Читать книгу Bury This - Andrea Portes - Страница 27

EIGHT

The motel clerk who’d hired Beth all those centuries ago had a taut stretched face from smoking and stretching and smoking and stretching her skin. Pull pull pulling it tight tight and over her ears, sewing it, bolting it down. It seems she’d hit it big, this banana-haired lady, married an auto exec, moved to Bloomfield Hills. Those coupon days back in Muskegon, a thing of never-talking, a thing of leave-behind.

Here, at the Radisson Lobby Bar in Bloomfield Hills, you would not believe she had been the one to actually hire Beth. But Danek and Katy had driven out here, three hours, to get it right.

It wasn’t drinking time but black roots was having a drink. The white wine spritzer set down before her at the lobby bar, guilty, on the tiny circle table, had prompted her.

“It’s five o’clock somewhere.”

Danek and Katy had smiled politely, not wanting to seem snooty, wanting to take off this college kid armor, leave it at coat-check, don it later. Now we are investigators. Now we are friends.

Danek had typed up the list of questions. Katy would ask them, of course, she’d be better. Put the lady at ease. Girl talk.

“Do you remember the afternoon you hired Beth Krause? At the Green Mill Inn?”

“Barely. Honestly, look. It’s been awhile.”

Staring nervously into the camera. How do I look? Fluffing up her hair. Danek behind the camera . . . fine . . . you look fine. Great even. Don’t change a thing. Just try to focus on the questions. Try to remember.

“Even just a small thing?”

“Well, I . . . I remember she seemed kind of out of place, you know? She seemed kind of like . . . well, I was thinking, What do you want this shit-ass job for? A pretty girl like you.”

Katy laughed with her, a casual we’re-in-it-together laugh. Keep her happy. Keep her comfortable.

“I guess I worked there, so why not, right? I wasn’t that bad to look at. Not then anyway.”

“Oh, c’mon, you look great, are you kidding?”

Keep her cozy. All is well.

She shrugs now, “A shitty job’s a shitty job, you know. No matter how you slice it.”

“That is for sure. I’ve had my fair share.”

A lie, of course. Katy had never had a job, other than babysitting her cousin over summers in Saginaw. A family job. A job to say you’ve had a job. Teach the value of a dollar. But not really. Not a crapsicle french fry job, not a frazzle-brain, answer-twelve-phone-lines front desk job. A kid job, no danger of an accidental brush with humanity. That cement block future of toil.

“You have?” Blondie looks relieved. We’re peers. “Oh good. Well, that’s what this was.”

“And what did it entail?”

Danek behind the camera, Danek thinking about ordering a drink. Maybe a gin and tonic. Maybe a Pimm’s. No, too summery. Maybe a whiskey and Coke. Maybe one for Katy, too. That might work.

“You know, we had to check people in, check ’em out. Simple stuff.”

The tiny circle table gets emptied. A replacement drink gets set down. No questions asked. Guess she’s a regular.

“Was there ever any weird people coming through? When you were there? Anyone you’d suspect?”

Slurp. Clink.

“Well, you know, we had some odd ones, yes. But mostly it was the groups I hated. We had a few Hells Angels. Real rowdy, you know?”

“Hells Angels?”

“Oh yeah. Biker guys. All in leather. And some union guys. Sometimes there’d be some hubbub down at the plants . . . next thing you know we’d be checking in the union guys.”

“What about a lone individual? Did you ever check in someone you thought, ‘Oh no, hide my purse!’”

Katy smiles. Reach out to them. Make them feel like you are gonna be best friends for sure.

“Look, there were some creeps. I’m not gonna lie. One guy even offered me five hundred bucks to go up to his room. Just to watch him . . . you know. A real normal-looking guy, too. I’m not kidding.”

“Really?

“Oh, yeah. And there was this one guy asked if I would . . . uh, forget it.”

“No, c’mon, I have to know now.”

“Okay, well, there was this one guy, wanted me to come up and call him names, like call him a baby, and he’d put on diapers and shake a rattle and stuff. Offered me three hundred dollars. Said that was it . . . that was all I had to do.”

“Wow. Did you do it?”

“Hell, no! I mean, sure, sounds like easy money but . . . you never know.”

“Unbelievable.”

“I know! But, you know, it was mostly people traveling through, families on a budget, you know. In summers, lots of fishing. Peak season. The rest of the year, well, we had some husbands, getting their rocks off, on the side. They’d pay for the night, be gone by twelve.”