FRIDAY MORNING, JOE LEANED AGAINST the front counter, sipping his coffee and watching the motel’s newest guest making her way across the courtyard, a plastic laundry basket under one arm, with the little girl in tow.
Letty was dressed in shorts and a tank top, and the little girl was dressed in the same pink-and-white bathing suit she’d been wearing all week.
“There’s something off about that woman,” he told his mother.
Ava looked up from the computer screen, lowered her reading glasses, and followed his gaze. “Why do you say that? I think she’s perfectly nice. Look how hard she worked, getting that unit cleaned out so she’d have a place to stay. She’s quiet, minds her own business. And that Maya is adorable. I wish we had half a dozen guests like Letty.”
“Tell that to the Feldmans.”
“Those two! They’re not happy unless they have something to complain about,” Ava said. “They came in here Wednesday, in a snit, wanting me to post a sign at the pool saying that it was reserved for lap swimmers from eight to nine P.M. I told ’em to blow it out their bungholes!”
Joe laughed softly. “I bet that went over great with Ruth.”
“They think they own the place just because they’ve been coming here all these years.”
He finished his coffee and tossed the paper cup in the trash. “I gotta get to work.”
“You still haven’t told me why you think there’s something off about Letty.”
“Didn’t you tell me she paid you cash?”
“Yeah. So what? Several of our guests do that. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the perfect arrangement. That money goes right in my pocket, and what Uncle Sam don’t know, won’t hurt.”
“Don’t tell me that!” he said sharply. “I’m a cop, remember? And income-tax evasion is a federal crime. Besides, it’s not just the cash. It’s the whole situation. She’s not some retired schoolteacher from Buffalo. She’s half the age of our guests. She admits the kid isn’t hers. No job. She just shows up, out of the blue. What’s she doing? And why here?”
“Why does anybody come to Florida?” Ava gestured toward the plate-glass picture window. Outside, the fuchsia blossoms of a bougainvillea vine clambered across the office’s concrete-block façade, and palm fronds rustled gently in the breeze. “The cost of living isn’t too bad. No state income tax. The weather’s great, the water’s warm. I read online that they had snow squalls in Chicago yesterday. It’s why your father and I came down here, all those years ago. And why we stayed.”
“But why this motel? Why the Murmuring Surf? Remember how upset she got when I suggested she find another motel? It was like she was desperate to stay here. I don’t like it.”
“Go on to work,” Ava said, making a shooing gesture. “Lock up some tax evaders or something. I’ve got a business to run.”
He pulled his phone from the breast pocket of his jacket. “I’m gonna run the tag on that car of hers. Just to make sure she’s legit.”
“The trouble with you is that that you don’t trust anybody. Just because you’re a cop, you think everybody’s a criminal. Look at you, Joseph! You’re thirty-eight and still single.”
“Take a look at yourself, old lady. The trouble with you is that you trust everybody. You’re fifty-seven and you’ve had two husbands. And don’t get me started about that loser Chuck. And yet you’re still trolling Match.com, looking for love in all the wrong places.”
“It’s Silver Singles, smart-ass. And yes, I’m still hopeful that I’ll meet somebody. I know he’s out there, somewhere.”
“Yeah, probably at a halfway house on work release,” Joe said. “See you later.”
Letty loaded the sheets and towels into the washing machine, dumped in a detergent pod and a cup of bleach, inserted two dollars’ worth of quarters, and punched the start button.
The laundry room was tiny, with two commercial washing machines and two dryers, and sweltering.
“Let’s sit out here,” she told Maya, guiding her to a row of metal chairs stationed right outside the laundry room door. She would have liked to go back to their room, but the day before, when she’d left the laundry unattended, someone had dumped her wet clothes on the floor instead of placing them in the dryer, or even in the plastic basket she’d left on top of the machine, and now she had to wash them all over again.
She suspected that the “someone” was one of the Feldman ladies, but she had no proof, and she had no idea why they’d taken such an instant dislike to her. She’d even asked Ava about the pair, the morning after the swimming-pool debacle.
“Don’t mind those two,” Ava said. “They’ve been coming here for twenty years, so they think they run the joint.”
“Are they sisters?” Letty asked. “They sure don’t look anything alike.”
“Sisters?” Ava hooted. “No, honey, bless your heart.” She lowered her voice. “They’re lesbians! Got married right here on the beach, as soon as it was legal. Of course, Ruth insisted that Billie had to take her name.”
“Juice box,” Maya said, tugging at Letty’s arm.
“Juice box, please,” her aunt corrected.
“Pees?” Maya batted her eyes. She was Tanya’s daughter, all right. Only four, and she’d already figured out that the best way to get her way was to look cute and turn on the charm.
