The Sun Down Motel (13 page)

“Can I look for myself?”

“You have a spine on you, you know that? But I get it. What happened to Betty Graham shouldn’t happen to anyone, and whoever did it is still walking around. If there’s a chance this guy is him, then I suppose I can go through some photos with you.”

“It isn’t just Betty,” Viv said. “There are others.”

Marnie shook her head, her lips pressed together. She said, “You mean the girl left under the overpass. The one with the baby.”

There was a feeling in the back of Viv’s neck like a tap that had been turned too tight, that was finally being twisted loose. Of something finally flowing that had been twisted off for too long, maybe forever. Marnie
knew
. Like it was common knowledge for every woman in Fell. Like the women here all spoke the same language. “Her, and another one. Victoria.”

“The jogging trail girl.” Marnie eyed Viv up and down again. “Are
you a cop, or what? You say you work at the Sun Down, and you really don’t look like a cop.”

“I’m not a cop. I just spent some time in the library, looking up dead girls. I think there are a lot of them in Fell.”

“You think there are a lot of them in Fell.” Marnie repeated the words back. “You think? I’ve lived here all my life. Every woman was afraid when Betty Graham died. Every single one. We locked our doors and didn’t go out at night. Our mothers called us ten times a day. Even my mother, and Betty was white. Because we were all Betty. For a few weeks, at least. You know?”

Viv swallowed and nodded. “We’re all still Betty,” she said. “At least I am.”

Marnie shook her head again. “You’re a strange girl, but I like you. Get in the front seat.”

Viv got out of the back seat and got in the front, which Marnie had cleared of photography equipment. “Are we going somewhere?”

“I’ll get you your photos,” Marnie said, putting the key in the ignition and starting the car. “But if you’re so interested in dead girls, let’s take a little tour.”

Fell, New York

November 2017

It took them four days to even realize Viv was missing,” I said. “
Four days.
Can you believe it?”

I was in the
AMENITIES
room with Nick. It was two o’clock in the morning. The candy machine wasn’t working, so Nick had agreed to take a look at it. He’d gone into the motel’s maintenance room—I hadn’t even known there was one—and come out with a toolbox. Now I was sitting on the ice machine while he poked at the candy machine in the tiny, closet-sized room. We’d found an old brick and propped the door open with it, because the door kept trying to close on its own.

“What do you mean?” Nick said. “No one called the police?”

“No. The papers said she
likely
went missing during her shift on the twenty-ninth of November. She talked to the guy who was on the shift before her, and that was the last anyone saw. Four days later, when the cops started looking for her, they found her belongings in the Sun Down office.”

Nick unscrewed something and the front of the candy machine popped open. “I’d say the staff wasn’t very observant, but then again I’ve been here for weeks. There’s barely any staff at all.”

“I know. Most of the time no one relieves me at seven in the morning. It makes me think that if I disappeared during my shift, no one would know.”

“I would know,” Nick said.

My cheeks went hot. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

He was looking at the candy machine and he didn’t notice. “I thought she had a roommate,” he said.

“The roommate’s name was Jenny Summers.” When Nick was focused on the candy machine, I could stare at his profile without him noticing. His profile was pretty much perfect when you looked at it closely. His blue eyes were set under a more or less semipermanent scowl, especially when he was concentrating. His nose was just right. He hadn’t shaved in a few days, and he had a dark brown shadow of beard along his jaw and under his cheekbones. When he turned the screwdriver, mysterious and amazing things happened in the muscles and tendons of his forearms, and his biceps flexed under the sleeve of his T-shirt. It was time to admit I had a crush on the mysterious occupant of room 210.

Nick paused, and I realized I’d stopped talking in order to ogle him. I recovered and remembered what I was saying. “I looked up Jenny Summers today,” I said. Nick’s frown eased a degree and he went back to work. “Her name is still Jenny Summers—she hasn’t changed it. And get this—she’s in the Fell phone book. Because Fell has an actual, physical phone book.”

“I know,” Nick said, picking up his screwdriver again and flipping a switch on the inside of the candy machine. Nothing happened. “There’s one in the motel office.”

“There is,” I said, pointing at him in congratulations, though he wasn’t looking at me. “I found it in the desk drawer. There’s also a copy at the library. It’s like the Internet never happened in this place.”

