Sex & Sensibility

by Shannon Hollis

  “Nothing’s up, I guess. I thought I could open a door for him, but he’s locked down tight.”

  “It happens,” Linn said sympathetically. “Look at me and Jordan. Remember him? The pilot? I tried to open up his door for three years.”

  “Jordan was a jerk.”

  “I know, and if you’ve fallen for Griffin he must not be one, but sometimes you just have to know when to cut your losses.”

  Tessa supposed that was true, but the optimist in her always hoped that every problem had a solution. Some didn’t. Maybe some problems just wanted to be left alone.

  She said goodbye to Linn and put the phone back in her purse. If ever there was a time to consult the cards, it was now.

  The Queen of Wands smiled at her from the front of the little velvet bag as she shook the cards into her hand. “I could use some help from you,” Tessa told her. Then she sat on the rug in a long beam of sunshine and shuffled and cut, then chose one.

  The Magician.

  Tessa caught her breath. She should have consulted the cards before she’d called Linn and gotten all depressed. The Magician was her kind of card. He meant concentrating on what you wanted, committing to it, and then going after it. People often thought he pulled off miracles, but it was the power of his focus and simply doing what needed to be done that accomplished the seemingly impossible.

  So there you were.

  She needed to focus on doing what needed to be done, and that would help get her what she wanted. The seemingly impossible.

  But what was that, exactly? Was it to return to her old life and focus on her thesis, so she could graduate—yep, that fell under “seemingly impossible”—and get on with the scary business of making a living?

  Face it, Tessa, sensible people don’t change their major four times. You stay in school because it’s safe there. You don’t actually have to get out and grow up and be useful. Or if not useful, then at least a benefit of some kind, helping people who need your skills.

  And if she didn’t want to focus on that, then how about the other impossible? How about Griffin?

  Again, that deep sense of recognition sounded inside her, like the vibration of a bell that you can feel but not hear. Her instincts told her this was what she wanted, whether it was logical or practical or not. And Tessa had learned to listen to her instincts.

  Her brain told her that Linn had all the facts right. But her heart and her internal sense told her that there was more to caring about someone than facts. There was action. There was sex. And there was opening up to one another and being honest.

  Okay, so two out of three wasn’t bad.

  Through the open window, she heard the purr of a couple of very expensive engines, and then voices. Jay and Mandy were home.

  Well, in the absence of Griffin, she was going to have to check in and add a report of some kind to the one-word text message she presumed Griffin had gotten around to sending once he’d slowed down.

  She crossed the patio and went around to the front door, which was closest to Jay’s office. But for once the inner sanctum was empty. It felt just like Jay, though—big and full of importance and stress. A hundred years and half a dozen owners from now, it would probably still feel that way.

  Tessa followed the sound of voices down the hall to the kitchen, where it seemed Mandy was making Jay a snack. Big shot meetings must make a guy hungry.

  “I told you, I don’t know anything more than that one word—oh, Tessa.” Jay put down his cheese-and-croissant sandwich and motioned for her to come in. “All I know from Griffin is ‘no.’ What does that mean? And where the hell is he?”

  “It means no, she wasn’t at the beach house this morning.” Tessa pulled up a stool and sat opposite him at the huge butcher-block table. “And Griffin drove out of here about twenty minutes ago. I don’t know where he went.”

  “Oh, I passed him when I was coming back from Santa Rita,” Mandy told him. “I got him on the walkie-talkie. He’s on his way back.”

  That wasn’t enough time for a guy to cool off and find his equilibrium. Tessa wished Mandy’s timing had been off just a little so that they might have missed each other. Or that the battery had gone dead in her phone. It was hard to prepare herself to talk to him when she had no idea what frame of mind he’d be in.

  “Well, you can tell us as well as he can,” Jay said, chomping into his sandwich. “Start at the top. Don’t leave anything out.”

