by Nancy Warren
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry, honey. Some girls just don’t have any luck.”
Somehow, the salon and her mom helped Toni get back on track. Dwayne was a no-good, cheating loser. Irresponsible and childish, he used his charm and good looks to drift through life, rarely challenged by anything approaching morals. But she didn’t think he’d contact Tiffany. An almost grown daughter would make him feel old, she suspected.
She’d said no to giving Dwayne money and that was most likely the last she’d see or hear of Dwayne for another sixteen years. Or sixteen million, if she was lucky.
Her diamond restored to the tip of her nail where it belonged, sparkling with the other nine, and a pedicure thrown in for the heck of it helped her the way therapy might help another woman. To Toni, being surrounded by women laughing, gossiping and relaxing, with her mother for company, was as good as a group counseling session.
When she got home, even Tiffany was in a better mood.
“How was enviro club?”
“Really cool. And I’m sorry about your car. The man said it would be good as new with a new bumper and engine and a couple of new doors.”
“You are so grounded forever.”
Tiffany laughed. “I put the keys beside the fruit bowl. What’s for dinner, Tiger Mommy?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She opened the fridge. “How about mushroom lasagna and salad?”
“Or we could have pizza?”
“Pizza and salad. Honestly, for a vegetarian, you don’t eat enough vegetables.”
They chatted over dinner and Toni thought, as she had so many times over the past sixteen years, that Dwayne had missed out on the only good thing he’d ever done.
She managed not to think about her deadbeat ex for the next few days until she was startled by her daughter coming into her office one evening after dinner.
She fiddled with one of the silver rings on her hand.
“Mom?”
“Mmm-hmm?”
“Why did you and Dad break up?”
Toni’s head jerked up from the Spring Fling sample packs she was packing into her tote bag to take to a Spring Fling makeup party. Toni didn’t do a lot of home parties anymore but she liked to keep her hand in.
“What brings this on, Tiff? You haven’t asked about your dad for a while.”
Tiffany hadn’t inquired about her father for probably two years. How creepy that she would ask about him today, only a few days after Toni had received a call from Deadbeat Dwayne.
“I don’t know.” Today Tiffany had chosen to embrace spring and its colorful palette by wearing more black than usual. “Most of my friends who have divorced parents still see their dads. I feel like a freak.”
Toni couldn’t stop herself from smoothing a loving hand down her daughter’s back. “We were way too young to get married. I wasn’t much older than you are now. And Dwayne, well, he certainly wasn’t ready to settle down. He lit out when you were a baby and I haven’t seen him since.”
“But he’s older now. Maybe he wants to see me. Maybe he feels like you’re keeping me from him.”
“Has he contacted you?” The words were out before she could contain them. Her tone sounded sharp even to her own ears.
“See? There you go acting all control freaky. What if he has? Doesn’t a man have a right to see his own child?”
Feeling as though a giant fist were squeezing her heart, she said, “Of course he does. I’m surprised he’d want to get in touch after all these years, that’s all.”
“I’m old enough to know the truth,” Tiffany said, looking achingly young and lost in a way Toni knew she could never fix.
“I’ve always told you the truth.”
“Have you?” And before she could answer, Tiffany’s cell made a tone that indicated a text was coming in and she was gone.
Toni did not believe her daughter’s sudden interest in her father was a coincidence. She also understood that Tiffany was a lot like she herself had been at sixteen. Stubborn, convinced she knew about life. Naive as hell.
If only she knew how to protect her daughter from her own father.
Luke Marciano was ass-deep in a murder investigation. Not that you needed to be much of a detective to solve this case. Two neighbors had exchanged angry words and insults over the placement of a fence. A fence, for chrissake. Half the neighborhood had witnessed the altercation. Then, a day later one of the two was found in his backyard with a couple of bullets in him. The other neighbor had a cabinet full of guns and one was missing. Luke sometimes felt like everyone in his adopted state solved their problems with guns.
When his cell rang and he glanced at the incoming number, he wondered whether his day was about to get better, or worse. With Toni you never knew.
“Marciano,” he said.
“Honey, you know it’s me. Why do you always bark out your name? You think I might have forgotten it?” She had the sexiest voice. He sometimes wondered if that’s why she was such a successful saleswoman. But he doubted it. More likely it was because she was so pushy.
“Force of habit,” he said.
“Am I interrupting anything?”
“Murder investigation.”
She sighed. “Don’t people in this state ever do anything but kill each other?”
Her words so mirrored his own thoughts that he had to smile. “Texans like to do everything bigger.” He glanced around, making sure no one could hear him. “Speaking of which, you still coming over to my place later?”
He and Toni had an interesting relationship. Having met on a murder investigation where her smarts — well hidden, in Luke’s opinion, under more makeup and diamonds than any woman needed — had almost got her killed. Since then they’d become, he wasn’t really sure what. Friends with benefits maybe came closest.
Between their two insane work schedules and her teenaged daughter, they didn’t see a lot of each other. Usually they got together at his place for an evening. They’d order take-out or one of them would cook, they’d talk, they’d have sex. She’d go home. With the divorce rate in his profession so high — and he’d already struck out once — he knew how difficult it was to sustain a relationship. He suspected Toni was equally skittish of anything resembling permanence.
