by Kathi Daley
“I suppose.” To be honest, I felt like there were better ways of going about obtaining public support, but I supposed that most of the contestants were more than willing to kiss a few frogs if the eventual payoff was a million bucks and a career establishing a spokesperson position. “So, is the contest only for women?” I asked. “For some reason, I thought that both men and women entered.”
“This particular competition is for women, although Sunfit does have male spokespersons as well. I think there’s a separate contest to choose the men,” Josie informed me.
“It’s really just a big publicity stunt for the company,” Jemma said. “I’m pretty sure the event held here in Gooseberry Bay is only one of many sponsored by the company annually.”
It did seem as if I remembered hearing about a marathon that was held in San Francisco each summer with the Sunfit name attached to it.
“Oh, before I forget, I ran into Hope today,” Josie said, veering away from the subject of personal fitness and the billions of dollars that were generated by the industry each year. “She told me that she needs volunteers for the first annual Spring Fling event. I told her we’d all help out.”
“When is that?” I asked.
“Not until the end of March,” Josie answered. “It’s scheduled to take place during spring break. I know that Gooseberry Bay isn’t the usual sort of place college-aged kids head to for spring break, but the town has been trying to lure tourists to the area during months traditionally considered to be the offseason, so they’ve come up with events and contests such as the fitness competition and Spring Fling to give folks a reason to be here.”
I supposed that made sense. “I’m happy to help out in any way I can,” I offered.
“I figured you would,” Josie said. “Hope is going to email us with the time and date for the volunteer meeting. The planning committee is looking for fresh ideas, so she wants everyone to put their thinking caps on.”
“Do you really think beach-loving spring breakers will come to Gooseberry Bay in March?” I asked. “It isn’t exactly tropical here.”
“Which is why we need a hook,” Josie said.
“Maybe a film festival,” Jemma suggested. “That could be held indoors.”
“We want college-aged kids, not senior citizens,” Josie pointed out. “Maybe a concert series with a bunch of different bands and lots of booze.”
The three of us continued to discuss options, but even as we chatted, I had to wonder if trying to attract spring breakers to Gooseberry Bay was really the best use of anyone’s time. Maybe a film festival with a more mature audience really would be a better way to go if tourism dollars were the eventual goal.
Chapter 4
Despite the peaceful and relaxing evening I’d had with Jemma and Josie, I’d had a rough night. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d wakened after eight hours in bed feeling so unrefreshed. I supposed my telephone conversation with Gil had my mind working overtime. I couldn’t remember the content of any of the dreams I’d had, but I did remember vividly dreaming during most of my sleeping hours.
I pondered going back to sleep but ended up settling on a run. Maybe the fresh air and exercise would help unclog my chakras. If I was going to be productive today, I needed to find a way to clear my mind and regain my energy. It was sunny yet chilly this morning, so I bundled up with multiple layers, not wanting to catch a chill. I knew the dogs would welcome the chance to really open up and work their muscles, so we settled into a comfortable pace and headed toward the trail that looped around the bottom of the bay before veering north onto Piney Point.
As I jogged toward the landmass owned by Adam and his brother, Archie, I couldn’t help but wonder how the brothers were doing. Adam had been out of the country for a while now, and his return was open-ended. He’d called a few times, but it seemed that every time we managed to connect, one of his business acquaintances would pull him away, so we hadn’t really had a chance to talk in any sort of depth since New Year’s. I wasn’t sure where Archie had gone off to, but he’d left town a week or so ago and was due back a week from now, so I suspected he just had a party to attend or friends to look up.
As I jogged around the end of the bay, I let my mind drift to the dreams I’d experienced during the night. As with most of the dreams I had, once I’d awakened, I couldn’t really remember the content of the dream, although I did remember having the knowledge that the dream was relevant and vivid. It frustrated me when I was left with the feeling that something my subconscious had uncovered while I slept was important to the mystery I was trying to unfold, yet once I’d awakened, I couldn’t remember a single detail of what I was sure had been a vivid memory.
As I rounded the corner where the trail headed north along Piney Point, I considered the idea that perhaps I should take a step out of the box and try to recover my memories in another fashion. Waiting for them to appear in my dreams was taking a long time, especially when I usually couldn’t remember what I’d dreamt once I awoke. Maybe I should try hypnosis or some sort of regression therapy. Of course, the very idea of someone messing around in my subconscious left me with a feeling of terror I couldn’t quite define. Was it possible, I wondered, that the reason I couldn’t remember was because I didn’t want to remember?
It did seem as if something horrible had happened to me when I was a child. Perhaps my memories had been locked in a sealed room in my mind because I’d locked them there. Maybe, just maybe, opening that door before I was ready was a terrible idea.
Once I reached the fence that ran along the back of the Winchester Estate, I paused and let my heart rate slow. I hadn’t known Adam all that long, and I certainly didn’t know him all that well, yet since he’d been gone, I’d really, really missed him. Yes, he was a friend, and yes, he was helping me with my mystery, but Coop, who was also a friend, had been gone for four weeks, and I’d barely even missed him.
Not like I missed Adam.
