Мэри Эндрюс - The Newcomer

“I was trying, but then Merwin interrupted me, complaining about the damned shuffleboard cues, and I guess I lost track of what I was doing,” Ava said. “What do we do now?”

Letty clicked over to the bookings for the rest of the motel. “Hmm. The Feldmans are checking out on Easter morning. Can you turn the unit that quickly? Will Anita come in to clean on Sunday, or Monday morning?”

“We’ll have to get it turned, even if I have to do it myself,” Ava said, sounding resigned. “I don’t want to disappoint new guests. Especially since they’re booked for ten days. And at the new rate.”

Letty nodded. “Okay, I’ll email the guest and tell them we’ve had a slight hiccup, but the unit they’ll be in is just as nice. Maybe we can give them a free breakfast coupon for Sharky’s, as a consolation prize.”

“You’re a natural at this, you know it?” Ava said, beaming at her assistant manager. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d been in hotel management your whole life.”

“Not my whole life,” Letty said modestly. “But I was doing residential property management, which is sort of the same thing, back in New York, before I came down here.”

“Since you’re here, I’m going to go run my errands. I should be back around three, if anyone comes looking for me,” Ava said.

Once her boss was gone, Letty threw herself into work, imputing all the existing motel reservations from Ava’s handwritten logbook into the new software. It was arduous, mind-numbing work, just the thing she needed to keep from thinking about Evan Wingfield.

Maya contentedly colored in her workbook, humming under her breath, pausing occasionally to show off her work.

Isabelle arrived in the office after lunch. She slung her backpack onto the reception counter and launched a stream of questions at Letty.

“How was your meeting with the FBI agent? What’s she like? I mean, did she have a gun and stuff like that? What happens next? You’re not under arrest, right?”

“Whoa!” Letty said. “And lower your voice, please. The meeting went okay. Agent Hill is pretty businesslike. If she had a gun, I didn’t see it. I’m not under arrest, yet.” She motioned toward Maya, who was beaming at Isabelle, pointedly waiting to be greeted.

“Hiya, Maya Papaya,” Isabelle said, picking up the workbook to examine the child’s work. “Wow, this is awesome coloring!”

“I know,” Maya said, tugging at her babysitter’s hand. “Now we go to the beach, right, Isabelle?”

“I’ll tell you the rest later,” Letty promised.

Letty was puzzling over one of Ava’s nearly illegible scrawls when the office-door bell chimed. She looked up to see Vikki Hill, dressed in running shorts and a sports bra, her hair gathered into a ponytail. Her nose was smeared with white sunblock and her sunglasses dangled from a strap around her neck.

“Did you hear from Evan?” Letty blurted.

“No. And I hate to say it, but you might be right. I texted Wingfield to tell him I’d found someone to do the job, and now he’s gone dark on me.”

“Is that unusual?”

“Up until today, he was texting and calling me every day, sometimes twice a day, wanting to know what I was doing about finding you. But now, I’m a little concerned. I don’t want to text him again, because I don’t want to seem overeager.”

“What can you do?” Letty asked.

“The one thing I’m terrible at. Wait. In the meantime, I’m going to go for a run on the beach to keep from going crazy. But I’ve got my phone with me.” Agent Hill looked around the office. “Where’s DeCurtis?”

“Home, I guess,” Letty said. “You’ll let me know if you hear from Evan, right?”

“Definitely.”

The afternoon and early evening dragged on. She was thankful that Maya was tired after her day at the beach, and by seven thirty, she’d fed her and tucked her into bed.

Letty tidied up the kitchen, then went out to her tiny patio garden. She watered the plants, clipped dead leaves and spent blooms, then went back inside and tried, in vain, to immerse herself in a yellowing paperback Mary Higgins Clark mystery plucked from the Murmuring Surf lending library.

When her phone dinged to signal an incoming text, she was so rattled she dropped both the book and the cup of tea she’d been sipping.

The message was from Sierra, Isabelle’s hacker friend.

R U home? I’ve got something!

Letty grabbed a towel and mopped up the spilled tea, then texted back.

Yes. Home. Come now.

She heard the buzz of the Vespa approaching, and walked out onto the breezeway to wave the girl inside.

“Maya’s asleep,” Letty cautioned as they entered the unit. She gently closed the bedroom door.

“Oh man,” Sierra said, as she removed her helmet and began to unload her backpack onto the table. “This was a blast. I mean, it was crazy complicated, but I was totally into figuring it out, once I got started. It’s definitely high-tech, but it was WiFi enabled, like I thought. Normally these cameras only sync up to the network where the camera was installed. Because, like, if you’re watching your nanny, you’re not watching her everywhere. You’re just watching her at your house, right?”

“Oh-kay, I guess that makes sense.”

“But this camera—it was uploading to your sister’s iCloud.”

Sierra flipped the top of her laptop and powered it up. “I didn’t watch all of it,” Sierra said, as she clicked some keys and brought up Tanya’s iCloud. “Here’s one of the video clips. I think Ellie must have been sitting on a table nearby, because the video quality is better than a lot of the other stuff.”

To Letty’s surprise, the video was in color. The image was blurry, but as soon as Sierra tapped the arrow on the film clip, she immediately recognized Evan’s voice, and saw him, in soft focus, sitting at a table, drinking a glass of red wine.

“Maya!” His voice was sharp, irritated. “Stop dropping food on the floor. You’re a big girl now. Big girls don’t do that.”

Letty heard but couldn’t see Maya, who began crying. “I’m sowwy Daddy.”

A woman’s voice came from off camera. “Evan honey, leave her be. It’s a few Cheerios. I’ll sweep it up when she’s done.”

“That’s not the point, Juliette. She’s turning into a little slob, because Tanya lets her get away with crap like that.”

Evan’s girlfriend moved into camera range. She was lovely, slender with long hair and dressed in a flowing, gauzy green caftan. Just his type, Letty thought. Juliette began massaging his shoulders. “You’re still cranky because of your meeting with the co-op board. Can’t you let it go?”

“No! You don’t understand. They’ve hired a lawyer, and they’re threatening to take me to court over my units in that building. I haven’t been able to rent them out for nearly two months now. Do you have any idea what that’s costing me in lost income, not to mention the legal fees I’m looking at?”

“Well, what are you going to do about it?”

He sighed. “The debt service on those units is killing me. Looks like I might have to sell.”

“Oh no,” she laughed. “The great Evan Wingfield is going to sell? I thought you only bought.”

“Not funny,” he snapped. “The good news is, my girl Vikki is working out great. That last city inspector was a pain in the ass. Every time I turned around, he had his hand out. Lucky for me, I heard he got canned. Vikki’s gonna work out just fine.”

“How do you know you can trust her?” Juliette asked.

“I just know. I get vibes from people. Vikki’s vibe is mellow. She’s not greedy. Realizes she’ll make more in the long run if she works with me.”