  Yeah, right. She started at the top and left whole paragraphs of things out. And by the time she got to the end, Griffin was leaning on the kitchen doorjamb, arms crossed over his chest and his gaze fixed on her. She lost her train of thought and stumbled to a halt.

  “Can you add anything to that, Griffin?” Jay asked.

  “Just a few opinions.”

  “Let’s hear ’em.”

  “Why doesn’t Mandy update us first?” Griffin suggested.

  “Come on in and sit.” Mandy waved him to a stool next to Tessa, but he took the one on the end instead. Mandy shrugged and brought her own croissant to the table, taking the stool he had rejected.

  He won’t sit next to me. Not a good sign.

  Mandy took a fortifying nibble of her sandwich. “I went to Oraia to get a facial and see what I could learn.” She glanced at Tessa. “They do a great facial. You should go there. Ask for Bonita.”

  “But did you talk to Michelle?” Griffin wanted to know. “She’s the one who said Christina and Trey had plans to go away.”

  “Well, that’s the funny thing.” Mandy took another bite. “Bonita doesn’t know Trey or Christina. I guess she’s new. But what she does know is that Michelle hasn’t been in the shop for two weeks. Apparently she’s on vacation, diving in the Catalinas.”

  “What?” Griffin looked blank.

  “That’s impossible.” Tessa stared from Jay to Mandy and back. “She must have come back.”

  “Not according to Bonita. I asked around. No one has seen her since the day she left.”

  “Which one of you talked to her?” Jay demanded, glaring at Griffin.

  “I did,” Tessa said, and the glare turned on her like a bad-tempered searchlight. “I pretended I was Christina’s friend Ashley.”

  “Was Griffin with you?”

  “Of course he was. He’s been with me every waking hour since I got here, per your orders.”

  Don’t lose your temper. Up until now she hardly knew she had a temper. But there was something about these men that just rubbed her the wrong way. Separately, she could deal with them. Together? Bad news.

  Jay looked at Griffin. “And you believe she talked to this Michelle.”

  Griffin nodded. “At the time, I did.”

  “What do you mean, ‘at the time’?” Tessa demanded. “You were sitting right there. We called early, so she was there before the shop opened and people saw her. And then we went and looked Trey up at Stellar Memory. That’s how we found him.”

  “It couldn’t have been her,” Mandy observed. “The Catalinas are a long way from here.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether it was or not,” Tessa said. “The point is, we got the name we needed. We found out who Christina’s boyfriend is.”

  “For all the good that did us,” Griffin put in. “Let’s just say it wasn’t Michelle who answered the phone. Who could it have been? Someone who figured out you were playing games and decided to play one of her own? Trey’s name is all over the papers in this neck of the woods. Maybe this person saw it and decided to pull your leg right back.”

  “It was Michelle!”

  “But how do you know?” Jay asked.

  “That’s the point!” Tessa’s frustration increased. “I did know. It was Michelle Oraia, who owns the shop. I sensed it.”

  “Just like you sensed they were at the beach house last night?” Jay said, and looked to Griffin for confirmation.

  He shook his head. “There was no evidence at all that they were there. No trash, no damp in the shower, nothing.” />
  “She said that they were very neat.” Jay put his sandwich down. “I didn’t know she meant so neat they weren’t even there.”

  “They were there,” Tessa said, but even as the words came out of her mouth, she knew it was pointless. “I saw them there, last night. I just don’t know where they are now. I need to go and get the blue sweater and find somewhere quiet, so I can—”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Jay’s tone was flat.

  Tessa glanced at Mandy, but her face was as smooth as it probably was in the courtroom, right before she made her closing argument. No help there.

  Griffin? With her eyes, she appealed to him to help her out. He had believed her when she’d called Michelle before. And they had identified Trey together. The guy was in the Christmas party picture. Why was Griffin doing this?

  “Thank you for your time, Tessa,” Jay said. “But I believe we’ve been a little misled.”

