CJ hesitated. “Little of both, I guess.”
She handed him keys and a copy of his rental agreement. “Welcome to Arizona, Mr. Hartman. Enjoy your stay and drive safe.”
He’d rented an SUV, and he found it waiting outside the doors for him, gleaming and still dripping water from being washed. He threw his bags in the trunk, then climbed in and started the engine. The accented voice of the GPS guided him off the lot and away from the airport, but he didn’t fully relax until he’d eased onto the highway. The road stretched ahead like ablack ribbon and the landscape flattened into pale dirt with an occasional lone cactus standing like a sentinel.
The motel was almost an hour from the airport and fifteen minutes from the team facilities in Surprise, but CJ hadn’t expected it to feel quite so tucked away. It was on Bell Road, the main drag through Surprise, so it wasn’t isolated, exactly. On the drive in, he’d passed a shopping plaza about half a mile from the motel, with a small grocery store, a Chinese takeout place, and a handful of other businesses clustered around a gas station. Across Bell Road, a subdivision stretched toward the foothills, neat rows of stucco houses with Astroturf lawns. People clearly lived out here. They were just content to be away from the thick of things.
The place sat just past the city limits, where Bell Road began to stretch thin toward the foothills. Low stucco buildings were painted in a sun-faded coral and trimmed in a cheerful teal, and a row of palm trees cast shadows across the turf separating the building from the street. As he drove around the back, away from the road, the parking lot opened wide and quiet, the asphalt smooth and freshly sealed.
The motel sign looked like something from an earlier decade, with faded red letters on a turquoise background spelling outHappy Valley Motor Lodgebeneath the outline of a smiling sun. The motel looked exactly like an old roadside place that hadn’t changed in sixty years, except that someone had clearly taken care of it. The paint was fresh, the landscaping was trimmed, and everything from the pool deck to the parking lot looked well maintained.
A wide courtyard sat in front of him, framed by buildings on three sides, with a pool in the center filled with water so clear CJ almost forgot there was a desert only a few feet away. White plastic lounge chairs were arranged in a perfect half-circle on the deck, and CJ could already picture himself there on a dayoff, relaxing with nowhere else to be. As he parked his SUV and made his way inside, he found himself thinking that six weeks here might not be so bad after all.
The woman behind the counter wore a name tag that readEleanor, and CJ recognized the name from the emails confirming his reservation. For some reason, CJ had pictured someone older, maybe in their sixties, with a cigarette voice and sun-leathered skin from years in the desert. Instead, she looked barely thirty. Her dark hair was pulled into a low bun, with a bright scarf tied around it, and her lipstick was the exact red shade as the letters on the sign. Her nails were short with chipped sky-blue polish that matched the ceramic cactus holding her pens.
“Checking in?” she asked, her voice light and friendly in that way people sound when they actually like their jobs.
“Yeah.” CJ pulled his ID and credit card from his wallet and set them on the counter. “Last name’s Hartman. Reservation should be for six weeks.”
Eleanor typed something into her computer, and while she searched, CJ glanced around the lobby again. The tile floors were so clean they actually shone and potted succulents were scattered around the room. Behind the desk, framed retro prints of cactus silhouettes hung on the wall. He wandered over to a rack of brochures of local attractions and grabbed a few to peruse later.
“This place is great,” he said. “You keep it in good shape.”
Eleanor’s face lit up. “Thanks. We get that a lot. People think we’ve been here forever, but we only opened five years ago.”
CJ looked back at her. “Seriously?”
“Mm-hmm.” She leaned one elbow on the counter, clearly proud of the place. “I wanted it to look like something out of the fifties and sixties. You know, roadside nostalgia, vintage Americana, and all that. I think we succeeded. The furniturewas custom-made to look vintage, but everything was brand new when we opened.”
CJ chuckled. “So, it’s all fake retro?”
“Authentically fake,” she corrected with a grin. “And weirdly high-end if you look close enough. Every room has a full kitchen, and the refrigerators look vintage, but they’re brand new. Same with the stoves. All stainless-steel appliances hidden behind old-school styling. The countertops are quartz made to look like laminate instead of the other way around.” She shrugged like none of it was a big deal. “We may not look fancy, but we take care of our guests.”
“That’s good to know. I was prepared for flickering lights and a refrigerator that hums all night.”
“Oh, you’ll get the hum.” Eleanor nodded seriously. “But it’s the air-conditioning, not the fridge. Gets cold enough in those rooms to hang meat if that’s your thing.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” CJ said with a smile.
She turned back to her monitor. “Okay, I’ve got you in—” She broke off, and a frown creased her forehead as she clicked through screens on her computer. “Huh.”
“What?”
She frowned slightly at her monitor. “I accidentally assigned you to the wrong room.” The statement was delivered with the kind of distracted tone someone might use to discuss forgetting to water a plant.
“Okay,” he said slowly.
“It’s not a big deal,” she added quickly. “You’ll be perfectly happy there. It’s just that the room is supposed to be blocked off.”
“Maintenance issue?”
“No.” She shook her head and clicked the mouse buttons a few more times. “Recurring guest. We’ve got a guy who stays here every year for spring training. He comes for the sameapproximate dates and likes to stay in the same room, and he’s been here every year since we opened. I like to keep the room reserved for him, but when we updated our booking system last month, some of the room assignments got wiped out. I thought I’d fixed them all.”
“And I got his room.” It wasn’t hard for CJ to connect the dots.
“You got his room,” she confirmed.
CJ leaned against the counter. “Does he know?”
