As justification for staying out of it, I extended my radar out into the future and could see that the case would be resolved within just a few weeks. I felt quite strongly that it would be resolved by the agents already working the case and, oddly, another woman, who in her own right had a strong sense of intuition.
“Abs?” I heard from just inside the door. Eggy, startled awake, barked and leaped off the cushion.
I turned, craning my neck to see the shadowy figure of my fiancé come out onto the stone patio to join me. “Hey,” I said, filled with warmth by the sight of him. Candice might have been furious with him, but I knew he wasn’t to blame.
He picked Eggy up and came to my side. After a sweet kiss he said, “I’ve been trying to call you all night.”
Oops. I’d left my phone on the kitchen counter. And it’d been turned to silent anyway. I had no interest in talking to anyone. “My phone’s at home.”
Dutch nodded and stroked my hair. “How you doin’, sweethot?”
I reached up and took his hand. “Better.”
“You sure?”
I kissed his hand. He was far too good to me. “I’m fine. What’re you doing here, anyway?”
Dutch sat down on the other lounge chair and curled Eggy into the folds of his jacket to keep him warm. “You wouldn’t answer my calls, so I called Candice, and she told me you’d gone to bed, so I figured I could sneak over here before I came home.” I looked at him curiously and he added, “Sometimes after a hard day I like to come out here and hang out for a while. This place takes all the tension out of me, you know?”
I laughed. “That’s what I’m doing here.”
“I think we did good picking this lot,” he said, leaning back with a contented sigh.
“I think you did good. What time is it?”
“Almost nine.”
My eyes widened. I’d been there more than two and a half hours and it’d felt like only half that. “So what happened after I left?”
Dutch scratched his five-o’clock shadow and yawned. “Gaston wanted to wait until you’d gotten over your initial shock to ask you to come back and give us your impressions, and I told him to go to hell.”
I eyed him sharply. “You did not!”
“I did,” Dutch said. “And Brice backed me up on it too.”
My jaw fell open. “What’d Gaston say?”
“Well, at first I really thought he was going to write us both up, but when I explained that you’re sensitive both in spirit and in the ability to sense the future, he kind of got it. He felt bad about showing you the video and he sent me home tonight with a personal apology from him.”
“No way!”
Dutch grinned. “Way.” Dutch sobered then and reached out for my hand. “I’ve never seen you look like that. You were so pale, you looked like a ghost. I think that video put you into a mild shock.”
I remembered Candice insisting I have some Coca-Cola and a bite of a protein bar before she let me drive home from the office. I wondered if she’d thought the same thing.
“I never want to see you look like that again, Edgar.”
I slid out from under the afghan, careful not to disturb Tuttle, and moved over to cuddle against Dutch on his chair. “I love you so much.”
He grinned. “Rilly?”
“Rilly, rilly,” I vowed.
“Then would you do me a favor?”
“Anything,” I said, leaning in to kiss him affectionately.
“Anything?”
I laughed. “Yes. For getting me out of that case, I owe you, cowboy. Name it and I’ll do it.”
“Deal with your sister.”
“Anything but that.”
“Abs,” Dutch growled.
“Aw, man! Dutch, come on! You know she’s a nightmare!”
“Yes, Abigail, I do know that. I was reminded of just how much of a nightmare this morning.”
“But you deal with her so much better than I do.” This wasn’t actually true, but it was all I had and I was going down fighting.
“Maybe we should just elope,” Dutch suggested.
I sat up and stared down at him. “That is a genius idea! Let’s do it! Let’s just run away and get married on a beach somewhere!”
Dutch’s deep, rich laugh echoed out into the cool night air. “You know we can’t actually do that, right?”
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing, our friends and family would kill us. For another, your sister would never, and I do mean never, let us forget it.”
“You’re right,” I groaned. The thought of facing my sister and all her decisions sent me into a good pout before I made another confession. “I’ve been ducking Dave too.”
