Endings by Linda Richards (portable ebook reader .TXT) 📗

No hint of squalor, but far from the four-star places I generally stay when I am on a job. It has been my experience that getting in and out of hotels undetected is best done at a place with a large staff. Hotels so professional it’s possible to remain anonymous. Small places tend to be understaffed. Or worse, run by the owner. In either case, being remembered by someone is more likely in smaller places. And I pretty much never want that.

San Pasado is small enough, however, that there aren’t a lot of options, especially under the circumstances. The hotel I end up in is two brick stories and not far from one of the main streets. Austere but unremarkable. No room service and probably no ghosts.

Once in my room, I drop my bag on the floor and flop on the bed, grabbing the remote as I fall. Nothing much has changed in television land. Though no one has seen any sign of Atwater, the fever pitch has grown. I let the anxious voices lull me into fitful sleep, traveling and fretting having taken their toll. I wake at the sound of a vaguely familiar voice, noticing as I gain consciousness that, since the time I put my head down, the light has gone out of the day. I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep, but it was long enough for me to have missed a West Coast sunset.

On the television, though, is a familiar face to go with the familiar voice. Curtis is standing not far from where I left him, and it must have been filmed around that time, too, because he is standing in sunlight, so it was apparently hours ago.

“Things have continued to be quietly tense here outside William Atwater’s childhood home.”

Quietly tense. I wonder what that even means.

“We had a recent visit from an author, who says she is working on a book about Atwater.”

My blood chills as I see a figure that is clearly me hunched behind the wheel of the rental car. I will myself to breathe. It was a very brief glimpse and the plate of the car was not shown. There is no way I could be recognized from what was revealed on-screen. Still. It feels like a close call. It feels like the possibility of endings.

“Though she said it was early days, this reporter was left with the impression that it would be a work of merit.”

“Curtis, can you share the author’s name?”

“I’m not at liberty to say, Jennifer,” he says blithely, and I find myself looking quizzically at the screen, head cocked, a smile forming. “But I recognized her as a leader in the world of true crime.”

And with that, my smile is full. No one is looking for me. No one knows to look for me. They are looking for someone sorta famous, and I am not that.

“Thanks, Curtis,” I mumble, knowing as I do so that the half-lie was for his benefit, not mine.

I get myself up and together and walk the few blocks into the heart of town. I am hungry and restless and I walk into both of those feelings.

The town is as charming as promised. I prowl around, looking for both food and inspiration. I keep to the shadows and see what I can see. That man over there—might he know something? That woman pushing a pram—had she recently seen someone suspicious? I wonder if this is how it is with small towns in general; when it’s possible to know everyone, everyone is both suspect and safe.

I settle on a couple of slices of pizza in a cobbled square, and sit in a courtyard while I nibble, watching people go past while I wonder and consider. At this moment, the task I have set myself seems larger than I am. This thought nearly paralyzes me.

There comes a time, after I’ve eaten, when I am no longer hungry and I feel there is no more for me to learn just by hanging out and watching. I take the long way through the town and back to my hotel.

Once there, I do it right this time: slip out of my clothes, leave them in a pile on the floor, turn off the television and the endless bleating of earnest and alarmed voices. And, finally, I pull the curtains shut and turn off the light. And then I sleep, sleep, sleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

WHEN I WAKE, I discover I have been asleep for a freakishly long time. It was maybe ten when I lay down, and now, it is ten again: I have slept an entire half of a twenty-four-hour cycle away.

I get ready for the day, thinking I will grab breakfast on the road on the way to the Valley de Oro, but then I realize I am hungry now. And it’s not like anyone is expecting me. Once I shower and get myself ready for the day, it is after eleven and never mind breakfast, I’m ready for lunch.

Wandering through the streets I’d walked the night before, I am hit again with the double-barreled charm of this place. It doesn’t take long for me to find an eatery that is charming, as well.

I sit on a patio at the back of the restaurant at a wrought-iron table right next to an actual bubbling brook. The servers all have the clean look of the college students they probably are, and all the staff have names like Kelsey and Madison.

My server is a lanky blond who identifies herself as MacKenzie. I stop myself from saying “of course it is” when she tells me that’s her name.

The place is a microbrew, so I order beer in a tall glass. When it comes, it is pale and fruity. A grapefruit honey amber ale or something else that doesn’t generally belong in beer. I order it, because it is today’s special brew, but I don’t really pay attention. And, since it’s first thing in the morning for me, I get