Nine Lives(35)

Clara grimaced again, and Sam apologized before making his way down to Frank’s office.

It was a tiny space, made more cramped by the piled-up boxes against every wall. There was one desk, and one chair, the desk weighed down with paperwork. Not knowing where to start, Sam decided to sit down in the upholstered office chair, where Frank had sat all those years. Sam opened the middle drawer, crammed with old invoices and mini bottles of brandy, most empty, some still sealed. The other drawers were crammed with paperwork as well, all of it seemingly related to the running of the hotel. Sam, not even officially on this case, did not quite have the energy to go through all the piles. He did pull out one rubber-banded stack of thick creamy paper jammed down the side of the largest drawer; the rubber band, completely dried out, crumbled when he pulled at it, and he was looking at a bunch of yellowed menus from a Christmas Eve dinner in 1986. Shrimp cocktail, then beef Wellington. Sam was hit with a wave of sadness at the passage of time, wondering if anyone even remembered this particular dinner. Had anything significant happened? Love affairs? Breakups? How many of its guests were still alive?

He put the menus back where he’d found them and stared straight ahead. There was a bulletin board leaning on top of the desk and against the wall. Like everything else in this office it was crammed with hotel business: old receipts; Post-it Notes; job applications. Most were layered on top of one another, but there was one photograph pinned into the bulletin board, and although it was partially covered up along its edges, it was clear that Frank hadn’t wanted to entirely cover it. Sam plucked it off the board. It was a family photograph, black and white and slightly faded. It showed a youngish couple, the man in a suit and a hat, the woman in a summer dress with polka dots. Between them were two children, a girl who was maybe twelve, and a younger boy, around eight. The boy was scowling slightly, as though he’d had to pose just a little too long for this particular photo. It was clearly Frank, his face hadn’t changed much in all his years, and these were clearly his parents, the original owners of the hotel. They stood in front of the main entrance to the Windward, the carved wooden sign unchanged.

Sam sat still for some time, thinking, the photograph in his lap.

There is a method in all this, he thought. The list is not accidental, not coincidental. And Frank was killed first. In fact, the killer hand-delivered Frank’s list directly to him, let him open it, then murdered him. Sam couldn’t help but think that something Frank had done, or something that had been done to him, was crucial in figuring out what was going on.

And what the picture told Sam was that Frank’s life, unlike most lives these days, had been spent entirely in one place. Here in Kennewick, Maine. At the Windward Resort. And that made Sam think that the answer to what was happening might be found here, at this decaying hotel, where Frank had spent his life. He thought of the ghosts that only the foreign cleaners could see, and he thought of all the people who had stayed here over the long years. It would be thousands for sure. Would it be hundreds of thousands?

Sam returned the photograph to the bulletin board, pushing the tack back through the already existing hole along its uppermost edge.

He wondered about Frank’s older sister, and if she was still alive.





6





MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 4:35 P.M.


It had been several months since Tod Fischer had received a phone call from the woman he knew only as Linda. He imagined that Linda probably got a phone call from someone, maybe a Fred, only the first name and a voice over the phone. And Fred told Linda to call him. Information was passed along a chain of people who didn’t know one another, all talking on unregistered cell phones.

The funny thing about Linda was that she always sounded so happy to hear his voice, as though they were old friends, or maybe just amiable coworkers, which he guessed they were in a way.

“Hi,” she said. “It’s Linda.” She never used his name, maybe because she didn’t know it. He was a phone number and a voice.

“It’s been a while,” Fischer said.

“I know, right?” said Linda. Fischer, who was watching his youngest boy play Pee Wee football on a misty field two towns from where they lived, said nothing, and eventually she added, “Do you have a pencil handy?”

She always asked that, and Fischer always said, “I do,” even though what he had was a very good memory.

“Okay, then. Jessica Albers Winslow. I’ll spell it out for you just in case.” As she spelled out the name Fischer pictured the letters being written on a chalkboard. Once the name was there, he knew he’d never forget it. “Her date of birth is December 3, 1975, and her current address is 17 Tamarack Meadow Way, in Thornton, New York. Just outside of Albany.”

“Okay. Got it,” Fischer said. Because he was standing about fifteen yards back from the football field it had become impossible to tell which of the miniature black-and-red football players was Jerome, his son. He could tell, however, that his son’s team, the Trojans, had just given up a touchdown.

“She’s an FBI agent out of the Albany field office.” There was a slight question mark in Linda’s voice that Fischer ignored.

“Okay,” he said.

“But the thing is, she’s currently not in New York. The client believes that she is in Maine but does not know exactly where in Maine. She was tailed, but she was lost somewhere along Route 1 north of Thomaston and Rockland. She’s driving a white Toyota Camry, the 2012 model, and her license number is—”