Stopping for fast food wasn’t my favorite choice, but I needed something quick and easy. Plus, the closest options were out near where the hotels were. Honestly, hotel was too nice of a word for the place where Rory had been staying. When I first drove up to it, I thought the place was abandoned. Half of the parking lot lights were out, and there were just a few turned on around and inside the long, squat two-story building. The place looked like it dated back at least sixty years and probably hadn’t been painted often since it was constructed. A sign saying “OTEL” was the only identification for the place. I hoped that the place was at least cheap.
I climbed up to the second floor and followed the exterior hallway down to Rory’s room. His room had some signs saying KEEP OUT. I assumed they were left there by the police. However, I didn’t come out here to not at least peek inside. I attempted looking through a window, but the blinds were too far down for me to see anything.
“Hey! Hey!” An older woman appeared at her doorstep. She looked like she was in her seventies. She had long silvery hair and enormous silver hoop earrings. She wore a tight black shirt with dark jeans and the largest silver belt buckle I’d ever seen, encrusted with turquoise. She wasn’t wearing boots, though, but five-inch black heels. I hoped to be as stylish as her one day.
“Excuse me?”
“You need to leave that guy alone.” She placed her hands on her hips and leaned back against her door jamb. She seemed far too upscale for this place.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve had enough of you coming back and forth all hours of the day and night. And then all those police come thundering through.” She switched to crossing her arms across her chest. I spotted a few tattoos peeking out from under her arms.
“I think you have me confused with someone else. I haven’t been here before. Ever.”
The woman looked uncertain. “Hang on.” She disappeared inside and reappeared moments later wearing glasses. I liked their bright teal frame. “Okay, okay, I see now. You do look different from that other woman.”
“How?” I asked, hoping to keep her talking.
“Well, you both have short hair, but hers was spikier. And I think it might have been purple. Or blue. She was taller than you, and excuse me for saying, but a bit younger too.” She had to be describing Tess. More and more, it appeared that she and Rory were involved somehow. Were they dating? Or was it something else? Obviously, they had made some sort of connection with the O’Doyle diary. Whose idea had it been to give the diary to Orson Bradford?
“Did you know the man who was staying here well?” I asked.
She considered my question for a few beats and said, “He hadn’t been here all that long. I’ve been coming here for decades. See, guys like him come and go. Sure, he seems nice. Smiles and waves and all that jazz, but people don’t come here for good reasons.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked, wondering if she counted herself in that consideration.
“Seen enough happen that ain’t good. This isn’t the first time a door’s been covered in police tape, and I don’t think it’ll be the last.” She paused. “Why are you here?”
“Trying to find him.”
“What? He owe you money? Drugs?”
I shook my head. “He’s married to my sister.”
“Oh, that’s rich. You getting on with her husband.”
“What? He’s missing, and I’m trying to find him. For her.”
“Look, honey, let me give you a piece of advice.” She relaxed against the door jamb and kept her hands in her tight jeans pockets. “People who come around here to this dump…. They don’t want to be found.”
Before she said anything else, I heard a man’s voice in the background. “Hey, Gladys, who you talking to? Get back in here.” She shrugged and slammed shut the door. I had been dismissed.
“Well, good day to you, Gladys.”
Left on my own, I considered if I should violate the police’s keep-out signs or not. I didn’t want to get in trouble, or worse, mess up the room for them. But then I thought about Azalea. Maybe I could bring a different view to things. I looked around. No one else seemed to be out, and the only camera in sight was broken with the lens smashed. If there was any other sign of security, I didn’t see it, and given the condition of the place, I felt fairly confident that I was safe. Besides, I was already up here, so someone would probably ask as is. I decided to just spend three minutes inside.
At least I had brought some gloves with me. I slipped inside the room and felt a complete and utter letdown. The small room consisted of two made beds, a dresser, and a TV. Nothing looked touched. Not even the linens were askew. It was like no one had stayed here at all. At least in the bathroom, I found a duffel bag with some wrinkled clothes and a few toiletries, but they didn’t strike me as anything important.
