Change of Fortune

by RaeAnne Thayne

  * * *

  Ross pulled into the circular driveway in front of Frannie’s house, fighting off the bleak mood that settled over him as he looked at it. There was no reason such a silly froth of a house should seem so ominous, but he had begun to dread coming back here each night.

  Josh wasn’t home. The boy’s aging sports car wasn’t in the driveway and Ross knew damn well he shouldn’t have this vague feeling of relief that he didn’t have to deal with his nephew right now.

  He was going to have to talk to him sometime. A serious, blunt conversation between the two of them was long overdue. Ross rubbed his temples as the implication of all he had learned over the last two days centered there in a pounding headache that slithered down his spine to his tight shoulders until it became a cold, greasy ball in his gut.

  He still didn’t want to believe any of it, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep an open mind.

  After his talk with Lily and William at the Double Crown, he had spent two days tracking down leads, trying to find anyone else who might have heard Josh fighting with his father and who might be able to shed more light on the content of their conversation. He wanted to be prepared with as much information as possible before he faced his nephew with what he had learned.

  He finally found a potter whose stall had been not far from the scene of the argument. Reynaldo Velasquez had indeed heard the fight. He had recounted it much as Lily had—that he couldn’t hear many of the words but he had heard raised voices, had heard Lloyd yelling at his son and then had heard Josh say he would stop him, no matter what it took.

  And, more chilling than that confirmation, Reynaldo had added that he had been surprised to hear such harsh words coming from Josh. He’d seemed like a nice kid, the artist said, when he had come to his booth to pick up the large vase his mother had purchased earlier in the evening.

  Ross closed his eyes, his hands tight on the steering wheel. Even now, remembering the conversation, his stomach felt slick with nausea. As far as he could tell, Josh had been the last one in possession of the vase.

  Josh. Not Frannie.

  Josh had fought with his father in front of witnesses. Josh had a rocky relationship with his father. Josh was a hot-headed teenager.

  And most damning of all was Josh’s behavior since his father’s death. The furtive conversations, the obfuscations. Ross had sensed he was hiding something. He supposed it made him a pretty damn lousy investigator that he hadn’t once suspected his nephew was capable of killing his own father.

  Despite the witnesses and Josh’s own dishonesty by omission in not saying anything about the fight with Lloyd, Ross still couldn’t make himself believe it, any more than he had been able to contemplate the ridiculous notion that Frannie might have killed Lloyd.

  Josh was a good kid. Yeah, he had a temper and his relationship with Lloyd was tense and strained and had been for some time now. But Ross couldn’t accept that Josh might be able to commit patricide. And he absolutely couldn’t see the boy he knew standing by and saying nothing while his own mother took the fall for it.

  Ross would have to talk to him about what he had learned, no matter how difficult the conversation. He would have to walk a fine line between seeking the vital information he needed to put these pieces of the puzzle together without sounding accusatory. It would take every ounce of his investigative skills.

  He didn’t want to ruin Josh’s birthday, but he had no choice. Josh would legally be an adult in just a few hours. Perhaps it was past time Ross started treating him like one.

  With a sigh, he let himself into the house. The empty foyer echoed with every sound he made, from the clink of his keys on the polished white table to the scrape of his boots on the tile floor.

  He hated it here. He found the entire place depressing. He had never liked it, even when Frannie was here, but without her, the house seemed lifeless and cold.

  He had a sudden, irrational, very Cindy-like desire to walk away from everything here, to escape back to his apartment in San Antonio where he had no responsibilities except to his agency clients. Where he was free to come and go at will, without this nagging worry for those he loved.

  Ashamed of himself for indulging the impulse to flee, even for a moment, he walked through the house to the kitchen and flipped on the light switch.

  The first thing he saw was a note from Josh on the memo board above the small kitchen desk that Frannie had always kept meticulously organized. It was written in Josh’s careless scrawl on the back of a takeout menu for the pizza parlor.

  Helping a friend. Don’t wait up.

  Ross frowned. Helping which friend do what, where? The kid was a few hours away from eighteen and now thought he could come and go as he pleased without any more explanation than one terse, say-nothing note?

  Fighting down that instinctive relief again that he could put off the coming interrogation for a while longer, he pulled out his cell phone and hit Josh’s number. The phone rang four times then went to voice mail.

  Ross sighed. “Call me,” he said after the beep, not unaware of the terseness of his own message.

  He thought about dinner, but he didn’t have much of an appetite anyway, he decided. A better expenditure of time would be to enter the field notes from his interview with Reynaldo into his case file.

  He headed down the hall to the guest room he had taken over for his use since coming to stay at the house. Compared to the rest of the house, this room was simply decorated, with a double pine bed, dresser and a comfortable desk. He figured Lloyd hadn’t bothered to come into it enough to insist on more of his atrocious taste.

  Ross set his laptop case on the bed and pulled out the digital recorder and the small notebook he used on field interviews.

  An hour later, he finished logging in his work for the day. Since the notebook was nearly full, he opened the desk drawer to find a new one and his gut suddenly clenched.