“I sure am. And good news. Tiffany’s sleeping over at a friend’s. I can stay the night.”
He felt his day getting better by the second. “That is very good news.”
“I’ll see you later.”
When she arrived at his place later, he kissed her. And then he kissed her again and they discovered they weren’t that hungry. Not for food.
Sometime later, he found himself lying naked in bed, a satisfied smile on his face and Toni’s head on his chest.
When her breath had returned to normal, she said, “Oh, I really needed that.”
He turned to grin at her. “Best stress reliever there is.”
She played her hand idly across his belly and the reflection of five tiny diamonds winked at him. “Tiffany’s going through something.”
“Tiffany’s always going through something,” he reminded her.
“I know, but this is different. It’s about her dad.”
“What about her dad?”
“I think he contacted her. He called me out of the blue trying to get some money out of me, if you can believe it. He saw that article in Texas Today. He doesn’t even live in Texas. Somebody must have sent him a copy.”
Toni never talked about her ex, and what little he’d gleaned did not sound impressive. “The guy who ran out on you and left you with a baby is hitting you up for a loan?”
She nodded, her curls tickling his chest. “I think he might have contacted Tiffany, as well.”
He knew how much she protected her daughter. Too much, in his opinion, but he didn’t have kids so he kept his feelings to himself. “She’s sixteen. What harm do you think he can do her?”
“She’s my baby, Luke. I don’t want to see her hurt.”
>
He pulled her closer, if that was possible. “What makes you think he contacted her?”
“Because she asked about him. Said a father has a right to see his daughter, which sounded exactly like something Dwayne would say, when he’s tried very hard for the past sixteen years not to see her, or know about her and definitely not to support her. I couldn’t even find him for the divorce. Had to do that without him, too.”
“Probably it was coincidence,” he said, kissing her. Not that he believed his own words, but he didn’t have much to offer.
The next morning, Luke was barely in the office when Toni called. He picked up with a grin. “Hey, sexy.”
“I want to report a missing person,” she said, sounding unlike herself. No smile in the voice.
“What happened?” But in his gut, he knew.
“It’s Tiffany. She’s gone.”
“You know where she’s gone, right?”
“Yes. She emailed me this morning.”
“The sleepover?” He was pretty sure there hadn’t been any sleepover, which gave Tiffany a big head start.
“There was no sleepover.” She tried to stifle a sob, which sounded more heartrending than an actual sob.
He scanned through everything he knew about teenaged runaways. “Her cell phone must have GPS. We can track her.”
“She left her cell in her room. The messages were all wiped clean.” She sighed. “I’m looking up the phone log online, at least I’ll be able to see what numbers she was calling and texting, but none of the content.”
“Hang tight. I’m coming over.” There wasn’t much he could do, but Toni needed him.
As he headed out, he said to Henderson, his partner, “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.
“But we brought the guy who shot his neighbor in for questioning. I was going to put him in the interview room.”
“Put him in the holding tank. Let him sweat.”
Toni couldn’t panic. She knew emotion could only make her do something foolish. Still, when Luke arrived she wanted to throw herself against his strong chest and sob. But Toni didn’t have time for weakness. She had to find her daughter.
He pulled her to him and hugged her anyway, as though knowing how much she needed it. “Tiffany’s smart,” he said against her hair. “She’ll be okay.”
“But how’s she getting to Vegas? What if she’s hitchhiking?”
“Let me see the email she sent you.”
“Of course. I’m sorry. I can’t seem to think straight.” For the first time since she had joined Lady Bianca, Toni had no cosmetics on. She hadn’t even combed her hair or dressed. Her robe swished before her as she ran upstairs to her office. The article Tiff had pinned to her corkboard fluttered as she opened the door, filling her with a pain so sharp she almost couldn’t breathe.
The email was still open on her computer screen. All she had to do was push a button on her keyboard to get rid of her screensaver, the kaleidoscope of relentlessly positive motivational mantras that seemed pretty hollow right now.
Success wasn’t achieved in a series of small steps. Right now, success would be achieved when she got her daughter home where she belonged.
Luke sat in her office chair and she read the message over his shoulder, as though it wasn’t burned into her brain.
“Hey, Mom,” it began. “Don’t worry. I’m going to visit my dad. He and I both figure it’s time we got to know each other. I know you don’t want me to go, but I have a right to know my own father. I’m fine. My schoolwork’s up to date. I’ll call you when I get to Vegas. DON’T WORRY! Love, Tiffany.”
Apart from the nagging drag of fear, she felt furious with both of them. “That’s Dwayne, right there. That line, I have a right to know my own father. That’s him. Putting ideas in her head.”
Luke turned his head and regarded her, his dark eyes serious. “She does have a right to know her father,” he said.
“He abandoned her. Plus, she’s underage. Can’t the police do something?”
He shook his head slowly. “She’s getting close to the age of emancipation. With no sign of foul play, and an email telling you where she’s going, which is to her father…” He made a gesture with open hands that seemed very Italian considering he’d been born in the states, and clearly implied that the cops weren’t going to rush out and bring her daughter back home.
