Lethal Outlook

by Victoria Laurie

  “I can totally respect that. But the fact that no one has seen or heard from Kendra since last month is a bad sign, Russ. If she’s in trouble, she might really need your help.”

  Russ stopped spraying and seemed to consider the wall for a long moment. “Well,” he said at last, “it’s funny you should say that she’s been missing for about two weeks, because I saw something about two weeks ago when I was at the Crawleys’.”

  “The whom?”

  “The Morenos’ neighbors,” Russ explained. “I’ve got pretty much everybody on that block.”

  “Okay, so what did you see?”

  Russ turned to face me, his expression anxious. “Everybody on that block is on a different schedule. I don’t know what it is with that neighborhood, but every time I try to schedule my clients there for the same day to make it easier on me, they all call and move their appointments around, so I’m usually out there at least six times a month, if not more.”

  I found myself nodding, encouraging him to go on and get to the relevant part.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “I’m on that street a lot, so I see stuff. And one thing I’ve noticed is that lately there’s been this guy hanging out at the Morenos’ house. He’s always there on a weekday around eleven thirty in the morning, and I’ve never seen his car. I first noticed him a couple months ago because he came walking down the street with his head down, like he didn’t want me to get a good look at his face. I see a lot of sneaking around in my line of work, and you kinda develop a sense of knowing when people are up to no good.”

  I could feel my heart start to race, but I knew I had to play it cool or I’d spook Russ. Digging through my purse for a notepad and pen, I asked, “Any chance this guy hanging out at the Morenos’ could have been Kendra’s husband?”

  Russ shook his head. “No. I’ve met Mr. Moreno a couple of times. It wasn’t him.”

  “If he came on foot, do you think he could be one of the neighbors, maybe coming over to borrow some sugar or something?”

  Russ frowned. “I know most of the people on that street but not everybody, so yeah, it’s possible.”

  “Can you describe what this man looked like?”

  Russ scratched his head. “He’s white, and both times I saw him in the same kind of clothes: jeans, T-shirt, ball cap, and sunglasses.”

  “What color hair?” I asked, scribbling the description furiously as I pressed for more details.

  Russ tugged on his mustache. “Brown, maybe?”

  “Could you describe his face?”

  “I never got a good look at him,” he told me. “Like I said, when he walks he keeps his head down, and his ball cap hides his face.”

  Crap. That wasn’t much of a description. “How tall?”

  Russ shrugged. “Maybe six feet or a little shorter, but at least five-ten.”

  “Was his build thin, medium, or heavyset?”

  “Medium build,” Russ told me. “Probably between one seventy-five and one hundred ninety pounds.”

  “How old?”

  Russ shrugged again. “I’d guess early to mid-thirties.”

  I looked over the description now written in my notepad and realized that my friendly neighborhood exterminator had just described one-quarter of the Austin male population. Still, he had also confirmed that a man other than Mr. Moreno was in the area of Kendra’s house around the time of her disappearance.

  “You know what’s funny, though,” Russ said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Well, the last time I saw this guy, he didn’t go to the back door like he usually does. He went right to the front and rang the bell.”

  My breath caught. “Russ, this is really important. Do you happen to know the exact date of the last time you saw him?”

  Russ got out his smart phone and began tapping the screen. “It looks like I was at the Crawleys’ on Friday, the twenty-eighth of September, around eleven thirty in the morning.”

  I was tingling with excitement—Russ the exterminator had just given us a brand-new suspect and a possible time for when Kendra was abducted. Still, who was this mysterious stranger in the ball cap?

  Just as I was rooting around in my purse for my cell to call Candice, and remembering that Cat still had my phone, the front door opened, and in bounded my sister, loaded down with a huge binder labeled “Abby’s Wedding” and trailing two beefy-looking bodyguards also loaded down with bags of wedding stuff.

