The harsh, dry landscape had seemed a strange and alien place to her when she had moved here a year ago, but somewhere along the line her new environment had begun to feel familiar, even comfortable. She had discovered an unexpected beauty in the desert, with its spectacular sunrises and sunsets and the astounding depths of light and shadow. She had always been drawn to contrasts, and there was nothing subtle about this place.
The decision to move to Whispering Springs had been a good one, she mused, but maybe she should reconsider the career move she had made at the same time. Interior design had seemed like a natural, logical way to go. After all, she had a background in the fine arts and a good, trained eye, and she certainly knew how to get the feel of a living space. Best of all, she hadn’t needed any additional degrees or qualifications in order to set herself up in business legally. But today’s encounter was enough to give her some second thoughts.
A uniformed guard came out of a small building located at the gated entrance. The emblem on his snappy khaki jacket declared him to be an employee of Radnor Security Systems. He greeted her politely, wished her a good day, and went back inside his air-conditioned sanctuary to make a note on his log.
Security was tight here in this carefully planned enclave of wealth and status, but someone in the Mason residence had not benefited from it.
She waited until she was clear of the gates and on her way back toward the downtown section of Whispering Springs before she picked up her phone. She punched in the only number that she had coded into her speed dial.
Arcadia Ames answered on the third ring, giving the name of her gift shop in her low, throaty voice. “Gallery Euphoria.”
Arcadia sold unique, expensive gifts to an upscale clientele, but Zoe was pretty sure her friend could have sold sand here in the desert with that voice.
Arcadia was her best friend—make that her only friend. She had once had other friends, Zoe thought. But that was a long time ago, back when she had had a real life and had not been living in the shadows.
“It’s me,” Zoe said.
“What’s wrong? Something happen with Mr. Ideal Client?”
“You could say that.”
“He decided not to hire you after all? That idiot. But don’t worry, there will be other good clients like him. The divorce rate doesn’t seem to be going down very much.”
“Unfortunately, Mason didn’t change his mind,” Zoe said evenly. “I wish he had.”
“Did the creep make a pass at you?”
“He was a perfect gentleman.”
“He must be rich because everybody who lives in Desert View is, by definition, a high roller,” Arcadia said patiently. “So what went wrong?”
“I think Mr. Ideal Client may have murdered his wife.”
Chapter Two
Twenty minutes later, Zoe left her car in one of the landscaped parking lots that served the shops and businesses of Whispering Springs. She walked down the sidewalk and turned into the palm-shaded entrance of Fountain Square, an upscale outdoor shopping mall. Arcadia waited for her at a small table set out on the shaded patio adjoining one of the numerous cafés.
Arcadia was, as usual, a study in ice and silver hues. Her very short, gamin-cut hair was tinted platinum and matched her long acrylic nails. Her eyes were an unusual shade of silvery blue. She was tall and slender and as languidly graceful as a haute couture model. She wore a pale glacier blue silk shirt and flowing white silk trousers. Silver and turquoise gleamed at her throat and ears.
Zoe was not precisely sure how old Arcadia was. Her friend had never volunteered the information, and there was something about her that made you think twice before you intruded on her very private space. Zoe assumed that she was in her mid-forties but she would not have put money on it.
In another time and place, Zoe thought, Arcadia could have been an expatriate living in Paris, drinking absinthe and recording her observations on soon-to-be famous people in a journal. There was about her an air of sophisticated ennui that implied too much knowledge of the world. In reality, she had once been an extremely successful financial trader.
There was a small cup of espresso in front of Arcadia. A glass of iced tea waited for Zoe. The neighboring tables were unoccupied.
Zoe dropped her tote onto a vacant chair and sat down, aware, as always, of the sharp contrast between herself and her friend. On the surface they looked like they had nothing in common. Her own hair was a dark shade of auburn brown. Her eyes were that vague, hard-to-describe mix of green and gold that ended up going down as hazel on a driver’s license. And, unlike Arcadia, she loved bright, vivid colors.
Opposites they may have been, Zoe mused, but the bond between them was as strong as any that could have existed between sisters.
She glanced briefly at her fingertips. They were no longer trembling. She took that as a good sign.
Arcadia’s platinum brows drew together in a delicate frown. “Are you okay?”
“Sure. The worst is over. I got caught by surprise, that’s all. I should know better than to just blunder merrily into an unknown room like that.”
Zoe picked up the pleasantly cold, damp glass in front of her and took a long swallow of the iced tea. The adrenaline that always accompanied an episode was wearing off, but it would take a while to wash out of her system. The aftermath inevitably left her restless and oddly hungry.
“I ordered a couple of Caesar salads,” Arcadia said.
“Oh, good. Thanks.”
A waiter appeared bearing bread and rosemary-scented olive oil. He arranged the items on the table and departed.
Zoe tore off a large chunk of bread and plunged it into the olive oil. She paused just long enough to sprinkle a little salt on the oil-saturated bread, and then she took a very large bite.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Arcadia remained unconvinced. “No offense, but you look somewhat the worse for wear.”
“I’m fine,” Zoe said around the mouthful of dense, chewy bread. “The problem is: what do I do now?”
