It was a photo of Rose. Rai pulled up the school application photo on his phone and placed them side by side.

The Rose that Cherry had managed to capture was strangely waifish, tousled and open-mouthed; more relatable in her irritation. Her hair was pulled into a feathery curl of ponytail. One hand gripped a pen and the other was shielding whenever she was writing. Bullet points in a purple notebook.

Sao turned the two photos his way. “Candid is best, as they say. The school shot - it’s fine, only I’ve never seen a child wear makeup like that. The effect is rather odd.”

All that was completely invisible to Rai, but he imagined Sao’s eye had more experience with concealers and coverup than his ever would. “Yea. The outfit too.”

Sao picked up Cherry’s photo, flipped it over. “Not film. It feels like standard printer paper.”

“The school has printers. Or she could have used the Business Center.”

“So Cherry must have a camera.”

The candle in the glass flickered. Into the dining room tumbled Guy with their fried onion and garlic mushrooms. Rai stowed both photos away.

Marinell had been the one to greet them in the lobby, where he had been lying passed out on the check-in counter. He snapped into action when he saw Sao’s smiling face. Guy had received them with surprise too - and not happily, if Rai’s impression was correct. He felt a little bad, maybe the kid was looking forward to a break after the busy weekend.

Guy had come loping up the stairs and stopped dead when he saw them in the lobby. “You weren’t kidding.”

“Hello again to you too, Guy,” was Sao’s rejoinder.

Whatever apprehension Rai picked up from Guy’s face when he’d hopped into the room vanished behind a smile that mirrored Sao’s. “I had a feeling, so I made up your room again. If you want it.”

Though he could now pay, Rai didn’t exactly jump at the chance.

But after an hour in the dining room, his stomach full, his coffee cravings sated (for now), things looked different. One more night in the room, or the lounge or the Business Center, seemed more than doable. To sweeten the deal, Guy offered them each a slice of his ‘world famous’ pear tart. “I made two. They go to the school tomorrow, but I’ll just say I took a slice or two for myself.” He leaned over the table, his catlike eyes flashing up when the candlelight hit. “So, any news on Rose? I guess that’s why you’re back.”

“We filed some requests for info,” Rai said. “We’re hanging around until we have something to tell Cherry and Muka. Don’t worry, we’re not being held hostage. I think she’s forgiven us.”

“And you’ll be here for another two days?”

“I hope not. I mean, it’s nice here, and the food-” Rai’s ravaged plate said enough on that topic. “- but I have to get back by Wednesday. I only asked for two days off work.”

“I thought you were a detective. So this isn’t part of your job?”

“I’m an investigator. It’s a little different - I can open and add records for cases as long as I document what I’m doing. Even if I was a police detective, like an officer, I’m based in Central. I couldn’t detain anyone in Interstate.”

“So you’re not armed. Not even handcuffs?”

“What? No.”

Sao was happy to play clueless. He had barely touched his mushrooms. Rai told Guy to get them that pear tart and they came on the nicest plates Guy could find, glistening with honey and dotted with sugar granules and cinnamon.

“If you do manage to get another day off, there’s a farmers’ market in Bower,” Guy said. “I’m definitely going - I wanna pick up peaches. Been a while since we’ve had peach cobbler.”

“If you plan to make anything like this tart out of them, perhaps we will consider an extra night,” Sao said. “So, how long have you been doing deliveries, Guy?”

Guy feigned collapse. “Oh, not this again. I’m not telling you how old I am.”

“I was more wondering how long you’ve known the older folks in town. I’ve been hearing about a man named Lamort.”

“Huh. Who’s talking about him?”

“We heard a bit from Muka,” Sao said, forking up another baked pear. Rai gawked at his lie - but no - at this point in time, it wasn’t a lie. “Did you know him well?”

“Not really. He stood out to me because he lived at the last house on this street. But it was hard to get to know him because he was a shut-in. Man. A long time he’s been gone now.” Guy scratched his head. Digging through his memory. “He was around when I started deliveries. So I did see him regularly for a few years. But he was always really private. I heard he had a family, though I never saw anyone else in the house.”

“A letter scared him, so I heard.”

“Yeah, I think that was it.” Guy gave up on his digging. “You probably heard as much there is to hear from Muka. He knew Lamort pretty well.”

