Adam returned to our cruiser from a modest yellow cottage on the opposite side of the highway, where Mrs. Norris had lived since FDR was elected. We’d flipped a coin to decide who got to talk to her this time.
“Mrs. N can’t give us many details about her mystery stalker,” he reported. “She calls him Snuffle Man. Said his heavy breathing sounded like some kind of obscene phone call.”
“And this was last night?”
“Early this morning. Around five o’clock or so, before daylight. She was sleeping, but Snuffle Man woke her up he was so loud. He was right outside the open window.”
“And is she sure it was a person? Sounds like it could be a deer snorting to me.”
“Yeah, Mrs. N says she screamed and grabbed her shotgun and went running to the window. You don’t mess with a double-barreled ninety-five-year-old who sleeps in the raw. She made sure to tell me that, by the way, like I’ll ever get that image out of my head. Anyway, she spooked whoever it was, and he took off. She thinks he headed across the highway to the motel.”
“But she couldn’t give a description of him?”
“No. Too dark to see.”
I peered up the asphalt driveway at the Rest in Peace Motel, or the Peaceful Rest, if you want to be fussy about its real name. Rose had inherited the place two years earlier when her parents died in a car accident. This was where she’d grown up, but I knew Rose had never wanted to be in the motel business like her parents. She liked to be on the go, and running the Rest in Peace kept her inside the office nearly every single day, which she hated. She was fixing it up and already had plans to sell it as soon as she could find a willing buyer.
Rose wasn’t married, and she was an only child. It’s funny, when we were kids, I was a little jealous of her because she knew who her parents were. And then, just like that, her mom and dad were gone. You’d think that kind of tragedy might have brought two old friends closer together again, but it really didn’t. I offered to stay with her for a while after the accident, but she was pretty firm in saying no. I knew that Rose and I were never going to hunt for the Ursulina together the way we did as kids, but I still missed the closeness we had in those days.
The motel was an L-shaped one-story building with twelve rooms. The doors were all freshly painted red, and blooming flower boxes decorated the windows. A dense stand of pines towered behind the motel walls. It was the high season, and every door had a car parked in front of it. The highway advertisement featured two painted signs dangling from hooks below the motel’s name. One said No Pets and the other said No Vacancy.
“Full house,” Adam commented.
“Yeah, let’s go see if Rose remembers any snuffly breathers.”
We climbed the driveway to the bungalow in the woods that doubled as the motel office and Rose’s residence. We opened the swinging screen door and went inside. The television behind the motel counter was blaring a home fix-up show, but no one was in the office. I saw real estate books on the desk — Rose was going after her realtor’s license — and another laminated sign reminding guests about the no-pet policy. Around here, pets were prone to wandering into the woods and getting eaten.
I rang the counter bell.
“Hey, Rose, you around? It’s Shelby.”
The back door of the small house was cracked open, letting in a few flies that buzzed around us. I heard a muffled reply, and not long after, Rose appeared in the doorway, carrying half a dozen clay flower pots planted with daisies and African violets. She wore a camouflage tank top and jean shorts underneath. Rose had always carried a couple more pounds than she liked, and her exposed stomach had the tiniest roll. Her skin was moist with sweat and dirty with paint and potting soil. Her reddish-brown hair was tucked under a beret.
“Hey, Shelby,” she said. “Hey, Adam. Have you been here long?”
“Just got here.”
“Oh, good. Sorry I’m such a mess. I was out in the garden, and I’ve been touching up paint on the doors half the day.” She dropped into the office chair and swatted away a fly with one of her motel brochures. “What’s up? You guys find Jeremiah yet?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Damn, that’s so awful. He’s such a great kid. I can’t believe this. I just saw him yesterday.”
“Where was this?”
“Right here at the motel. Jeremiah and Adrian both help me out sometimes during the summer.”
“Doing what?”
“Oh, Adrian moves furniture and other heavy stuff. Jeremiah helps me unload boxes. Soap, shampoo bottles, new towels, that kind of thing. Ellen likes to make sure the kids have plenty of summer chores, and there’s never a shortage of things to do around here. Plus, Jeremiah’s a little chatterbox, and I like that. He hangs out around the office with me.”
Adam and I exchanged a glance.
“Does he meet a lot of your guests?” I asked.
“Some, sure.”
“And you said he was over here yesterday?”
“For a couple of hours in the morning.”
“Did he seem okay?”
“Oh, yeah, he was fine.”
“Did anything unusual happen?”
“Unusual? No, just the same old, same old. Guests check in, guests check out, guests always need something. It’s go-go-go all day long.”
“Do you remember Jeremiah talking with any of your guests yesterday?”
“I suppose he did, but I don’t remember anyone specifically. People assume he’s my kid, so they talk to him.”
“What was he doing while he was here?”
“Not much. I was too busy to put him to work, so he was batting around a shuttlecock outside for a while, until he lost it in the trees. Then he was working on a jigsaw puzzle in the corner.”
“Did he mention having problems with anybody?”
“Problems? You mean, like with one of my guests? No, he didn’t say anything like that.”
“Mrs. N says she had a Peeping Tom outside her window last night. She thinks it was someone from the motel. Did she talk to you about that?”
Rose rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah, of course, she did. Every week it’s something different with her. Complaining is what keeps Mrs. N alive.”
“Do you have any idea who this man was?”
“Not a clue.”
“She said he breathed really loud. Does that remind you of anybody staying here? Like a guest with allergies or something like that?”
“A loud breather? Seriously? You think I pay attention to that? The only problem I have is with people who are too loud at other things. Moms don’t like it when the walls start shaking right next to their kids’ heads.”
“What about men staying here on their own?” Adam asked. “Do you have anybody in a room by themselves? No wife or girlfriend tagging along?”
“I don’t get it, why are you guys so on about this? Jeremiah’s missing, and you’re worried about somebody peeping Mrs. N?” Rose cocked her head, trying to figure us out. Then a flush of horror spread across her face. “Oh, man, you don’t think—? One of my people?”
“My father asked us to cover all the bases,” I explained. “The thing is, if Jeremiah was hanging out here yesterday, maybe he met somebody...”
Rose swore. She took off her beret, wiped her forehead, and put it back on. “This sucks. I can’t believe it.”
“Single men, Rose,” Adam repeated. “Anybody around here fit the bill?”