A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

hers, gathering dollar bills. She leans into the back seat and presses
them into my hand. “Check into your room. Get the key,” she says.
“And what if I don’t?” I ask, though I watched with my own eyes
what Bea did to Shelby. I’ve witnessed the cover-up, the lies. Hardpressed,
Bea is capable of anything.
“You don’t want anything to happen to Delilah, do you?” she asks,
and there’s a glimmer of hope: Delilah is alive.
Unless Bea is lying to me.
Bea gets out of the car. She tucks the knife into the back pocket of
her jeans, and hides it beneath the hem of her shirt. She comes
around the side of the car and opens the door for me. It takes me a
minute to get to my feet. I’m unbalanced, my head still throbbing.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Meredith. I will be just outside watching.
Remember, I’m the only one who knows where Delilah is. Don’t test
me.” I swallow hard. I don’t know what Bea has done with Delilah.
But if she’s alive, I have to get back to her. I have to do what Bea
says. I have to behave, for Delilah’s sake.
Bea follows me to the motel office. She stands far enough back
that security cameras, if the motel has them, wouldn’t reach. The
clerk takes my cash and hands me a key. She doesn’t look up long
enough to see that I’m not right.
Bea and I walk to the room. She tells me to unlock the door. With
shaking hands, I do. She tells me to turn on the light, to close the
blinds. She touches nothing. I’m sensitive to this.
“What are you going to do to me, Bea?”
She doesn’t say.
The motel room is squalid. The carpeting is stained. The plaster
flakes off the walls.
“Delilah is sick,” I tell her, pleading now. “She’s overdue for
medicine. Her fever will be back by now. She’ll be burning up. She’ll
need Tylenol.”
Bea says nothing apropos of this. Instead, “I need you to find
paper and a pen.” I do what she says. I don’t ask. I go rummaging
through drawers to find what Bea needs. But this isn’t the kind of
place to have free paper and pens. Instead, I come across an
outdated phone book in a drawer. I tear a page from it. Bea has a
pen. She wipes it on a sleeve before passing it to me.