“He’s heavier than he looks,” Hillary whispered.
We pulled Sam to his feet again, exchanging a shaky glance over the top of his hanging head, and forged on.
Before we attempted the feat, Hillary had urged me to pick Sam’s pockets for his room key. She wasn’t stowing him in her room, and I had long cycled past the blind trust that had allowed me to shelter him in mine. His key was found easily in his pocket. Now, as I used it to open the flimsy door of his Hide-a-Way hovel, I wondered if he had always had his key. If he had only pretended to lock himself out, what did he need that night? To be near another human being after the horror of Malloy’s death? Had he really found my room instead of Martha’s? Or had he planned it that way?
“What?” Hillary said.
“Nothing.”
Sam’s room was the same as mine, in reverse. The mice, if they existed, were silent as we lay Sam on top of the covers and pulled the comforter up around him.
“Going to snoop?” Hillary said.
I’d been considering it. Wasn’t sure what the right answer was here. “Do you think I should?”
“I’ll watch the door.”
I tried the bathroom first, but only Sam’s missing toothbrush made its home there. It sat dry on the counter, unused. I caught a glance of myself in the mirror and ran my hands through my dank hair. I’d never gotten a shower today, not with all the excitement. This? This is what made Warren Hoyt blush around his buttoned-up collar? I looked like the walking dead. I ripped off the tape that kept my hand in the awkward splint and threw it into the trash.
I heard Hillary say something in the next room and went to the door. “What?”
“A car in the lot.” She stood at the window, peering between folds in the curtains, shifting from one foot to the other.
Sam didn’t have a suitcase in sight—probably because he’d used his packing time to secret away the wine—but his neatness at the guest house was evident here, too. A little stack of clothing sat tidy, almost prim. Carefully folded designer golf shirts, a pair of khaki shorts, a pair of boxers. A Dopp kit with tidy travel-sized bottles of this and that. In all his things I hadn’t seen anything out of place, no entertainments, no hints.
Hillary fidgeted at the window. “I think it’s them.”
“Who?”
“Someone dropping off . . . Dev.”
“Surely not.”
“That’s who it looks like,” she hissed. “Who’s left?”
Sam in the bed, Hillary at the window, Malloy in the morgue. Paris in intensive care, and Martha tucked in with a nice lumbar support pillow somewhere in the hospital’s mommy ward. I counted them off. Dev. Dev was the one with mobility, but he would have to leave Paris alone. “I mean, there are other people in the world who might stay here,” I said, “though I can’t think of a single good reason. Do you think he’d leave her bedside?”
“If she died,” Hillary said, glancing over her shoulder at me. I nodded. I was not rooting for these people, but I wasn’t wishing them harm, either. “Find anything?” she said.
“No,” I said. “Can you still see Dev out there?”
“Mmm, no,” she said. “Maybe he went to his room? Their room.”
“Didn’t they have a first-floor room?” I went to Sam’s bed and checked the drawers in the nightstands, but only a Gideon and a restaurant directory kept company there. A hotel-supplied plastic cup sat on the nightstand. There was a slight ring of color at the bottom. I picked it up and smelled it. Wine, of course. Then I knelt and peeked under the bed, trying not to touch my skin to the nasty carpet.
“What are you looking for?”
“Anything out of place,” I said. “I guess. I don’t know.” I stood over Sam’s passed-out form and studied him. He lay on his stomach. His cheek was smashed against a pillow, turning his face childlike, one of those Renaissance fresco cherubs. But an angelic face didn’t make him innocent. That key in his pocket was something I had to consider more carefully. I hadn’t given Sam the proper attention. I had given him a pass. I placed his room key next to his hand.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Wait,” Hillary said. “Did you learn anything?”
I gestured to her to check between the curtains again. She did and nodded. Outside on the landing, my breath clouded.
“Did you?” she said. “Learn anything?”
