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“They’re missing?”
“Cody…” Demetrius said.
Oliver ignored him again. “No. They’ve been men. Except for one.”
“The ghost, right?” Demetrius said. “Ruby Gallagher?”
“No. She never went missing. She was murdered and discovered at the motel.” Oliver looked between them. “But one woman went missing shortly after Ruby’s murder in the mid-sixties.” He regarded his phone. “Her name was Rebecca Hawkins. She was a local in her early twenties, and word around town was she had been seeing a man named Kenny Walker who broke up with her and soon after became engaged to a woman named Betty Quinlan.”
“This is in a police report?” Cody said with a snort.
“No, it’s a local history page,” Oliver said, “apparently the gossip section.”
“What else does it say?” Demetrius asked.
“Rebecca wanted Kenny back, so she came here to the Morelock Motel where she knew Kenny and Betty would secretly rendezvous.”
“Apparently not as secret as they liked to believe,” Cody muttered.
“One night she left home, determined to meet with Kenny and convince him to come home with her. She never returned. When Kenny was later questioned, he admitted that Rebecca had asked him to go for a walk in the woods to a place she liked, which he did. She begged him to come back, but he rejected her and left her there. The police suspected him of foul play, but they couldn’t charge him without a body and no evidence.”
“What are you suggesting?” Demetrius said.
Oliver looked at them, a fervent excitement giving him a renewed energy and hope about finding Dave. “I think the Vixen of the Morelock Motel is the ghost of Rebecca Hawkins, not the ghost of Ruby Gallagher.”
“How does that help us find Dave?” Cody asked.
“It changes the motivation of the ghost,” Oliver said. “And after the story the waitress told us about the condition of the body that had been found, I think Dave’s alive and out in the woods somewhere.” He held up his phone. “We just need to find this place mentioned in the article where Rebecca liked to go, and I bet that’s where we find Dave.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
They returned to the motel and found the room undisturbed. Armed with the iron pokers and the few containers of salt Oliver had purchased the day before, they searched a new section of the woods. Calls for Dave went unanswered, and none of them saw any kind of trail or sign that Dave had passed through that area. After several hours, they regrouped at the room, tired, sweaty, bug-bitten, and agitated. The sun was setting, painting beautiful colors on the bottoms of a bank of heavy clouds that stalked toward them from the west.
"It's like he just fucking vanished," Cody said, tossing the fireplace poker into a corner of the room. He looked at Oliver and held his hands up as if in surrender. "I'm not pointing fingers and I'm not accusing anyone, okay? But I do have some questions." He switched his gaze from Oliver to Demetrius and back again. "I'm not going to say anything accusatory, I promise. I only want to ask some questions."
"Fine.” Oliver sat on the end of the bed. "Go ahead."
"Thank you." Cody paused a moment, collecting his thoughts. "You were sleeping here on the bed?”
“Yes. He volunteered to take the first watch. The breeze coming in the open door woke me up, and I found him… And Dave was gone." Tears filled his eyes and he quickly wiped them away. "Sorry. I’m really tired, and my emotions are right under my skin."
"It's okay, we understand," Demetrius said. "We’re all worried about Dave. But we'll find him. We just need to eat some food and make a plan for the next area we'll search."
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and they all looked toward the open door.
"Well, that's a fucked up mess waiting to happen," Cody grumbled. “As usual.”
And Oliver had to give the gargantuan man-child that one: he had been right on the money with that prediction. Before they could organize enough to resume their search, the clouds dumped a heavy rain over the area, leaving everything wet and muddy. They tried to go out and search some more, but the storm made it almost impossible. When he returned to the room, drenched and shivering, Oliver slumped in a chair and broke down into tears. Dave was out in that storm somewhere, and it was killing Oliver to not know where he was and what condition he might be in. He’d never felt so helpless and hopeless, and he had no idea what to do next.
“We’ll find him,” Demetrius said, coming up to kneel beside Oliver and pull him into a hug.
Oliver put his arms around Demetrius and cried into his shoulder. He could hear Cody stomping around the room and bitching about the rain and the woods and the bugs and the fact that they couldn’t do anything, and where the hell was his brother, he couldn’t have gotten that far on foot. Oliver put Cody’s rants out of his mind and allowed himself to enjoy the comfort of Demetrius’s reassurances. He was glad to realize he no longer harbored an attraction to Demetrius. He thought of him as a good friend, and nothing more.
After his emotions had settled a bit, Oliver sat back and managed to give Demetrius a weak smile. “Thanks. Sorry about that. Little sleep and a lot of anxiety.”
“You don’t have to apologize.” Demetrius gave him a reassuring smile then stood up and looked at Cody. “Do you have any suggestions for next steps?”
Cody stopped in the midst of pacing like a caged beast and blinked. “What?”
