No Time Like Mardi Gras (6 page)

“If I did that, I’d have to tell them who the other half of
The Ex Factor
is so y’all could communicate. Are you okay with that?”

Not many people—five, to be exact—knew he was the Ex-Man of
The Ex Factor.
He didn’t need the publicity for Rainstorm, as the Venn diagram of “People Who Read Callie’s Blog” and “People Who Play Zombie Apocalypse Games” didn’t have a large intersection, and it might actually work against him among the gaming community if it got out. And Callie had agreed to the secret—mainly because most people would look askance at dating advice from someone they assumed was socially awkward,
Star Trek
obsessed and living in his parents’ basement because he designed games. The secrecy of his identity had been played up on the blog so long that the Ex-Man was its own local celebrity. Callie had no desire to leak that info now, but a guest blogger for her would require someone else to know.

Damn it.

It would be so much easier to turn her down by email, which was most likely why Callie had come in person to ask this favor. “Let me think about it. I’ve got too much going on right now.”

Callie started to say something else, but he stopped her. “Seriously. Not now.”

Callie’s head cocked to the side. “What’s wrong?”

He knew exactly what she was asking—he knew her far too well not to—but he’d rather play ignorant and not go diving into his psyche at the moment. “I just told you—glitches. And they’ve got to be fixed before the news spreads and affects the launch.”

“I know that’s what you said, but things have messed up before, and there’s never been a bit of code you couldn’t wrangle into submission. There’s something else going on with you.” She sighed. “First, you blow all of us off on Fat Tuesday without any explanation—”

He rolled his eyes. “Since when do I owe you an explanation for my whereabouts?”

Callie made a face at him, but ignored the comment otherwise. “Eric says you’ve been grumpy for days now. What’s the problem? Can I help?”

The offer was sincere, that much he knew for certain. And while he appreciated it, he had no intention of bringing any more people into this little melodrama. “Unless you have software experience that I’m unaware of—and if so, you can start taking care of your own website—I don’t think you’ll be much help. So...”

Callie got that worried look on her face. “It’s not your mom, is it? Is she off her meds again?”

She was one of the few people on earth who would have guts enough to ask straight out like that. And the only reason she could get away with it was that she’d been there—both physically as a witness and as emotional support for him at some of the worst times. Jesus, the last thing he needed was his mother going manic right now on top of everything else. He paid a neighbor to make sure his mother took her meds, but it had been awhile since he’d checked in...

He didn’t like having a memory leak in the programming to deal with, but it beat the hell out of the kind of chaos his mother could create. “No, Mom’s fine.”

She opened her mouth to say something else, but he cut her off with a look. Callie closed her mouth quickly. She had a certain amount of leeway—enough to ask but not enough to push the topic, and she knew it.

A second later, her eyebrows pulled together and she cocked her head. She pushed off the couch and came to perch on the edge of his desk. “What’s that? It’s pretty, but I don’t think it’s quite your style.”

He looked where she was pointing, but it was totally unnecessary. Only one thing on his desk matched that description.
The cause of my bad mood.
“A watch.”

“That I can see.” She picked it up to examine it and let out a low whistle. “I know this brand. Is it real? Because if it is, it’s not cheap.”

He knew that, too. He’d had to look up the brand online, only to be more confused by the information. Jamie had seemed so
normal,
but she’d been wearing a thousand-dollar watch—or a really great knockoff—in the French Quarter on Fat Tuesday.

She smiled as though she was onto something. “It’s also a
ladies’
watch. A gift, I presume?”

Damn it. Now Callie was intrigued.

The smile faded as she looked closer. “Uh-oh. Do you know the clasp is broken?”

He tried to be casual, pretending to be looking at his screen. “Yep. That’s how I ended up with it.”

“So you just found it on the street?” He shrugged. Callie leaned across the desk and poked him until he turned his attention to back to her. Then she just stared at him, eyes narrowed, and waited. He knew that look, and damn it,
that
was the problem with remaining friends with your ex-girlfriend. She knew too much, knew him too well, for him to get away with prevarications or vagueness. When he didn’t say anything, she poked him again. “Spill.”

