“HOW WAS YOUR FLIGHT?”
Vikki Hill looked up from scribbling something illegible on the registration book. “Okay. They put me in the middle seat between two smelly old men. And they didn’t serve any food. Not even a lousy Biscoff cookie.”
“That’s terrible,” the motel manager said. “I can recommend some local restaurants if you’re hungry. Do you like seafood?”
“Not particularly.” Vikki Hill looked around the office. It was cluttered in the way of a business that had been around for a while. Racks of brochures for tourists. A shelf full of well-thumbed paperback books with a sign that said NEED ONE? READ ONE! There were a pair of cracked plastic chairs on the wall by the front door.
The manager was older, matronly, wearing a bright pink polo with the motel’s logo stitched over the breast. Her name badge said MURMURING SURF. MANAGER. AVA DECURTIS.
Vikki tried not to stare. DeCurtis wasn’t a common name. She had to be related to the cop.
“There’s a really good pizza place just up the beach road,” Ava said. “Even our guests from New York say it’s good pizza. Gianni’s.” She pushed a pamphlet-size booklet across the counter. “There’s a coupon for a free drink in here. If you’re too tired to go out, they deliver.”
“Thanks,” Vikki said. “I am kind of beat.”
“Can I ask you a question? How did you find us?”
“Why?”
Ava’s face flushed. “Well, uh, you know, we mostly get repeat business here this time of year. I mean, we hope our website is drawing in new business, but I’m always trying to improve. For instance we just redid the unit you’re staying in. So I was wondering if you found us through one of the search engines, or.…”
“I thought the name sounded cute. Murmuring Surf. Like an old song or something.” Vikki looked over the manager’s shoulder. An open door behind her led to an office and storage area. And there was a small red child-size table and chair in an alcove directly behind the reception desk. But no sign of a child, or the child’s aunt.
“It was called that when we bought the place,” Ava said. “My ex thought it sounded cute too. I wasn’t too sure, but you wouldn’t believe what it costs to get a new neon sign. Even back then. So we kept the name. It’s grown on me over the years. And of course, our regulars like it. They hate change. If I so much as bring in a new kind of coffee maker in the kitchens, they raise hell about it.”
“You’ve owned this place for a while then?”
“Oh yeah. Over thirty-five years. What kind of work do you do, Ms. Hill?”
“Nothing too exciting. I’m a civil servant. I punch a clock.”
“Just looking for a little sunshine, huh? I bet it’s still cold back up north. I’ll tell you, I don’t miss those winters.”
“Yeah, it’s nasty cold,” Vikki said. The sun was starting to go down. There was a large palm tree in the middle of the courtyard, and she could see a small group of people gathering there in lawn chairs. “What’s going on out there?”
The manager craned her neck to see. “Oh, that’s just the happy hour group. I don’t allow smoking anywhere else on the property, but they’ll gather out there and have a drink. Strictly BYOB. You’re welcome to join them. I can introduce you.”
“Maybe later,” Vikki said vaguely. She picked up her key. “My room is where?”
“Right down at the end of the breezeway,” Ava DeCurtis said. “Turn left when you walk out the door here. Let me know if there’s anything you need. And welcome to the Murmuring Surf.”
The room was nothing to write home about. It was clean, though, and there was a palm tree right outside her door. She stripped off the heavy black sweater and jeans she’d worn on the plane. It was seventy-two degrees outside, and she’d been roasting since she stepped out of the airport in Tampa.
Telling herself she needed to canvass the area, she dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, and put on the rubber flip-flops she’d bought at the airport gift shop, and a pair of oversize sunglasses.
She walked toward a strip of palm trees that divided the motel property from the beach. There was a row of lounge chairs facing the water, and just beyond were the sparkling turquoise waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Vikki Hill gasped. She’d been to the beach, lots of times, mostly the Jersey Shore back home. But this was different. She left her shoes on the grass and walked out onto the sugary white sand, letting her toes sink into it. The water was like a magnet. She drew closer, stopping to study the waves lapping at the shore. Huh. She ventured closer, bracing herself for the shock of cold, but the water was surprisingly warm. She wiggled her toes, and something beneath them wiggled back. She stooped down to see that there were millions of tiny multicolored clamlike seashells strewn along the waterline. She smiled despite herself.
“They’re called coquinas.” She jumped, startled. An elderly man, shriveled and bald with skin like an old Samsonite suitcase, stood only a foot away on the hard-packed sand. His white T-shirt was shrunken with age and he wore baggy knee-length shorts, black socks that came to his mid-calves, and white tennis shoes.
“Excuse me?”
“Those shells you’re looking at. They’re co-qui-nas.” He pronounced it slowly, like she was hard of hearing, or stupid, or both.
“Huh. So these are like what, babies? Do you eat ’em?”
“Only if you’ve got a really tiny knife and fork.” He guffawed at his own joke, then stuck out his hand as if to shake. “Oscar Jensen. You’re new here, aren’t you?”