  “Hello!” Cat sang, seeing me in the living room. “Now, Abby, I know I promised to go to Dutch for the rest of the wedding decisions, but he’s not returning my calls and I simply have to get your opinion on a few things.”

  I turned to Russ, who was blinking rapidly, trying to take in the flurry of movement coming into the house. “My sister is planning my wedding and I’m probably going to be tied up for the next hour. Can you handle the rest of this yourself?”

  “You’re getting married?” he asked.

  “Next month,” I said, watching my sister look for a place to set down her binder.

  “Congratulations!” Russ said happily, offering me a big smile.

  I had to admit that I liked the exterminator, and I made a mental note to recommend him in the future. I also made a mental note to tell Candice that we’d have to alert the police about what Russ had seen the morning Kendra went missing. Everything fit the timeline now that we knew what time Colby went down for his first nap, and why there’d been no apparent signs of struggle. Whomever this mysterious stranger was, he’d been someone Kendra trusted enough to let him into her home. I suspected he was also the man she’d been having the affair with. He definitely could have murdered her if she’d either wanted to end the affair or threatened him in some way if he was the one who wanted to call it off.

  But then I had another chilling thought: If Tristan had suspected his wife’s affair and he’d pretended to go to Dallas to meet his client, when in fact he’d really spied on her and waited until her lover left to catch her unawares and murder her, knowing that if anyone began to really dig into her life, they might discover this lover, then he could shift the blame away from himself.

  From my impressions of Tristan, I didn’t quite know if he was capable of such clever deception, but I realized that we’d still have to keep him in the suspect pool even in light of this new evidence.

  And that was the last clear thought I had that early evening, because in the next second Cat handed me my phone and said, “Your vet called. Eggy and Tuttle are due to get their shots. I made the appointment for this Saturday and put it in your calendar.” I looked at her a little stunned. She…what? “You’re welcome,” she said when I didn’t comment. “Oh, and the guest list is taken care of, so no need to worry about getting that to me, but we still have some stuff to go over, so let’s get to it! I’ve got a few selections for your ‘something blue’ to look at, and we’ll need to think about your ‘something old,’ but I’ve got some ideas for that too…” and on she went, bulldozing her way through my night the way she often does with my life. And she wonders why I work to avoid her…

  Chapter Eleven

  Candice called me the next morning right before I was about to jump in the shower. “Turn on the news,” she said by way of hello.

  Moody as my sleep-deprived self was, I managed to flip on the TV without any snark. The newscaster was commenting on live footage of Tristan Moreno being taken away in handcuffs by a whole squad of police while his mother-in-law held protectively to a little boy I assumed must be Colby. “Aw, crap,” I muttered.

  “I guess they talked to Velkune,” Candice said.

  “Yeah, well, the police may have it wrong,” I told her. Then I quickly explained what my exterminator had seen on the day Kendra went missing.

  Candice was quiet through it all, and when I was done, she said, “You know, I really dropped the ball on that one. I saw him the day you got his number and didn’t even think to question him. We’ll also need to eliminate him as a suspect.”r />
  That took me aback. “You think Russ could have abducted Kendra?”

  “I think anybody could have done it,” Candice replied. “And consider this, Abs: He’s a familiar fixture on that street and the Morenos are his regular customers. If he had knocked on Kendra’s door, she probably would have let him in, no problem.”

  I took that in and played it against my intuition, which came back with a surprising feeling, and then I remembered how nervous he’d been when I’d begun questioning him, and how he didn’t seem to want to talk to the police so much. “Yeah,” I told her. “Look into his background, Candice. We’ve got to look at everyone.”

  I then told her my other theory about Tristan, that he could have known about his wife’s affair, pretended to go to Dallas, spied on her, seen the exterminator in the neighborhood to act as a witness to the stranger approaching her door, then murdered his wife the moment her lover left. “That is of course assuming that Russ really did see a man in a baseball cap enter Kendra’s home that day.”

  “Absolutely true,” Candice said. “So let me start with Russ the bug man. I’ll look into his background a little. Give me his number and I’ll meet you at the office in an hour, okay?”