Lie and drag this out or just tell the truth and get it over with?
Decisions.
Figuring the quickest way to get Callie off his desk would be to just tell her, he decided to tell. But not all of it. “It belongs to Jamie,” he said casually.

“Jamie.” She nodded. “And Jamie is...?”

“A woman I met last Tuesday in the Quarter. I missed that party because I was with her. I ended up with her watch accidentally when the clasp broke.”

Callie, in love with love as always, grinned. “All day Tuesday? And you’d just met?” At his nod, she made a breathy
aw
noise before hooking a chair with her foot and pulling it close to the desk. The she leaned forward on her elbows, all excited. “Okay, I want to hear
all
about her.”

Damn it.
That was supposed to satisfy her, not encourage her. “Not much to tell.”

“You spent all day with her, blowing off your friends in the process. There’s
tons
to tell. I assume she’s pretty.”

“Of course.”

“And...” Callie waited for him to answer, then heaved out a sigh. “Guess we’ll do this the hard way.
So...
what does she do?” she asked in a singsong voice.

“I don’t know.”

Callie blinked in surprise. Recovering from that, she tried again. “Where’s she from?”

“I’m not sure. One of the Carolinas.”

“So she was just in town for Mardi Gras?”

“Maybe. I think she said she was staying with friends, but I’m not sure. And before you ask me where, I don’t know that either. Or even how long she was in town.”

He could tell Callie was getting frustrated with his answers. “And her last name is...”

“Don’t know.”

“What the hell?” Callie sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you just
trying
to be difficult?”

“Really not.” His computer chimed, and he turned his attention back to it. “Now, if you’ll—”

“What
do
you know about her?”

He gave up his last bit of hope she’d just let it go and swiveled to face her. Any other time, this would be funny—baiting Callie was always fun—except he was busy and far more frustrated over this than Callie could possibly imagine.

“Let’s see. She’s about twenty-six, twenty-seven. Brunette, gorgeous, great legs.” Callie rolled her eyes at that. “Smart, funny...a little conservative, maybe? Bourbon Street was a bit shocking for her.”

“Specifics, Colin.”

He thought. They’d talked about everything—and yet nothing, he realized. Instead, he rattled off what he did know. “She doesn’t drink anything fruity or fancy. Her elbows are double-jointed. She knows all the words to both ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and ‘Ice Ice Baby.’ And she knows a lot about baseball.”

Callie’s eyebrows had gone higher with each inane detail, and when he finished, her mouth twisted. “
That’s
what you know about this girl?” she asked, sarcasm dripping off each word. “She likes Led Zeppelin and baseball.”

“No,” he corrected. “She
knows
a lot about baseball, but I don’t think she’s actually a fan.”

“Why?”

“Not a clue.”

If he kept this up much longer, he might actually get to see Callie’s head explode. “Colin Raine, I can’t believe you. You spent all day with this woman and you don’t even know the most basic information about her?”

Tell me something I don’t already know and am not already kicking myself over.
“It was Mardi Gras. We were watching parades, barhopping, dancing...you know, having
fun.
” The embers deep in his belly flared up a little as he remembered exactly how much fun. “It wasn’t exactly conducive to swapping life stories.”

“Name, location, profession—the basic requirements of a freaking online dating profile is hardly someone’s life story.” She sighed and shook her head. “I’m almost afraid to ask now, but how did you end up with her watch? And don’t you dare say you don’t know.”

That part of the story was easy enough to tell and believe. “We got caught on Bourbon at midnight. The crowds were really bad, and Jamie’s really small. I was trying to get us off the street, but someone pushed between us and Jamie got pulled away from me. I had her wrist, but when the clasp on her watch broke, she slid out of it and I lost my grip. The crowd moved her away, and I couldn’t find her after that.”

Callie paled. She knew the dangers, the bad situations Jamie could have gotten into. “Oh, God. I hope she’s okay.”

“Teddy said she left a message on the Lucky Gator’s answering machine—that’s where I’d met her that morning when I was relieving Teddy. She says she made it home—wherever that is—safely.”

