Lethal Outlook

by Victoria Laurie

  I discreetly cast Candice a look that said, “This should be fun!”

  She cut me a look that said, “Behave!”

  We stepped through the doorway without a word and into the foyer. In front of us was the staircase to the second floor, and to our immediate left was the dining room. The woman—whom I assumed was Kendra’s mother—closed the door, locking it tightly before motioning for us to follow her. We passed a spacious study and a bathroom and finally came into a large open kitchen with dark chocolate cabinets, white marble countertops, and a central island with three counter-level chairs.

  Flanking the kitchen was a cozy living room with two sofas and a large-screen TV set over the fireplace. Sitting numbly in one corner of the sofa was a sickly looking gentleman hooked up to an oxygen tank. He lifted his sad eyes to us, and I nodded and offered a polite smile. He didn’t smile back.

  “Gary, these two are from the FBI,” said the woman. She still hadn’t identified herself, but it was pretty clear that she was Mrs. Woodyard.

  Candice walked across the floor right up to Kendra’s father and extended her hand to him. “We’re consultants at the bureau, Mr. Woodyard. We’re not actually agents or here on official FBI business.”

  He took her hand and eyed her with interest. “You’re here about Kendra?”

  “Yes,” Candice said. Waving her hand in my direction, she added, “This is my partner, Abigail Cooper. I’m a licensed private investigator and we saw Kendra’s story on the news the other day. We felt strongly that we wanted to come to you and offer our investigative expertise.”

  “For a price,” Mrs. Woodyard said (a bit snippily, I thought).

  “Our hourly rates are quite reasonable,” Candice assured her.

  “The police are free,” she countered, looking meanly at us. Man, this woman didn’t give an inch!

  Still, Candice nodded like she agreed. “Yes, they are. And if you’d like to put all your trust in them and their ability to find your daughter, then please do so.”

  Mrs. Woodyard shifted on her feet. She didn’t appear to have a snappy comeback to that.

  “May I ask how that investigation is proceeding?” Candice asked gently when the silence stretched out a bit.

  “It’s way past the seventy-two-hour mark,” Mr. Woodyard said, his voice so forlorn that it hurt to hear it. “The detectives said that if Kendra didn’t turn up within seventy-two hours, then it could mean the worst. It could mean that it wasn’t her choice to leave the house that day.”

  “Of course it wasn’t her choice, Gary!” his wife snapped. “Kendra would never leave Colby home alone.”

  Mr. Woodyard stared at the floor. Of the two, I could see he’d been the most hopeful that his daughter had somehow left her home of her own accord and might come to her senses and be back soon. I knew he would suffer a terrible blow when he discovered the truth—that she was gone for good—and sensing the illness wafting out of him as evidenced by the oxygen tank, I truly didn’t look forward to that.

  “We haven’t heard anything from the detectives in over a day, Nancy,” Mr. Woodyard said. “Maybe we should bring in some outside help.”

  But I could already tell that Mrs. Woodyard had hardened to the point where she didn’t want any outside help. She wanted us out of her house, and she wanted to wait for the police to tell her what had happened to her daughter. I didn’t know if it was because she was cheap or just naturally suspicious of everyone and everything. I didn’t really care either. She had an element of meanness about her, and I suspected that Kendra and she hadn’t gotten on so well. “What’re your hourly rates?” she asked, and not like she was genuinely interested, but more to appease her husband.

  Candice told her, and Mrs. Woodyard reacted as if we’d said a thousand dollars a second. “That’s outrageous!”

  “It’s actually below the industry standard,” Candice replied calmly. “Investigating a missing person is more work than it appears. But if it would make you more comfortable, we could agree to work the case until either it’s resolved to your satisfaction or we reach the end of our retainer. If it’s the latter, then whatever we discover we will turn over to you and you may offer it to the police or to another PI if you wish.”

  I noted that Mr. Woodyard hadn’t looked put off by the rate Candice had quoted. “What can you offer that the police can’t?” he asked.

