by Ink, India
He was quicker to take me up on my offer than I’d expected. “You’d do that? Because her car checked out—no strange prints inside, no sign of foul play, no sign of anything out of the ordinary. And the sand didn’t look like there was a tussle, though with the wind and rain that night, who knows?”
I blinked. “Sounds like I’ve just been deputized.”
“More or less. No prowling, no getting yourself in dangerous situations . . . just ask a few questions if you would, while I try to figure out where to look from here. Oh, and Persia?”
“Yeah?” I glanced at the clock, thinking about my to-do list for the day. I’d just have to push a few of my errands back until tomorrow.
“Thanks.” He hung up, and I stared at the receiver. So the department was in a budgetary fix that was impacting police services. It figured. People could be so short-sighted. Save a few taxes today but lose your shirt in the process. Wait until some of those city council members dialed 911 and came up with a busy signal. I decided to set Auntie to work on the situation, whether Kyle wanted me to say anything or not. She was persuasive. While I looked for clues to Lisa’s disappearance, Auntie could start badgering the town leaders into coughing up more money for Kyle and his crew.
I made two calls: one to Barbara, asking her to come help us at Venus Envy if she wasn’t going to work at the bakery for the day. As I suspected, she was happy to have something to do, even if it meant being right next door to the Baklava or Bust Bakery. I had the feeling she was hoping Dorian would see her and rush over to apologize.
The other call was to Amy. “Listen, I thought I’d go out and ask a few questions about Lisa. Sort of get a head start on things. I’m going to check out some of her clients from last week, see if she said anything to them about her plans. And what did you say the name of her ex-boyfriend was?” She told me, and I jotted down his name.
“Persia,” she said, and I could hear the hesitancy in her voice. “Why are you doing this? Isn’t this Kyle’s job?”
I thought fast. “Kyle thinks I’d have a better chance of getting them to open up to me, since I’m one of the owners of Venus Envy, and friends with a number of our customers.”
She murmured an assent, though I wasn’t sure she was thoroughly convinced. When I hung up, I called Kyle back and filled him in on the excuse I’d given Amy so he wouldn’t blow it when she came in to file the missing person report. After I finished, I picked up my notes and Lisa’s appointment book and stuffed them in a spare tote bag I kept under the counter.
Auntie was sitting amid a pile of invoices and spreadsheets six inches high. She glanced up at me and saw that I had my coat on and purse over my shoulder. She let out a little huff of irritation. “No, no, no! You aren’t going out, are you?”
“For a little while. Barb’s coming in to help, though. I’m going out to talk to some of the clients who Lisa saw last week. They might know something, and they’ll be more willing to talk to me rather than to Kyle.” I hesitated, remembering my promise to keep quiet about the layoffs. “Another thing . . . you might want to talk to some of your friends on the city council and tell them to loosen the purse strings on the police department.”
“Why? What do you know?” Aunt Florence gave me that look that said she knew I knew something she didn’t. And Auntie wasn’t happy when she was kept in the dark.
I gave a little shrug but winked. “Just call it preventative medicine. I should be back before one.”
With a sigh, Auntie waved me toward the door. “Go, but give me a call if you’re going to be much later than that so I can rearrange some things I was going to do this afternoon.”
“Thanks, Auntie. I won’t be too long,” I said, giving her a quick kiss. As I headed out the door, I wondered if I was wasting my time. Kyle thought Lisa was sleeping at the bottom of the inlet. Finding out something of value from one of her clients seemed like a long shot, but we had to start somewhere. And Kyle certainly wouldn’t be able to follow up on all these leads . . . not as quickly as I could.
Braving the rain, I ran toward my car, closing the door in just in time to avoid being caught in a massive downpour that overwhelmed my windshield wipers. As I waited for the sudden surge of rain to back off, everything took on a bleak edge. My cell phone rang, and I answered, but it was a wrong number. As I stared at my phone, I wondered . . . Lisa had a cell. Had anybody called it? Surely, Amy had, but I still had to try.