Arcadia leaned forward and lowered her voice even though no one else was seated nearby. “You’re absolutely sure this guy, Mason, killed his wife?”
“No, of course I’m not sure.” Zoe swallowed. “I have no way of knowing exactly what happened in that room. I only pick up on the emotions of the events, not the events themselves. But I’ll tell you this much, whatever it was, it was bad.” She shuddered. “And fairly recent.”
“You could tell that much from those weird sensations you get?”
“Yes.” She thought about her impressions. “Furthermore, I’ve got some evidence to back up my conclusions. At least, I think I do.”
Arcadia pounced on that. “What kind of evidence?”
“Well, nothing that would stand up in court. But the bed was gone.”
“The bed?”
“He claimed that his ex took it with her.”
“Maybe she did. A missing bed isn’t going to get anyone’s attention.”
“I know, but the bed wasn’t the only thing that was gone. I could see some fading in the finish on the wooden floor, but there was a rectangular area near where the bed had stood that was not faded.”
“A rug?”
“Uh-huh.” Zoe ate more bread. “But it’s gone, too. Mason didn’t say anything about the ex taking it. Also, the walls in that room have been recently repainted with a coat of white paint that is all wrong for that space. Mason told me that he did it himself, and it looks like it. Lousy job. A wealthy man like that living in a high-end neighborhood, you’d think he would have hired a painter if he didn’t know what he was doing around a bucket of paint.”
“Hmm.” Arcadia tapped a platinum nail lightly against the small espresso cup. “I admit this is not sounding good.”
“As far as I’m concerned it was his choice of stark white that bothered me the most. It had a certain symbolism to it. Almost as if he was trying to cover up something very dark.”
“I see what you
mean.”
The waiter reappeared with the salads. Zoe picked up a fork and went to work.
“Unfortunately, he really wants to hire me,” she said between bites. “Apparently Helen Weymouth gave me a glowing reference. I’ve got another appointment with him on Friday.”
“You could cancel it. Tell him that you can’t take on the job of redoing his residence because there’s been a huge glitch on one of your other projects that won’t leave you any time for him.”
Zoe was briefly amused. “Not a bad excuse. You’re good, you know that?”
“Well?”
“The thing is, I got the distinct impression that Mason isn’t going to like it if I back out of this. He’s very anxious to get his house redone. Maybe on some unconscious level, he’s picking up a few of the bad vibes in that bedroom. Or maybe he’s living with a guilty conscience and thinks a change of environment will make him feel better. Either way, I’ve got a feeling he’ll make an unpleasant scene.”
“What’s he going to do? Report you to the Better Business Bureau?”
“You’re right. There isn’t much he can do, is there? If he is guilty of something really awful, he certainly won’t want to draw a lot of attention to himself by creating a scene in the office of a respectable local business person.”
“So why aren’t you rushing to back out of that Friday appointment?”
“You know why.” Zoe ate the last anchovy, sat back, and met Arcadia’s eyes. “What if he really did murder his wife?”
“All you know right now is that something nasty occurred in that bedroom.”
“Yes.”
Arcadia studied her for a long moment and then sighed softly with an air of surrendering to the inevitable. “And you, being you, can’t let it go.”
“It’s sort of a hard thing to block out of my mind,” Zoe said apologetically.
“Okay, okay, I understand.” Arcadia took a dainty bite of salad. “We’ve got to think this through before we make any decisions.”
“Well, one thing is for sure, I can’t do the logical thing and go to the cops.”
“No,” Arcadia said immediately. “That’s not an option. They’d laugh in your face if you told them you thought you’d picked up some bad energy vibes from a client’s bedroom.”
“Maybe I could phone in an anonymous tip? Pretend I saw something suspicious happening at that house and ask them to inquire into the current whereabouts of Mrs. Jennifer Mason?”
“If no one has filed a missing person report, I doubt you’d get their attention,” Arcadia replied. “You’re not a member of the family. You never even met the woman.”
“True. And even if I somehow managed to convince them to search Mason’s residence, they wouldn’t find much in the way of evidence. I ought to know. I went through every room myself, this morning, including the linen closet.”
“It’s possible that whatever took place in that bedroom had nothing to do with the Masons. Maybe it occurred before they bought the house.”
“Maybe. But Mason told me that he and his wife moved in shortly after they were married. I got the impression that was about a year and a half ago. I think that what I felt in that bedroom occurred more recently.”
“But you can’t be sure, right?”
“No,” Zoe admitted. “When the emotions are very powerful, they can linger for a long time.”
“Then it is possible that the events in the bedroom could predate the arrival of the Masons.”
“Well, yes. It’s possible.” But not likely, Zoe added silently. There was a faded quality to the old stuff that she had learned to detect, even if she could not describe the difference. What she had felt this afternoon was fresh. “Look, it shouldn’t be too hard to find out if Mrs. Mason is still alive and well. If she’s happily sunbathing topless in the South of France, I can relax and assume that her husband did not murder her.”
“Right.” Arcadia looked somewhat relieved.
