“Yes, ma’am,” I said, giving her a smile that never failed me. “Any idea if our friend Murphy has checked in yet?” I asked, figuring now was as good a time as any to put feelers out. Coach occupied himself by walking through the lobby—decorated in that shabby chic old lady way of New England inns—and looking over the books in one of the cases on each side of the fireplace.
“Murphy?” the woman asked, frowning. “You’re our only guests,” she told me.
“Hmm,” I said, pretending to seem confused. “Maybe he decided to stay at the campground.”
“They’re very popular,” she confirmed. “Most people come here for the outdoors,” she added.
“Sure they’re nice,” I said as I took the keys—actual keys, not cards—from her hand. “But I will always appreciate a private bathroom and a bed off the ground,” I told her, watching as she beamed even more.
“Breakfast is from six to seven,” she told me. “And we do have a dining room, if you are interested in eating here.”
“Are you cooking?” I asked, leaning on the desk, laying it on thick.
“I sure am,” she said with a proud nod.
“Then we will definitely be interested,” I told her, watching as she flushed.
“Come on. Let me show you to your rooms,” she said, moving out from behind the desk.
The rooms were a lot like the lobby.
Bold carpets, colorful, busy wallpaper, too many colors and patterns in that cluttered, grandmother’s house kind of way.
But, hey, it was a warm place to crash.
Because it was cold as fuck out here compared to home. And if our days included walking the town, the campgrounds, and the fucking forest, we were going to be happy for the fireplaces we each had. And the hot water in the pipes, even if it did take them a while to get going.
The first night was mostly a bust.
We hit the town to grab some basic supplies at the general store, asking some locals if they’d seen our friend Murphy, deftly side-stepping questions about his appearance because the guy was a fucking ghost, it seemed, but getting nowhere.
So we’d had dinner at the inn, then crashed, deciding to hit the campgrounds the next day.
I woke up just in time to grab the tail end of breakfast, which was a spread of some bagels, eggs, and sausage patties with orange juice. It wasn’t Detroit’s famous breakfasts, but it was food. Fuel. For a day when we were going to need it.
“Your friend already had his breakfast,” the inn owner, Maria, told me as I made a sandwich of the bagel, egg, and sausage, and looked around. “He is on the back deck… meditating,” she said, uttering the word as if she were claiming he was doing some sort of animal sacrificial ritual or something.
But, yeah, this wasn’t exactly LA where shit like meditating and yoga were common. Besides that, it always seemed to surprise people that someone like Coach, who looked like a walking criminal record—which he was—actually did shit like clearing his mind with extensive meditation and yoga practices.
He also read a shitton of books, built shit, and entertained himself by pulling pranks on the corrections officers who’d made his time incarcerated miserable.
He was a complex sort of guy.
An hour later, when Coach finally breezed back inside, we made our way out for the day, hanging around at the campgrounds, mentioning our pal Murphy to anyone who struck up a conversation with us.
But no one had heard the name.
And with a name like that, people tended to remember.
It wasn’t a busy time of year for the campgrounds, either, with only two families, a few sets of buddies out for some hunting, and a few solo travelers seemingly here for the hiking and shit.
“I know,” I said, feeling Coach’s gaze on my profile as we sat at the bar in town, holding lukewarm beer, trying to unfreeze our limbs from a long day out in the cold.
He didn’t have to say it.
If he wasn’t in the town, and he wasn’t at the campgrounds, that only left the houses and cabins. None of which we could casually approach like we could people in town or in the camps. And the people out there might not be as friendly as those we’d come across already.
“Hey,” a voice called, making both of us turn to find the guy who’d been working at the gas station looking at us. “These are the guys looking for Murphy,” he said, eyes hazy, face flushed, clearly a few more rounds into the night than we were. And it was early. But I guess there wasn’t much else to do around here, especially in the cold season. His arm was thrown around an equally drunk-looking guy’s shoulder as he led him over toward my side.
“That’s us,” I agreed, nodding.
“This is my buddy, Dick,” he said, and just barely seemed to manage to hold back a snicker at the older guy’s expense. “And guess what?” he asked.
“What?” I asked.
“He knows Murphy!” the gas attendant, Jake, I think his name was, said. Faces and names were starting to blur already.
“Oh yeah?” I asked, trying not to sound too eager.
“Yeah, he does septic,” Jake supplied.
“Ain’t glamorous work,” Dick started.
“But someone’s gotta do it,” Coach piped in.
“That they do. Always shit to deal with,” Jake added, chuckling at his own… I guess we could call it a ‘joke.’
“Anyway, someone bought one of the cabins way out a bit,” Jake went on, and I was silently thankful for alcohol and the way it loosened up lips.
“Yeah, and the last owner had been using the old outhouse still,” Dick said, shrugging it off as if that was common, not straight out of a fucking nineteenth-century novel. “But the new owner wanted some septic. So I went out there to install it.”
“And you met Murphy?” I asked, trying to move this conversation along.
“Yeah,” Dick said, giving me a sly smile I didn’t quite understand. “I met her, alright,” he said, and I felt like the wind had gotten kicked out of me.
Her?
He’d met her?
Murphy was a woman?
I mean, this wasn’t the eighties or nineties or even early aughts. It wasn’t exactly rare for women to be gang leaders and kingpins and explosive experts.
Hell, I’d met women who ran all sorts of empires.
And Murphy, well, there were female Murphys, even if they were rarer than male ones.
“Woulda done more than just meet her, if you know what I mean,” Dick added with an exaggerated eyebrow wiggle.
I knew what he meant.
And I liked a good time with a woman more than most men. That said, I also knew that women didn’t appreciate repairmen there to do a job getting all creepy with them.
I didn’t know how old Murphy was, but Dick had to be in his late fifties, and looked every single day of it.
“Yeah, she’s easy to look at,” I said.
“Hey,” Jake said, looking momentarily sober. “Didn’t you say Murphy was a guy?”
“Must be mistaken,” I said, shaking my head.
“Easy to look at,” Dick scoffed. “Hottest thing I’ve seen in a long, long time,” Dick clarified.
“Is her cabin hard to get to?” I asked, ignoring the shit about her looks. I could practically hear Slash in my head when he found out the person we were looking for was a chick.