Doom with a View (12 page)

“That’s ridiculous,” I snapped. “
I
was the one who told Harrison where to look for Bianca in the first place!”

“Hey, don’t yell at me,” Dutch said, putting his hands up in mock surrender. “I’m just telling you how it will likely go down if we get one more mysterious disappearance.”

I scowled, remembering what I’d told the task force the day before, that there would be another abduction soon. “You know what?” I said, still irritated. “They don’t want our help? They don’t have to have it.”

“Abs,” Dutch said with a sigh of his own. “Don’t be like that.”

I knew I was being childish, but it irked me that all my efforts weren’t being appreciated. I didn’t really have long to dwell on it because Gaston was soon back with us. “Agent Harrison is going to stay here and work with the CSIs to make sure this is done right. Jeremy is also staying, and he’ll catch a ride back to Battle Creek with Agent Harrison. In the meantime, I think we should get these two home,” he said, indicating me and Candice. “You both look very tired, and I know we’ve put you through a difficult few days.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said gratefully.

“We know you’re busy and again, we very much appreciate all your assistance in helping us get this far.” He said that last bit like he was confirming what Dutch had hinted at—that Candice and I were officially off the case.

I should have been relieved, but the connection I’d made earlier in the day with Bianca left me feeling bummed about not being allowed to help anymore. I simply nodded when Gaston had finished speaking, and we all walked quietly to the helicopter.

The ride home was thrilling, even though it was dark now and I couldn’t see much. Still, I’d never ridden in a helicopter before. . . . Er . . . scratch that. I’d actually been medevaced out of a wooded area once, but that’s another story. This ride I could actually remember and I wasn’t in and out of consciousness—so it was easier to focus.

We were home around nine and I was asleep by ten.

The next few days were very routine; I got back to my regular schedule, beginning each day with Candice at the gym, and we worked diligently on one of the only cases she had lately. “If this doesn’t pick up soon,” I heard her grouse as she closed the file with a sigh, “I might have to look for a corporate job.”

I could sympathize. My own calendar was woefully thin. I remembered fondly when around this time last year there had been a two-month waiting list to get in to see me. Nowadays you could get in for a session right away.

Still, I wouldn’t be a good friend if I didn’t at least put out my feelers for Candice’s business, and when I did, I came up with something interesting. “You know what, girl?” I said casually as I stared at the far wall and concentrated on the images swirling around in my head. “I think you’re going to be okay.”

“Really?”

I nodded. “I’m getting that this month there might not be a lot of business, but there’s something of a windfall coming your way.”

“Ooooo,” she said dreamily. “I like the sound of that!”

I smiled. “Yeah, but I want to prepare you: The windfall might come with strings.” And then something unsettling poked at me from the ether and I couldn’t help but pause to reflect on it.

Candice must have noticed the pause because she asked, “What is it?”

I looked at her curiously, considering what I had to ask her and how crazy it was going to sound. “Have you been crying or depressed lately?”

Candice tilted her head back and laughed. And if you knew her like I did, you’d get why that was funny. Candice defined cool, calm, and collected. I’d never seen her cry, or get overly emotional. “No,” she said, cocking her head. “Why? Am I about to dissolve into a puddle of tears?”

I shook my head ruefully. “I know, it’s absurd, right? I must be having an off day.”

“You’re due,” she said with a kind smile. “Maybe you should take off and go do something nice for yourself, like get a massage or something?”

“I’ve got a client in twenty minutes,” I said. “Otherwise, I’d be all over that.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ve got some paperwork I could catch up on, but I think I’ll take off a little early today and go see my grandma.”

“How is Madame DuBois?” I asked.

“Crazy as ever. She wants me to help her paint a new chest of drawers for her bedroom.”

“Don’t tell me,” I said, covering my eyes in mock concentration. “Is the color of choice . . . pink?”

Candice giggled. “Wow, you must be psychic!”

Candice’s grandmother was ridiculously fond of pink. Dutch and I had once visited with her, and we’d both felt like we’d fallen into a vat of cotton candy. “Well, have fun with that,” I told her as I got up to move into my office and get ready for my client’s arrival.