I had learned something but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. “Nothing,” I said. And that was the strange thing, perhaps. Sam was too much nothing, and that was something.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Hillary begged off and headed for her room. I waited until she was inside and the locks in her door had sounded before going to my own room.
I had left all the lights on, though the overall effect in the room was still dreariness.
First lock. Second. And then the chain.
In the bathroom mirror, I regarded her again, the haggard lady with the greasy hair who had been following me from mirror to mirror. I needed a shower in the worst way, but a good shower, with better soap than I had access to. I washed my hands and face, using two of the scratchy towels to mop up the water I’d splashed on the counter. The empty counter. My toothbrush was—
—in my suitcase. And my suitcase was with my camera case, still parked down in the bar behind the back booth. Damn it. I’d have to fetch it, and soon, before someone laid claim to it. Before night came on.
I hurried to the door, threw the bolts, opened the door, and—stopped. The sun was deep in the sky, the shadows filling in along the walkway and down below in the parking lot. Everything else had been coated in the glow of sunset. In my photography classes, we had called the sixty minutes after sunrise and the sixty minutes before sundown the golden hour. These were the times of day when the sun’s rays were at their lowest angle. They painted the world and everything in it in a gorgeous, liquid, golden hue. Taken at this hour, every photo could be magnificent, every subject made heroic, thoughtful. The very air told the story of time, and this was the pinnacle, a moment drenched in the last rays of daylight before the earth spun us around another rotation. Light was the most reliable timekeeper, especially to a photographer. It didn’t matter what time your phone said, your watch, or the clock. Light told the story. Light made the story.
I had not had a chance to think of this area of the country as beautiful since we’d been booted from the guest house, but of course it was, even here from the upper deck of the Hide-a-Way. Even from the vantage point of misery. The planet would continue to spin. Light would continue to rain down upon all that we made and were. You had to go on. The world gave you no chance to pause, to put on the brakes and say you didn’t want tomorrow to happen, to say you didn’t ask for it. When it came to light, it spent itself, ready or not. It poured out, spilled, wasted. The stars shined on, even if we had no chance to look up.
What would Warren Hoyt say about that?
I felt hurried down the stairs. Behind. Gasping to catch up with something I couldn’t name.
Downstairs, the bar was darker than I remembered. I stood in the open door, trying to let my eyes adapt before cutting off access to the open air behind me.
“You really shouldn’t leave your stuff behind like that,” scolded the bartender’s gruff voice. She came to the end of the bar where I could better see her, wiping at the counter with a gray rag. “I’m not the concierge or nothing.”
“Sorry,” I said. “My friend—” I stopped. “That guy needed help to his room.”
“Don’t wonder,” she said. “You want the bottle to go with you?”
“God, no,” I said. “Save it for the next time you need to peel paint.”
“It worked, though, didn’t it?” she said.
Had it worked? In two episodes, it had flushed out secrets, sent one of us rushing for the toilet, sent two people to bed, completely zonked—
I eyed the bottle now. How much did I need to drink to sleep the night?
�
��It worked,” I said, and held out my hand.
My camera case slung over my shoulder, bottle tucked at my elbow, I rolled the suitcase outside and around to the stairs. The sun was falling fast now; the shadows in the stairwell were dense. It worked, didn’t it? The bottle of spirits had not been corked. Why not? I downed a mouthful, waited, and then had another, then raised the suitcase to the second step before climbing up beside it. Maybe I’d be ready for sleep by the time I got to the top.
“I could help you with that,” a voice said. Dev, emerging from the breezeway where the vending machines stood. He tipped back his head and dumped the crumbs of a bag of chips into his mouth, crumpled and tossed the bag toward a trash can.
“I Sherpa-ed your friend up these stairs a few minutes ago, so I guess I can handle an overnight bag,” I said.
His eyes raked over the bottle. “I could help you with that,” he said. “Is it wine?”
“No. Some kind of bottom drawer schnapps or something.” He looked awful. Paris. “Is she—?” I held out the bottle.
