The Sun Down Motel

by Simone St. James

  In my half-asleep state, it took me a minute to translate that Heather had gone to her parents’. I picked up the sheet of paper she’d left with the note. It was a printout of an old scan. A list of numbers.

  I pulled out a kitchen chair and turned on the light, studying the page. I was looking at a phone record, I realized. Just like Viv’s roommate Jenny had said. The cops would get a big old printout.

  Heather had circled the name at the top of the report: Sun Down Motel. And the date: November 1 to November 30, 1982.

  I scanned the numbers. There weren’t many; the Sun Down didn’t make or receive a lot of phone calls in 1982, a situation that hadn’t changed in thirty-five years. Some of the calls were marked as incoming, others as outgoing. Near the bottom of the list were the calls made on November 29 and the early hours of November 30.

  Just after one a.m. on November 30 was an incoming call. The record didn’t show which room it was routed to, if any. Heather had circled the number the call came from and written a question mark next to it. That meant she hadn’t been able to identify the number.

  At 1:54 a.m. was an outgoing call. Again, there was no record of whether it came from the motel office or one of the rooms. Heather had circled this number, too, but next to it she wrote Fell Police Department.

  There were no other calls that night.

  I stared at the numbers for a minute. Someone had called in to the motel just after one. Maybe that was a coincidence, a fluke, or a wrong number. Maybe not.

  But just before two, someone at the Sun Down had called the police.

  Was it Vivian? Simon Hess? Someone else?

  I put the note down.

  My aunt Vivian killed Simon Hess.

  She must have. There was no other explanation. Or was there? I didn’t really know what had happened that night in 1982. But someone—a woman—had warned Tracy Waters’s parents about Hess. And Tracy had been killed, her body found the same day Viv disappeared.

  Had Hess killed Viv, then been killed by someone else?

  Callum’s information would answer some of my questions. An ID on the body in the trunk in the barn and a cause of death, even a preliminary one, would put some of the pieces together. I went into the bathroom and cleaned up, then changed into clean clothes. I had a text on my phone from my brother, Graham, but I ignored it. My old life seemed so far away.

  I texted Heather quickly so she wouldn’t worry. Callum has info from the police. Going to meet him. As I hit Send, the phone rang in my hand. I didn’t recognize the number.

  I bit my lip for a second, undecided. Then I answered. “Hello?”

  “You found him.” The voice on the other end was female, older than me, and familiar.

  “Marnie?” I said.

  Marnie sighed. “You’re a smart girl. We hid him good, and he stayed gone for a long time. But it looks like you dug him up after all these years.”

  I shook my head. “You lied to us. But you took a photo of the barn where you left him.”

  A pause. “Yes, I suppose I did.”

  “Why did you take the picture?”

  “I wanted to be able to find the place again. I don’t think I ever believed he’d stay buried forever. We thought maybe we’d have to go back and move him, but we lucked out. For a while, anyway. Now is as good a time as any for all of it to come out. It was going to happen whether I wanted it to or not.”

  “Who killed him?” I asked. “Was it you? Was it Viv?”

  “It’s a complicated story.”

  “Not really. Someone put Simon Hess in a trunk and left him in a barn. Was it you? Or her?”

  “You didn’t find the notebook, did you?”

  I stood straighter, my skin tingling. “Notebook?”

  “It was left for you,” Marnie said. “You’re missing so much of the story. It’s why you’re confused. Read the notebook and you’ll understand.”

  My mind raced. It was left for you. What did that mean? “Where is the notebook?” I asked Marnie.

  “Tell me,” Marnie said. “Did you ever try to get candy out of the candy machine?”

  I froze, remembering the broken candy machine. Nick saying, I can’t believe this even works.

  “Read the notebook,” Marnie said again, “then meet me at Watson’s Diner.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight,” Marnie said. “When you’re there, I’ll be there. Don’t worry.” She hung up.

  * * *

  • • •

  Finelli’s was a beacon of yellow light on the dark downtown street, where a lot of businesses were already closing for the night. Fell wasn’t a late-night town. At least, not here. At the Sun Down, it was an all-night town.

  Callum was sitting at one of the small tables, a coffee in front of him. He was wearing a button-down shirt, a zip-up sweater, and a fall jacket. The guy knew how to layer. His hair was neatly combed and he smiled when he saw me.

  He held up his mug when I sat down. “Decaf,” he said. “Want one?”

  I blinked at his cup, still groggy. “I want the most caffeine this place can supply.”

  Callum smiled again and signaled for the waitress. “Right, you work nights. I guess this is morning for you.”

  “To be honest, I don’t know what time of day it is. I haven’t in a while.”

  “Interesting,” Callum said. “And kind of freeing, I guess.” He put his cup down. “The rest of us are stuck in time. You know—you do one thing in the morning, this other thing in the afternoon, go to sleep at night. The same thing every day. But that isn’t real, is it? It’s just something we construct for ourselves. If we wanted to, we could let it go.”

  I sipped the coffee the waitress had brought and tried to follow what he was talking about. “A lot of people work nights.”

