The odds finally feel in Beck’s and my favor.
Beck and I step over to the office side by side. My fingers itch to hold hers, but given the red territory we’re in, I understand it’s far from the best move to get whatever motel worker in there to talk to us.
The person working the front desk is a young guy, maybe inhis twenties, with curly golden hair that falls around his shoulders. It reminds me of guys at our high school who still run flat brushes through their curls because their straight-haired moms didn’t teach them any other way. After Evan, though, my senses are on alert. Sure, Evan could’ve just asked if the motel was occupied that night to safely hide Paisley’s body before burying her somewhere else entirely, but there’s a high chance one of the motel workers is in on it.
“Hi,” I say.
He glances up from his ancient desktop, eyes glazed over in what seems like a mix of exhaustion and boredom. “Hey. Need a room?”
I nod, despite what comes out of my mouth. “Were you working in October?”
His light eyes go wide. “I don’t know anything about those girls,” he insists. “I wasn’t working that night. We closed the office at six, so we weren’t even checking in guests if I had been here. I don’t know any suspicious characters or anything like that.”
Beck and I exchange a glance. I don’t think I’ve heard a more suspicious response in my life.
Beck leans on the counter. “Okay,” she says. “Does this place have a most-popular room, then?”
The desk worker swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Room 5. People like only sharing a wall with one other guest.” He sniffles. “And no one likes 1 because of that old movie and the peephole thing.” He pauses. “We don’t have a peephole. I can show you the wall right now.”
“Were all the rooms available that night?” Beck asks.
He glares, looking back to the computer. “We have someone who’s always in 2, but that’s all I know.”
So that’s five potential rooms for us to search for a lead on Paisley’s body. We can at least rent out one and then sneak into the others.
Beck gives him a smile. “Three, then, please.”
I suppose it doesn’t really matter what room we start with, I think.Three works.
He hands us the key without any other questions. Doesn’t even ask for our IDs.
As soon as we’re out of the office, Beck snorts. “You think they’re peddling something here? There’s no way that fucker didn’t card us, and he was acting so skittish.”
I shrug. “Any number of not-as-bad-as-murder crimes.”
She puts a hand on my back. “Next investigation.”
I shake my head. “Let’s not make a habit of this.”
We turn the key and swing the door open.
It’s every bit as unremarkable as I would’ve guessed judging by the office. The walls are some flavor of honey-mustard yellow, the yellow hue fading behind what seems to be decades of old hand- and footmarks all over the walls. There are two queen beds with brown quilts and flat pillows and a dark chipped wooden desk in the corner. When I glance at the floor, there’s clearly been stains here, but there’s no real way to know what substance they once were. The whole place smells like homemade cleaning solution and dust.
“We need a black light,” I say.
Bang!
The noise reverberates from the right wall, room 4. Like someone knocked over a piece of furniture.
Beck puts a hand to her heart. “I know we’re looking for signs of murder, so worth asking—we’re not actually staying here tonight, right?”
“No.” Hopefully, we can find what we need, slip out unnoticed, and will have federal agents on the phone before the day ends. “If we don’tfind anything now, we’ll just go to Natalie with what we have and wait with her for the forest cops to arrive.”
Beck exhales. “Good.”
Either way, we’d do well to not interact with any neighbors. If the front desk guy is as shady as he seems to be, I don’t need to know who usually stays here.
“Here’s the black light by the way,” Beck says.