My fingers were shaking as I dialed the number. The ring on the other end told me that wherever her phone was, it wasn’t in the inlet. I waited. One ring. Five, and it switched to voice mail. As I left a message, the downpour eased up. Would she get my message? Was her phone even with her? As I pulled out of the parking space, I found myself praying that Kyle’s hunch was wrong.
Chapter Seven
First things first. I was going to drive home and change. My comfort clothes were beginning to feel baggy, and the hangover was starting to lift. I was also hungry, and the thought of a ham sandwich was beginning to sound appealing. From home, I could also call the names in Lisa’s book and ask them if I could drop in.
As I walked through the door, Dodger, our silver tabby, and Nalu, our black shorthair boy, stopped short in the hallway, where they were playing tug-of-war with a loaf of bread. A little over a week ago, we’d found a loaf of partially devoured bread on the bathroom floor, and we’d blamed the dogs. Now I knew the identity of the real culprits.
“What the hell are you two doing?” I stomped over, shooing them away from the bag. They watched, all innocent-like, as I picked up the bread and examined it. Yep, teeth marks pointed the finger, all right. Dodger was good at climbing, where Nalu was a little too fat to scramble up on the counters. Dodger must have pushed the bread off to the waiting Nalu, and together they decided to make tracks with the booty.
“You twits,” I muttered, carrying the bread into the kitchen. A couple of slices looked munched on, but otherwise everything seemed okay, so I dropped the remaining slices, minus two for my sandwich, into a Ziploc bag and threw away the old wrapper. The slobbered-on slices went in the dog’s dishes, which no doubt Dodger and Nalu would pilfer as soon as I wasn’t looking.
I fixed my snack, then sat down with the phone book, my sandwich, and a glass of tomato juice at the table. As I ate, I jotted down names and then hunted through the phone book for their addresses. First on the list from Lisa’s Friday appointments was Heddy Latherton. Well, if Lisa had said something, Heddy would be only too happy to tell me. But she wasn’t home, so I left a message on her voice mail and went on.
Barb had been her next appointment. I could talk to her after work. Third on the list was Karen Sanders. She answered on the first ring. When I introduced myself and asked if I could come over and ask her a few questions about Lisa, she quickly nixed that idea.
“I don’t mind talking to you, but not at my house. Can you meet me at the Starbucks adjacent to Barnes & Noble in an hour?” She lowered her voice. “I just don’t want to talk here at home. You can understand why.”
Okay, obviously she thought I was privy to something I wasn’t. Either that, or she was a drama queen. “Sure,” I said, wondering what it would take to pry information out of her. “See you in an hour.”
The fourth and fifth appointments were Donna and Enid Smith, elderly women who lived out on Ridgerock Road. They were sisters, regulars in our shop, and they loved company, so I was in like Flynn. I told them I’d drop by in a couple of hours, and they insisted I come for a late lunch. Feeling a tad guilty—they thought I was coming over just to be friendly—I agreed. I’d take them a bouquet and spend an hour or so dishing with them so I didn’t appear rude.
Lisa’s sixth appointment, a Candy Harrison, wasn’t home either. I left my name and number.
I ran upstairs to change clothes—I’d dropped a spot of mustard on my skirt while fixing my sandwich—and slid into a pair of black jeans and a skintight black V-neck sweater. My stomach had calmed down since I’d eat
en, and while I was still tired, I felt ready to take on the rest of the day. After making sure my mascara was good to go, I brushed my teeth, then headed out to meet Karen. The two-story Barnes & Noble was across the street from the mezzanine of Delacorte Plaza, connected by an enclosed walkway that stretched across one of the entrances to the mall.
The Barnes & Noble had a Starbucks coffee shop attached, and I stopped at the counter and ordered a grande tea before looking around. A woman raised her hand, and I recognized her. We hadn’t officially met, but I’d seen her in the shop several times. She always struck me as a bit of a flake, but I put on a smile and took a seat at her table. She leaned forward, looking just a little too eager.