  “Sure they do.” Callum smiled again. “Thanks for meeting me.”

  Now I was perking up. I took another swallow of coffee. “You said you have information.”

  Callum’s gaze dropped to his coffee cup, then wandered around the room. “Do you want to know something strange?”

  That was when it clicked. Something was off. I’d been too distracted, too tired and overwhelmed, to notice it before. “Callum,” I said. “You told me you had information from the police.”

  “Do you want to know something strange?” Callum said again. “I mean, really strange. Like the craziest strange thing you’ve ever heard.”

  I went still. I was suddenly aware of the coffee shop around me, how nearly empty it was. How dark it was outside. How I was alone here with him.

  “You have this big mystery in your family,” Callum said. If he was aware I was uncomfortable, he didn’t show it. “You came all the way here to solve it, and you met me in the library. But I have a family mystery of my own. Isn’t that crazy?”

  “Sure,” I said slowly, putting my cup down.

  “I have a family disappearance, too,” Callum said. “My grandfather. He went to work one day and never came home. No one ever saw him again.”

  My mouth went dry. It couldn’t be.

  “My grandmother never even called the police,” Callum went on. “Crazy, right? Mom says that my grandmother always assumed that my grandfather left her for another woman. She found it so humiliating that she never considered filing a missing-person report. She never wanted to talk about it, all the way to the day she died five years ago. Those were different times.”

  I licked my lips and swallowed.

  Callum turned his gaze back to my face. It was hard and unreadable. “Imagine that. Just imagine it. Your husband of fifteen years goes to work one morning and never comes home, and you just live with it. You pretend everything is fine and he didn’t just vanish. You pretend everything’s fine for the rest of your life. No wonder my mother is so screwed up.” He smiled, but now I could see it
was forced. “Everyone has a screwed-up family, but I think yours and mine win some kind of award, don’t they?”

  He stared at me, expecting an answer, so I said, “I don’t know.”

  “I’ve asked my mother about it, of course,” Callum said. “I mean, I grew up with a long-gone grandfather. So I was curious. My mother wasn’t as closemouthed as my grandmother was. She was a kid when he left, so she wasn’t subject to the same shame. She told me that the topic of her father was completely taboo in her house growing up. Once he left, she wasn’t supposed to talk about him, even to admit he had ever existed. My grandmother was too proud.” He shook his head. “So I have this family mystery, and so do you. And both of those mysteries happened around the same time. The first thing I thought when I saw the article about your aunt was, Maybe she ran off with Granddad. She was a lot younger than him, but it isn’t impossible. My grandfather was a traveling salesman—he met all kinds of people. He met people all day, every day. Maybe he met your aunt, and in a fit of passion they drove away together to start a new life.”

  The coffee shop seemed too empty, too quiet. One of the few customers had left, and the young man working behind the counter was starting to clean up to prepare for closing, one eye on us, hoping we would leave.

  Maybe in a fit of passion they drove away together to start a new life.

  I thought of the car in the old barn, the dried blood on the ground beneath it.

  I pushed back my chair. “I need to go.”

  “You just got here,” Callum said.

  “You said you had information from the police.” I picked up my purse. It suddenly seemed urgent that I get out of here, get away from him. “You lied to get me here. I’m going.”

  Callum watched me, and his handsome face was unreadable. “I don’t need information from the police,” he said. “I already know who the body is in that trunk. Do you?”

  I didn’t answer. I turned and left.

  “Call Alma Trent,” Callum called after me. “She knows who it is, too. Maybe she’ll tell you.”

  Outside, I got in my car, started it, and hit Dial on my phone. Nick’s phone went to voicemail.

  “Nick,” I said after the beep, “I got a call from Marnie. She says there’s a notebook hidden in the candy machine we need to see. I’m coming to the motel to find it.”

  Through the windshield, I watched Callum come out of the coffee shop. He gave me a little wave, as if nothing were wrong. He got in his own car.

  I hung up and tossed my phone on the passenger seat. I pulled out of the parking lot and headed through town.

  I wasn’t surprised when I looked in the rearview mirror and saw Callum right behind me.

  Fell, New York

  November 1982

  VIV

  There was a moment, a few minutes after it happened, when Viv thought of the little girl she’d seen through Simon Hess’s front window. When she thought of Simon Hess’s wife, in her homemade clothes from a Butterick pattern, washing his dishes and keeping his house. What would those two do now?

  But she had to confess: The thought didn’t last very long. Maybe he would have killed them. Maybe not. And right now there was too much to do.

  The lights were back on. Betty was gone. And Viv was left with a dead body on the motel room floor.

  She picked up the room phone, realizing when she heard the dial tone that she’d half expected the phone to be dead. Betty was unpredictable, especially when she was angry.

  But the phone worked, so she dialed the number she had learned by heart because she’d stared at it so often on long night shifts, on a piece of paper tacked to the wall.

  “Fell PD,” came a bored voice on the other end of the line.

  Viv made her voice the drawl of a girl who was both bored and stupid. “Alma there?”

  “Maybe. You have a problem, dear?”

