Sex & Sensibility (18 page)

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.

T
ESSA’S FACE HAUNTED
G
RIFFIN
.

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. Singleton’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.

The chill of loss filled his gut as he acknowledged the truth of that. He tried to shake it off as he showed Petrie to the door. She paused on the steps outside.

“Former law enforcement?” she asked, looking him up and down with a tad more than professional interest.

He nodded, and she smiled. “I can always tell. What department?”

“Santa Rita P.D. Invalided out. Took a round in the knee.”

“Ah.” Her voice held sympathy. “Still, can’t be a bad gig, working for Singleton. Though this whole psychic thing is a bit irrational. I’m surprised you allowed it.”

“She was good.” He could be as abrupt as Jay.

Petrie’s gaze became flirtatious. “Maybe you can educate me. Bring me up to date. Say, over a drink down at the Pelican?” The Thirsty Pelican was a cop hangout close to the municipal pier. Griffin had gone there a lot after Sheryl. After he’d regained the ability to drive.

“No,” he said. “But thanks. I have your card. I’ll send you a briefing by e-mail so you have everything documented.”

Detective Petrie withdrew visibly into “sexless police officer” mode. “Right. Meanwhile, I’ll try to convince my lieutenant we should get a team down to that cottage to process it.”

“Don’t waste your time. I’d suggest the beach house in Santa Rita.”

Petrie shook her head. “Not our county.”

“So what? They’ll assist you.”

“Not for a missing person, especially if she’s not a minor and there’s no evidence of a crime. Like I said, I can make inquiries, check phone records, but no more. Unless evidence turns up that she actually has been kidnapped. Even then, you’d have to go to the Feds or CLEU.”

CLEU.

What were the odds that Tessa would already have
called her sister about her firing? How close were they? Could Linn Nichols help?

Probably not more than she already had, with the under-the-counter phone records. And Linn would be least likely of all to put the state’s resources to work for him if she knew he’d just helped to publicly humiliate her sister.

Look what had happened the last time he’d done that.

Griffin watched Detective Petrie drive off with a sense of relief. Then he walked around the back of the garage and climbed into his own truck. All he needed was a couple of hours away from here to clear his head, and then he’d get back on the case. He’d drive over to the beach house and go over it with a fine-tooth comb, without the beautiful distraction who might have made him miss something before.

He signaled and pulled onto the highway northbound to Santa Rita. If it hadn’t been for Tessa, he’d probably have taken the good detective up on her offer of a drink and let nature take its course afterward. He’d have spent some time with her and then dropped out of her life, which had become his modus operandi for the past year or two. It was convenient, it was easy, and he didn’t have to engage the drive belt that connected his libido and his emotions.

His emotions had engaged with a vengeance when Tessa had looked at him in the kitchen. He’d been so stunned by the collision between his need to keep his employer happy and his need to fold her in his arms and protect her from Jay’s anger that he’d just stood there, immobilized, and watched the trust and hope drain out of her when he didn’t step up to support her. His heart squeezed with pain in direct proportion to the pain he had caused her.

When he’d received his shield and gun, he’d vowed silently that he’d uphold the truth and believe in “innocent until proven guilty.” That he’d fight on the side of the underdog. That he’d do the right thing, no matter what it cost him.

He’d learned soon enough that police work didn’t lend itself to the first three in a lot of cases, so the shine had been rubbed off a lot of his youthful illusions pretty damn quick. But he still believed in the last one. It wasn’t easy doing the right thing sometimes. In fact, even knowing what the right thing was could be hard, especially when you were facedown in a filthy corridor with a hysterical crackhead waving a Walther at you.

But he hadn’t done the right thing by Tessa. Of course he had checked out everything she’d said because that was his job. However he should have told Jay that this wasn’t because he didn’t trust her, but because it increasingly proved that her visions were accurate.

With a sigh, he pulled into his driveway. His little house stood baking on its lot, the shutters closed against the sun so that it looked as if it were sleeping. Just like him. Pretending to be asleep, pretending to be unavailable, so no one would be tempted to knock on the door and make him feel again.

Frowning at his thoughts, he collected the mail from the box and let himself inside. He was by nature a methodical, neat kind of guy who didn’t like a lot of stuff around, but what he had was always in its place where he could find it in a hurry. But the house felt even more spare and empty than it usually did. He had gotten used to Tessa’s sunny presence with him, and now that it wasn’t around, everything just looked dark and solitary.

He pushed open the drapes and opened a few windows.

An unopened soda was hiding in the back of the fridge, behind a rock-hard chunk of cheese. Popping the top, he took it into the backyard and, out of habit, looked over at the banana tree.

Uh-oh.

The damn tree, which had been growing despite his best efforts to ignore it, drooped disconsolately, its broad, serrated leaves turning jaundiced. “Aw, come on.” He didn’t care about the tree. But at the same time, he didn’t want to see anything die on his watch, either. He dragged the hose over to it and soaked the ground. “Don’t die on me now, you stupid thing. You’ve stayed alive to spite me so far.”

The tree didn’t answer, but the water disappeared into the hard ground with a sound like a hiss of relief. He stood there, hosing it down and sipping the soda, until water puddled at his feet. Then he hosed the tree’s leaves for good measure.

The action of attempting resuscitation seemed to spark the need for activity. He turned off the water and went back in the house. Petrie’s business card was still in his back pocket. With a sense that he needed to help set things right again, he flipped open his cell phone and punched in her number.

T
HE ONLY THING
different in the apartment was the pile of mail, which had grown, and the plants, which had not. Yesterday all Tessa had managed to accomplish was to haul a load of laundry down to the communal laundry room and bring it up again when it was done. Today she filled the watering can and attempted to bring the plants back to life. She should have had someone come in to look after them. But she’d left in such a hurry, so excited to have a job and
someone to believe in her, that she hadn’t even thought about mundane things like what would happen to the African violet and the tray of herbs over the sink while she was gone.