I was a practical person who realized that letting my heart get wrapped up in any feelings I might have for Adam Winchester was a bad idea. Adam was a friend. Nothing more. He had his life, and I had mine. With the exception of the intersection where my mystery involved him and his family, separate lives were the way things were most likely destined to stay.
By the time I got back to the cottage, it was nearly mid-morning. I took a long shower, dressed in jeans and a sweater, and then cooked a couple eggs for breakfast. I fed the dogs and returned a few emails. I was supposed to meet up with Lizzy at two-thirty to look for Snowball, so I figured if I arrived at the office around eleven-thirty, it would give me a few hours to work on some ideas I had before she arrived. I really wanted to ease into my new role as a PI rather than pounding the pavement looking for work, as some new PI’s were prone to do. I wanted to work with those who found me, rather than tracking down potential clients and convincing them they needed my services when, in reality, they might very well be able to take care of their problem on their own.
I decided to leave the dogs at the cottage today since Lizzy and I would be out walking around most of the afternoon. Even though they’d had a long walk, I knew they’d need a bathroom break, so I called them to follow and stepped out onto the beach that lined the bay just outside my cottage. I still wasn’t sure how I’d been so lucky as to end up on this beautiful little beach. Of all the places I could have ended up after my father died, I was sure that there was nowhere that would have been as perfect.
When I returned to the cottage, I found a text from Adam on the cell phone I’d left on the table. He’d texted to let me know that he had news to share and that we should arrange a time to talk. He was currently in London and heading out to dinner with two of his cousins, so he could either call me when he returned that evening, which would be around two or two-thirty my time, or that he could call me tomorrow morning any time that worked for me. I knew I was supposed to meet up with Lizzy at two-thirty, so I texted him back and suggested that tomorrow might be better.
I did tell him that if he got back from dinner early to go ahead and call. I let him know I was heading into the office but should be at my desk doing busy work until I was supposed to meet up with my first client. He texted back to let me know that he was impressed I had a client already, although I hadn’t bothered to explain that I’d been hired by a ten-year-old to find a cat. He texted one last time and agreed that if he returned from dinner early, he’d call when he got back, and if it didn’t work out this evening, he’d call me in the morning.
Grabbing my keys and purse, I headed toward my SUV. I was curious about what Adam had to share and was sorry I’d most likely have to wait to hear his news until tomorrow. I supposed asking him to call after I finished with Lizzy would make the call a late one on his end. I figured I’d be done by around four-thirty my time. What time was that in London? If I remembered correctly, the time difference was eight or nine hours, which would mean four-thirty my time was either twelve-thirty or one-thirty his time. I wasn’t sure what Adam’s sleeping habits were, but if it were me, I’d be sound asleep at that time of day.
After parking in the small lot behind the block of buildings I shared a hallway and bathroom with, I grabbed a few items I’d brought from the cottage and headed toward the back door. The rear entrance was for business use only and could only be accessed with a key. Once I was inside, I set the box of items I’d brought on my desk and headed over to the yogurt shop to check on their special of the day.
“Kevin,” I greeted the young man. “I thought you were off all week.”
“I was supposed to be, but things got sort of strange with my friends, so I lied and told them I had to work. I figured I should probably come in just in case one of them showed up here, so I called Kim and offered to give her today off.”
“I’m sorry to hear that things with your friends didn’t go as planned.”
He ran a hand through his hair and then leaned his elbows on the high counter. “It was so odd,” he said. “I really thought the four guys who showed up for a visit this week were the same four guys I’d known at summer camp, but it became obvious pretty quickly that college had changed them. Or at least most of them,” he amended.
“So they all go to college?”
He nodded. “Everyone in the group other than me does.”
“So, if you don’t mind me asking, what did they do that was so odd?”
He shrugged as he slid a sample of the flavor of the day across the counter. “Have you ever seen movies like Animal House or American Pie?”
“Sure. Slapstick young adult comedy at its finest, although I do suppose there are some parts of both movies that might be defined as having bad taste.”
“I’m not a prude,” Kevin said, handing me a spoon. “In fact, I like a good joke as well as the next guy, so when Lance first came up with the game, I willingly joined in.”
“Game?” I asked, indicating that I’d like a small cup of the pineapple yogurt.
“I guess you saw that kissing booth on the boardwalk.”
I nodded. “Yes. I saw it. It’s a fundraiser for the fitness group that’s in town. I thought it was sort of crude, but I’ve been told the kisses are pretty platonic and handled tastefully. I’m not sure I would have chosen that sort of fundraiser, but I guess the group made a lot of money over the weekend.”
“Yeah, I heard that as well. Anyway, when Lance saw the booth, he bet Jimmy, Cory, Kyle, and me that not only could he get a much juicier kiss than could be bought for a five dollar donation out of the built blond behind the counter, but he could get her phone number as well. Lance can be a charmer, but we all figured that the girls running the booth had heard every pickup line imaginable, so we all accepted his challenge.”
“I’m going to take a stab at a guess. Lance was able to do what he said he was going to do.”