Dutch smirked. “Yeah. I know. He keeps calling me looking for you.”
I sighed heavily. “It’s all just a little too much for me right now, Dutch. I mean, the house, the wedding, and this huge case Candice and I just landed.”
“What case?”
“It’s a missing-person’s case.”
“Kendra Moreno?”
“Yes,” I said, surprised he knew.
“I saw the news clip yesterday before you got all prickly peared on me. Is she still alive?”
“No.”
“Damn,” he swore, but he didn’t press me for details, and I was grateful for that. “Still, you can’t keep avoiding Cat and Dave, dollface. Just devote a few days to both of them and it’ll all be behind you.”
“I don’t have a few days to spare, Dutch.” I was busy with clients, cases, and physical therapy. It wasn’t like I was sitting at home eating bonbons all day. And then I had an idea. “How about we agree that you take Cat and I take Dave?”
Dutch laughed like he really enjoyed that one. “How about I take something easier like world peace or global warming?”
“Oh, come on, Dutch! She’s better with you than she is with me!”
“How do you figure?”
“You say yes to all her ideas. I sometimes dare to have my own opinion, and then we end up arguing.”
Dutch looked affronted. “For the record, I don’t just say yes to all her ideas.”
“Right. Keep telling yourself that.”
Dutch dug into his pocket and pulled out a coin. Flipping it into the air, he said, “Call it.”
I smiled sweetly while I pointed my radar right at that shiny silver coin. He caught the quarter and slapped it onto the top of his wrist, looking up at me expectantly. “Heads,” I said with a satisfied sigh. “Have a good time with Cat, cowboy.”
Dutch lifted his hand to take a peek at the coin. “Damn! Best two out of three?” he asked (a bit desperately, I thought).
I moved back over to my own lounge chair. “We could do this all night, sugar, and I’d still win.” For effect I tapped my temple and winked at him.
“Son of a bitch!” he swore again. “Forgot about the radar.”
“It works for rock, paper, scissors too, just in case you’re thinking of changing it up.”
Dutch muttered under his breath and crossed his arms over his chest moodily. “Fine, I’ll take Cat, but if I get one more call from Dave looking for you, the deal’s off, got it?”
I gave him a smart salute just as my stomach growled. My appetite had returned.
Dutch’s left eyebrow arched. “Didn’t you eat?”
“Nope. You?”
“Nope,” he said, getting up with Eggy still cuddled in his jacket. He came to my chair and offered me his hand. “Come on, hot stuff. Let’s find a place that allows dogs on the patio. You can buy me dinner.”
“Least I can do,” I said, wincing as I got to my feet and Dutch handed me my cane. “But let’s not stay out too late tonight. Candice is picking me up at eight a.m.”
“No time for nooky, huh?” he asked with a bounce to his eyebrows.
I gave him a mischievous smile. “Maybe we should order dinner to go?”
Reaching for the sleepy Tuttle, Dutch winked at me and said, “Now you
’re talking.”
Candice pulled into my driveway promptly at eight a.m. Tired as I was—Dutch and I had been up late…uh…playing Parcheesi (cough, cough)—I knew that I had to get out fast because my sister was on her way over. I could sense that her imminent arrival was just minutes away.
I felt bad about not warning Dutch, who was dragging a little himself and already on his second cup of coffee. But I was worried that if I let him know Cat was headed our way, he’d do what I was doing—bolt for them thar hills.
I knew that eventually Cat would catch up to both of us, and because of my cane, I also knew that Dutch could easily outrun me. It wasn’t that I somewhat doubted he’d be true to his word and take Cat off my hands. I completely doubted it. She could test the patience of a sainted saint’s saintly mother.
“Hit it!” I said once I’d made it into Candice’s car.
My sidekick floored it and we zoomed down the street. “Does your sister have your new address?” she asked me.