“You have to get used to it,” Nick said.

He crouched down to pick a different screwdriver out of the toolbox, and the pose made his shirt ride a few inches up his lower back. I stared fixedly at that slice of skin and said, “Anyway, Jenny Summers is listed in there. I called her and left her a message, telling her I’m Viv’s niece. I also tried to contact the cop that worked on the case. I want to know why no one knew she was gone for four whole days.”

“She didn’t have friends, a boyfriend,” Nick said. “When you’re all alone, it can happen.”

“That’s the other thing,” I said. Beneath me, the ice machine made a random rumble, like a belch, and the inner workings clicked. It was weird, thinking about this machine making ice year after year when no one ever needed it. I waited politely until it was finished before I continued. “The news stories all described Viv as pretty and popular. And she really was pretty. But no one who is popular disappears for four days without anyone noticing. I mean, I’m not even popular, but I at least had to tell my roommate I was leaving college for a while. She would have thought I’d been taken by the
Silence of the Lambs
guy if I didn’t come home.”

“That’s now,” Nick pointed out. “We’re talking about 1982. It was different then.”

“Maybe. But why describe a girl as popular when no one even notices she’s disappeared? That doesn’t sound very popular to me.”

Nick scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Maybe the reporter who wrote the story just assumed she was popular.”

“Because she was pretty? They just looked at a photo of a good-looking girl and decided she must be popular? Like a woman who’s pretty can’t have problems. She can’t have any depth. She can’t have any life except a perfect one.”

Nick glanced at me, amused. “Nice rant, but I didn’t write the article.”

I was talking his ear off, I knew, but I couldn’t seem to help it. I should probably shut up about Viv, but I was obsessed, I’d already told Heather all of this, and the longer I talked to Nick, the longer I could look at him. “Do you really think you can fix the candy machine?” I asked.

“No,” Nick said honestly, standing up again. The slice of skin disappeared, but a different slice appeared when he raised his arm and grabbed the first screwdriver, which he’d left on top of the machine. Was his stomach honestly that flat? “I can’t even figure out how it works in the first place. It has to be a few decades old. Have you ever actually gotten candy out of this thing?”

“No. I came in here to get a chocolate bar, because the machine says they’re twenty cents, which is insane. I put two dimes in and it just ate my money and made strange noises. So I figured it was broken.”

“Well, it’s been broken for a while. There’s dust on these M&M’s. This Snickers doesn’t look too bad.” He held it out to me, so I took it and he turned to the machine again, using the screwdriver to pry open a panel on the side. “I wonder if it’s jammed.”

“Jammed with what?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t see anything in there. But this machine is definitely not dishing out candy. Breaking in is your only option.”

I sighed. “All this work, and all I got was a dusty Snickers bar.”

“Don’t knock it,” Nick said. He inspected the panel he’d just opened. “Yeah, this is definitely broken. I’m surprised the thing is plugged in.”

I ripped open the Snickers bar. Because why not? It wasn’t
that
old—like, not decades old. A year or two, maybe. “My guess is that a repair person costs money. We do not spend money at the Sun Down. Not on new phones, not on electronic keys—nothing.”

“My room is like a museum,” Nick agreed, putting the panel back on the side of the machine. “The lampshades are the color of cigarettes and the bedspread has those fabric knobs in it. I don’t care, because I’m sleeping for the first time since I was a teenager. Oh, shit—something’s happening.”

The candy machine, reassembled now, made a whirring noise. My two dimes clinked somewhere deep in the mechanism. There was a
thump
, and a second Snickers bar appeared in the gap at the bottom.

We both stared for a second in surprise.

“Um, congratulations?” I said. “Looks like you fixed it.”

Nick looked as shocked as I felt. “Looks like I did.” He picked up the Snickers bar. “Which cop did you call?”

“What?”

“You said you called the cop that worked your aunt’s disappearance. Which one?” He glanced at me. “Carly, I know every cop in Fell.”

Right. Because his brother had been murdered, and he almost had been, too. “Edward Parey,” I said. “He was chief of police.”

Nick shook his head. “He won’t help you. Parey was chief when my brother died, and he was an asshole then. I doubt he’s improved.”

