The Sun Down Motel(54)

The dog kept barking, and a minute later the front door opened. Alma was in her late fifties, with gray-streaked brown hair tied back in a ponytail and no makeup on her pleasant face. She wore old jeans that bagged a little and a plaid flannel shirt under a brown cardigan. She was still fit and looked strong, and she gave me a kind smile. “Carly?” she said.

“Hi.” I held out my hand. “It’s nice to meet you. Thanks for taking the time.”

We shook, her hand going easy on mine, though I could tell she could crush me if she wanted. “Come in,” she said. “I put the coffee on, like I said. I know it’s late for coffee, but I’m a night owl. Comes from doing all those years of night shift.”

“Right,” I said, following her down the front corridor and into her kitchen, which was dated but cared for. A small dog, some kind of terrier, barked his authority at me and then joyously smelled the cuffs of my jeans, dancing around my shoes. “I’d love some coffee. I’m a night person myself.”

“Watch your step. My dog’s an idiot.” She led me through the cozy house into the small kitchen, where she gestured for me to take a chair. She paused, looking closer at me in the light. “You look a lot like her,” she said.

I didn’t have to ask who her was. I felt a zap of excitement again. I was in the presence of someone who had seen Viv, known her.

I opened my mouth to ask a question, but Alma started first. “Can you tell me something? What is it that brings you here looking for an aunt who died before you were born?”

“Technically she might not be dead,” I said.

Alma’s eyebrows shot up politely. “Okay.”

“I mean, she is,” I said. “She probably is. But they never found a body. Though she left her wallet and her car behind and everything.” I trailed off. I sounded like a ditz.

If Alma agreed, she didn’t say it. She opened a cupboard and took out two mugs. “It was a terrible night,” she said. “I remember it well. The night I found out she was missing, of course. She’d been gone for four days by then.” She paused by the coffeepot, lost in thought. “That shouldn’t have happened, that lag. But it did.”

“How?” I asked. It was like she was reading my mind.

“No one was paying attention, that’s how,” Alma said. “Vivian was quiet and kept to herself. She didn’t invite attention. Her roommate was away, I seem to remember. But she was far from anyone who cared about her. The owners of the motel didn’t even notice when she didn’t show up to work. If you want to meet people who make an art of not being curious, go to the Sun Down Motel.”

I watched her as she poured coffee into two mugs. She had a calm about her, an unhurried quality that wasn’t tentative. I hadn’t known what to expect, but I could picture this woman scraping up a drunk, teenaged Nick Harkness at a party. Giving him a lecture and sending him on his way. In her decades as a cop, she must have seen a lot worse. “How did you know Viv?” I asked her.

She looked at me, her eyebrows up again. “How do you take your coffee?” When I asked for cream, she turned back to the cups. “I was Fell’s night-shift duty officer for thirty years. I got called out to the Sun Down from time to time. Viv called me once or twice—truckers arguing in the parking lot, I think was the first one. You got petty disturbances like that at the Sun Down. It was just that kind of place. Still is.”

“I know,” I said as she set my mug in front of me. “I work there.”

For the first time, I surprised her. She paused, her hand still on my mug of coffee. “I beg your pardon?”

“I work the front desk,” I said. “Nights, just like Viv did. I went out there to ask a few questions, and there was a Help Wanted ad, and I just . . .” I watched as she pulled a chair back and sat down. “What?”

Alma shook her head. “The Sun Down isn’t a safe place to work, that’s all. It never has been. I worried about Vivian working there alone at night. Now it looks like I’m going to worry about you.”

She knows about the ghosts, I thought, but when I looked at her face, I wasn’t sure. She would make a great poker player. And I wasn’t going to bring up ghosts with anyone except Nick, who had seen what I had seen. “I guess the Sun Down has always had bad luck,” I said. “I mean, Betty Graham’s body was found there while the motel was being built. And there was a boy who died in the pool.”

Alma sipped her coffee and looked at me as if she might be reassessing. Maybe she’d expected an airheaded twenty-year-old dunce who liked to Twitter. Who knew? Most people expected that. “How do you know about that?” she asked.

“The Fell library archives.”

She put her mug down, her expression calm. “Okay. What do you want to know from me?”

I pulled my own mug toward me. I didn’t sip it yet, though I’d barely slept today and I needed the caffeine. “Can you tell me anything about Viv’s case file? What was in it?”

“I was just the night shift duty officer, not a detective. I didn’t work missing-person cases.”

“But you saw the file,” I insisted.

She sighed and lowered her hand below the seat of her chair in the absent way that dog owners do. Her dog pushed his nose into her palm. “I read the file,” she admitted. “I knew Vivian. It bothered me that she would go missing. She wasn’t wild, and she wasn’t on any drugs. And she wasn’t stupid.” She scratched the dog’s head. “It was like the newspapers said, I guess. It seems that she went to work, because her car and purse were at the motel and she talked to the man on shift before her. But she vanished sometime during her shift, leaving everything behind.”