The Sun Down Motel

by Simone St. James

“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 p
eople 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.

  Fell, New York

  October 1982

  VIV

  It seemed fitting that the rain was still coming down as Marnie drove them through town. She wound through the streets of downtown Fell and to the other side, where the small split-level homes tapered off into farmland and scrub, pocked by warehouses and run-down auto body shops that never seemed to be open. She pulled up next to an overpass and parked on the gravel, the windshield facing the dark tunnel in the rain.

  “This is where Cathy Caldwell was found,” Marnie said.

  Viv pulled her hood up over her head and got out of the car, her sneakers squelching on the wet ground. Cars passed on the highway overhead, a small two-lane that fed onto the interstate miles away. Other than that, the world was quiet except for the rushing of the rain. There was no one around, no other cars on this road, no buildings in sight.

  Viv looked at the overpass, the shadowed concrete place beneath it. It was just an overpass, one of thousands, an ugly stretch of concrete spattered by a few lazy squiggles of spray-painted graffiti, as if the teenagers of Fell couldn’t be bothered to come out here very often, no matter how bored they were. Beneath the gray sky the mouth of the overpass looked dark, like it was waiting to swallow prey. The road beyond was slick with water in the hazy light.

  Viv passed beneath the lip of the overpass and the rain stopped beating on her hood. She pushed it back and looked around. There was a concrete shoulder on either side of the road, and the ground at her feet was littered with trash, a broken beer bottle, and cigarette butts. There was a deflated piece of rubber that she realized with shock must be a condom—a used one. She looked away, blinking and smelling old urine.

  Cathy’s killer had dumped her body here. This place, of all places. This place. Viv pushed down her disgust, her outrage at the thought of being left here to lie naked and dead, and tried to think. Why this place?

  First of all: There was no one to see. That much was obvious. Since Marnie had parked the car, no one had driven through here. The only potential witnesses were the cars passing overhead, and those drivers would have to be leaning out their windows to see. How long did it take to dump a body? One minute, two? She had already stood here longer than that.

  Second of all: The overpass was full of shadows. A body might be mistaken for a sleeping drunk or an addict. Compared to a ditch or an open field, there was the chance for a longer time before the body was discovered. Yet the body would be discovered—that was also clear.

  Third of all: This was a place for the people who knew where it was. The drunks, the teenagers, the condom users. This wasn’t a place that someone would randomly find on a stroll. He dumped the body here because he’d driven through here before. Probably many times. In one direction or the other—this was a road he’d taken.

  Cathy, being taken as she got into her car to go home from work. At a time when her husband was away. Her body dumped here.

  Viv walked back to the car and got in. Marnie was sitting in the driver’s seat, and Viv realized she’d been watching her the entire time.

  “Well?” the other woman said.

  Viv ran a hand through her hair, her careful curls that were wet now, her pretty makeup that had been rubbed off long ago. “He picked her,” she said. “He followed her. He knew where she worked, knew that her husband was away. And after he killed her he picked this place. He planned it—and he’s local.”

  “Well, hell. All that from five minutes standing there?” Marnie seemed to think this over. “He’s local because he knows this place,” she said, putting the pieces together. “A stranger wouldn’t know.”

  Viv pointed through the overpass. “What’s that way?”

  “It goes out of town, heading south to New York.”

  New York. Viv remembered wanting to go there, wanting to be on this very road. Planning to pass through Fell and take this very route. She could still do it. She could still go.

  Someone who came and went from Fell would take this road. Someone like, say, a traveling salesman.

  She turned to Marnie. “Let’s go to the next place.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Marnie took her to a tree-lined street on the edge of what passed for Fell’s suburbs, a neighborhood of twenty-year-old bungalows. Viv had been born in a house like this before her father got a better job and they moved into a brand-new house in Grisham, surrounded by freshly dug lawns and newly planted trees. This street was well kept and unpretentious, and was probably
pretty on a summer day, though now it was soaked and dark in the early-morning rain.

  Marnie pulled the car up to a curb and turned the engine off.

  “What’s this place?” Viv asked her.

  “You asked about Betty Graham,” Marnie said. “She let a traveling salesman into her house on a Saturday afternoon.” She pointed. “That’s Betty’s house.”

  Viv stared through the windshield as the rain pelted the car. The house was small and tidy, with a neat front walk and well-tended shrubs in the garden beneath the windows. It was past eight o’clock in the morning now, and as they watched a man came out the front door. He wore a plaid overcoat and a matching brown hat, and he looked to be in his late fifties. He checked his watch, then got in his car and drove away. Somewhere nearby, a dog barked.

  “They sold the place, obviously,” Marnie said. “You’d think they’d have trouble selling it, but they didn’t. Maybe because Betty wasn’t killed in the house.”

  “She wasn’t?”

  Marnie shook her head. “There was a broken lamp in the living room. That was the only sign anything had happened there at all. No blood, no nothing. He got her out of there somehow.” She pointed to a house across the street. “That’s the neighbor who saw the salesman. She saw him go in the house. No one saw anyone leave.”

  “How is that possible?”

  Marnie shrugged, though the motion was tight, her shoulders tense. “You’d have to ask him that. All anyone knows is that Betty disappeared, and then her body showed up on the construction heap that was the Sun Down Motel.”

  The woman in the flowered dress. She’d lived here, but she didn’t haunt this place. She haunted the motel instead.

  “How do you know so much about all of this?” Viv asked her.

  “The Fell PD hires me sometimes to take photos of crime scenes. Usually burglary scenes—smashed windows, broken locks, ransacked rooms, footprints in the garden. The PD is so small that they don’t have someone full time to do pictures, and they don’t have enough equipment for two scenes at a time. That’s where I come in. Freelance, of course.” She started the car again. “I’ve never shot a body, but I’ve worked with cops. I listen to what they talk about, the things they say among themselves. Cops gossip just like everyone else. And if they aren’t paying attention to you, you can listen.”