“Thanks, hon. If I don’t catch you before I leave, I’ll see you on Monday in the gym.”

My client arrived right on time and I ushered her into my reading room, which is located just off the lobby that both Candice and I share in a lovely little building in downtown Royal Oak.

I was excited to see that I didn’t recognize the woman who booked the session with me—it’s always good to be challenged by reading for a total stranger. She introduced herself as Jennifer Callahan and we sat down for our session.

“The first thing that I’m picking up for you, Jennifer, is a man to your side. I feel like he’s just a little bit older than you, but it’s weird—there’s no romance here, but I know you two share the same space. It feels like this relationship has fallen into the roommate rut.”

Jennifer smiled. “My brother lives with me,” she said.

“Ah!” I said. “Well, that explains it. Okay, so with regard to your brother, does he work in law enforcement? Or is he an attorney or does he do anything with the law?”

“No,” she said slowly.

“Weird,” I said as the image of a badge kept reappearing in my mind’s eye. I told her what I saw and she admitted that her brother had been thinking about applying to the police academy. “He should totally do it,” I said with emphasis. “He’d make a great cop.”

She looked unconvinced. “Do you think he’d be safe?”

“Abso-tootly!” I said, feeling my right side lighten. Then I focused on another series of images. “Holy cow,” I said when I’d gotten a sense of the energy. “Do you work with some sort of hateful woman or something?”

Again Jennifer’s eyebrows lowered in confusion. “No,” she said. “I love my boss.”

I frowned. Swirling around my client was the energy of an awful beast of a woman, clearly unstable, who was causing her a
lot
of havoc. “Then I don’t get what this is all about,” I admitted, “because there is this woman who is right out of a nightmare and has no control over her emotions. I keep feeling like she’s painted you as a target. There is a man in this picture too, however, and I feel like these two used to be a team, but now he’s on your side and she’s not having it.”

Jennifer’s eyes lit up with understanding. “I think you’re talking about my boyfriend’s soon-to-be ex-wife.”

And like the missing piece in a puzzle, it clicked into place. “Oh, yeah!” I said. “That’s got to be it! Wow, she really has it in for you. Did you know she spies on you?”

Jennifer sighed heavily. “My boyfriend, Paul, and I thought we heard someone in the bushes outside my house two nights ago, but when we went to investigate, no one was there.”

“It was her,” I said with conviction. “She’s really unstable, you know.”

“Oh,” Jennifer said with a laugh, “you don’t have to tell me twice!”

Just then I heard the phone ringing in my office and something about that buzzed my radar, but I set it aside because I needed to focus on my client. “She’s also doing something funky with your boyfriend’s accounts or with his money,” I added. “Again, I want you to realize this woman is not thinking rationally, and she’ll pretty much do anything she can get away with to try and hurt both of you.”

“Do you think I’m in physical danger?” Jennifer asked.

I worked that question in my mind for a minute and relaxed when I felt the answer. “No,” I told her. “I think she would stop just short of that. Still, you and your boyfriend need to tread carefully here, especially with regard to his finances.”

“How can we find out what she’s up to?”

As if in answer, I heard the phone in Candice’s office start to ring and my radar gave another little ping. “My office mate is actually a private investigator, and she’s one of the best in the business. I think she could definitely help you out with a little digging.”

Jennifer and I continued with the session for about another twenty minutes before we ran out of time. It was a good session, with some great hits, and she looked a bit dazed at the end. “It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?” I asked as she paid me.

“It is!” she said with a laugh. “I’ve never done this before, so I didn’t know what to expect, and I certainly didn’t think you’d be so detailed and so accurate.”

I resisted the urge to blow on my knuckles . . . but just barely. After she left, I remembered the little ping my radar had sounded when my phone rang, and as I moved toward my office, I noticed the light was still on in Candice’s suite. Curious, I headed there first and was surprised to find her still at her computer. “I thought you were leaving,” I said.

She’d been so focused on her computer screen that she obviously hadn’t heard me come into the doorway, and she jumped in her seat when I spoke. “Just the girl I need to talk to,” she said, recovering quickly, as she indicated the chair in front of her desk. “Take a seat, Abs. We need to talk.”