“That makes sense.” The fork tapped down. Sao had polished every crumb of tart off his plate before Rai was halfway through his. “Excuse the strange question - what did Lamort look like when you last saw him?”

“Um. He was an old guy, or he looked old. Tall, but then, even normal grown ups look tall to me. Whitish hair, skinny. For a shut-in he was pretty clean. Classy, you know?”

“I see,” Sao said. “Thank you.” He ignored the scrutiny both Rai and Guy were giving him.

“Anything to help. Do you think he’s related to what happened to Rose…? But he left town ages ago.”

“No. I suppose I was just being nosy.” Sao sat back, touched part of his jaw where a scar was concealed. “Just a clean, classy old man, then.”

Questioning over, Guy cleared their plates and skipped to the kitchen to get their usual post-meal refreshments.

“Get anything interesting out of that?” Rai asked. He wasn’t sure why he was whispering. Their reflections in the dark window looked incredibly suspicious.

“A delicious tart. As for Lamort… I was testing a theory.” Sao rested his hand on the scarred spot again.

—

Rai tipped generously for the meal and paid for four hours in the Business Center. While he did some of the cursory online searches that he had intended to do at the school, Sao talked to Marinell. Rai saw the manager scramble upstairs while Sao smiled his smothering smile and waited. Marinell soon returned with a canvas bag which he handed to Sao like a vassal to his lord.

Rai snuck a look at Cherry’s profile on Storycentral before logging out. Somehow she had found time to start a story about foxes.

Then it was back to Room 218. Since they were so familiar with the trek now, Marinell only followed them to the top of the stairs.

Loosening his coat so the screaming horse was once again on show, Sao put his new bag down on the desk. From it he pulled a threadbare white tunic and linen pants. Rai recoiled from the sight, for no good reason. And Sao saw him.

“Marinell offered to lend me clothes the last time we were here. Since we’re staying a while longer, I thought I’d take him up on it.”

“When was that?”

“When we talked in the kitchen last night. You were entertaining Florien. You’ve been doing really well with the kids.” Sao pulled out another shirt. Homemade tie dye - a yellow and mauve explosion erupting from the chest like a giant bruise. After careful assessment, Sao passed the less subtle of the shirts to Rai. “He didn’t forget you. I asked for a second set.”

“Generous of him.”

“Isn’t it? I’m going to take a shower. No need to sleep in the day’s grime.”

Personal grooming. So that’s what really gripped Sao in that talk about Lamort, the ‘clean, classy old man’.

At least Sao had his horsey sweater; Rai really was sitting in three days’ filth. Three days. He collapsed on the freshly pressed sheets of the (single) bed, peeled off his gloves and threw them down beside Marinell’s blotchy shirt. He checked his phone on instinct - no connection - threw that down too and stared at the ceiling.

Sao crept into view, overhead. Rai felt like he’d laid down and dropped into another dimension. Typically, Sao was the one caught lounging while Rai looked down on him.

“It’s been an interesting trip,” Sao said. “Not a bad time at all.” He could sound very honest when he wanted to. That’s why he was useful to have around. Or maybe he really was being honest. That possibility just made Rai’s nerves flare up.

One more day. They could take Wednesday off too. Rai reminded himself to make the call by tomorrow afternoon. Change the reservation. After all the trouble…

Rai pulled himself back up. He felt like a wreck being dredged from the ocean. “Mind if I shower first?”

—

Rai loitered in the room longer than he had planned, drying off by the heating vent under the window and watching grainy reruns of the same sitcom from two nights ago. Marinell’s tie dyed shirt smelled like floral soap. Rai himself smelled like plum blossom and white musk, as promised by the Langgan branded shower condiments.

Scrubbed until he shone and presumably smelling the same way Rai did, Sao fell into bed and stayed there. Around eleven fifteen, when a particularly confusing episode about recycling hit the credits, Rai left the room as quietly as he could. Guy was coming up from the basement as Rai was heading down. The co-manager (as Sao seemed to like calling him) gave his guest a courteous bow, and slightly less courteous smirk at the shirt. He was headed to the lobby to lock up.

Marinell was nowhere to be seen, but the fire was just recently put out. Traces of smoke and ash hung in the air.