“She’s stable,” he said. He approached, took the bottle, peered at the label, shrugged, and took a drink. Winced. “Barely. She’s got three broken ribs, a compound fracture in her right leg, and—” His voice gave out, so he raised the bottle again. After a couple of pulls, he cleared his throat. “And maybe some trauma. To her head. Her brain. She could still—she might—” He took another drink.
“Why aren’t you there?”
“Her parents are there now,” he said. “I don’t want to use up all their recriminations in one day, so I came to get a shower, maybe a new shirt—”
“A drink,” I said, watching him tilt the bottle back again.
“A big drink,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and offering the bottle back to me. “Sorry. Here you go.”
“Sam bought it,” I said. “I’m sure he’d like you to have it.”
“Is that who you carried upstairs? I’m starting to lose track of them,” he said. “My friends.” He tucked the bottle into the crook of his arm. “Martha?”
“In the hospital, still, I suppose. They’re probably worried about the—”
We stood in silence, letting the word I hadn’t said bounce around in silent echo. I could almost forget where I was.
“You thought the baby might be yours,” I said, finally.
He made a dismissive face. “You’re getting us mixed up. Martha must have had a little fling with Malloy when they were getting his will together. Just like old times, I guess.”
Martha and Malloy? So far, I’d heard about Malloy and Tash, Malloy and Paris, Hillary, now Martha. His idea of pilgrim was different from mine. “What kind of old times are we talking about?”
“College,” Dev said, waving off whatever face I was pulling. “It was a long time ago.”
“It was five years ago,” I said. “No wait. It wasn’t even five. But I’m not talking about then. I’m talking about now. When you asked Martha about the heir, you were explicit that it was Malloy’s,” I said. “That was the thing you wanted to know. Believe me, I’m not the only one who heard it. Paris—”
“I thought maybe it was Sam’s,” he said evenly.
I knew what I’d seen. The answer had mattered to Dev.
I thought I knew, anyway. I tried to remember the scene, but most of it had faded against the image of Paris, arms reaching, the pink towel tucked around her unfurling, a flag of surrender. I was having trouble thinking anything through. I gazed at the bottle tucked against Dev’s chest, remembered instead his shirtless descent down the stairs at the guest house that first day.
“Did you want help with the suitcase or not?” he said. “While I can still walk up and down stairs?”
I stepped back from the case and started up to my room.
The last few drinks had spread to my limbs. My fingers, trailing along the metal bannister to my room, seemed unconnected to my body. My head was awash, but that didn’t stop the filmstrip from tick-ticking at the side of my vision. I could see our approach from every angle, a film shot with six cameras.
At the door, he set down the suitcase. The air around us grew heavy. “You’re not coming in,” I said. The key to my room felt awkward and too large in my hand and then dropped.
He leaned down and retrieved it, slowing rising until we were face-to-face, close. He inserted the key into the lock. “Are you sure?” he said.
I wasn’t sure.
He pushed the door open and stretched to set the bottle and suitcase inside the bright room. I wasn’t sure. A moment passed while we looked at one another and then he must have seen some agreement or decided not to wait for it. He pressed himself against me, and we were both inside, the door closed, our breath close. His unshaven chin had scratched against my cheek. I raised my hand to it. He reached for my hand and held it down against my thigh, as though to save me from something. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be saved. Maybe he thought he was keeping me from visiting the moment, from thinking too much. I was remembering what he’d said about the passions of youth, of first kisses.
Using my injured hand gently, I pulled the strap for my camera bag over my head and let it swing to the floor. He took this hand, too, and pressed it to my other side. We touched only where his warm palms held my wrists to myself.
“How long has it been since you went to bed with someone?” he said, his breath hot against my temple.
“He’s been dead nine months,” I said.
“And before him?”
“We were married ten years—would have been.”
“And no one since?”
I was teetering on the edge. Shove him away or breach the space between us? The decision should have been simple.