  Candice pointed meaningfully at me. “Abby,” she said. “She’s an intuitive investigator with ten years’ experience and dozens of solved cases to her credit. She’s worked for the Royal Oak, Michigan, PD, the Denver PD, the FBI, and the CIA. Her credentials and reputation are impeccable. To my own credit, I’ve also had a dozen years’ experience as a PI and FBI consultant. As investigators go, Mr. Woodyard, we’re very good, and we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t know we could help you find out what happened to Kendra.”

  Mr. Woodyard appeared interested; however, his wife was a whole different story. She squinted first at me, then at Candice. “Hold on,” she said as she pointed at me but addressed Candice. “She’s a…a…what did you say? An intuitive investigator? What the hell is that?”

  “I’m a professional psychic, ma’am,” I told her. “I’ve had my own private practice for over ten years, and, like Candice said, I’ve worked dozens of cases for various police departments and federal investigators.”

  Mrs. Woodyard hardly seemed impressed. In fact, she appeared downright offended. “Is this some kind of a joke?”

  “No,” Candice replied in that same calm manner. “Abby’s the real deal, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Woodyard rolled her eyes and cast a meaningful look at her husband before she went over to a stack of papers about twenty pages thick. Holding them up like they were evidence in a courtroom, she said, “And these are also so-called psychics who’ve been sending us messages on Kendra’s personal Facebook page, claiming to know where our daughter is!” Sorting through them with obvious disdain, she pulled one out of the stack and said, “This says that Kendra is in the South of France on the beach with her new lover. While this one,” she growled, flipping to the next page, “says Kendra has been kidnapped by a Mexican drug lord and is being used as a sex slave!”

  “Ma’am,” Candice said, discreetly stepping closer to me. “I can assure you that Abby is both experienced and held in high esteem by this nation’s top investigative bureaus.”

  Mrs. Woodyard, however, wasn’t listening. Flipping to the last page, she pulled out yet another e-mail and angrily said, “This one is my personal favorite. It says that Kendra was buried alive and left in a wooded area, and that she was murdered by a man she had once trusted!”

  My radar binged. A legitimate psychic actually had contacted the Woodyards, although perhaps that psychic’s methods had been a bit too forthcoming for these two just yet.

  Candice held up her hands in surrender. “Mrs. Woodyard, I’m afraid we may have gotten off on the wrong foot—”

  “Thank you, but no, thank you,” Mr. Woodyard cut in while he struggled to get to his feet. “We don’t believe in psychics, no matter how many claims they make about who they’ve worked with.”

  I felt my spirits fall. I’d been hoping for his support at least. And that comment, “We don’t believe in psychics…,” always cut into me like a sharp sword. It was as if someone was suggesting I didn’t exist. Being psychic was so much a part of who I was that it always shocked me when people suggested it—and by extension I—wasn’t real.

  But then I looked into Mr. Woodyard’s eyes and I saw the fear there. It wasn’t fear of me; he was afraid of what I might tell him about what had happened to his daughter. He wasn’t ready to hear the truth yet, and until the police had a solid lead, he could continue believing that Kendra was still alive and would return home safe and sound.

  I focused on him, determined to prove to him that I wasn’t a fraud and shake him out of his cloud of denial. “We understand,” I said gently. “It takes a certain open-mindedness to accept that what
I do is real. But, Mr. Woodyard, if I may, your doctor has some good news about that clinical trial she’s been trying to get you into. You’ll be getting a call very soon from her to tell you that you’ve been accepted into the program, and I can tell you that you won’t be given the placebo; you’ll get the real deal. The experimental drugs will tackle that tumor in your right lung and shrink it down to nothing. It’s the genetic engineering tied to your DNA that’ll make all the difference in the drug’s effectiveness. You’re going to make it, sir.”

  The sickly man’s jaw fell open slightly as he stared at me with big, wide eyes. I then wished him and his equally stunned wife a good day, turned on my heel, and headed to the door without a backward glance.

  Chapter Five

  “Show-off,” Candice chuckled as we buckled our seat belts.