They came to the front hall to find the Business Center already occupied. A little red-headed shape was pecking away at the keyboard behind the frosted glass, muttering to herself.

Rai tried to make out the words. It had been a girl’s voice he thought he’d heard his first night in Temperance. And there had been a thump. Cherry had been behind a lot of yelping and thumping around in the schoolhouse as recently as that afternoon - and she had been in and around the hotel the first night.

Not a fox or racoon after all. Rai was relieved.

But before Rai could stop him, Guy threw open the door.

“Cherry! Again?”

Cherry caught the door before it was fully open and tried to wrestle it back closed. “Leave me alone! Nobody was using it!” She saw Rai and went red, and pulled the door harder.

“You need to pay to use the Business Center!” Guy bawled.

“Just calm down, both of you,” Rai said. “Guy, I’ll pay for her time. Come on, Cherry, I’ll drive you back.” Unless Cherry had driven herself. How had she been getting to the hotel on her own?

“She won’t learn a thing!” Guy gave a yank with his entire back in it.

“I’ll tell the principal she-”

“That won’t work! He just lets her do whatever she wants!” Guy strengthened his grip on the glass. The hinges crunched in a way something attached to glass was probably not meant to.

“Both of you stop! Someone’s gonna break the—!” Rai pressed his gloved hand against the glass. Of course, the damn thing had just been waiting for him to make a move. The second he touched it, one of the bolts holding a door hinge popped off the wall. Tilting with the lack of support, a large crack sliced through the glass, but it didn’t shatter. Yet. Both kids let go instantly and shuffled backward, Guy out and Cherry into the closet, upturning the stand full of stationery.

And here came Marinell up from the basement, all dull footsteps and terrified babbling, and Guy rushed to compose himself. “Cherry, you’re here illegally. This guy is a cop, you know. You keep breaking in and he’ll take you away!”

“Good. I hate it here. I would rather go to jail than live with a bunch of dirty liars.” She brandished her huge book and Guy scrambled behind Rai. “So? Do it!”

“I’m not going to arrest anyone,” Rai said, pushing the door against the wall as gently as he could. “But you need to go back, Cherry.” His voice sounded appropriately calm, or so he thought. “It’s late. Miss Thomi will be worried.”

Gingerly, Cherry emerged from the room, book held tight to her chest like a bomb.

“Yeah, you stress Miss Thomi out.” Guy circled around Rai to avoid Cherry, and hopped into the closet. “And Muka. And you stress me out too. What are you even doing in here all the time?” He laid one hand on the desk and the other on the mouse. “Wedding? 18-plus? What’s this site? Are you looking at porn?”

Cherry ripped herself away from Rai’s side and launched herself into the closet. Guy’s hands came up to shield himself but she just shoved him aside, planted the book under her arm and grabbed the computer monitor with both hands. She pulled, turned, and threw.

The machine hit the ground in front of Rai and bounced, explosively, wires trailing like a black comet. Then she went for the computer tower. It rammed the inkjet printer into the wall with a crunch before she managed to heft it off the desk. Wielded like a sledgehammer, the long plastic case smacked Guy on the hip bone and he howled. Cherry dropped it after one swing and it shattered against the wooden floor, inner parts fizzing and whirring desperately before coming to a stop, dead.

Sao was floating down the stairs now in his baggy borrowed pajamas, like a ghost, or an angel, Rai had always considered them similar enough phenomena. For once, Marinell didn’t have the eyes for him, and stayed gripping the edge of the reception desk, unsure if he should help or dive for cover; paralyzed into doing neither. Guy was steadying himself against the wall, his back turned.

There were a handful of scissors and a box cutter among the fallen stationery and Rai didn’t like the way Cherry was glancing at them. He stomped through the shards of the broken monitor, grabbed her bony wrists, and pulled her out of the room. She barely resisted, and he let go as fast he could - he was probably pulling too hard.

There seemed to be a lot of noise, but nobody was saying words that made much sense to Rai. He left Cherry in the middle of the lobby, under the metal chandelier, and turned to find the whole wretched group staring her down. She reminded Rai of a caged rodent, wary of being pounced at from all angles, ready to bite.

No. She wasn’t so easily trapped. Securing the Omnibus to her side, she pelted out the front door.