“You mean the one to the new house?” Candice nodded. “No. We haven’t even shown her where it is yet. I mean, you know how she can be. She’ll see the house isn’t finished, and she’ll start ordering us around like we work for her, and telling the construction crew how to do their jobs, and pretty soon we’ll have a house that looks just like one that Cat built.”
“Maybe you guys should move and not tell her,” Candice said seriously.
“Yeah. We’ve talked about that. I’m thinking of telling her the mail doesn’t get delivered to our new address and offering her a PO box instead.”
Candice snickered. “Do you know she sent me so many e-mails of all the ideas she’s thinking of for your wedding that I had to change my e-mail address?”
“I’m so sorry,” I said sincerely. My sister always got her way, mostly because she wore the opposition down to a tired, battered nub. Well, she was Dutch’s problem now. Which reminded me…I picked up my phone and sorted through the contacts to Dave’s cell.
“Yo,” he said by way of answer.
“It’s me,” I told him.
“That’s funny, this doesn’t sound like me.”
“Ha, ha!” I said with a roll of my eyes. “Listen, when can we get together to pick out all the deco stuff for the house?”
“I’ve left you a thousand voice mails, asking you that exact question,” he replied (a bit testily, I thought).
“Dude, I’m sorry, but I’ve been crazy busy.”
“Right,” he said, taking a more sympathetic tone. “I always forget that you guys are also planning a wedding. How about tonight?”
I eyed Candice. “Am I free tonight?” I whispered, remembering that I hadn’t even asked her what our agenda held on the Moreno case.
“You should be,” she said, weaving sharply around a car that had the audacity to travel at the posted speed limit.
“Tonight should work, Dave. I’ll meet you at the house at four, okay?”
“See you then,” he replied, and clicked off.
“Where’re we headed again?” I asked, tucking my cell into my purse.
“We’re diving right in, remember?” Candice asked. “We’re on our way to see Tristan Moreno.”
Then I remembered. “The husband.”
“Yep.”
“What’re you gonna say to him when he answers the bell? I mean, how are you gonna explain why we want in on the case?”
“Don’t know yet,” she told me.
“Well, whatever you say, just don’t mention the visit from the attorney,” I reminded her.
Candice gave me a patronizing pat on the shoulder—alarming, because she was also taking a sip of coffee with her other hand while maneuvering the car with her knees. “Relax. I have no plans to mention the mysterious Ms. Smith or her possible connection to Gagliano. I figure I might say that we heard about his wife’s disappearance on the news, and that your intuition has been buzzing with clues about where Kendra might be.”
My brow furrowed. “But I don’t know where Kendra is.”
Candice looked at me sideways, still holding the cup of coffee and driving with her knees. The woman was seriously going to give me a heart attack. Or kill me in a fiery crash. “He doesn’t know that we don’t know where Kendra is,” she said.
My brow dipped even lower. “Huh?”
“I’ve got it covered, Abs,” she assured me, finally taking her hand off my shoulder and placing it lazily on the top of the steering wheel. If that was the way she was going to grip the wheel responsibly, I thought I’d prefer her knees.
Still, we managed to arrive at the Moreno residence without incident or accident (a minor miracle). It was obvious which house the Morenos lived in—it was the one with all the news crews hanging out in front. The local press had apparently settled in for the ride.
“Crap,” Candice spat, pulling over and eyeing the house moodily. “I was hoping they’d all be up at College Station.”
“They probably split up their reporters to cover both stories just in case something breaks.” Austin was by far one of the safest cities I’d ever lived in, and with no daily murder and mayhem to report on, the news here was almost never exciting.
“Looks like they’ve been here awhile,” I said, pointing to a few empty disposable coffee cups littering the sidewalk.
Candice frowned. “They better pick those up,” she groused. Candice had no tolerance for litterbugs.
“What do we do now that the vultures have taken over?” I asked, nodding at the smattering of reporters waiting around for any signs of life from inside the Moreno residence. I noted that every window had the blinds or curtains drawn.
