“I wouldn’t know. Like I say, lawyers aren’t my thing.”
I sighed. I liked Alma, but it was impossible to be friends with her. Heather was more my style. “I took pictures of the Sun Down being demolished on my phone. I think Viv would like to see them the next time I visit her.”
“I hear they’re giving her medical treatment in prison while she awaits trial,” Alma said.
My heart squeezed. Despite everything, Viv was my aunt. “They’re giving her chemo, but they don’t know if it will work.”
Viv had cancer again. She was going to either die of it or spend the rest of her life in prison. Maybe both.
Maybe neither.
Either way, there was nothing more I could do.
Did I feel good about that, or bad? It depended on the day, on my mood, on whether I felt anger at what Viv had put my mother through or the ache of missing family or admiration at some of the things she’d done. There were times I felt all three at once. This was going to take time—time that Viv, maybe, didn’t have.
“She beat it once,” Alma said. “She can beat it again. She can beat anything.”
“Jeez,” I said. “It almost sounds like you know her.”
“I don’t, of course, but she sounds like an interesting lady. Tell her I’d like to meet her someday.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”
“It’s cold out on Number Six Road. Do you want to come by for a coffee? I don’t care what time it is. I’m a night owl.”
“Me, too,” I said, “but I’m not coming today. I have plans.”
“Is that so,” Alma said again. “It’s about time.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means have fun,” she said, and hung up.
• • •
Nick was wearing jeans and a black sweater. He had shaved and he smelled soapy. He had long ago moved into an apartment in a third-floor walkup, a small place that was sparse and masculine and somehow homey. He had started a partnership with an old high school friend in a renovation company, and he ran two renovation crews in town. Maybe some of the business came because he was notorious, but not all of it did. When Nick put his mind to something, he could do anything he wanted.
“I want to study criminology,” I said to him as we ate a late-night dinner at a Thai place downtown. “I can start in the spring, get credits over the summer before I enroll for the fall.”
He lowered his chopsticks. The restaurant lighting was dim, making his dark hair and his shadowed cheekbones almost stupidly gorgeous. I couldn’t decide if I liked him better with his insomnia stubble or without.
“Are you sure about that?” he asked me.
“Yes.” I poked at my pad thai noodles. “I think I’d be good at it. Do you?”
He looked at me for a long moment. “I think you’d be brilliant at it,” he said, his voice dead serious. “I think the world of criminology isn’t ready for you. Not even a little.”
I felt my cheeks heat as I dropped my gaze to my plate. “You just earned yourself another date, mister.”
“I have to earn them? This is like our tenth.”
“No, it’s our ninth. The time we ran into each other by mistake at CVS doesn’t count.”
“I’m counting it.”
“I was in sweats,” I protested. “I had a cold. Not a date.”
“I sent you home, and then I bought all of the cold meds you needed and brought them to you. Along with food and tea,” he countered. “It was a date.”
I most definitely still had a crush on the former occupant of room 210 of the Sun Down Motel.
“Well, tonight is going to be better,” I told him.
It was. We finished our dinner, then went to the revue cinema for a midnight showing of Carrie. There were exactly fourteen people there. I held his hand through the whole thing. When it was over and we went outside, it was snowing. We barely noticed on the drive back to his apartment. We were too preoccupied.
Like my aunt Viv said, a girl has to lose her virginity somewhere, right?
Hours later, when I lay warm in bed with Nick’s arm over me, I turned toward the window in the darkness. I watched the snow fall for a long time before I finally fell asleep.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my editor, Danielle Perez, for her sage help with this book, and thanks to the rest of the team at Berkley for their hard work and my amazing cover. Thanks to my agent, Pam Hopkins, for everything she does. Thanks to Molly and Stephanie, who read a draft of this book and told me it wasn’t terrible. Thanks as always to my husband, Adam, who understands my need for writing time and makes sure I have it. Thank you to the booksellers and librarians who work so tirelessly to get the word out about my books. And thank you, readers, the ones who keep picking up my books and talking about them. Without you, none of this happens. Thank you so much for reading my stories.
The Sun Down Motel
SIMONE ST. JAMES
Readers Guide
Questions for Discussion
1. Why do you think the author chose to tell this story across two time periods and two points of view? Do you think it was effective? Why or why not?
2. Discuss how each of the victims were described in the media. Do you think the way the media characterized these women played a role in the overall investigation—and the failure by the police to catch the killer? How does their characterization compare to how victims are described by the media today?
3. From the beginning, Viv is determined to uncover who the female ghost is and why she’s haunting the motel. Why do you think this was so important to her? Why do you think she
