The Sun Down Motel(9)

I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. “Me, too.”

Her smile wasn’t exactly even, but I still liked it. “Gosh, that settles it. Don’t you think?”

“Settles what?”

“I think you should stay here,” she said. “It’s fate. Come stay here for as long as you need to, and I’ll help you look for your aunt.”





Fell, New York

November 2017





CARLY


Heather, it turned out, wasn’t lying when she said she knew a lot about Fell. “My dad is a dork,” she told me plainly. “His idea of a vacation is to drive to Americana Village and walk around. He’s a nerd about history, so I grew up learning a lot about the history of this place. Being a dork runs in the family.”

It was hours later and we were back in apartment C. I’d retrieved my things from the hotel and put them in the second bedroom. We’d ordered pizza, and night was starting to fall, even though it was only dinnertime. I was sitting on the sofa and Heather was lying on her back on the floor, still swathed in the poncho. She’d had a bicycling accident two years ago, she said, that gave her daily back pain. “One vertebra is smushing down into the one below it,” was her explanation. “They say I have to have surgery, but I can’t do it. I’m too neurotic.” Since I’d seen the shelf of prescription pills in the bathroom when I dumped my things, I didn’t ask questions.

“I’m talking about 1982,” I reminded her now, dropping a crust back into the pizza box. “I don’t need to know about old forts and cannons.”

“Ha ha,” Heather said from the floor. She had her knees bent and her feet flat, her pale hands resting on her stomach as she stared at the ceiling. “Fell doesn’t have any forts or cannons. It’s a strange place. Sort of morbid, like me.”

“I read a few things online. This place has some unsolved murders.”

“We have plenty of them. It isn’t just the unsolved murders. It’s the solved ones, too. I don’t know the stats, but with our small population we’re probably some kind of per capita murder capital of the country. Or at least of New York.” She lifted a hand and I placed a pizza slice into it. “I can’t explain it. It’s just a weird place, that’s all. Tell me about your aunt.”

I told her about Viv, about her disappearance in the middle of the night from the Sun Down. I gave her my two newspaper articles.

“Hmm,” Heather said, leafing through them. “No boyfriend, no drugs. ‘Pretty and vivacious.’ Ugh. We can find the roommate in the phone book if she’s still in Fell.” She handed the articles back to me and lay staring at the ceiling again. “So she worked a night shift and disappeared. You’d be amazed how many people do that—disappear as if into thin air. They leave doors open behind them, food on the counter, their shoes by the door. It doesn’t seem possible, but it is.”

“I know,” I said. “Do you think the cops will let me look at their records?”

“I have no idea, but anything’s possible with a case that old, I guess. A few of the Internet sleuths have tried to get records from the Fell PD and not gotten anywhere, but this is different. You’re the victim’s family.”

“Are you training to be a detective?” I asked, putting my folder away.

Heather laughed. “Hardly. My anxiety couldn’t handle it. No, I’m taking medieval literature. That’s more my style.”

“They teach medieval literature at the college in Fell?”

“It’s practically all they teach. The school’s full name is Fell College of Classical Education. Greek literature, Latin, classic art and sculpture, Russian literature, that sort of thing. It’s a small, private college started a hundred years ago as a vanity project by the richest man in town. We only have three hundred students. I’ve never had a class that had more than ten people in it.”

“Are you getting a degree?”

“Pray tell,” Heather said in an amused voice, “what exactly can one do with a degree in medieval literature? Usefulness is not exactly Fell College’s forte. You should apply. I like it there.”

“I was taking business studies,” I told her.

“Carly.” Her voice was shocked, like I’d said I was taking porn star classes. “You can’t take business studies. You’re a Fell girl. I know it already.”

I handed her another slice. She was small under that poncho, but she could pack pizza away. “Town history, remember?”

“Okay,” she said, lowering the slice. “The Sun Down Motel. Let me think. There was a time in the early seventies when people thought Fell would be a tourist destination, even though we don’t have lakes or mountains or anything to see. There were plans for a big amusement park that would bring thousands of people a year, so businesses got built—the Sun Down, a few other motels, some ice cream shops and restaurants. Then the amusement park plan fell through and none of it happened. Most of those old businesses are gone, but the Sun Down is still there.”

“It didn’t go out of business?”

“It’s pretty dodgy,” she admitted. “Maybe it gets by taking in drug dealers and such. I wouldn’t know. A few kids in high school liked to go there on weekends to drink, but my parents are prudes and never let me go.”