Candice didn’t have time to answer, because a silver Lexus came bolting down the Moreno’s driveway and hit the street fast, barely avoiding a reporter stuffing a doughnut into his piehole.
Several other reporters jumped to grab their microphones and motion to their camera guys, but it was already too late, because the Lexus was roaring down the street, barely breaking for a stop sign before rounding the corner and disappearing from view. The mob of news crews scrambled to get to their vans, and almost as one they gave chase. It was sickening.
“Time for plan B,” Candice said, putting her own car into drive and heading off in the opposite direction.
“The parents?”
“Yep,” she said. “Nancy and Gary Woodyard. I saw them interviewed on the late news. They look like reasonable people.”
The Woodyards lived not far from their daughter and son-in-law on the east side of town in a beautiful community overlooking a bucolic man-made lake. Their house had a very small front yard, a bit out of proportion for the rest of the home, which was a large contemporary structure with a mosaic pattern of dark and light sandstone set against the front and sides. Hunter green aluminum siding with coral trim gave color to the second story, and the whole thing was capped off by a silver tin roof. The effect was striking and really made the house stand out from its neighbors.
“Nice digs,” I said when we’d gotten out of the car and began walking up the steps.
“Excuse me!” said a voice down the sidewalk.
“Keep walking,” Candice muttered out of the side of her mouth.
I did, but I happened to glance over my shoulder at the voice. I could see a redheaded reporter I recognized from the local news hurrying toward us. “Are you friends of Kendra’s?” she asked when it was clear we weren’t going to respond.
Candice walked purposefully up the steps, and I was right next to her.
“Extended family?” the reporter asked next.
“Don’t look and don’t say a word, Abs,” Candice warned softly as she pressed the bell.
“Have you heard from Kendra?” the reporter called, desperate for a quote from someone, anyone, that she could use on the next news broadcast. “Do you know where she is?”
Candice and I waited with our backs to the reporter, who didn’t approach the house but remained on the sidewalk. I was silent
ly cursing the Woodyards’ small yard when footsteps from inside echoed through the door to us. A moment later I had the feeling that someone was peering out at us. “Who is it?” asked a woman’s voice.
Candice held up her badge and her FBI ID. “Candice Fusco and Abigail Cooper, ma’am. We’re consultants with the FBI and we’d like to talk with you.”
As nonchalantly as I could, I turned my head a little and saw the reporter scribbling furiously onto her notepad. She’d heard Candice’s every word. “Great,” I muttered. When Candice looked at me I indicated the reporter. Candice eyed her too and sent the woman a dark look.
The door was opened a tiny crack and one hazel eye and part of a nose appeared. “You’re with the FBI?”
“We’re consultants for them,” Candice corrected. I knew even she’d be careful not to indicate that we’d actually been sent by the bureau.
The brow above the hazel eye lowered suspiciously. “You consult with them but you’re not actually with them?”
I could feel Candice’s energy working hard to appear pleasant and patient, but with the reporter right behind us taking notes, she’d have to be careful about what she said or it would be all over the five-o’clock news. “Are you Mrs. Woodyard?” she inquired.
“I asked my question first,” the woman said stubbornly. I wondered at her attitude, but then I remembered the way the press was currently hounding Kendra’s husband. Maybe they’d already tested the patience of Kendra’s parents too.
“Yes, ma’am,” Candice said contritely. “I’m so sorry. Abigail and I consult on a regular basis with the FBI. Abby used to work full-time at their bureau office downtown, in fact. Abs, show her your badge.”
I dug through my purse and pulled up my own plastic-encased ID. I held it up to my face and smiled to mirror the photo.
The hazel eye swiveled back and forth between us. “What do you want?” she asked at last.
“We heard about your daughter’s disappearance, and we’d like to offer our professional services,” Candice said. When the woman showed no signs of opening the door wider than the crack, Candice added, “I promise you, ma’am, we’re on the level here. May we please come in and talk to you?”
Lethal Outlook: A Psychic Eye Mystery Page 6