“Her father,” she exploded. “He can come here and see her if he wants a relationship so bad. Why the hell would he want her to go to Vegas? It’s not like Dwayne. He’d never want to be bothered with a teenager. She’ll remind him he’s getting older. She’ll be an expense. She’ll sure as hell curtail his sex life.”
“Think about it, Toni,” he said in his calm way. “If you’re right about Dwayne, and I really hope you’re not, he wants Tiffany there for one reason. To get to you. He wants money.”
“That low-life snake. Oh, that’s sleazy even for him. He’d kidnap his own daughter to get money out of me?”
“Toni, it’s not kidnapping. He is committing no crime whatsoever.”
“How can you say that? He abandoned her, never sent a dime--”
“He also never signed any divorce documents, right?”
“No. Because I couldn’t find him and I couldn’t afford to track him down. I got divorced without him just like I did everything else without him.”
“So he’s not violating the terms of a custody agreement because he never signed one. His daughter decided on her own to go see him. He’ll act delighted to see her, and he’s got to know that you’ll be there almost as soon as she is. He wants money. You want your daughter back. Maybe he’s looking at this as a simple business proposition.”
“He’s not that smart,” she snapped.
Then she put her hands over her face and pressed her palms into her burning eyes. She gave herself a minute, then said, “You know, I am so tempted not to go. Let her spend a few days with Dipshit Dwayne. She’ll appreciate how good she has it with me.”
“I think that’s an excellent idea.”
If it was somebody else’s kid, she’d think so too. “But what if she’s hitchhiking? Anything could happen to her. She’s only sixteen.”
“She’s not hitchhiking. ” He grabbed her shoulders and squeezed. “Come on, Toni. She’s your daughter.”
“Dwayne never came to get her. And she doesn’t have the money to fly.”
“My guess is she took the bus.”
“The bus?” She could barely stand to think of her baby riding a long distance all alone on the bus.
“Did you check her phone records?” She knew he dealt with murders and terrible crimes all day long and was thankful he was taking her missing daughter seriously.
“I printed them out. Lots of calls to the same number Dwayne called me from.” She picked up the printout and handed it to him. “I’ve sheltered her. I know I have. I overcompensate because I’m a single parent. My mom thinks I feel guilty because I chose such a loser to father my child.”
“Your mom is a lot smarter than she looks.”
“I should have listened to her when I was young. She told me Dwayne was no good for me.”
Everything about this mess was stressing her out. While she watched, he scanned the numbers rapidly. Then he banged a blunt fingertip onto a number. “That’s the number to buy bus tickets. That number right there.”
It wasn’t a huge relief to find her daughter had taken a bus hundreds of miles, but it was better than hitchhiking.
“Did you call Dipshit Dwayne?”
“Of course I did. Got his voice mail.”
“You leave a message?” He sounded wary.
“Honey, please, I’m also a lot smarter than I look. I did not say anything except, ‘Please call me.’ There’s nothing he could play for Tiffany that would make me sound like a hysterical witch.”
“Good.” He kissed her. “You tell me what you need.”
She looked at him knowing he meant what he said. “Dwayne’
s not listed in any directory I can find. All I have is his cell number and he’s not picking up.”
He nodded. “I’ve got a buddy in LVPD. I’ll get you everything I can on him.”
“Thank you. I can’t get a flight out today. Everything’s booked. I’ll head out tomorrow morning.”
“Okay. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
“Luke?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you do one more thing for me?”
“What?”
She hated feeling needy, but she felt like her head was going to explode from worry. “Could you stay with me tonight?”
He nodded once. “Yeah.”
Chapter Three
“I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.”
— Sigmund Freud
Tiffany Diamond scraped a ribbon of black nail polish off one thumbnail with the nail of her opposite thumb. The bus rolled along with boring monotony. A fat woman with b.o. sat beside her, kind of melting over from her seat into Tiffany’s. She pushed her earbuds deeper into her ears as though she could drown out her own thoughts. But they wouldn’t be drowned.
What if he didn’t like her? What if he was disappointed? She hadn’t sent a picture. Hadn’t thought of it. He’d sent her one, though.
Her dad looked kind of like Josh Duhamel. He had the same killer smile and the confidence of someone who’d always been hot. She scraped off another ribbon of black. The silver skull ring on her index finger gleamed. He’d known her mom back when she was the same age as Tiffany was now.
She’d seen photos of her mom when she was young and she’d been all blond hair, cuteness and boobs. If he thought they looked alike, he was going to be sorry. She wished she’d got her hair cut. She wanted to think about something else, but it was tough with Dwayne singing in her ear. He’d sent her a couple of tracks off his latest album. The country and western songs made her think of Dolly Parton, which made her think of her Gran.
The bus dragged on past small towns and fast food joints. She slept a little and ate a granola bar she’d packed from home and sipped on a bottle of water, but she didn’t have much of an appetite. She felt like she was coming down with the flu or something. Kind of dizzy, nauseated from the endless movement of the bus and the sick smell of the woman beside her.