She ignored the outstretched hand. “Yes.”
“Just come in, did you?”
“That’s right.”
“Couldn’t pick better weather.”
He was a chatty old bastard. So far, everyone she’d encountered down here was overly friendly and super chatty. Annoying. Her usual tendency would have been to blow him off, but since he seemed to be the self-appointed welcome committee here, maybe she should break her own rules.
“The weather’s pretty good,” she said. “Have you been coming here very long?”
“Oh yeah. Started coming down in the nineties, I guess, me and my wife, Sue. She passed, so now it’s just me. We don’t get a lot of new folks here at the Surf. All us regulars, we’ve been coming here for a real long time. I’m guessing you’re staying in the efficiency?”
“That’s right. How’d you know?”
“Like I said, I know everybody here, and we all always stay in the same place. Until somebody dies or quits coming. I figure you’re here because Harry Bronson had a heart attack. Him and the wife headed home Monday, which meant their unit was available. It’s one of the nicest ones here, got a great little patio with a Gulf view. Merwin, he thought he and Trudi would move over there, but Ava went and gave it to Letty. So she moved out of the efficiency, which meant that was vacant. See?”
Vikki tried not to act too eager. “Who’s Letty?”
“Oh, she’s the newcomer. Been here two, three weeks. Her and the little girl. Just showed up out of the blue, looking for a place to stay, so Ava moved her into the efficiency, even gave her a job working in the office.”
“Where’d she come from?” Vikki asked.
“I think maybe she said New Jersey? She’s all right. Mostly keeps to herself. But it caused kind of a stir, like I said, because it wasn’t really fair, Ava giving her that room when it should have been Merwin’s. I think Ava felt sorry for her, what with the little kid and everything.”
“I see.” Vikki nodded. “Well, nice to meet you. Guess I’ll go up to the room now.”
The pizza at the joint from down the street, she begrudgingly admitted to herself, was half decent. Nice crisp crust, definitely homemade sauce. Who knew they had good pizza in Florida? She was eating a slice, sitting in the chair by the window, watching the happy hour under the palm tree. She figured the median age of the congregants at seventy-five. No sign of anyone who could be Letty Carnahan, or of the kid.
At seven thirty, her phone rang. She smiled and answered.
“Officer DeCurtis. Thanks for getting back to me.”
“Sorry for the delay. What’s this about?”
“A woman named Scarlett Carnahan. She calls herself Letty. Do you know her?”
There was an extended silence on the other end of the line. While she waited, Vikki picked a pepperoni off the last slice and nibbled at it.
“Why are you asking?”
“She’s a fugitive. Wanted for questioning in the murder of a woman in New York, and the abduction of her child. The victim was her own sister.”
Another long silence. “You flew down here from New York today and checked into my mother’s motel a couple hours ago, right?”
It was Vikki’s turn to be surprised. She didn’t much like the sensation.
“How’d you know that?”
“I make it my business to know who’s staying at the Murmuring Surf. Ever since the incident with Declan Rooney. Your message didn’t mention the fact that you were coming down here.”
“It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. So, when can we talk?”
“There’s a bar just down the beach from the Surf. Called the Ka-Tiki.”
“For real?” Vikki asked. “Is the bartender named Don Ho?”
“I can meet you there in an hour,” DeCurtis said. “I’m wearing a red Atlanta Braves T-shirt and blue board shorts. How will I know you?”
“I’ll be the one not in a Hawaiian shirt,” Vikki said. “See you then.”
Maya held out a handful of tiny red cherry tomatoes. “Look, Letty!” She crammed one in her mouth, the juice oozing down her chin. “I picked them!”
“They’re yummy, right?” her aunt asked.
Their new routine was to sit in the courtyard garden after dinner, watching squadrons of pelicans soar past on the darkening horizon. A wind-down time.
“Where they goin’?” Maya had asked, pointing to the birds in flight.
“I guess they’re going home,” Letty said.
“Where’s home?”
“Good question,” her aunt said. She’d been pondering that for weeks now. Living day to day as she had could not continue, but what was the alternative?
Maya picked up her worksheet. She loved playing school. Writing names was her new passion.
“Spell Letty,” she commanded.
“L-E-T-T-Y,” her aunt said, and Maya laboriously used a red crayon to form her idea of what the letters should be.
“How you spell Ellie?” Maya asked, holding up her stuffed toy.
Letty looked over and smiled. She’d done a sloppy job of stitching the elephant’s wound back together, but Maya didn’t seem to care.
“E-L-L-I-E.” As soon as she’d spelled the word, the light bulb switched on.
“Ellie!” Letty said, sitting upright. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? It was so simple. So obvious.
Ellie. It had to be the password for Tanya’s nanny cam. She reached for her phone and texted Isabelle’s teenage hacker friend, Sierra.
I think I figured out the password!!! Plz call me ASAP.