“And how. I don’t know what Lance said to that girl, whose name ended up being Britany, but she was all over him. Anyway, later that evening, the five of us got to talking, and Lance came up with the idea to have a contest of sorts.”
I had a feeling things were about to get interesting. “What sort of contest?”
“Lance called it the Casanova Challenge. Basically, the goal was to collect points, which were recorded on a whiteboard each evening. You could get one point for buying a woman you didn’t know a drink, two points for getting the phone number of an attractive woman previously unknown to you, three points if you scored a kiss from a woman you’d just met, all the way up to ten points for actually scoring.”
I wrinkled my nose. Why was it that young men had to turn sex into a conquest or battle victory of some sort?
“I figured I’d buy a few drinks and get a few phone numbers, but I never planned to take it beyond that,” Kevin added. “Kyle is a shy sort who I doubted would get any points at all, and Cory is a lot like me, so I figured he’d play along but not take it too seriously. The real problem was that Lance and Jimmy immediately got into an intense head-to-head battle to win the title of Casanova in our little group. They became more aggressive as their point count increased. I became really uncomfortable with some of the ways they were manipulating these girls and suggested that maybe enough was enough. Cory and Kyle agreed that the game might have been a bad idea, but Lance and Jimmy were into it and really took it seriously.”
“So you pretended that you had to work.”
“Exactly. I spoke to Cory earlier today, and he told me he was going to stay tonight and then head home for the rest of the break. He said that Kyle had bailed on the group without even saying goodbye. Kyle is the sensitive sort, and I could see that the game was not at all the sort of thing he was comfortable with. I wasn’t surprised Kyle didn’t want to participate and was cool with letting him sit this one out, but Lance and Jimmy seemed to take all sorts of pleasure in torturing him into getting a number on the board. Kyle did eventually do as they asked and actually left the bar with a girl he’d just met so I figured that would be the end of it, but he must have been angry about the whole thing since I haven’t seen him since.”
“Maybe you should call and talk to him,” I suggested.
“I’ve tried calling him several times, but he doesn’t pick up. He’s been gone since Monday night, so I’m sure he’s home by now. I’m afraid that the guys might have pushed him to the point of ruining our friendship, which would be too bad. The five of us have been friends for a long time.”
I took a bite of my yogurt. “Maybe Kyle just needs some time to cool off.”
“Maybe. I hope so. I do feel bad that things got out of hand.”
I offered Kevin a smile. “I guess this is one of those things that you learn and grow from.”
“Yeah, I guess. Anyway, thanks for listening. I guess I was more upset about the implosion of friendships that mean a lot to me than I realized.”
“Things might still work out. If they don’t, then you can maintain friendships with all four men separately.”
“It won’t be the same.”
“No,” I agreed. “I guess it wouldn’t be.”
Another customer came in, so I said my goodbyes and headed to my office. I felt bad for Kevin, who seemed like a nice guy even if he did have some friends with questionable values. I was sure that Lance and Jimmy weren’t the first two twenty-one-year-olds on the planet to treat hooking up with a pretty girl as some sort of a game, but the concept still disgusted me, and I was glad that Kevin had decided to get out when he did.
The next two hours seemed to fly by, and before I knew it, Lizzy was trotting in the front door.
“Are you ready to canvas the neighborhood?” I asked.
“What does that mean?”
“Are you ready to knock on doors and ask people if they’ve seen Snowball?”
“I am. I hope we find Snowball. I can’t sleep when she isn’t with me. I keep thinking that she’s cold and scared. I don’t know why she won’t just come home.”
Yeah, I’d wondered that as well. The past
few nights had been cold. It seemed that if the cat was alive and well and able to do so, Snowball would end her walkabout and return to the girl who loved her.
“I thought we’d focus on the houses between the apartment building where you live and this street,” I said. I held up a stack of fliers. “We’ll give one to everyone and ask them to call if they see Snowball. We’ll also bring tape and put fliers on all the lampposts.”
“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “I have a lot of homework, so Mom said I have to be home by four-thirty.”
“Then I guess we should get going.”
Of the first six houses we tried, no one was home at three of them, and no one claimed to have seen the cat at the other three. The seventh house we tried was inhabited by a woman in her nineties with questionable eyesight who said she had seen a cat a couple days ago. Although she stated that the cat she saw may or may not have been the cat in the photo, since the cat she noticed sitting on her back porch was pretty blurry. We asked if she had seen where the cat went when it left her porch, and she said she didn’t know.
The next three houses were dead ends as well, but the house after that was owned by two sisters who looked to be in their eighties and were sure they had seen the cat in the photo wandering around the neighborhood a few days ago. I asked the women if they knew where the cat had gone, and they reported that they didn’t know. The cat apparently took off through their hedge when they tried to approach her.
By the time four-twenty rolled around, Lizzy and I had managed to cover the area we set out to cover. We still hadn’t found the cat, but we had found enough people who claimed to have seen her that we suspected she’d been wandering the streets in the area a few days earlier. The problem was that the most recent sighting of the cat was two days ago. Or maybe three. Unfortunately, our eyewitnesses weren’t all that reliable when it came to nailing down a timeline.