“Persia, I was so happy to hear from you today. You said you wanted to talk about Lisa?”
So much for social niceties, I thought. But hey, it would get me out the door that much sooner. “Karen, hello. Nice to meet you. Yes, I was wondering if you remembered anything Lisa might have said during your appointment.”
“What’s wrong? Is she in some sort of trouble?”
Hoo boy, here it came. Treading cautiously into the subject, I said, “No, probably not. But her sister hasn’t heard from her for a couple of days, and we’re trying to figure out if she went on vacation or something.”
Karen’s eyes glittered, and I realized I had a young Heddy Latherton on my hands. The town gossip, Heddy had a mouth that outweighed her common sense by ten to one. My aunt couldn’t stand the woman.
“Let me think.” She sipped her drink, which looked like some sort of green tea blend, and her eyes lit up with an unnatural glow. She leaned forward and whispered, “Lisa seemed high-strung and anxious to get done with the appointment. I thought there might be something wrong.”
That could mean any number of things, including Lisa just wanting to get Karen out of her chair. In the two minutes since I’d sat down at the table, I’d developed an instant distaste for the woman. I usually tried not to make snap judgments but Karen rubbed me the wrong way, and I wasn’t sure why.
“Did she mention anything about plans for the weekend? Maybe something with her boyfriend?” I sipped my tea and puckered my lips. Apparently the lemons had received a good dose of tang by the sourpuss faeries.
Karen blinked. She lowered her voice and in a conspiratorial tone said, “You know who I am, right? And why I wanted to meet here instead of my house?”
It was my turn to blink. I was beginning to feel like I’d walked in on the wrong movie, or a bad X-Files episode. “Uh . . . no. Why don’t you enlighten me?”
“My sister is Yvonne Sanders. She was Shawn’s girlfriend until Lisa stole him away. Yvonne would kill me if she knew I went to Lisa for a makeover, even though Shawn and Lisa broke up months ago.” Karen sat back, an expectant look on her face.
I still wasn’t altogether clear on what she was trying to tell me. “So, is your sister still mad at Lisa?”
Karen played with her Danish. “Lisa just swooped in and carried him off. Yvonne was crushed. I don’t know if she’ll ever get over it.” She let out a tragic sigh. “I don’t know if I’ll ever have a great love like that. I like to think so, but it’s so hard to meet people.” She made a little shrug and gave me one of those basset hound looks, peppering my irritation with a tinge of compassion.
I looked her over a little more closely. Karen was wearing a baggy sweatshirt beneath a pair of overalls. It was impossible to tell what her figure looked like, and she sat as if she were uneasy in her body. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, and she had a Mariners baseball cap slung on backwards. Her nails were bitten to the quick, and her face was bare. She could be a pretty girl if she’d take a few pains with her appearance, but the truth was, she’d never be a classical beauty. It occurred to me that perhaps she didn’t think she was pretty at all, so why bother trying? Self-esteem was a rare commodity in women. I idly wondered what she’d looked like after the makeover.
“Can you think of anything out of the ordinary that Lisa told you? Do you remember if she said she was going anywhere?”
Karen crinkled her nose, thinking. After a minute, she shook her head. “No, not really. I was too nervous to pay attention. I’ve never been to anything like the Thanksgiving Gala before. I guess I was thinking about that, mostly. And I’d never had a makeover before. I still can’t believe what she was able to do to me, but I don’t think I can ever learn how to put on makeup like that. It seems like magic to me.” She sounded wistful and, once again, I felt sorry for the woman.
I gave her a wide smile. “Listen, there are a lot of good books and magazines on the subject. Start with Kevyn Aucoin’s books and magazines like Pout and Winsome and Allure. Buy a good makeup mirror, and inexpensive drugstore cosmetics for practice, and when you find colors you like, get them in a good department store brand. I can tell you right now you’d look great in lilac and rose-colored eye shadow, and a dusty rose-colored gloss or lipstick. When you pick out foundation, pick one that matches your skin tone—don’t go darker. And use a translucent powder.”
