Left on St. Truth-Be-Well by Amy Lane

didn’t trust him.
    “Yeah, but you gave them your no-haaabla-English schtick, and they’re dumb enough to bang girls in the hotel room, so they buy it. Now you’re gonna talk to me, and I already know you’re full of bullshit, so you’re going to tell me the truth. Where’d that asshole come from?”
    Jarred looked left and right, like someone was going to be pounding down that ghost-ridden corridor ready to stop him from spilling his guts. As. If. Even the cockroaches were avoiding this place now.
    “Look, I don’t know where he came from, okay? I was using the room upstairs… well, I’ve got another deal like I’ve got with Gail, so I was surprised when Bea checked you in up there. There were people in the room downstairs, and I figured she’d check you in next to them. It’s easier to clean, right? Just go from room to room? But she didn’t. And I realized that while there were supposed to be guests down there, she hadn’t been requesting service specifically for that room. There was a couple of guys down there, honeymooning like. For a while, they needed soap and shampoo and toilet paper all the fucking time, but suddenly she cuts it off. I don’t know why. I know I say something about the smell and she makes it disappear. I think maybe there’s dead rats in the plumbing or something, and the two guys, they took off, but I didn’t say a damned thing, and then the cops got here!”
    Carson dropped him abruptly. “Wonderful. So all you know is that there’s rats in the plumbing and the two honeymooners disappeared. How come nobody else notices anything? Where are all the frickin’ people here? This is a resort town, dammit!”
    Jarred shrugged. “Well, business ain’t been great, you know? I mean, there’s the lifers, over on the other side of the building. You saw all the decorated windows and stuff?”
    Carson had—the sliding glass windows that looked onto the balcony were decorated with glass stickers and there’d been wind chimes and everything. It had been colorful, and a little bit freaky too, because Carson couldn’t imagine the sort of weird curve your life would have taken to find yourself living in a crumbling hotel on the edge of the sea. He’d been trying to imagine it, actually—ever since he’d seen those bright rainbow-y stickers and wind chimes—and was drawing a big fricking zero. He needed some more experience of the town, he guessed.
    “Yeah, I saw them.”
    “Well, most of us just sort of tend to those people. Sometimes there’s a convention, and Bea calls all the local talent. High school kids of her old friends. She’s sort of a pathetic old broad, but she does know how to network. When she needs help, help comes. But anyway, we take care of them and then sort of send service quick if too many people check in.”
    “So where’d the lye come from?”
    “Who’s lying?”
    “Oh God, spare me! The fucking lye, the shit that was all over the dead body to keep it from stinking. Where do you keep that?”
    Jarred’s squinty little eyes narrowed to slits. “Well, we have a fuckton of it in the maintenance shed out by the east wing. You know, big fish come up and die and rats—”
    “In the plumbing, yeah. I hear you. Okay, so there was lye on the premises to keep the dead guy from getting stinky, and someone else broke the lock—wait a minute.”
    Because the guy’s eyes had gotten all shifty all of a sudden.
    “You broke the lock?”
    “Well, those guys, they were in there all the time, and they finally went out, and I just wanted to see if they had anything good!”
    Carson’s head hurt. It could have been hunger, but given all the talk about dead bodies and rats in the plumbing, he was thinking maybe not. “Okay, so the guys finally leave the room together, and you use the time to break in. There’s nothing there—”
    “Not a thing! Man, it was either on them or locked in the car!”
    “No shit. Stassy’s from Chicago, he fucking knows better. So you