  Something wasn’t right.

  He had a strict system of organization with his case files. He kept the field notebooks he used in numbered order, meticulously dated and filed so he could easily double-check information on any case when needed. No matter what else was going on, he always took the time to refile them in order.

  The notebook on top of the stack was not the most recent. He frowned and flipped through the half-dozen books he had filled with various casework in the days since coming to stay with Josh.

  None of them was in order, the way he was absolutely certain he had left them just that morning.

  He stared at the stack as that greasy ball in his gut seemed to take a few more rotations. He might be haphazard and casual about some things—his clothing came to mind and, yeah, he needed a haircut—but not about work. Never about his cases and the interviews.

  He couldn’t afford to be careless as a private investigator. He had to be able to find information quickly and reliably. And while the computer was a great backup for storing data, he still depended on his own handwritten field notes.

  Someone had rifled through his notes. He should have locked them up, but the thought had never even occurred to him.

  His mind sorted through other possibilities. He wanted to think maybe he had just been sloppy the last time he was in here. That would be a much more palatable option than what he was beginning to suspect, but he couldn’t lie to himself.

  He knew without a doubt that he hadn’t left his notebooks like this. Which meant someone else had rifled through them.

  He only had one suspect and it was the very one he didn’t want to believe capable of it. Josh. Who else could it have been? The boy had access to the notebooks and plenty of opportunity when Ross wasn’t here. He never bothered to lock the desk drawer. That heedlessness on his part had obviously been a mistake, but Ross had never considered it, had never believed for a moment it might even be necessary.

  But motive. Why would Josh want to know what Ross was digging into, unless he had reason to want that information to stay buried?
/>
  It was another good question. He now had several for his nephew—if only he could find the kid.

  * * *

  By 8:00 p.m., he still hadn’t reached Josh.

  Ross paced the living room of Frannie’s house, not sure whether to be angry or worried about his nephew, especially when all his calls started going directly to voice mail.

  He had been through this waiting game enough with his brothers. He couldn’t count the number of nights he had sat up stewing while he waited for either Flint or Cooper to come home, hours later than they were supposed to. Of course, this was a little different situation, since he had never been preparing to question his brothers about a murder.

  When his cell phone rang at eight-thirty, he lunged for it.

  “Yeah?” he growled.

  A slight pause met him then he heard Julie Osterman’s voice. “Ross? Is that you?”

  His hopes that he might be able to clear everything up quickly with Josh and get the kid home faded.

  “Oh. Hi.”

  A slight pause met his response. “That’s a bit of a disheartening reaction,” Julie said, her voice suddenly tight. “I just needed to ask a question about tomorrow but I can call back later. Or not.”

  He cursed under his breath. “Sorry. It’s not you, I swear. I’m always glad to talk to you.” He probably shouldn’t have said that, even though it wasn’t a lie. “I was just hoping you were Josh.”

  She picked up his concern right away. “Josh? Is something wrong? What’s going on? Where is he?”

  “No idea. He’s not answering his cell. He left a note saying he was helping a friend and that I wasn’t to wait up.”

  “But of course you will.”

  “Oh, undoubtedly,” he said grimly. “I have a few words to say to my nephew.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “This morning at breakfast. Everything seemed okay. Nothing out of the ordinary. He left for school to take his last final. We talked about the kids he had invited tomorrow and what movie they planned to watch after dinner. Nothing unusual.”

  “He didn’t say anything about going anywhere after school?”

  “Not a word.”

  But then Ross had kept secrets of his own. He hadn’t mentioned anything about the direction he was taking in the investigation because he had wanted to be more certain of his information before confronting Josh about the fight with his father. “He took a call, said something about being on his way, then took off for school.”

  “Are you sure he went to school?”

  “No. But the school’s long closed. Unless I drag the principal in from home to go through the attendance records, I’m out of luck.”

  “What about his other friends? Did you try Lyndsey’s cell phone?”

  “I don’t have her number. I called her home, though, and got no answer.”

  “What about Ricky or one of his extended cousins?”

  “Good idea. I was planning to give him a little longer before I hit the phones.”

  He didn’t tell Julie he would have done that before, but he had still been holding out the vague hope that Josh would walk through the door on his own.

  She was quiet for a long moment. “You know, Ross, it’s a natural human reaction when life becomes too stressful to seek escape. Perhaps he just needed a little time away from things here in Red Rock.”

  He hated to ask, in light of her own firsthand experience with suicide, but he had to know her professional opinion. “You’re right. Things have been tough for him lately. You don’t think he would do anything rash, do you?”

  She was silent for a moment and he knew she guessed what he meant. “I couldn’t say definitely, but in our two sessions, I didn’t get any vibe like that from him, Ross. He wouldn’t have any reason to, would he?”

  A guilty conscience, maybe? Ross thought of those disordered notebooks and what he had learned the last two days. He hoped Josh didn’t feel hopeless or cornered enough to do something drastic.