I frowned. “Uh-oh,” I said as I sat down. “That doesn’t sound good.”

Candice closed the lid to her laptop and regarded me thoughtfully. “I got a call while you were in with your client,” she began.

“I heard the phone ringing,” I said.

Candice nodded and again hesitated before speaking. “It was Jeremy and Jessica Lovelace. They want to hire us.”

My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “They do?”

Candice folded her fingers into a steeple, resting her chin on her hands. “Harrison filled them in on how we wouldn’t be asked back on the case. He tried to assure them that he could handle things from here on out.”

I smiled. “Don’t tell me; let me guess. Jeremy and Jessica didn’t exactly find his reassurances reassuring.”

“Bingo,” Candice said with a wink. “Anyway, they want to hire us as a team to work the investigation.”

“What about Bianca’s mother, Terry?” I asked.

“She’s on board too. She’s been making copies of Bianca’s journals before she hands them over to Harrison. She wants to ensure we have access to as much information as possible.”

My brow furrowed. “Her journals?”

“Don’t you remember?” Candice asked, and when I shook my head, she reminded me that I’d mentioned to Terry that there was a clue in Bianca’s journal about what might have happened to her.

“Oh, yeah,” I said as that came back to me.

“There is a catch to all this, however,” Candice said, and I noticed that her eyes dropped to the desktop.

“And that is?”

“We cannot in any way interfere with the FBI’s investigation. In fact, when Jeremy Lovelace called in a few favors of his own and attempted to get us back on the bureau’s team, he was told by Gaston’s superiors to butt the hell out.”

“Harrison went above Gaston’s head again, didn’t he?”

Candice sighed. “It appears so. I think that asshole knows some other assholes in some pretty high places, which means this might get sticky for Dutch if the FBI becomes aware that we’re nosing around.”

“Great,” I said. “Just what he needs. More trouble.”

“Still, you and I could really use the cash. And Lovelace was willing to agree to our price—which, trust me, I didn’t skimp on when I quoted him an hourly rate.”

“Lord knows we could use the revenue,” I agreed.

“So what do you want to do?”

I thought it over for a little bit and checked in with my crew. My right side began to feel light and there was a sense of peace that settled into my abdomen. “My crew thinks we should go for it,” I told her. “So I’m in.”

“Awesome,” she said happily. “I’ll call the Lovelaces and tell them we’re on. You go home and get some rest. We’ll start this thing early Monday morning.”

“Great, thanks, Cassidy,” I said, getting up.

“Hey, Sundance,” she called to me as I moved through her doorway. When I turned back, she said, “Remember, we need to keep Dutch out of it for now.”

“In other words, you don’t think I should tell him.”

“I don’t,” she said.

I agreed, but my radar let me know that I’d certainly hear about it later.

Monday morning after the gym, Candice and I drove up to Battle Creek again, following the directions we’d been given by Terry Lovelace. We arrived at her beautiful home a few miles east of Jeremy and Jessica’s, and as we trailed up the winding driveway, I noticed how sparkling clean and well tended everything seemed. The gardens and lawn were perfectly maintained. The house looked freshly painted, the white so brilliant it made me squint, and the shutters also appeared to have received a fresh coat of deep green. Mentally, I wondered whether this was how Terry had been dealing with the worry and anxiety over Bianca’s disappearance. It appeared that maybe she’d kept busy on the house to avoid having too much time to think, and I had to give her credit for not crumbling into an unmoving mess, as I might have done in her situation.

We parked next to a silver Mercedes and headed to the door. It opened even before we had a chance to ring the bell. Terry stood there looking pale and frail, and I wondered whether now that she knew Bianca was really gone, the crumbling would begin. “Hello, ladies,” she said with a forced smile. “Please come in.”

We entered the house and were immediately warmed by the heat of a fire in the front room. My first observations were that the inside of the house was even more perfect than the exterior. The carpet had been meticulously vacuumed, each line a symmetrical parallel to the next. No clutter dotted the espresso-stained side tables. Just a bowl of potpourri and a side lamp.