Shame

another hotel under the name of Sue Price. She had considered switching hotels but had decided against it. The Shame story was breaking, and as much as she didn’t like it, Elizabeth was part of that story. Journalists would be trying to track her down because of her past association with Gray Parker. She didn’t want to lead them inadvertently to the Parker family.
    The night auditor handed her the keys, pointed out the direction she should go to park, and told her to enjoy her stay. Henry looked more asleep than not by the time she left the desk.
    Elizabeth had parked her car out of sight of the front desk. She opened the door to a different make and model car than what she had written on the registration card and for a moment wondered if there was a good reason for her having lied, or whether she just lied from habit.
    Janet and James were asleep in the backseat, but Anna was only too awake. Her eyes were wide open, and she kept shaking her head as if to deny all that had happened.
    Elizabeth handed her a key. “Room two-two-four,” she said. “Better remember the number. All the rooms here look alike.”
    “Remember when hotel keys used to have the room numbers on them?” Anna said, looking at the key. “Lots more security these days, but nobody feels more secure.” Her head kept swiveling ever so slightly, saying,
No, no, no.
    “The name you’re registered under is Vera Macauley. Say it aloud three times.”
    “What?”
    “I always do that when I check into a hotel under an assumed name. It makes me remember who I am while I’m there.”
    “I’ll remember.”
    “In the middle of the night? When the phone rings and a voice you don’t know says, ‘Mrs. Macauley?’ It’s easy to forget.”
    Anna reluctantly complied: “Vera Macauley, Vera Macauley, Vera Macauley.”
    “And now put a mental picture in your head of being near a tamale.”
    “Near a tamale?”
    “Rhymes with Vera Macauley. It’s easier to remember images than names.”
    “You always travel under an assumed name?”
    “Yes.”
    The man from the radio show wasn’t the first to tell her he wanted her dead. There had been others. Many others.
    “Do you like living like that?”
    Elizabeth didn’t answer. It was a way of life, but in hindsight she wasn’t sure it was the life she would have chosen. She remembered how Gray Parker had warned her of the consequences of “looking into the abyss.” Too bad he hadn’t offered her a warning about his own son.
    “You’re going to have to explain your new name to the children,” Elizabeth said. “I suggest that you, and you alone, answer the phone.”
    “How long do you think we’ll be hiding?”
    “It’s hard to say.”
    It actually wasn’t. They would be the media’s big game until her husband was captured, but Elizabeth didn’t want to tell her that, at least not yet.
    Anna sighed. “Now I know why people confess to crimes they didn’t commit. You get so beaten up by the questioning, you just want it to end.”
    The questioning wasn’t over, just deferred, but Elizabeth didn’t remind her. Anna had promised to keep Lieutenant Borman informed of all her movements. Not that he had taken her at her word. Detectives Holt and Alvarez had followed them in an unmarked car to the hotel.
    “You and the children are going to have to keep a low profile while you’re here,” Elizabeth said. “If the media track you down, I’ll find you another place to stay.”
    “Under yet another name?”
    “Yes.” Elizabeth noticed that Anna’s head shaking had stopped—a good sign. She offered up a division of labor: “I’ll bring up the bags,” she said, “and you bring up the kids.”
    “Deal.”
    Elizabeth caught her head dropping forward. There was no time for sleep, she knew, but her body needed to be reminded of that. She forced her shoulders back and took a deep breath. Anna was in the next room, trying to coax her children to sleep for a few more hours. Janet and James had slept through all the excitement of the night before. It was just as well. They’d missed their father on the eleven o’clock news. The Sheriff’s Office had identified him as a fugitive wanted for questioning in the murder of Teresa Sanders, but the whole story was yet to be told. Those revelations would come out at the sheriff’s nine o’clock news conference. Instead of wearing his usual designer suit, Elizabeth thought, the sheriff should consider wearing asbestos.
    She looked at her