  “I’m going to go look for him,” he said suddenly. “I can’t just sit here.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Julie heard the desperate determination in Ross’s voice and she ached for him, especially in light of her conversation with his cousin earlier in the day. He was a man who took his responsibilities seriously and right now he had far too many.

  “I’ll come with you,” she said. “I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” he exclaimed, not bothering to hide his surprise that she would make the offer.

  “I know I don’t. But a second pair of eyes wouldn’t hurt, don’t you agree? And I have a few advantages.”

  “What are those?”

  “From my clients at the Foundation, I happen to know the location of many of the local teen hangouts. I also have connections among the different teen groups, from the jocks to the druggies to the cowboys to the hackers. I can help you, Ross, if you let me.”

  She kept her fingers crossed even as she went to her closet and pulled out a jacket and sturdy walking shoes.

  Silence met her assurances as he hesitated and she was certain he would refuse her offer of help. Ross was a man who liked to do things on his own, she was learning. He hated depending on anyone else for anything, even for assistance he might desperately need.

  She was bracing to tell him she would go on her own looking for Josh when he surprised her.

  “All right,” he answered. “I probably could use your help, especially given your connections to the local teen scene. But stay at your place and I’ll come pick you up.”

  Julie quickly changed out of her lounge-around-the-house sweats into jeans and a tailored blue shirt and sweater and pulled her hair into a ponytail.

  While she waited, she went to work gathering a few provisions and compiling lists of any possible friends she might have ever heard Josh mention and several potential places they could look.

  When Ross pulled into her driveway exactly sixteen minutes later, she was ready. She opened the door to her house before he could walk up the steps.

  He drove a white SUV hybrid that she imagined was perfect for a private investigator—bland enough to be inconspicuous but sturdy enough to be taken seriously.

  She opened the door to the back seat and set the large wicker basket inside before she opened the front passenger door and climbed inside.

  In the pale glow from the dome light, she could see baffled consternation on his rugged features. “What’s all this?” he asked, gesturing to the basket.

  She shrugged, feeling slightly foolish. “A few supplies. A Thermos of coffee, some soda, a few snacks, sandwiches. I didn’t know what might come in handy so I packed a little of everything.”

  He glanced at the overflowing basket in the back seat and then back at her as if he didn’t quite know what to make of her. “We’re not heading out on a cross-country trek here. We’re only driving around town looking for one kid.”

  “It doesn’t hurt to be prepared, does it? You never know what might come in handy.” She swiveled in the front seat and reached back to pull a flowered tin off the top of the basket. “Here, have one of my caramel cashew bars. I made them for Josh’s birthday tomorrow but I thought maybe we could use them for bribes or something.”

  “For bribes.”

  She shrugged. “You know, to get somebody to talk who doesn’t want to.”

  He opened his mouth for a second, his eyes astonished, then closed it with a snap. “That good, are they?” he finally said.

  She managed a smile, despite her worry for Josh. “See for yourself.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, he picked one up and bit into it. As he chewed it slowly and then swallowed, his eyes glazed with sheer ecstasy.

  “Okay. You win,” he said after a few more bites. “Right now, I would tell you anything you want to know.”

  She laughed, though a hundred questions tumbled together in her mind she would have asked him if circumstances
between them had been different.

  She held out the tin. “I’ve got a dozen more in here. You’re welcome to eat them all if you want.”

  He gave her a half smile as he put the SUV into gear before backing out of her driveway. “Wrong thing to say to an ex-cop,” he said. “We’re like locusts. If there’s food available, we eat it.”

  She had a sudden wild urge to make a hundred different home-baked treats for him. Dutch apple pie, jam thumbprint cookies, snickerdoodles.

  It was a silly reaction but she couldn’t help remembering all the bleak details Susan had told her about Ross’s childhood. His mother didn’t sound like the sort to cook up a batch of warm, gooey chocolate chip cookies for her kids after school and Julie wanted suddenly to make up for all those things Ross never had.

  She sighed and pushed the impulse away. Right now they needed to concentrate on Josh, she reminded herself.

  “Where to first?” she asked.

  “Nobody answered at his girlfriend Lyndsey’s house but I figured that’s a logical place to start.”

  The small tract house was in a neighborhood with dozens more that looked just like it. The siding might be a little different color and a few details varied from house to house, but Julie would be hard-pressed to tell them all apart, if not for the house numbers.

  No lights were on inside and only a low-wattage porch light glowed on the exterior.

  “Doesn’t look like anybody’s home,” he said.

  “Her mom works nights,” Julie said. “Josh told me that once in passing. I think she’s a nurse or something.”

  “Well, it doesn’t hurt to double-check since we’re here.”

  Julie opted to stay in the SUV while Ross walked to the front door and rang the bell. Even with her vehicle window rolled up, she could hear a dog’s deep-throated barks from somewhere in the backyard.

  The neighborhood shouldn’t have seemed ominous. It had obviously seen better days and some of the houses had peeling paint, with a few junk cars up on cinderblocks in the driveways, but it was equally obvious that families lived here. She spotted multiple bikes, trampolines, play sets.