“You’re a lights-on girl, I assume,” he said.
I pulled away, slipping out from under his touch. I got the joke. He was making it easier to decide. “You can go.”
“Let’s drink some more,” he said. “It seems like such a good idea, doesn’t it? You have some glasses?”
He went to check the bathroom.
The spell was broken. “Is this how you show concern for your fiancée in the hospital, then?”
He came out, a plastic cup in each hand. “Is this how you celebrate your wedding anniversary?”
“Maybe you haven’t heard,” I said. “My marriage shouldn’t be celebrated.”
“Then we should toast its demise,” Dev said. “We’ll pour one out for each of our relationships.” He walked to the door to retrieve the bottle. “Don’t look at me like that. Even if she lives— I think she might have killed Malloy. There, I said it. How do you come back from that? You don’t. Once you think the person you love—loved—might have killed someone, that’s probably the end, don’t you think?”
“That’s funny,” I said. “I got the feeling she thinks you might have done it. That you could have, anyway.”
“There you go. Two toasts, or is that three now?” he said. “Are these cups clean? They were unwrapped.”
“Sam opened them,” I said. I found myself distracted by the shape of his shoulder under his T-shirt.
He stopped. “Sam was here?”
“He got locked out of his room last night.”
“Is that a euphemism?”
I tasted the accusation, just out of reach. Was this jealousy? His fiancée prefers his best friend, but I’m the one he wants to fight Sam for? Dev reminded me of long-ago bad boyfriends, but of Bix, too, in a way. Bix as he turned out to be, so much beyond my grasp. “Just drink your booze and go. Take the cups, too. My wedding gift.”
“Now, now,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. He patted the spot next to him and then poured two inches into each cup.
I sat next to him and took the cup offered. Before I could take a sip, though, Dev had pulled at the neck of my shirt and was kissing the skin at the back of my shoulder. In my surprise, my cup sloshed and spilled. God, what an old lady I was. A young, virile man whose body I
had already admired offered me a bit of escape. Did I care about Paris? If she lived or died, was it my fault? Would this change anything? I’d be gone in a day or two, surely, and they could get on with their marriage or misery, whatever came next. But—Bix. Not that I felt loyalty to him at this point—he didn’t deserve it—but I was conscious of playing the hated role. The other woman. That was not who I wanted to be.
I stood up. Below me, Dev smiled at me in a way I felt all the way through. I knew that smile—the devil, smiling. But I wasn’t afraid of it. As much as I wanted to taste that smile, as much as I wanted that smile to taste me, I was sure. “Good night, Dev,” I said.
“Mediocre,” he said. Dev shot back his drink and dropped the cup to the floor. “But it could yet be saved.”
I went to the door and opened it. While I was considering Dev’s advances, night had fallen. Outside, the neon sign stuttered, and the long road toward the park was empty. I stood in the doorway, frozen, until I heard something behind me and turned—
Dev knelt on the floor at the foot of the bed, clutching at his throat, gagging.
“What? What’s wrong?”
His face was a terrible color, his limbs jerking and kicking at the carpet.
“Do you need water?”
My cup lay on the bed with an inch of booze left. I reached for it.
He gasped, wordless, and struck out. The cup clattered against the wall and to the floor. He reached for my arm and squeezed it until I screamed.
I grabbed for the phone and dialed for help. The extras. I would pay them no matter what they cost me. And, boy, was it going to cost me.
Chapter Twenty-Six
So let me get this straight,” Sheriff Barrows said.
The EMTs had taken Dev to the hospital, of course, but Barrows had ordered me here to the station. We’d been getting things straight for at least a couple of hours. Who had the bottle when, where? Who had access to my room? Sam, Hillary, Dev. The cleaning staff? No, this was a two-bit hovel, not the Ritz. The cleaning staff would enter the room and clean—here I heard air quotes around the word—after I left, and not a moment before.
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