I tried the hotel safe, trying to determine what four number code Rory could have used. First, I tried Violet’s birthday. Nothing. I tried his birthday. Nada. I sat there for a few moments before attempting Azalea’s birthday. The safe popped open. That was a bit of a surprise, but at least it worked. Unfortunately, whatever had been inside the safe was now gone. I may have uttered a few choice words when finding it empty.
I attempted the closet, opening drawers, looking under pillows. Anything I could think of. My three minutes had already passed, and I needed to leave soon. I wasn’t sure that Gladys next door wouldn’t call the cops, and I didn’t want to try explaining my actions to Detective Gupta or Deputy Torres.
Not that I really could explain my actions to myself, either. Had I really thought I was so special that I could find something they hadn’t? What had I expected? That the O’Doyle diary would just be sitting around here, waiting for me? Anger bubbled up within me. I was mad at this being a bust. Mad at Rory for disappearing. Mad at myself for letting Azalea down. My hands locked into fists, and no matter how much I tried to tamp down the feeling, it surged through me. Without an outlet, I kicked hard at one of the beds. It rattled, and I jumped back, scared that I had somehow hurt it. Then I noticed something had fallen from behind the bed frame. The edge of a paper peeked out. I picked at it until I pulled it out from back there.
However, it still wasn’t a diary or map or anything old at all. It was a small series of photos of Rory and Tess like you’d get from a photobooth. In most images, they made silly faces, but in the last one, they were smiling up at the camera with an arm wrapped around the other. I flipped it over, but there was nothing on the back.
“What’re you doing, Rory?” I asked the photo. Of course, the answer was right there in front of me. They were a couple. That had to be the case. Maybe that’s why Azalea and Rory had started divorce proceedings. I didn’t want to ask my sister, but I needed to know. I pocketed the photo. This must have been why Rory asked me about the covers. He had to have been searching for them with Tess.
Back at the inn, Keisha was working at the front desk. She looked exhausted. One hand propped up her head, while the other rested on the counter in front of a laptop. She stared off into space.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“Yeah, of course,” she replied, trying to perk up, but then a yawn escaped. “Oh, sorry. It’s been a long day.”
I looked at the clock on the wall. “You’ve been here a long time today. When does your shift finish?”
“I’m spending the night again. Staying with Vi and Clover. We’re having a sleepover,” she said with a tired smile.
“You don’t have to stay,” I said.
“I know, but it feels like something I can do to help Azalea and Vi,” Keisha replied.
“That’s nice of you. Where are they?”
“Azalea has them. Maybe giving them a bath together. Anyway, I’m helping with the search party for Rory. Tomorrow afternoon at the cemetery.”
“Didn’t the police already search there?” I asked.
“Yeah, but my sister and a bunch of her friends thought it’d be a good place to start. Rose Mallow has such a tiny police force. Desiree said that even if the county pitches in, we could be extra eyes. She asked me to manage the social media for the search.”
I thought about how the weekend was almost over. There was no way I was leaving Azalea and going back to the Library of Congress tomorrow. Now that I had my phone back, I needed to let Greyson know. I hoped he didn’t use that as an excuse to fire me.
“I should have started working on it sooner,” Keisha said.
“Do you need help?” I came around to the back of the counter. She had several tabs open on her laptop, including an event page on a social media site, a map of the cemetery, and a webpage all about the event.
“It’s pretty much all done. Although some people are pretty unhappy because they think Rory was involved with Tess’s murder.”
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I don’t think he was involved.”
“Why are you so certain?”
Keisha opened a few more tabs. “Well, I’ve been piecing together some threads online, but nothing concrete yet.”
“What threads?”
“Well, I think one of them was up to something. Let me get back to you,” Keisha said.
“Do the police know you’re looking at this?” I wasn’t crazy about Keisha’s digital sleuthing on her own. If she could find something, there seemed just as good of a chance that someone could find her.
“No. Neither does Azalea. Or Desiree. I don’t want anyone to worry until I have something definitive.”