“And you haven’t seen or heard from her since?”

“Nope.”

“Have you looked for her?”

He didn’t try to hide his exasperation. “Like I can find one woman in all of New Orleans when I don’t even know her last name?”

“Please tell me you at least tried.”

“I waited at the Gator for over two hours that night. I figured she’d show up there. She never did.” He really hated how pathetic that sounded, and it made him angry all over again.

“You said she left a message, though...”

“No last name, no number.”

He could practically see the wheels turning in Callie’s mind. “What about caller ID on Teddy’s phone? You could match up the number to the time of the message...”

He was shaking his head even as she spoke. “Teddy’s phone only holds the last ten numbers. It was gone by the time I checked.”

“Then call the phone company—”

“Let it go, Callie.” He’d played amateur detective for two days, even tracking down the band and the guitar player David, hoping for a lead to Kelsey. David hadn’t even remembered Kelsey’s name, so that was a bust. And although she’d left that message, he’d still called a friend at NOPD and had him check the jails, the hospitals, even the morgue. No one matching Jamie’s description. He was out of ideas. And it turned out the phone company didn’t like to give out that kind of information without a warrant. “She knows my name, and she knew to call the Gator to get a message to me. If she wants to find me, she can.” The fact she hadn’t really ticked him off. She hadn’t gone back to the bar in the following days. And it didn’t seem as if she was trying to find him. Hell, if she’d even bothered to look him up on Google, he’d have popped up as the very first result. He’d checked.

“I can’t just let it go, Colin.”

“I have, so you might as well. She’s probably gone back to wherever by now.”

“You don’t know that. She said she made it home safe, so that probably means she was staying with friends who live here, not in a hotel.” Callie stood and began pacing. “If she was with friends, there’s a good chance it was a long vacation and she’s still in town. If not, maybe we could find the friends she was staying with.” She put her hand on her chest dramatically. “We can find your Cinderella. We have to.”

“My what?”

“A chance meeting, separated at midnight, and all you have is something she left behind accidentally... It’s the Cinderella story.”

He was wrong. He should have stuck with a lie. Or silence. Silence would have been good. “Callie, honey, step back from the fairy tales.”

She made a face at him. “Granted, you’re not exactly Prince Charming, but...”

He lost his last shred of patience. “Just drop it, Callie,” he snapped. Her hurt and shocked look had him feeling bad for that almost immediately. “I appreciate your concern, but there’s nothing to be done, so it doesn’t make any sense to keep worrying over it.”

“You can’t Dr. Spock your way out of this.”

“What?”

“Logic and reason don’t apply here. You’re a man, not a Vulcan.”

“You’re thinking of Mr. Spock,” he corrected. “Dr. Spock is the baby guy.”

She waved a hand. “Whatever. You liked this girl enough at the time, but not enough to try to find her now?”

“It seems rather fruitless, and I don’t have time for fruitless.”

“What? So you’re just going to keep that watch?” she challenged. “Finders, keepers, or some such?”

He shrugged. “If she wants it back, she’ll contact me.”

“What if she can’t? What if...what if...what if she got mugged on the way home, hit her head and has amnesia now?”

Oh, dear God.
“Okay, I’m going back to the
Dungeons of Zhorg,
where memory issues are a
real
thing.” To soften the blow, he added, “Thanks, though.”

Callie’s mouth twisted, but she let the subject drop. “Want to go to lunch?”

As if he was going to subject himself to another hour of Callie’s questions about Jamie. He pointed to his computer. “Trolls. Dragons. They need me.”

“Okay.” Finally getting the message, she grabbed her bag and put it over her shoulder. “Sorry about your mystery lady.”

He shrugged. “It happens. Ships passing in the night and all that.”
Keep telling yourself that.

“It
is
a great story, though. Like the beginning of a book or something.”

Callie was a romantic who spent way too much time indulging people’s fantasies. She’d stew on this if he didn’t nip it in the bud now. “Just an interesting footnote for my biography.”

Callie was finally headed for the door. “Good luck fixing the trolls,” she called over her shoulder.