  I shook my head, regretting what I’d just done inside the Woodyards’ home. “I know, I know,” I told her. “It would’ve been better to just keep my mouth shut.”

  Candice eyed me like I’d just said something shocking. “Are you kidding?”

  “No. You’re right. I was showing off a little. It just pissed me off that they were turning away legitimate help out of ignorance and fear.”

  “Huh,” Candice said, starting the car and pulling away from the curb. “And here I thought that what’d irritated you was his comment about not believing in psychics.”

  In the past I might have shared a complaint or two (twenty) with Candice about the personal insult of that particular dig. “I may have been a little put off by that too,” I admitted.

  “Hey,” Candice said when I took to staring out the window. “Sundance, you gave that man an amazing gift just now. Granted, you probably also should have told him about what happened to Kendra, but he looks to be a man who hasn’t had his fair share of happiness in life, and he’s probably way overdue for something positive. You gave him that. And you gave him a measure of hope. No one can fault you for that.”

  I offered her a grudging smile. “Yeah, yeah,” I said, already trying to put it behind me. “Where to now?”

  “Well,” said Candice, taking a moment to think about it. “I doubt we can get to Moreno with all that press around, but we may try taking a more circuitous approach.”

  “Extended family?” I was only guessing. I was still feeling a little sluggish this morning and longed for a caffeine pick-me-up before we tackled plan C.

  “Maybe we’ll try extended family, or maybe we’ll get lucky and find a willing partner among Kendra’s friends,” Candice replied cryptically. She didn’t elaborate, and we drove in silence for only a few more minutes before she pulled to a stop in front of a nearby Starbucks.

  I clapped with glee. “It’s like you read my mind!” I hurried out of the car and gimped into the cool building. We got in line, and while we waited Candice tapped at the screen of her smart phone. I peered over her shoulder to look and saw that she was on Facebook. “Updating your status?”

  “No,” she said, thumbing through the screens. She didn’t say anything more; in fact, she was so engrossed with her phone that I had to order for her. It got downright annoying once I paid for our drinks and moved over to a table, leaving Candice still standing next to the counter tapping at her screen.

  “Yo, Cassidy!” I called to get her attention. Candice lifted a finger in one of those “hold on” moves, and I rolled my eyes and dove into my frozen caramel Frappuccino with extra whipped cream.

  “Not the smartest choice for a woman a month away from fitting into her wedding dress, is it?”

  I looked up. Candice had finally decided to join me. “Be nice to me or I’ll have Cat swap out your bridesmaid dress for that puffy purple number with the big bow.”

  Candice smirked and tore open a packet of Splenda for her herbal tea. “Hey, take a look at this, Abs,” she said, once she’d finished stirring. She lifted her phone so I could see the screen.

  I peered down. “The Bucket List,” I read. “Wasn’t that a movie?”

  Candice turned the screen back to her. “It was. And a good one. But this isn’t related to that. It’s the Web site for Kendra’s business.”

  I blinked. “I thought she was a stay-at-home mom.”

  “She was. But she was also a fledgling entrepreneur.” My partner scooted her chair closer to me and propped up her phone so we could read it together. “Kendra created a profile questionnaire,” she explained. “Basically she set it up to ask you about thirty multiple choice questions, and after you submit the answers, the site sends you a personalized bucket list of your own.”

  “You got a list, didn’t you?” I asked, knowing Candice too well.

  She grinned. “Yeppers,” she said, switching over to her e-mail. “And I have to hand it to Kendra—the site’s good.”

  “What’s in your bucket?”

  Candice read a few off her list. “Snorkel the Great Barrier Reef. Run the Boston Marathon. Learn Italian.”

  I cocked my head. “How do any of those things fit you?”

  “Are you kidding? These are all things I’ve always wanted to do!”

  I blinked. “Really?” Apparently, I didn’t know my best friend nearly as well as I thought I did. “You want to learn Italian?”

  “Brice and I were thinking of Tuscany for our honeymoon.”