  “I haven’t misled you! In fact, I’ve—”

  “I didn’t say it was you who misled us. Though these discrepancies between your visions and reality are a little disturbing. I think now that it’s time we pursued a more—shall we say, realistic line of investigation.”

  “But it is real!”

  “I’m going to disagree with you.”

  “We’re not sure how you define real.” Mandy smiled, as if to indicate that these were the facts, but she wasn’t holding them against Tessa. “In the beginning Jay and I agreed to overlook this business about Griffin’s arresting you for fraud. But since we don’t seem to be seeing any results, here, I’m feeling very uneasy about you working with us.”

  Tessa felt as if she’d been thrown to the ground. She tried to drag a breath into her lungs that were suddenly having trouble working. “Remember that I was not convicted, or even charged.” One breath. Good. Try another. Now, talk. “He arrested me by mistake. You can ask him.”

  Jay waved an arm, as if to get their attention. “Arrested, charged, it’s all the same to me. The point is, we need to try something else. While you’re packing up your things, I’ll be in my office writing you a check. I’ll meet you there in, say, ten minutes.” Jay pushed himself back from the table with an air of finality.

  “Mr. Singleton, it’s you who’s making a mistake now,” Tessa said desperately. “We’re only half a day behind Christina. If you’d just let me—”

  “Ten minutes, Tessa,” he said from the doorway. “And I suggest that this time, you don’t keep me waiting.”

  21

  From the private journal of Jay Singleton

  I don’t know which is worse—fear or disappointment. With fear, at least there’s the hope that everything will turn out okay. But with disappointment that hope gets killed and you’re left with nothing.

  So here I stand with nothing. Less than nothing, in fact. Because I insisted on racing down rabbit holes with this psychic, any trail Christina might have left is stone cold. I should have listened to Griffin. I should have called Barbara right away and asked for her help, because God knows Christina could have jumped on a plane and gone back to Boston.

  Should have, could have, would have. The most useless words in the English language. They mean failure.

  No, come on. What’s failed here is me. The whole reason I wouldn’t let Griffin call in the police is because I was afraid of losing Christina. I was afraid Barbara would convince her to go away—but if my little girl really wanted to stay here, nothing would have made her go back, not even Barbara.

  And now I’ve really lost her. No matter what I did or didn’t do, she still chose Trey Ludovic and left me anyway. When am I going to get the opportunity to make this right? Is it really too late? Am I going to lose my girl before I’ve had a real chance to be her father?

  Father, ha. What kind of father am I?

  I’m a joke as a father. The fact is, I chose work over my family and now I’m paying the price when my family chooses something else over me. Christina’s no dummy. I taught her well that family isn’t important. I taught her that if you chase something hard enough, you’ll get it. She chased Trey Ludovic and got him, much as that sticks in my gullet.

  Face it, Jay.

  You brought this on yourself. The person to blame is not Barbara, not Tessa, not Griffin. The person to blame is you.

  TESSA’S FACE HAUNTED GRIFFIN.

  She had stared at Jay like a child on Christmas morning who has just had all her presents torn from her hands and given to someone else. No, it was worse than that. It was the face of a woman who has believed the best despite all odds, and who has just realized the worst has been waiting to ambush her all along.

  Griffin shook off the memory of those eyes and the plea for support that had faded to pain and disappointment. It was true he had been of two minds about the information she’d given them. How much of their progress had come from her gift and how much was sheer coincidence and investigative luck?

  It was too late now to debate it. He had his boss’s runaway daughter to find.

  His first call after the sound of the Mustang’s perfectly tuned engine had faded out of his life was to the local P.D. to report Christina missing. Normally there would be a twenty-four-hour waiting period for a report to be filed after such a call, but when he’d explained that had expired long ago and told the duty officer just who was missing, a detective was dispatched within the hour.