  I flipped through my contacts list and found Russ’s number, reciting it for Candice before hurrying through my morning routine to get to the office in time to meet up with her before my first reading.

  Eggy and Tuttle gave me the guilts again. I’d forgotten to give them their belly rubs the night before, so I vowed to play fetch and give two belly rubs each if they’d simply quit with the sad eyes. They just cocked their heads at me, which I took for, “We’ll think about it.”

  I got to the office and found Candice listening to her voice mail. She had a weird look on her face: kind of excited, kind of surprised, kind of troubled. Odd combo, I know.

  When she hung up I asked, “What’s up?”

  “That was Tristan Moreno. He wants to hire us.”

  My jaw fell open. “From jail?”

  “No, his lawyer got him out on bail half an hour ago.”

  “That was a fast bail hearing,” I said, eyeing my watch.

  “It was,” Candice agreed. “His lawyer’s good and she’s got some weight to throw around to get him out so fast.”

  I nodded. “I didn’t see that coming,” I confessed.

  “That he’d be out so soon?”

  “No, that he’d want to ever talk to us again, let alone hire us. Kind of makes me wonder if he isn’t innocent after all.”

  “Too soon to tell,” Candice replied before checking the time. “He wants to meet at ten. Are you free?”

  “Yeah. I have an appointment at nine; then the rest of my morning is clear until one.”

  “Perfect,” she said. “Let’s use the conference room on the first floor.”

  The office building we rent space in has a very nice community conference room located just off the main entrance. Candice and I would sometimes go there after a hard day and just sit and chat. No one else ever seemed to use it, and the chairs were super comfy.

  While Candice called Tristan to confirm the appointment, I went into my suite to set down my purse and get ready for my reading.

  My client was twenty minutes late. For the record, it seriously ticks me off when clients don’t show up on time without calling to let me know they’re running behind. It didn’t seem to bug my client, though. She arrived wearing lots of designer labels and an “I’m better than you” attitude, avoiding even hinting at an apology. I gritted my teeth and got right to her reading, making sure to talk fast so I could get in everything I saw in her energy. No surprise, much of what I discussed had to do with her relationships—both personal and professional—which were all a hot mess. The woman was a train wreck in a pretty, designer-label package.

  When I was done, I turned it over to her for questions, but at that point we had exactly five minutes left and she got in only two of her questions before I stood up and thanked her for coming. “But I didn’t get through my list,” she protested as I pocketed her payment, walked to the door, and held it open for her.

  “Well, then, maybe you should think about getting to your appointments on time from now on,” I told her not so sweetly.

  She glared at me and stalked out. “I’ll e-mail you the recording of your reading!” I called to her backside.

  “Don’t bother!” she yelled back.

  I shut the door and sighed. I hated losing a client, but her kind I could afford to let go.

  I then grabbed a protein bar from my desk drawer (okay, so it was a Snickers, but peanuts count as protein, right?) and reached for a notebook and a bottled water to take down to the conference room. Just as I was shutting off my desk lamp, Candice appeared in the doorway. “Ready?”

  “I am. And just to clarify, would you prefer my psychic guns be blazing for today’s chitchat?”

  Candice grinned. “Give him all you got, Sundance.”

  When we arrived in the lobby, we saw Tristan was already there, waiting for us. His demeanor was anxious, and I could well understand why.

  Candice greeted him and led him into the conference room, where she took her seat at the head of the rectangular table and indicated that I should sit on her right. Tristan sat two chairs down on Candice’s left. “Thanks for taking the meeting,” he said.

  I studied him under the glare of the fluorescent bulbs above us. He appeared haggard, and the dark circles under his eyes indicated that he hadn’t gotten much sleep in probably several days.

  “I was surprised to get your call,” Candice told him. “After our last chat, I figured you didn’t want anything to do with us.”