She beamed and pulled out a notebook. “Can you repeat that? I think I’d like to give it a try. Yvonne’s always been the pretty one, but maybe . . .” She stopped, biting her lip. I thought I saw tears glistening in her eyes.
“Maybe you can find your own beauty and stop comparing yourself to your sister,” I said firmly as I reached for her notebook. I jotted down some suggestions and the titles of a couple of good books and handed it back to her. “Remember, people treat you the way you treat yourself. So stop beating yourself up, okay?”
“I’ll try,” she said, giving me a grateful smile. Standing up, she added, “Listen, don’t tell Yvonne I went to see Lisa, would you? She’d be pissed at me.”
I nodded and watched as she trudged out of the coffee shop and into the bookstore. She glanced around, and then asked a clerk something, and I saw that he pointed her toward the health and beauty section. What do you know? She was taking my advice.
I drained my tea, made sure I had my purse and tote bag, and headed out to the car. Along the way, Karen’s remarks about Yvonne replayed in my mind. Could Yvonne have been so angry that she’d finally decided to lash out? It seemed a distant possibility, but nevertheless, we’d have to check it out. Because as it was, we were striking out, and every day that Lisa was missing reduced our chances of finding her.
I pulled into the Smith sisters’ driveway at quarter to one and made a quick call to the shop. Tawny answered, and I asked her to tell Auntie that I’d be about an hour later than I’d expected. As I walked up the flagstone path to the house, Enid Smith stuck her head out the door and motioned me to hurry.
“You’ll catch your death in that rain, girl. Get in here.” She ushered me into the quiet two-bedroom ranch house that had been built in the early eighties. The décor was à la the Golden Girls: mauve and mint green with splashes of yellow. Wicker furniture abounded, and large potted palms and ferns. I’d been over to Enid and Donna’s on several occasions, and each time, the whimsy and lightness of the house never failed to coax a smile out of me.
The sisters played mother to three Himalayan Siamese, all of whom were loud, sleek, and spoiled. They raced over to me when I sat down at the dining room table and milled around my feet. I reached down and tickled their ears and patted their backs.
Donna swept in from the kitchen carrying a tray of clear crystal dishes that contained what looked—and smelled—like lobster salad on croissant rolls. Both Enid and Donna were dressed as if getting ready for an afternoon tea, but I had known them long enough to know that this was their everyday getup. Neither would ever be seen in public with a single gray curl out of place or without a handbag that matched their shoes. They adored my aunt, but I knew they thought she dressed like a bag lady.
As she set the plates on the table, Donna prattled on about how good it was to see me. I leaned back, glad I’d come. Even if it did mess up my schedule, I enjoyed the Smith sisters’ company and di
dn’t get over here often enough. They were comfortable in their lives, and they made their guests feel comfortable in their home.
As we settled down to eat, and I flourished the peach-colored napkin onto my lap, Donna said, “Okay, Persia, we know you have something to ask us. You didn’t just drop over here for a leisurely visit.”
When I tried to protest—feeling vaguely embarrassed because she’d hit the nail on the head—she added, “Save it for someone you can snow.” She was smiling though, and no sense of rebuke lingered in her words. “With the holiday season upon us, there’s no way you’d have time to run around on a weekday like this. Your aunt must be stewing to have you back at the shop.”
I gave her a wry grin. “Well, yes, she probably is. You know I love coming to visit, but you’re right. There is something I need to ask you.” I bit into the lobster salad and closed my eyes, reveling in the rich, sweet flavor of the flaked shellfish as it mingled with diced apples, celery, shallots, and water chestnuts, all blended together in a Dijon mustard dressing. The croissant matched perfectly with the salad. “Oh yum, this is so good,” I added. “I had a sandwich about an hour ago, but I guess I was hungrier than I thought.”
