The Last to Vanish(39)
“Well, my apartment is fine, and none of the guests have mentioned anything. But the internet isn’t reliable as it is.”
He nodded. “Probably not the main outside line, then. Sounds like a short, or a loose wire. I’m gonna need to take a look at the junction box in the basement.”
“Sure,” I said, fishing my badge from my purse, hanging it around my neck.
Harris followed me down the hall, stopping at the old photos of the inn. “You change something?” he asked.
Of course he would be the one to notice. Harris had an attention to detail I generally appreciated. “Celeste is getting a frame replaced,” I said. “But you know how it is. Everything gets pushed to the off-season.”
I swiped my badge against the employee door, then led him down the stairwell.
Cory was just pulling the storage door shut as I exited the stairwell. “Hey,” he said, taking a step closer, like he was going to tell me something. But then he stopped, his face falling flat, eyes to Harris behind me.
Cory didn’t like Harris, or Harris didn’t like Cory. I was never sure which came first. Only that they had gone to school together and knew versions of each other that I never would.
Not that I assumed they ever had much cause to be friends: They were almost the same age, but Harris had a steady job and a kid, while Cory took cash under the table for guided tours that capitalized on tragedy, worked periodic shifts at his parents’ place, and was presumably just passing the time until the tavern fell to him, just as it had to his father before.
Harris cleared his throat.
Cory watched closely for a second, not asking any question. “See you round, Abby,” he said before pushing through the entrance at the end of the hall, straight to the outside.
I pointed Harris to the closet just before the exit. That was the storage area with the patio furniture and hot tub chemicals, and we never kept it locked, since entry to the basement area itself was already limited, and a variety of workers needed access to the supplies. Celeste and I were the only ones with a master set of keys to the other rooms. Well, and maybe Cory.
Harris opened the door, flicking the light. “Bingo,” he said.
“All right,” I said, backing away—it always smelled like earth in there, all concrete floors and dusty surfaces and unfinished cinder-block walls. It made me imagine being trapped, in the dark, underground. “I’ve got to get back to the lobby.”
“I know where to find you,” he said, already opening the beige box adhered to the wall that abutted the outside.
I headed back upstairs, glad there weren’t any guests waiting again. My cell was still sitting on the window ledge of the back office. I finished making the list of date requests that had come through in the email and brought the page out to the lobby computer to check against our reservation system, waiting for Harris’s assessment.
The phone abruptly started ringing beside me. I jumped, then relaxed, glad that whatever issue Harris had found in the basement hadn’t been difficult to resolve. “The Passage Inn,” I answered.
“All set,” Harris said, his voice deeper and closer through the line. “Be right up.”
I heard the door down the hall, and then the slow amble of Harris’s steps coming closer. “What’s the damage?” I called when he finally came into sight. “Nothing too bad, I assume?”
His mouth remained a flat line, his fingers running through the base of his beard. “Yeah, nothing major. Just a line disconnected.”
I nodded. “Must’ve been coming loose for a while, I could definitely sense it cutting in and out before it went entirely.”
He slid the toolbox on top of the registration desk, pulling out his pack of work orders before sliding them back inside the box. “Let’s call this one even,” he said. “I was on my way, and it was just reconnecting it.”
“No new wire?” I imagined a fraying cable. Exposed wires. Thirty years of age.
He ran his tongue along his top row of teeth, seemed to be thinking through what to say. “The wire’s fine.” His glassy eyes slid over mine before he leaned one arm on the surface between us. “I don’t think it just managed to fall out on its own, Abby. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“Could it happen by accident?” I said quietly. Asking, silently, please.
Harris did me the favor of not saying no. “Anything’s possible, I wouldn’t say anything for sure. Just, be careful who you let in down there.”
He said it pointedly, and I knew he was picturing Cory coming out of that other storage room. I couldn’t help seeing the same, everything shifting through his eyes. Goose bumps rose across the back of my neck as I imagined Cory in these rooms. Cory, hands running over the wires. Cory, who had always had a way in.
But there were others, too. The cleaning company. Various maintenance workers. People Georgia or I let inside without a second thought, to reach the supplies.
Harris patted the desk once, his silver wedding ring tapping against the surface. “Call me if you need me.”
“Thanks, Harris. Hi to the family.”
* * *
AFTER HE LEFT, I kept running through the possibilities. It could’ve been an accident. Someone who hit the phone box while storing a piece of furniture, dislodging a wire that had been only loosely attached. Like Harris said, anything was possible.