The Sun Down Motel(8)

Instead I followed Poncho Girl up another set of stairs and through a door. The apartment inside was surprisingly big, with a linoleum-floored kitchen, a TV room, and two bedroom doors opening from opposite ends.

“I’m Heather,” the poncho girl said as she closed the door behind me. She stuck out her hand from beneath the folds of wool. It was a slender hand, porcelain white, and when I shook it, it gave my skin a little chill.

“Carly,” I said.

“I’ll give you a tour.”

The next thing I knew it was ten minutes later and I had seen every room. I knew that the hot water was fussy and the Wi-Fi reception was unreliable and the rent was two hundred per month. I also knew I was a bit of a jerk, because I still hadn’t told Heather the truth.

“Two hundred a month isn’t very much money,” I pointed out.

Heather rubbed a hand on the back of her neck. She had faint purple circles beneath her eyes, as if she were very tired, but she still gave off a tight vitality that was hard to look away from. “Okay, I can’t lie,” she said, the words in a rush. “I don’t really need the money. My father pays for this place while I’m at Fell.”

“At Fell?”

“Fell College,” she said. “It’s weird, I know. A local girl going to a local college, moved out into an apartment paid for by her parents. Right?” She tilted her chin like she wanted me to answer, but she kept talking without giving me the chance. “I needed the experience, or so the parental units tell me. To feed myself and fend for myself, something like that. And I like it, I do. But I’m alone all the time, and this apartment makes noises. And there’s no one to talk to. I’m a night owl and I don’t sleep at night. I think I posted the ad for a roommate just so I can have someone here. It isn’t the money really. You know?”

“Okay,” I said, because she seemed really nice. “I’ve never heard of Fell College.”

“No one has,” Heather said, shrugging her thin shoulders beneath her poncho. “It’s a local place. Not a college in the usual sense, really. It’s obscure, and we locals go there. Makes us feel like we’re going to college without leaving town.”

“Isn’t the point of college to leave town?”

“The point of college is to go to college,” Heather said with utter logic. “And I’m surprised you aren’t one of us. I took you for a fellow student.”

I looked down at myself: worn jeans, old boots that laced up the ankles, black T-shirt that said BOOKS ARE MY LIFE beneath a stretched-out hoodie, messenger bag. Add my dark-rimmed glasses and ponytail and I was pretty much a cliché. “I am a student, actually. But not at Fell College. I’m . . .” I looked around, cleared my throat. “Okay, I can’t lie, either. I didn’t actually come here about the roommate thing. You just assumed.”

Heather’s eyes widened. “Then why are you here?”

“Um, because I like grim Soviet Bloc architecture?”

She clapped her hands once, the motion making the poncho ripple. Her eyes sparkled. “I like you! Okay, then! Tell me why you’re really here. The details.” She closed her eyes tight, then opened them again. “You’re mooning over an ex-boyfriend. There’s a guy who lived in B who wasn’t bad, but he moved out last week.”

“No,” I said. “No mooning.”

“Curses. Okay. You’re an archaeology student, and on a dig you found a map that led you here and you want to know why.”

I stared at her. “That’s actually sort of close, but my reason is weirder.”

“I live for weird,” Heather said.

I stared at her again, because she meant it. No one in Illinois lived for weird. No one I’d met, anyway.

“My aunt lived here, I think,” I told her. “She disappeared in 1982. My mother died and never told me about her, and I left school, and I’m here to find out what happened.” It didn’t sound stupid. In this apartment, telling this particular girl, it didn’t sound stupid at all.

Heather didn’t even blink. “Um, 1982,” she said, thinking. “What was her name?”

“Viv Delaney.”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t ring a bell. But then again, there are so many.”

“So many what?”

“Dead girls. There are lots. But you said she wasn’t dead, right? She disappeared.”

“Y—yes.”

“And she lived here, in this apartment?” Heather looked around at the apartment, as if picturing it like I was.

“Yes, I think she did.”

“Have you found the tenant records?”

“Do you think I could?”

Heather looked thoughtful. “The landlord is a friend of my dad’s. I could probably ask him if he has any records from 1982. And the archives in the Fell Central Library might have something. Nothing is digitized here. We’re stuck in a time warp.”

“I’m looking for people who might have known my aunt,” I said. “I have her roommate’s name. According to Google, she might still live in town. I want to find her and talk to her. And my aunt worked at the Sun Down Motel. Maybe someone there remembers her.”

Heather nodded, as if all of this were not at all strange. “I can help you. I’ve lived in Fell all my life. True crime is kind of a hobby of mine.”