Letty’s chest contracted in a sudden spasm of grief. She couldn’t get the image of her sister out of her head, her blond hair splayed out on that black and white floor. The puddle of blood. The single shoe, the glass of vodka.
Today was Friday.
Less than a week ago, Tanya was alive, making plans to move to LA and reinvent herself. She’d found a bungalow to rent in Holmby Hills—“Ellen DeGeneres has a house there!” she’d said, showing Letty the photos from the online real estate listing. “It’s way small, actually, I think it’s the guesthouse behind some gigantic mansion, but you’d have your own bedroom and bathroom. And there’s a pool for Maya. She could go swimming every day.”
Tanya refused to accept that Letty didn’t want to move to Los Angeles. “Think of all the career opportunities,” she’d said. “Show business is the business there.”
“I’m not in the business anymore,” Letty reminded her. “And that’s fine with me.” She didn’t remind her sister that Evan intended to fight tooth and nail to keep Tanya from taking Maya across the country with her. And she didn’t point out that she was pretty sure Tanya mainly wanted Letty to accompany her to California as in-house childcare.
While Maya sucked contentedly on her juice box, Letty tapped her phone and forced herself to read the headlines of the tabloids back in New York.
BLOND BEAUTY SLAIN, TOT ABDUCTED, COPS SEEK SISTER was the headline in the Post. A huge color photo of Tanya and Maya, dressed in matching outfits for a children’s charity fundraiser, was plastered across the front page, and below it was a smaller photo of Letty, handcuffed and dressed in orange jail scrubs. It was a screenshot from the other walk-on she’d done three years earlier for a Law & Order episode, but it made Letty look like a hardened criminal.
The Daily News was even worse. WHERE IS MAYA? the headline screamed. Beneath it was a blown-up shot of Maya, hands clasped beneath her chin, her cupid’s-bow lips curved into a dreamy smile. Letty recognized it as the school photo from the exclusive preschool Maya attended. The subhead and accompanying story made her want to gag.
HEARTBROKEN DAD OFFERS REWARD FOR KID’S RETURN
Real estate entrepreneur / philanthropist Evan Wingfield is still reeling after last week’s brutal murder of his estranged partner, Tanya Carnahan, and the apparent abduction of his four-year-old daughter, Maya.
Through a family spokesman, Wingfield announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of his daughter.
“Although they were no longer in a romantic relationship, Evan admired and respected Tanya, and he is devastated by her tragic death. For now, though, all his energies and resources are concentrated on finding his daughter,” said the spokesman, Charles “Skipper” Hallowell. “He has fully cooperated with the police, and he will not rest until Maya is brought back to safety.”
Tanya Carnahan, an aspiring model and actress, was found sprawled on the floor of her lavish Upper West Side brownstone last Sunday morning, after an anonymous tipster, believed to have been her older sister, 33-year-old Scarlett Carnahan, called 911 to report Tanya’s death. A source close to the police investigation told the Daily News that Tanya Carnahan suffered a blow to the head. Although the actress had reportedly been in rehab for unspecified substance abuse issues, the source said preliminary lab results revealed substantial amounts of Xanax and alcohol in her system.
When authorities arrived at the town house, which is one of several in the neighborhood owned by Wingfield, they discovered Tanya Carnahan’s body. The child, however, was missing.
Evan Wingfield admitted to police that he’d seen his former girlfriend that morning, and that the two had a loud argument after he accused her of drinking, in violation of their custody agreement. He insisted, however, that Tanya Carnahan was alive when he left the home shortly after noon on Sunday.
Wingfield and Tanya Carnahan were in the midst of a very public and very bitter court battle over their daughter. Carnahan claimed that her former fiancé was a serial cheater who was indifferent to their daughter’s needs, while Wingfield claimed that Tanya Carnahan, who’d had only modest success with her acting and modeling career, was an unfit mother.
Friends of the couple say the two were introduced by Scarlett Carnahan, who at the time was employed by and in a relationship with Evan Wingfield. The relationship ended when Wingfield turned his attention to Carnahan’s troubled younger sister, a recent arrival from Atlanta.
“Troubled?” Letty exclaimed out loud. “She wasn’t troubled until she hooked up with that scumbag.”
Maya, startled, looked up at her aunt, her mouth puckered.
“It’s okay, ladybug,” Letty assured her. “Everything’s okay.”
The child smiled, uncertainly, before turning her attention to a handful of seashells they’d gathered during yesterday’s morning walk on the beach.
According to one friend, the 42-year-old real estate entrepreneur struck up a relationship with Scarlett Carnahan when she was working as a waitress at the Lazy Daizy diner in Tribeca.