When my brother died.
He said it like his brother had passed away naturally. His expression gave nothing away.

“Okay, then,” I said. “He’s likely a dead end. I’ll find someone else.”

“I know a few names you can call.” Nick scratched the back of his neck, thinking. “Don’t mention my name, though. I got into a lot of trouble as a teenager and none of them are fans of mine.”

“What did you do?”

“Stole stuff, got in fights. Got drunk a lot. I went off the rails after the murder, became a bad kid. You probably shouldn’t associate with me, really.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, because I realized I’d never said that to him. It wasn’t adequate, but it was something.

He gave me a curious look, as if I’d said something strange. Then he said, “Did you call Alma Trent?”

I shook my head. “Who’s Alma Trent?”

“She’s the cop who used to work the night shift. She worked it for years—decades. She has to be retired by now. She was a beat cop, but she might have met Viv if she worked nights.”

“Does Alma Trent hate you?” I asked him.

That made him smile a little. “She mopped me off the floor of a party or two, but she was okay about it. I got a few lectures about letting my life waste away. Alma didn’t put up with any shit.” His smile faded. “Jesus, I just realized I’ve been back in Fell for a month and I’ve barely left this motel. I don’t know if any of these people I knew are still around.”

I poked at my Snickers bar, dropping my gaze. “Come with me,” I said. “When I talk to some of these people.”

He was quiet, and I looked up to see that his blue eyes had gone hard. “That isn’t a good idea,” he said slowly.

“You said you came back to face your demons, right? To get over the past. You can’t do that by staying at the motel. Maybe getting out will help.”

“It isn’t that easy,” Nick said. He turned back to the machine and closed the front, picking up the screwdriver again. “For you, maybe, because you’re a stranger. But not for me. I know these people. A lot of them knew my father, knew Eli. I’ll face them when I’m ready, but not before.”

My cell phone rang at eleven thirty in the morning. I was deep under my covers in the dark, asleep and dreaming—something about a road and a lake, the stillness of the water. I didn’t want to swim. I rolled out of my covers at the sound of the phone, a sheen of cool sweat on my skin.

I picked up the phone from my nightstand. “Hello?”

“Is this Carly Kirk?” a woman asked.

I frowned, still in a fog. “Yes.”

“This is Marnie Clark returning your call.”

Marnie Clark, formerly Marnie Mahoney. The photographer who was credited with the photo of Viv I’d seen in the paper. I’d taken a shot and Googled her. She’d gotten married in 1983, but she was still in Fell, just like Jenny Summers, Viv’s old roommate. No one, it seemed, ever left Fell. Or if they did—like Nick—they eventually came back.

“Hi,” I said to Marnie, sitting up in bed. Outside my room I could hear Heather banging around in the kitchen. “Thank you for calling me.”

“Don’t thank me,” the woman said. Her voice wasn’t angry, but it was firm. “I don’t have anything to tell you about Vivian Delaney.”

“I saw a photo in the paper,” I said. “Your name was on it.”

“That’s just a photo, honey. I was a freelance photographer in those days. I took a lot of pictures. The papers bought some of them. Other people bought other ones. It was how I made a living.”

“It looked like a candid photo,” I said.

“Yeah, it probably was. Unless she sat for a portrait for me, it would have been a candid. But I don’t remember it. And I don’t remember her.”

I rubbed a hand through my hair. “Maybe you don’t understand. Viv was my aunt. She disappeared in 1982. No one has ever found her and—”

“I know what happened,” Marnie said. “I know she disappeared. I saw it in the papers, and I had a photo of her, and I offered it to them for sale. They bought it. I cashed the check. That’s all I have to say.”

“I just thought—”

“You’re on the wrong track, honey,” the woman said. “Whatever you think is going to happen, it isn’t. You have to accept that.”

“What?”

“I’m just giving you some advice here. It’s been thirty-five years. I’ve lived in this town all my life. Gone is gone. You get me? It’s hard to take, but sometimes gone is just gone. That’s all I have to say about Vivian Delaney, or anyone.”

“Listen,” I said. “Maybe we can meet for coffee or something. I just want to talk.”

But there was no one on the other end of the line. Marnie Clark had hung up.