  “I can make one up.” Viv gave an empty giggle. “I’m working the Sun Down tonight. Honestly? I just want to know if she’s free to come visit me. I’m bored.” She glanced down at the floor, where Simon Hess lay still, her knife still in the side of his neck. He’d died quickly in the dark, a gasp and a thrash and a few twitches. Then it was over. His eyes were half closed, as if he were drowsy.

  As soon as it was over, Betty was gone—as if that was what she wanted all along. But it wasn’t that simple. Betty hadn’t left the motel; Viv could feel her watching. She was no longer sure Betty could leave the motel.

  “You girls,” the cop said, disgusted. “This is a job, not a gossip session. Hold on.”

  A few seconds later, there was a click and Alma’s voice came on the line. “Viv?”

  Viv was speechless for a second. She had never in her life been so overwhelmed with relief at the sound of another person’s voice. “Alma,” she said, her voice cracking and the bored façade breaking down. “Slow night.”

  “Is it?” Alma said, because Viv was phoning her, and Alma wasn’t stupid.

  “Sure,” Viv said. She glanced at the body again. Her first thought when she picked up the phone had been Alma will understand. Because she would, right? She knew what Viv had been investigating. She knew the evidence. She knew what Simon Hess was. She would know that if Simon Hess was dead, it was because Viv had no choice.

  Now she wasn’t so sure. Alma might come out here and arrest her. In fact, she most likely would.

  I should be arrested. I should go to jail.

  Logically, she knew that. But deep in her heart, she wasn’t going to let it happen.

  “Viv?” Alma said.

  “It’s nothing,” Viv said. “I just got sick of having no one to talk to. I can’t even tell you how bored I am. I finished my novel and I don’t have another one. I didn’t even like it very much.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “You’re working,” Viv said. “I forgot. It’s fine. I’ll talk to you later.” She hung up.

  Shit.

  She’d just called the police on her own crime, because she thought Alma would understand. She wasn’t thinking like a criminal. Because she wasn’t a criminal—she was a sheltered girl from suburban Illinois.

  Not anymore. Now you’re a murderer. Start thinking like one.

  What would you do if you ever saw real trouble? Viv’s mother had said. You think you’re so damned smart.

  She turned and looked at Simon Hess, lying on the floor. “You’re the expert,” she said. “What’s the best way to hide a body?”

  He was silent.

  She thought that was kind of witty. There was something terribly wrong with her.

  She stepped forward and took a closer look. He’d bled into the rug beneath him, but it was a small bedside rug placed over the carpet. If she could get rid of him and the rug both, there might be minimal cleanup in the room. But how would she lift him? And where would she put him? Panic fluttered deep in her belly as she started to truly realize what she’d done. Alma would come and find this mess. Viv would go to prison. Her parents, her sister would be mortified. She’d get old in prison. She might even die there.

  It didn’t matter that Simon Hess was a killer—she’d still go to jail.

  She’d told Betty on the phone that she was willing to sacrifice herself. That she didn’t matter. But now, faced with life in prison, she was starting to think differently.

  She stared at his still face, at his hands curled lifeless on the rug. Hands that had killed so many and would never kill again.

  It was worth it, she thought. It would be worth it even if she went to prison.

  But she wasn’t in prison yet.

  She gripped the edge of the rug and pulled at it. Squatted on her hamstrings and put her weight into it. The rug with the body on it slid one inch, then another. She stood and realized the lamp was on, shining a beacon out the room’s window, so she
walked to it and turned it off. She opened the room door in the dark and looked out. There was still no one in the parking lot, no one for miles. The corridor lights were back on, the room doors all innocently closed, the road sign lit up as usual. Betty was quiet, but Betty was watching.

  “I did it,” Viv said out loud. “Are you happy?”

  There was no answer.

  “Of course you’re not happy,” Viv said. “You’re still dead. You’ll always be dead. But now so is he.”

  She turned away from the open doorway and started pulling the rug again. There was nothing for it but to get Simon Hess out of here.

  He was impossible to move. He lay as a dead weight, his blood soaking the rug. The knife was still in his neck, and when Viv looked at it her stomach turned. She didn’t quite have the nerve to pull it out.

  Time was running out; someone would come sooner or later. Either a customer or Alma Trent, dropping by to find out why Viv had sounded so strange on the phone. Viv pulled harder, got the rug slid halfway across the floor to the doorway. She was so focused on her task that she didn’t hear the car pull up in the parking lot.

  But she heard the footsteps as they came up the stairs. She froze with her hands gripping the edge of the rug. The room was dark, but the door was open. It was the only open door in the entire motel.

  The footsteps got closer, and Viv silently let go of the rug, inching back, away from view of the doorway. There was no way to close the door now. The instinct to get out of sight was overpowering.

  She was trying to silently crawl back in a crab-walk when a voice called, “Vivian? Is that you in there?”

  Marnie.

  Viv opened her mouth to shout something—she had no idea what—but there was no time. The footsteps came to the open doorway and Marnie appeared. She went very still, and Viv knew that she could see enough from the light in the corridor: the body, the knife, the blood, the rug, and Viv herself, crouched on the floor, most likely looking wild and insane.