“With all due respect, Sheriff,” Melba answered moderately, “go piss up a rope.”
Eli gave a husky guffaw, and the release of tension was downright restorative. “Thanks for that,” he said. He wasn’t talking about the suggestion; he was talking about the reason to laugh.
“Unless you’ve got something to say that’s related to Jane Doe, boss man, this conversation is done.”
“Well, then,” Eli answered, in a teasing drawl, “if that’s the case, over and out.”
Melba was no longer on his frequency.
Roughly ten minutes later, Eli pulled into the gravel and grass parking lot in front of Russ’s motel.
He’d done some renovations, with financial help from Shallie and Cord, but the place still looked as though it had been dragged into the twenty-first century by its gutter pipes.
Russ’s car, a rust-bucket sedan, was the only one in sight, and the motel’s vintage sign, equally rusty and very weatherworn, was either shut off from inside or simply too tired to light up.
Shallie had grown up here, with Russ and Bethanne and their folks; in those days, she and Reba had hung out together, working for next to nothing, cleaning rooms whenever some hapless customer showed up.
Reba had left town the night of the bonfire, when he and Cord and J.P. had found out, simultaneously, that they’d been played, big-time, and Shallie had taken off soon afterward, only to return to Painted Pony Creek last year, looking to lay a few ghosts to rest.
She’d succeeded in that—found the mother who had abandoned her, right here at the Bates Motel, when she was two years old. They had a decent relationship now, mother and daughter, and Shallie and Russ were on fairly good terms, too.
Shallie and Cord had connected through Cord’s work, and look at them now. Happily married and hoping to start a family soon.
Eli felt a stab of envy.
He hadn’t thought all that much about having a wife and family of his own, at least, not until Brynne Bailey had come home to the Creek. Before that, he’d had plenty of women—more than he’d had time for, actually—but he hadn’t allowed any of them to get too close.
When Brynne came back, things had shifted. He’d lost interest in casual dating, casual anything, and he’d been forced to acknowledge, if only to himself, that when he let himself slow down enough to consider his life, he was lonely as hell.
At first, he’d taken the attraction to Brynne lightly. After all, what red-blooded man wouldn’t be attracted to a woman as smart and sweet and beautiful as she was?
Eli brought himself back to the present moment.
Seeing that Russ had placed a paper Closed sign on the inside of the front door, which lead into the office, he knocked. Then knocked again, more forcefully this time.
Russ appeared, looking rumpled, a large smear of a man smudged onto the fogged glass in the door.
Reluctantly, he opened up.
“I didn’t kill that girl,” he said, before Eli could speak.
“I’m not saying you did,” Eli replied succinctly, “but I need to ask you some questions just the same.”
“Okay,” Russ said, stepping back so Eli could enter the building, “but I don’t have a lot of time. I’m invited over to Cord and Shallie’s place for dinner.”
“So am I,” Eli replied. “I probably won’t make it, though, because my sister is expecting me.” And because Melba told me Brynne will be at Sara’s.
The inside of that office smelled musty, though it was probably clean enough. The carpets, curtains—the very walls—were just plain old, past their prime.
In Eli’s unsolicited opinion, it would have made more sense to bulldoze the whole place, sell all that wood and wire and rebar for salvage, and rebuild.
The whole idea was to provide a place for Cord and Shallie’s students, all prospective horse-whisperers, to stay while they went through the six comprehensive weeks of the program. Like the clients who hired Cord to work his magic and train untrainable horses, the students tended to be well-heeled, used to comfortable if not luxurious accommodations, and even with renovations the property would still be haunted by its troubled past.
Russ led the way past the battered old reception desk to the living quarters in back.
The living room probably looked pretty much the way it had when the original owners, Russ’s drunken parents, were alive. The furniture was dated, and the carpet was the color of sliced avocado.
The TV, which still had knobs instead of buttons, sported an actual antenna flagged with tin foil. The volume was way down, but Russ had clearly been watching the news.
Eli watched himself on-screen, leaving the office, waving off reporters, climbing into his SUV.
In the next shot, a young man with an orange cast to his skin and ridiculously white teeth was shoving a microphone into Connie Sue’s angry, tight-lipped face.
Finally, there was a sweeping image of the field behind the motel and the crime scene, complete with yellow tape fluttering in the chilly breeze.
“No need for sound,” Russ lamented wearily. “They’re all saying the same thing, that nobody will tell them anything.”
“Typical,” Eli said.
“Have a seat,” Russ replied, with a nod. “You want any coffee? I’ve got instant.”
“No, thanks,” Eli replied, moving a stack of newspapers from one of the couch cushions to sit down. “I wouldn’t mind some water, though.”
Russ moved into the adjoining kitchen area, which resembled a museum diorama depicting the last quarter of the twentieth century, with its harvest-gold appliances, red-and-black-checkered tile floor and white metal cabinets.
Eli rubbed his eyes, giving his beleaguered brain a chance to assimilate the jumble of textures and colors.
He heard the fridge open and close, and then Russ was back in the living room, offering a bottle of water.
The liquid was cold, and pure, and it flowed into Eli like a magical elixir, clearing his brain, strengthening his muscles, boosting his energy, which had begun to flag at some point without his noticing.
Russ sank into an ancient recliner on the other side of the coffee table, the surface of which lay hidden beneath a variety of clutter—junk mail, old copies of TV Guide and Reader’s Digest, generic books of crossword puzzles, candy wrappers and a few coffee mugs, none too clean.
One of the reasons Eli had been glad to receive bottled water, instead of a glass from the tap.
“You taking your meds, Russ?” Eli asked thoughtfully, not as a gibe, but out of real concern. The man had made a lot of strides lately, but he’d suffered for years from chronic depression on a scale few people were made to endure.