The Sun Down Motel(91)

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.