Suddenly Madison’s back arched, startling Alison. She’d not seen that before. Her daughter let out a long, rasping sound … and then slowly deflated. Her head turned, quickly, but then she sighed. Her lips moved, a little, but no sound came out. And then she was still. And not moaning any more.
Alison waited a few minutes more, until she was sure her daughter was sleeping soundly. She carefully reached out and pulled the covers back over her. Stood for a moment longer, looking down at her sleeping face.
Make the most of it, kiddo, she found herself thinking. A nightmare is just a nightmare. You don’t know anything about real sadness yet.
As she turned away she noticed something on the floor, lying on the bare wood just the other side of the old rug that went under the bed.
She bent down and discovered that it was a sand dollar. It was small, grey. It had been broken in half.
She picked up one of the pieces. Where had it come from? Had Madison found it that afternoon? If so, why hadn’t she said? There was a reward …
Abruptly Alison realized why her daughter hadn’t said anything, and felt toxically ashamed. The piece Alison held in her hands was firm. Snapping the shell in half must have taken effort, and been deliberate.
She dropped the fragment to the floor and left the room, pulling the door almost closed behind her. Then she went back to her own bed and lay there for a long time, staring up at the ceiling and listening to the rain.
I got to the Hotel Malo just before ten a.m. I’d been awake since before six, but realized I could not call Amy’s office for several hours. So I put myself in movement instead. Seven was the earliest I could arrive at the Zimmermans’ and borrow a car without looking too strange. Inspired by Fisher’s visit the day before, I told them I’d got a call from an old friend and was heading to the city for lunch. Bobbi looked at me a beat longer than was necessary. Ben got straight to explaining how steering wheels worked.
I headed west on 90, joining 5 as the rush hour was starting in earnest, and fought my way off at James Street. Familiar territory so far, the route we’d taken when we came to spend a day in the city a week after we moved up north. Amy had showed me a couple of major draws like the Pike Place Market and the Space Needle, but she was more familiar with the city’s boardrooms than its tourist attractions. The sky was low and an unrelenting grey. It had been that way the previous time too. I eventually spiralled onto 6th Avenue, a wide downtown canyon with tall concrete buildings on either side, lined with small and well-behaved trees bearing little yellow lights.
I pulled up outside the Malo, joining the back of a line of black town cars. The hotel had an awning of red and ochre stripes. A guy in a coat and hat tried to take my car someplace but I convinced him not to. The lobby was done in limestone and rich fabrics, a big fireplace on one side. The luggage trolleys were of distressed brass, and the bellhops were demure. Something unobtrusive and New Age floated discreetly from hidden speakers, like the smell of vanilla cookies almost ready to come out of the oven.
The woman behind the desk was the one I’d spoken to a little after midnight. I was surprised to find she did have an envelope for me, and a receipt for my twenty bucks. Also that she’d had the initiative to get the driver to write down his name – which is more than I’d done – together with the company he worked for. His first name was Georj, the second a collection of crunchy syllables from not-around-here. The company was Red Cabs. She relayed this information in a way that implied guests at her hotel usually employed more upscale or funky means of transport, like native bearers or cold fusion hoverboards. I got her to check a final time for a reservation, implying I was a colleague, believed my assistant had made one and that he was going to catch seven shades of hell if he had not. No record, still.
‘Can you do me another favour?’ I asked, having also planned this on the journey. ‘I’m sure we’ve booked her in here before. Can you check back a few months?’
She tapped and squinted at the screen for a minute, nodded, then tapped again.
‘Okay,’ she said, pressing her finger on the screen. ‘Ms Whalen did stay with us three months ago, two nights. And before that I have a reservation back in January. Three nights that time. You want me to go farther?’
I said no, and went back outside. Walked up to the corner, where I was beyond the influence of the doorman and his familiars, who remained keen that I do the right thing with my car. I still wasn’t sure if I was over-reacting, and I knew from experience that I have a tendency to stomp on the gas pedal when sitting and waiting would be the more considered option. But now I knew Amy had stayed in this hotel before, and that changed things. Not because it confirmed she’d been in Seattle on those occasions – I knew that – but because it meant she was familiar with the Malo and unlikely to have turned up and rejected it this time. I knew from an enquiry via their website that the hotel had vacancies for this week. So it wasn’t a screwed-up booking either.
I went over to the doorman, gave him some money and told him I’d be right back. I zigzagged the few blocks to the Hotel Monaco on 4th Avenue. Amy would have liked this place too – God would have liked it – but a quick conversation confirmed neither had stayed there in the recent past.
The hotel had always been a dead end. It was time to forget about it. Time to forget about the whole thing, probably. I’d made the decision to come to the city around one o’clock the previous night, telling myself it was to do Amy the favour of retrieving her phone. A hundred plus miles is not a huge deal in the Pacific Northwest. But it wasn’t just that, of course. Amy had made business trips six, seven times a year ever since I’d known her. We had a standard operating procedure. We didn’t go for whole days without being in contact, however brief. But … bottom line, she hadn’t been staying in the hotel she’d used before. That was all I had, and in the light of day it didn’t amount to a whole lot. I felt embarrassed for being there and was not entirely inclined to dismiss the voice in my head which claimed it was merely an excuse for leaving my desk for the day.
When I got back to the Malo I went inside and perched on a chair by the big window. I opened the envelope and got out Amy’s phone. It was easy to recognize, though I noticed she’d changed the picture she used as her background. It was a standard cell phone, and no more: in an uncharacteristically anti-corporate stand she’d resisted getting sucked into BlackBerry hell. I pressed the green button. The ‘outgoing’ list showed a call to my cell at the top – from cab guy late last night – preceded by names and numbers I didn’t recognize, until it showed incoming from me the afternoon before last.
I switched to her Contacts and scrolled through it, searching for Kerry, Crane & Hardy, Seattle. It wasn’t there, of course. She’d know these people by first name and direct line, rather than hacking her way in through the general switchboard.
I noticed the battery indicator was flashing about two seconds before the cell went dead.
Using my own I rang directory assistance and got a number for KC&H. I called the number and heard a perky voice sing out the familiar three letters. I asked to talk with someone who worked with Amy Whalen. I figured I’d find some underling who knew Amy’s schedule, come up with a time and place to meet her. She might even be right there in the office. I could take her to lunch.
The phone went quiet for a while and then I was talking to someone’s assistant. She worked for a person named Todd and confirmed he’d be the guy to talk to, but he was in a meeting right now. I was told he’d phone me just as soon as he possibly could, if not sooner.
Then I called Red Cabs and tried to learn how to get in contact with Georj Unpronounceable. He was off duty and the dispatcher was cagey but claimed he’d tell the guy to get in touch with me when he came back on stream. I ended the call knowing it would never happen.
So I left the hotel