  “Huh,” I said. I hadn’t even thought about our honeymoon. The CIA was paying for it, and my former handler at the agency was keeping it a well-guarded secret. I was suddenly regretting allowing him that indulgence. Maybe I wanted to go to Tuscany too.

  “Anyway,” Candice said, pulling me back to Kendra’s Web site. “The other really cool thing about the personalized list Kendra sends you is that all the items on it have links to other sites where you can book whatever’s in your bucket. And if you book something through one of those links, Kendra’s site sends you a customized bucket of stuff to take along.”

  That intrigued me. “Like what?”

  “Well,” Candice said, tapping her screen again. “If I were to book a trip to the Great Barrier Reef, I’d get a snorkel, a beach towel, a mask, sunscreen, Ray-Ban sunglasses, and a book on the history of the reef and the best places along it to snorkel. All of that would show up on my doorstep in this cool big beach pail, see?” Candice swiveled her phone so I could see the screen again.

  “I like it,” I said, because I really did think it was a great idea. “So how did Kendra make money?”

  “She must’ve had a deal worked out with all the sites she’d linked to. It also looks like she was pulling in a little advertising cash too.”

  “Hey, Candice?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If Kendra’s dead, like I suspect, who’s running the site?”

  Candice winked at me. “That’s exactly what I wanted to know.”

  “You already found out, didn’t you?”

  She took a demure sip of her tea. “Yep. It’s all there on her Web site under the ‘About us’ tab.”

  “Should I guess who it is?”

  She laughed. “No, sorry, I like drawing out the suspense. Kendra built, designed, and ran the site with her best friend, Bailey Colquitt. They’ve been BFFs since high school.”

  “And we’re about to go pay Bailey a visit,” I said, already getting up.

  “We are,” Candice agreed. But then she hesitated, eyeing me in that I-have-something-to-say-to-you-that-I-don’t-think-you’re-gonna-like kind of way.

  I sighed. “What?”

  Candice tapped the side of her cup. “You know I love you, Abs, right?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh, come on, Cassidy, just spit it out. What do you want me to do that I’m not gonna like doing?”

  “It’s not so much what I want you to do; it’s what I don’t want you to say.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “What don’t you want me to say?”

  “Anything. Or rather, say nothing.”

  “Shocking,” I said drolly.

  Candice tossed her cup in the tras
h and swung her arm around my shoulders. “It’s just that the Woodyards seemed to me to be pretty conservative—”

  “Wow, Sherlock, nothing gets by you, does it?” (Sarcasm is my middle name…)

  “And,” Candice continued like I hadn’t interrupted, “I think that same conservative viewpoint may have extended to their daughter and her friends. If we go in there all psychic guns a-blazing, well, you never know who we’ll turn off before we even get to ask our first question.”

  “Fine. Whatever,” I said moodily, tossing my own empty cup in the trash. Thank God I’d had the dose of sugary, caffeine goodness, or I might’ve been a little more disagreeable.

  “It’s not you,” Candice insisted.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said with a wave of my hand. “I know. It’s everybody else. Can we just go? I want to practice my silent treatment in the car.”

  The drive over was a bit chilly, and I’m not talking about the air-conditioning. I think I was ticked off because I knew darn well that Candice was right. Still, I wasn’t able to let her off the hook for being the messenger—it’d been a crappy morning, and maybe the both of us needed to be miserable to get along for the rest of the day.

  Still, I will give Candice a whole lot of credit, because at the end of the drive she parked in front of a set of three edgy-looking townhomes that had to be worth half a million each, and let the engine idle for a minute. “Maybe this was a bad idea,” she said.

  “Coming here or getting involved in the case?”

  “Getting involved in this case. We’re a team, Abs, and maybe if these people won’t have you, then they won’t have us, you know?”

  I shook my head and chuckled softly. “Don’t beat yourself up,” I said, opening the car door. “This isn’t about you—or me. It’s about Kendra. And we need to remember her no matter who we end up working for. Even if none of her family or friends hire us, or help us by giving up information, we can still work this case and bring Kendra some closure by nailing her killer. That we can do just for her, okay?”