  Tristan put his elbows on the table and held his head in his hands. “This is all so crazy,” he said, his voice muffled slightly. He then lifted his chin and looked at us like a lost little kid who just wanted to go home. “I need some help to figure this thing out.”

  “Okay,” Candice said, still playing it coy.

  Tristan seemed to get that he needed to arrive at the point of the meeting pretty quick. “I want to hire you,” he said. “I want you two to find out what happened to my wife.”

  Candice tapped her lip with her pen. “Mr. Moreno,” she said, “you should know that Abby and I are very good at our jobs. We’re quite confident that we’ll find out exactly what happened to your wife.” She paused then, allowing the words to sink in, and when Tristan didn’t flinch she added, “Still want to hire us?”

  “Yes,” he said, and it was odd, but I thought I saw a hint of relief in his eyes.

  Candice then set her cell phone in the middle of the table. As she clicked the record button on her app, her eyes lifted briefly to Tristan to see if he would object, but he merely nodded his assent. She then opened a folder and took out two copies of our standard contract, which outlined our methods, set expectations, and, in bold print, listed our hourly rates. “If the terms are agreeable,” she said, “please sign both copies—one for us, one for you. Oh, and we’ll need a three-thousand-dollar retainer up front.”

  Tristan took the contracts, read them over, signed both copies, and handed one of them back to Candice. He then pulled his checkbook from his jacket pocket and wrote out a check. Tearing it off, he also handed that to Candice, who tucked the signed agreement and the check back into her folder.

  She then turned to me, as if to check how I was doing. I gave her a thumbs-up, and she sat back in her chair and motioned with her hand for me to take the lead.

  I was a little caught off guard but tried not to let it show. “Mr. Moreno…,” I began.

  “Please call me Tristan,” he said.

  “Tristan,” I corrected, “as you know, I’m a professional psychic. My job on these kinds of cases is to look for clues that might be either overlooked by other investigators or completely out of their purview. Instead of waiting for the clues to come in through conventional methods of tips and a lot of CSI stuff, I send my intuitive feelers out into
the ether and try to isolate the clues that will lead us to Kendra. Most law enforcement units work backward from the crime scene. I try to work forward from where I can sense the victim is right now.”

  “I’m not sure if I believe in what you claim to be able to do, Abby,” he said, “but I’m willing to keep an open mind if it’ll help bring Kendra home.”

  I actually appreciated his honesty. “Okay,” I said, deciding to get the tough questions out of the way first. “Let me get right to the biggest question in front of us: Tristan, on September twenty-eighth, did you physically cause harm to your wife?”

  Tristan shook his head vehemently and said, “No. No way would I ever hurt Kendra.”

  My lie detector went off loud and clear. I turned to my partner, and she read my expression. She nodded for me to continue, and subtly I saw her put her hand inside her purse—where her gun was readily accessible.

  I was going to push Tristan and call him out on the lie, and if this guy really did kill his wife, things could get dicey pretty fast, but we had to know the truth.

  Turning back to Tristan, I said, “See, that’s what I have a problem with, Tristan. I know you’re lying. I have a special talent for detecting mistruths. And right there I can tell that you just lied to me. You did hurt your wife, didn’t you?”

  Tristan’s expression turned slightly panicked, and his eyes darted to Candice. She stared at him with hard resolve. “I should mention, Tristan, that I am licensed to carry a concealed weapon.” Her own gaze traveled pointedly to the hand inside her purse, and he actually gasped.

  Finally he swallowed hard and took a couple of deep breaths. “Is there some kind of confidentiality agreement between PIs and their clients?” he asked.

  Candice motioned again to the signed contract on the table in front of him. “Yes,” she said. “It’s on the second page toward the bottom. Anything you tell us will be held in the strictest confidence unless you lie to us again; then all bets are off.”

  Tristan lifted the top page of the agreement and scanned the area toward the bottom of the second page before answering. “Okay,” he said. “You’re right. I did hurt Kendra.”