The Sun Down Motel

“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.”

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.”