Page 38 of Down and Dirty

Chapter 16

Keaton drove five minutes up the road and pulled into the Shady Lake motel.

“I thought you said you were staying in a motel by the airport.”

“It was better that I stayed with you, don’t you think, now that I’m your alibi and can attest that there wasn’t a dead corpse smell coming from the basement.” He grinned and got out, grabbing my bag and waiting for me to follow.

“You lied?” I asked, following him up the stairs to the second floor of red doors.

“After our little camping excursion, I wasn’t ready to leave you,” he said as he shoved a key in the door and then pushed it open wide for me to enter.

The motel wasn’t the best I’d stayed in nor the worst. The little foyer had a bath off to the side and a small closet. The room itself had two beds. Case files were opened and spread out, covering one of the mattresses. The other bed was half made, with jeans and a shirt hanging over the edge near the foot.

“Sorry about the mess. I wasn’t expecting company,” he said as he set my bag on the dresser.

I moved to the bed he’d converted to a makeshift desk. Profiles of the missing seven were laying open. There were photos. A room with furniture turned over in disarray. Another with a car door open and a purse on the ground. Its contents spilled out; lipstick, wallet, pill bottles, and tons of receipts covered the wet ground.

I picked up the picture of Ann, who looked just like my sister, Talia. Her file was thin compared to the others.

“That’s Ann Scott, but you already know that,” he said, coming to stand next to me.

“Who reported her missing?” I asked, staring hard at the picture, in which she smiled with a friend. There was another person, but only their arm was in the picture.

“Her building superintendent. He hadn’t seen her in days and reported she’d been skittish when she moved in three months ago. Quiet, kept to herself, but she started acting odd, requesting additional door locks and asked to have her name removed from the entrance buzzer.”

“She was hiding from someone?” I asked and lifted my gaze to Keaton’s.

“She never told him who.”

“What about this girl? They look to be close friends. Maybe she knows?”

“We haven’t been able to figure out who she is yet.”

“Another tenant in the building, perhaps? A coworker?” I asked just as the woman’s spirit flashed into the room. I swallowed hard, now understanding why the police couldn’t locate her. “She’s dead too.”

He squinted at me. “And you know that how?”

I gestured with a wave toward the entryway. “She’s standing right there.”

“What’s your name?” I called out.

“Maria,” she answered seconds before she vanished.

“Her name’s Maria. She didn’t give me a last name before she vanished.”

“I heard her,” he said, reminding me that he could see these spirits too. I relaxed in that knowledge.

He slipped his phone out of his pocket, dialed a number, and asked someone to pull the files of all the missing Marias in the state.

I sat down on the bed and picked up the picture of Ann again. Poor Ann. I flipped the file open, and only a few sheets of paper made up the contents.

Employment - none

Background - none

Paid rent and utilities in cash.

They really didn’t have anything on Ann. Just a statement from the landlord.

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