, Sammy peers into a room on the hotel’s fourth floor and witnesses a man with brown hair, a bushy beard, and black gloves rifling through a purse. She has an odd feeling that she’s seen him somewhere before. After the man takes a wad of money from the purse and puts it into his jacket pocket, he sees Sammy watching him through her binoculars. She waves to the man, an impulsive decision that she regrets immediately. She knows that she should call 911, but the apartment’s only phone is a landline in the kitchen where her grandmother is cooking dinner, and she doesn’t want to worry her.

When Sammy enters the kitchen to feed her cat, Dorito, Grams senses that she’s hiding something. Sammy simply says that she was using her binoculars, and Grams decides to teach the girl to knit so that she has a constructive hobby. Grams is thrilled with the idea, but Sammy thinks that she’d hate this proposed pastime because she had a miserable experience when her mother tried to teach her how to embroider. She mockingly refers to her mother as “Lady Lana,” and Grams asks her not to. When the doorbell rings, Sammy goes through the routine of putting away her belongings and hiding in the closet. This time, she fears that the visitor is the thief “come to shut [her] up for good” (8).

Sammy hides in the closet and prepares to defend herself from the thief with an old umbrella. She’s relieved to learn that their visitor is her best friend, Marissa McKenze. Marissa nervously bites her nails as she explains that she’s looking for her eight-year-old brother, Mikey. Sammy suggests that they check the pet store. Grams makes sure that Mrs. Graybill’s door is closed before the girls leave. Sammy can’t use the apartment building’s regular stairs without being seen, so she uses the fire escape.

The girls go to the mall and look for Mikey in the arcade. Marissa’s cousin, a high schooler named Brandon, works at a juice bar and saw the boy heading toward the pet store about 20 minutes ago. Sammy doesn’t consider fish real pets, but Mikey loves them. The girls find him staring enraptured at the tanks and surrounded by junk food wrappers. Marissa scolds him for leaving the arcade without her, but he claims that she gave him permission. Marissa wants to meet DJ Rockin’ Rick from KRQK radio, who is hosting a back-to-school giveaway at the mall, but the girls decide that they should head home right away instead. Marissa and Sammy make a plan to meet up outside of school for their first day as seventh graders tomorrow.

After she says goodbye to Marissa and Mikey, Sammy sees a man with a bushy, brown beard. She runs into a bookstore and hides but then sees the man join his wife and baby. In her distracted state, she bumps into a man wearing a baseball cap, but he keeps his eyes down and doesn’t say anything to her. On her way home, Sammy sees police cars outside the Heavenly Hotel and decides to investigate.

Sammy sneaks into the hotel lobby and hides behind a chair. She used to want to be a police officer, but she has to avoid them ever since her mother left her with her grandmother. Sammy listens to the police talk to Gina, the woman whose money was stolen. Gina is furious because she was robbed of $4,000, and she refuses to explain why she was carrying so much money in her purse. When the woman asks if the police are going to look for fingerprints, Sammy steps out from her hiding place and says that the thief was wearing gloves. She tells the officers that she was visiting her grandmother in the Senior Highrise and saw the robbery through her binoculars. One of the cops, Officer Borsch, previously gave Sammy a ticket for jaywalking, and she’s worried that he’ll recognize her. The officer treats her “like a stupid little kid” (21), but the woman encourages her to share everything she remembers about the thief. Sammy recounts, “He had brown hair and a brown beard, and he was wearing black gloves and a black jacket” (22). When the officers ask Sammy where she lives, she gives them Marissa’s address in an affluent area called East Jasmine. The girl is surprised that the officers believe the lie because of her worn shoes and general appearance. She wishes Gina good luck with the recovery of her stolen property and then leaves the hotel, feeling Officer Borsch’s suspicious gaze follow her.

Grams is angry at Sammy for being gone for so long, and she makes the girl eat all her dinner, which has gone cold. Sammy used to have nightmares when she first moved in with her grandmother, but she doesn’t have any trouble sleeping that night. In the morning, she tells herself that the thief won’t find out who she is. Her mother calls, and Sammy agrees to talk to her because she feels guilty for worrying Grams the previous night. Lana claims that “she’s so close to landing a part in a major motion picture and has to stay [in Hollywood] just a little while longer” (26), but her words ring hollow because she left Sammy with her grandmother over a year ago. Grams and Sammy apologize to one another, and then Grams cheers Sammy up by making French toast to celebrate her first day at William Rose Junior High.

Sammy meets up with Marissa outside the school. Marissa asks a girl named Heather Acosta, who has bright red hair and several ear piercings, for directions to her homeroom, and the girl is snide to the new students. A boy who is friends with Marissa’s cousin helps them, which irritates Heather. Sammy realizes that Heather is also in seventh grade when she enters the same homeroom as her and Marissa. Heather makes fun of Sammy during the Pledge of Allegiance, so the teacher makes her go to the front of the room and lead the class in the pledge. When she returns to her desk, Heather gives Sammy “the wickedest evil eye [she’s] ever seen” (31), making it clear that she will continue to target Sammy.