At the time, Carnahan was struggling to find acting work, and needed a new place to live after roommates evicted her from her apartment in Queens.
“Evan befriended her, let her stay in an apartment he owned nearby, even gave her a job managing some of his real estate,” the friend said. “He helped her find a new agent, who got her some acting gigs. Eventually they started dating, in a casual kind of way. Letty then invited her younger sister, who’d been living and working in Atlanta, to visit her in New York.”
But as soon as Tanya Carnahan arrived in the city, the friend said, everything changed.
“Evan fell hard for that girl. Letty, obviously, was furious. It caused a serious rift between the two sisters. They didn’t speak for years.”
Maya patted her knee and held up her juice box. “All done.”
“Okay,” Letty said, taking the empty box. “Would you like some Goldfish?”
“Pees,” Maya said, holding out a rather grubby hand. Letty took the bag of cheddar crackers from her backpack and poured some into the child’s hand.
“What do you say?” Letty prompted.
Maya shoved all the crackers into her mouth and chewed happily. “Fank you,” she said, sending showers of orange crumbs down the front of her swimsuit.
Letty resumed reading the Daily News story, fuming. She knew exactly which of Evan’s bitchy pals the reporter had quoted.
Sascha Hallowell was married to Evan’s Princeton classmate Skipper. She’d pretended to like Letty, but as Tanya later confided, “She thinks we’re both a couple of hillbilly hayseeds. What Sascha doesn’t know is that good ol’ Skippy tried to put his hand up my skirt the last time we had dinner at their place.”
Letty could picture the sneer on Sascha’s face when she referred to Tanya as “that girl.”
She was scanning the rest of the story when she spotted Ava’s son Joe sauntering out of the motel office toward the parking lot. She watched as he walked slowly through the parked vehicles, stopping behind her Kia. He took out his phone and clicked off a few frames of the license plate, did a slow circle around the car, then got in his own truck and drove away.
Letty froze. She thought she’d been so smart buying that car. After renting a car at Newark Airport the previous Sunday night, she’d driven as far south as Raleigh, North Carolina, before checking into a fleabag motel.
Maya had finally stopped crying, and the two of them had fallen asleep almost as soon as they hit the bed, not waking until glaring sunlight blasted through the thin draperies. She’d been horrified to see that they’d slept past noon. She’d hustled Maya out of bed, put her in the shower with her, and headed back toward the interstate.
Of course, the child screeched with joy when she spotted the golden arches at the strip of shopping centers and fast-food joints near the interstate on-ramp. They were devouring their chicken nuggets and French fries when Letty noticed the car parked several yards away, facing traffic. It was a silver Kia with a FOR SALE sign posted prominently on the dashboard, and it offered the solution to something she’d been worried about since leaving the Hertz lot at Newark.
She’d rented an Acura with Tanya’s credit card. Although Letty was three inches shorter with hair several shades darker than Tanya’s, on a driver’s license photo she could easily pass for her younger sister.
The police would probably be looking for her by now. Maybe they had found Tanya’s Mercedes in Newark already, or maybe not. Maybe they had traced the credit card and seen that it had been used at the Hertz counter. Maybe she was already the subject of a multi-state manhunt. She needed to ditch the rental car, and fast.
From the plastic booth in McDonald’s, Letty called the number on the Kia’s dashboard sign and, after a short discussion about price and the car’s mileage, arranged to meet the seller in the Hertz lot at the Raleigh-Durham airport. He pulled up alongside her at the appointed time, got out of the Kia, and seemed surprised to find someone who looked like Letty standing there, clutching the hand of a little girl, surrounded by two small suitcases and a child’s car seat.
“Here’s the keys,” he said. “And the title. You gotta sign it right there.”
She wrote her name on the registration in a deliberately illegible scrawl, then handed him the money. He counted the bills and nodded. “I gassed it up like you asked.”
“Thanks,” Letty said.
Now she didn’t know what to do about the Kia, or Joe the cop. Should she move on? Where would she go? The Murmuring Surf seemed like as good a place as any to lie low and figure out her next move. Tanya must have had a reason for saving that magazine article about the motel. But sooner or later she’d need a job. She didn’t want to touch any more of the money in Tanya’s stash than was absolutely necessary. That was Maya’s money, as far as Letty was concerned.
Right now, though, her most urgent concern was to keep as far away from Maya’s father as possible.
“Letty,” Maya said, tugging at the hem of her shirt. “Let’s go to the beach now, okay?” She kicked her sandal-clad feet. “Swimmy, swimmy, swimmy.”
“Okay,” Letty promised. “As soon as the laundry’s done.”