“You should leave this to the experts. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
Keisha’s expression soured. “Oh, you mean like how you’re leaving it to the experts?”
“What?”
“I know you’ve been asking and poking around. So, it’s totally hypocritical for you to ask me to stop.” I think she punched a few keys on the laptop hard for good measure. I got a quick peek at a few windows, most of which looked like forums. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see further before she closed the browser.
“Well, here’s the difference. I’m an adult. Legally. If you get hurt, Azalea and I are going to be held responsible for you. Your family will never, ever forgive us, and we will never forgive ourselves.”
Keisha pouted and replied, “You’re a librarian, not a detective.”
“Look, Azalea asked me to look into it.”
“I love your sister, but even I can see she’s obviously not in her right mind.”
I immediately looked around to make sure Azalea didn’t hear that. I leaned closer to Keisha and said, “That may be true, but it’s because she’s grieving. She was already grieving because of the divorce, and now she’s grieving because Rory is missing. That’s why I’m trying to help.”
“And the same for me.”
We were ending up in circles. I threw my hands up in surrender.
“I think part of this is that we’re all exhausted. I’m going to bed, and I think you should, too.” I stood there and waited. Keisha made a few sounds of exasperation, but after half a minute, she powered down the laptop. “Put it away somewhere. Come back in the morning with a fresh mind. At least that’s what I am going to do.”
I decided to leave Greyson a message letting him know that I wouldn’t be at work this week. It was late, but to my surprise, he picked up the phone.
“Greyson Patterson speaking. Who is this?” he asked.
“Hey, Greyson, it’s Juniper.”
“Juniper, where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you all weekend.”
“I don’t work on the weekend, plus I’ve had a family emergency.”
Before I could explain further, he interrupted me to say, “I need you to come in early tomorrow. And plan to stay late. There’s this big deadline coming up on the Dashiell Hammett collection for the new exhibit.”
“Did you hear me? I have a family emergency. I was calling to say I won’t be in for a while. At least a few days.”
“That’s not acceptable, Juniper. You didn’t ask for the time off before disappearing on Friday. I’ve been making up for your mess all weekend.”
“But Greyson…”
“Don’t ‘But Greyson’ me. I need you in the office first thing tomorrow.” It sounded like he didn’t believe that my emergency was real. I had never “cried wolf” before, so I couldn’t understand why he would act this way. Ever since he went from being my colleague to my boss, it had been just one power trip after another.
“My brother-in-law is…”
“Tomorrow morning. Nine a.m. No, wait, make that seven a.m. sharp. Otherwise, I’m putting in a report to HR.”
“Wait, but Greyson…”
The line was dead. He had hung up on me. I stared at my cell phone. To use Nana Z’s phrase, Greyson was very much a “shlemiel,” but I hadn’t expected him to be so unreasonable. I sighed. I loved the Library of Congress, but I felt stuck working for such someone with so much “chutzpah,” to use another one of Nana Z’s favorite words.
After all my time traveling around the world, I’d expected my work at the Library of Congress to be the culmination of my journeys. In some ways, it was. Every day, I had access to one of the best collections of books in the entire world. People treated me with respect when I told them that I worked there.
Yet, the truth was that I felt like little more than a cog in a big machine. I didn’t get the freedom to work on the projects I wanted. Many of my duties were fairly mundane. Digitizing papers and cataloging them in a database was important work, but I found myself struggling. The work was exacting, and I made mistakes more often than I’d like to admit.
What could I do though? It felt trite to complain about a decent job at such an important place. I mean, sure, having a frustrating boss was difficult, but that could happen anywhere, right? And it wasn’t like there were lots of opportunities for rare book librarians. Mine was a fairly specialized field of work.
Nonetheless, I knew one thing. Greyson was going to be disappointed. I couldn’t abandon my sister now. Ever since Nana Z died, my job had been an easy excuse to explain why I never made it back to Rose Mallow to see her or Violet. I’d used it as a mask to cover my grief. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. Not even working at the great Library of Congress was more important than being here for Azalea now.