“What I need,” Zoe said, “is a private investigator. I’ll bet an expert could go online and get me the answers I need in half an hour.”
She jumped to her feet. “Back in a second.”
“Where are you going?”
“Inside to find a phone book.”
She hurried into the interior of the small eatery and spotted a worn set of yellow pages on the desk behind the front counter. She asked if she could borrow it. The clerk shrugged and handed it to her.
She carried the phone book back outside, sat down at the table, and opened it. There were two listings under Investigators.
The first was for Radnor Security Systems. It featured a full-page display ad that offered employee background and due diligence checks, corporate security seminars, security guards for businesses, and the latest in online investigative technology.
The second company was named Truax Investigations. The tiny ad occupied a small space approximately two inches long and one inch high on the page. It claimed that the firm had been in continuous operation in Whispering Springs for more than forty years. It also guaranteed privacy and confidentiality to all clients. There was a phone number and an address on Cobalt Street.
“Looks like I’ve got a choice between a large company with a corporate emphasis or a small firm that has been in business here in town for quite a while.” Zoe studied the Truax Investigations ad. “Probably a one-man operation.”
“Go with the big company,” Arcadia advised. “More resources and more guarantee of getting someone who knows how to do the online stuff. But it will probably be pricier.”
“How expensive can a simple search like this be?” Zoe dug her phone out of the tote. “All I want to know is whether or not Mrs. Jennifer Mason has used her charge cards or accessed her bank account recently. Piece of cake for an investigator, I’m sure.”
She entered the number for Radnor Security Systems and was promptly greeted by a professional-sounding receptionist. She made a quick inquiry regarding fees and hung up fast when she got the answer.
“Well?” Arcadia asked.
“In hindsight, it appears that my observation of a moment ago was somewhat naïve. It turns out that, contrary to what I assumed, this sort of search can be very expensive. Not only was the hourly rate very high, but in addition, there is a nonrefundable minimum fee which is equivalent to three hours of investigative time.”
Arcadia raised one shoulder in a small, resigned shrug. “Obviously they don’t want to encourage small accounts. Try the little agency. Might be hungrier.” She paused. “Also might be less chance of complications.”
Zoe looked at her. There was no need to go into the fine nuances of just what the term complications meant. They both knew how carefully this matter would have to be handled if they were to avoid attracting unwanted attention to themselves.
“Okay, I’ll call Truax.” Zoe picked up the phone again, trying to stay positive. “It’s probably the best way to go, anyway. After all, if he’s been in business for more than forty years, he must be getting on. A real old-fashioned kind of investigator. I’ll bet he has a ton of contacts in the community and with the police. If Jennifer Mason is, indeed, missing, he might even be able to convince the cops to look into the situation without explaining why.”
“Just make sure he keeps your name out of it.”
Zoe glanced at the ad for Truax Investigations again while she listened to the ringing on the other end of the line. “It says right here that he’s really big on privacy for his clients. I’ll bet he’s built his reputation on his ability to maintain confidentiality.”
“What reputation?” Arcadia asked. “Neither of us had ever heard of him until you opened that phone book.”
“Just goes to show how good he is at keeping a low profile.” She frowned when she realized that no one was rushing to pick up the phone at Truax Investigations. She waited through a few more rings and then gave up.
“Out to lunch?” Arcadia asked dryly.
“Looks like it. The address is o
n Cobalt Street. That’s just a few blocks from here. I’ll walk over and talk to the person in charge as soon as we finish.”
“You’re sure you want to do this?”
“Yes.” She closed the phone book and picked up her unfinished tea. A sense of satisfaction flowed through her, lifting her spirits. Or maybe that was the food and caffeine taking effect, she thought. “You know, I’ve got a good feeling about this. Hiring Truax is the right way to go. I know it.”
“Think so?”
“Yes.”
Arcadia shook her head once, her silver-glossed mouth curved slightly in a rare, wry smile. “The thing that never ceases to amaze me about you, Zoe, is your seemingly bottomless well of optimism. If I didn’t know you better, I’d swear you took drugs to maintain such an irrational view of the universe.”
“So I’m a glass-half-full kind of person.”
“And I’m a worst-case-scenario type. Do you sometimes wonder why we get along so well?”
“The way I see it, we sort of balance each other, and we did both graduate from the same alma mater.”
“To good old Xanadu.” Arcadia raised her espresso cup and clinked it lightly against Zoe’s tea glass. A fleeting rage glittered briefly in her eyes. “May it sink into an undersea volcano and disappear forever.”
Zoe stopped smiling. “I’ll drink to that.”
Chapter Three
Zoe’s bright bubble of optimism threatened to burst when she turned the corner into Cobalt Street. It was amazing how fast the character of a town could change within a few blocks. The fashionable shops and the modern business district were only a short distance away, but they might as well have been in a different dimension. Here on Cobalt Street there was a dated, slightly seedy air.
The buildings were mostly two-story structures done in the classic Southwestern version of the Spanish Colonial style. The stucco exteriors had rounded edges, arched doorways, and deep-set windows. The roofs were red tile. The old trees, no doubt planted many years ago before the city council had begun to fret about water conservation, created a shady canopy.
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