  The detective who now sat across the desk from Jay Singleton in the chair that Tessa had refused that first day. The woman’s badge said her surname was Petrie, and her dark hair was cropped short in a no-nonsense style. She opened her notebook and took a pen from an enormous handbag that rested against the leg of the chair. It probably contained her handgun, a sack lunch and the policy and procedures manual.

  “So, you’ve been investigating your daughter’s disappearance privately?” she asked.

  Jay nodded.

  “Let me just say that after the first twenty-four hours the trail is often cold. Your first call should have been to us.”

  “I’ve called you now,” Jay said shortly. “There has been no ransom note or any real indication she was kidnapped. One possibility is that she ran off with Trey Ludovic, who is—”

  “I know who Trey Ludovic is. Stellar Memory, right?”

  “The same.”

  “But he’s got to be—” Detective Petrie stopped herself before she said “as old as you are” but Jay glared at her as if she had.

  “Right.” The woman scribbled in her notebook. “You know that technically she’s not a child. In the eyes of the law, after the age of seventeen she can go where she wants with whom she wants, and there’s not much our department can do about it.”

  Jay’s eyes narrowed. “You can help us find her before something happens, like they run off to Vegas and get married.”

  “This is a family matter, Mr. Singleton, not a crime.”

  “Do you investigate missing persons or not?” Jay had finally reached the end of his patience. “Do you have any idea how much I contributed to your department’s last charity gig? I expect a little service in return.”

  The woman paled and Griffin leaned a shoulder on the window and looked out at the endless, monotonous crash of the breakers.

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t make some inquiries, in the interests of the community. But demands on our time are high. I just want to set your expectations.”

  “No, let me set yours. I want my daughter found, and I want her found now, otherwise your chief’s pet charity had better not count on another cent from me. Is that clear?”

  It was evidently common knowledge at the department just how big Jay’s contribution to the policemen’s community fund was. “I’ll do what I can,” Petrie finally said. “Where was she last seen?”

  “At her cottage here on the property,” Jay replied.

  “Physically.” Griffin’s conscience prodded him again with the memory of Tessa’s face. “We also had information she was recently at Mrs. Single
ton’s beach house.” The detective was going to have to know why they’d waited so long to call her in. There was no point in putting it off.

  Jay glared at him. “We’ve been using a psychic,” he explained, then waved the idea away with one hand as Petrie’s eyes popped with disbelief. “But it didn’t work out. She saw Christina at my wife’s beach house in Santa Rita last night in a vision. But when Knox here investigated, there was no evidence they’d been there. So I fired her.”

  “A good decision,” Petrie agreed faintly.

  Something in Griffin’s gut gave him the figurative elbow. Or maybe it was his sense of fairness. He hadn’t been fair with Tessa and her departure was his reward for that. “Most of her information was backed up with evidence,” he said, “but I guess you can expect the universe to fire a blank now and then.”

  “I guess it was pretty stupid to waste valuable days on a psychic’s babbling,” Petrie snapped. “What were you thinking?”

  “We were thinking that we didn’t want this to be public knowledge,” Jay said. “If you bring in the cops you’re guaranteed to bring in the news vans.”

  “Not in this case.” Petrie closed her notebook. “All I need is for it to get out that I’m cleaning up after a psychic.”

  Griffin frowned and decided that, if he had been the detective, he wouldn’t be haranguing the family about their very real concerns. Or about their methods. After all, what was he, chopped liver? He’d been running the show up until now. He and Tessa had done the best they could with the limited tools they had at hand.

  He had to face it. He almost had it wrapped. If he’d opened his mouth and backed her up instead of letting Jay crucify her with sarcasm and anger, he’d be this many hours closer to succeeding. If he’d said one word in her defense, he could have built up Jay’s confidence in her, and he and Tessa would probably not only have found Christina, they’d be sharing a bed tonight.

  Right, that’s just what I need.

  Of course it was. And now he’d put the kibosh on it for good. He was never going to see her again.