by Mary Maxwell
“Will do,” he said.
“And you can call me Kate,” I said. “Tipper’s a dear friend. Even though you and I haven’t met, I’d feel weird if you called me Miss Reed.”
“Works for me,” Gallagher said, heading for a table by the front windows in the dining room.
After leaving my things in the office, I went into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water from the walk-in. When I pushed through the swinging door and stepped behind the front counter, Gallagher was standing at the far end of the dining room. He seemed to be watching something through the window.
“Kyle?”
He turned at the sound of his name.
“Sure you don’t want anything?”
“I’m sure, Kate.”
“So…” I walked around the counter, crossed the room to where he stood and sat at a table. “What can I help you with?”
He took the chair across from me. “Trent mentioned that you used to be a private investigator.”
I nodded.
“Well, I know this…” He paused and cleared his throat. “This is really awkward, Kate. I mean, I was with the DEA for a long time, so I’ve done my share of investigations and the like. But the thing is…” He glanced away, clenching his teeth with so much force that the veins in his neck bulged. “Here’s the deal,” he said, turning back to me. “I got shot on one of my last cases for the agency. Tore up my insides pretty good, you know? And it also did a number on my head.”
The room was so quiet that I heard the ice machine motor clicking away in the kitchen.
“Is that part of the reason you retired?” I asked.
He nodded. “I went back to work after the doctor released me, but something had changed. I couldn’t focus properly. I was jumpy. One time, a couple of my buddies and I were searching a warehouse and the door slammed behind us. I nearly flew out of my boots.”
He stopped to brush one hand across his forehead. When he looked up again, I could see the unspoken truth in his tired eyes. I’d talked to enough cops and detectives in Chicago during my days as a PI that I recognized the look. Gallagher was embarrassed; the change in his personality had left him feeling broken.
“How’re you doing now?” I asked after a few moments of silence.
He shrugged. “Up until this happened I was doing great. Meeting Tipper has been the best kind of medicine. She accepts me for me. Know what I mean?”
I smiled. “That’s a very good thing. I’m lucky enough to have something similar.”
“Yeah, Trent told me. I guess you and he were an item way back in the day.”
“Way, way back,” I said. “It was basically the antediluvian era.”
He frowned. “I don’t know what that is.”
“It was a long time ago,” I said. “We dated for about a minute in high school.”
“Gotcha,” he said.
“But I’m guessing you didn’t come here to talk about me and Trent.”
He leaned toward the table and took another deep breath. “You’re right. I wanted to ask if you’d be willing to help me look for Tipper.”
CHAPTER 23
“Help you look for Tipper?” I hesitated. “While Trent and his team are already hard at work on the case?”
Gallagher smiled, shifting in the chair and crossing his legs casually. “I’ve heard about your reputation, Kate. I know you’re out of the PI biz now, but I don’t know Crescent Creek. I don’t know the players. And I don’t know where someone could be hiding Tipper.”
“Why do you think they’re still here?” I asked.
His shoulders slumped. “She left a message on my phone earlier when I was talking to Trent. I didn’t recognize the name or number, so I didn’t answer.” He blinked hard a few times. “Man, I wish that I could’ve known it was her. I’d give anything to hear her voice, to know that she’s okay and safe.”
I was surprised by the tenderness of his tone. It almost seemed like he was fighting the urge to cry; a rare moment of the masculine, stoic reserve slipping to reveal softer emotions beneath the surface.
“Trent’s a great cop,” I said. “And so is everyone else on his team. They’re doing everything possible to find Tipper.”
He nodded; the moment of gentleness had passed. “I know that. But I’m not going to sit by the phone and wait. I want to do something to help. I spent four hours at the station last night. And another three this morning. To be perfectly honest, that was just frustrating and useless. I don’t think me sitting in a room talking to detectives and cops is a good use of my time.”
I watched his eyes as they darted around the tabletop and then out the window. On one hand, he seemed calm and controlled; on the other, there was a feral need in his core to take action.
“What would be?” I asked.
Gallagher pulled his gaze from the window. “Sorry?”
“What’s the best thing you can do?” I asked. “To use your time constructively?”
He nodded as he considered the question. “Here I am,” he said. “Asking you to help me look for her. It’s like I already told you, Kate; I don’t know the area. Since you’re a longtime local, I just thought maybe…”
I smiled. “Maybe we could conduct a separate search?”
“Sounds good to me.”
“I’d have to agree,” I said. “And, to be perfectly honest, I’ve already started doing a little checking around town.”
The declaration brought a crooked smile to his face. “See? I knew we’d get along.”
“Did someone say that we wouldn’t?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. It’s just…one time when Tipper was telling me about some of the people here in town, I could tell she thought you and I would have a lot to talk about.”
“Because of your work in the DEA,” I said. “And my ten years as a PI.”
“Right. And because she knows that neither one of us are going to camp out on the sidelines and wait while everybody else does the heavy lifting. We’re both gung-ho types, Kate. I mean, you’re running this place now…” He looked over his shoulder at the empty dining room. “And, even though it’s a far cry from being a private investigator, I can see you’ve still got the fire in your eyes; just a fierce dedication to being the best and doing your best.”
I smiled and thanked him for the kind words. Then I asked him to tell me everything he could about how he and Tipper spent the morning before she went missing. It took a few false starts, but he eventually achieved a steady rhythm, thinking about the errands they ran together, where they went and who they spoke with in town.
I wasn’t surprised by what he told me; it was routine for someone preparing to host a party. After a quick breakfast at Tipper’s house, they went to a few stores to buy food, liquor, paper napkins, disposable plates and a special floral centerpiece that Tipper had planned to use on the buffet table.
“And that’s it,” Kyle said about twenty minutes after starting the recap. “We got the flowers, stopped at Uncommon Grounds for a coffee and then went back to Tipper’s place. My brother was waiting in the driveway when we got there. He and I had planned to leave for Denver around two o’clock, so he was kind of mad that we were running late. He’s been down south and was on his way back home.”
“How late were you?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Maybe fifteen minutes. But my brother’s a fairly inflexible kind of guy. He’s been going through a pretty rough patch lately, so I let most of his antics slide.”
There was a shift in Gallagher’s eyes, a slight narrowing that suggested the casual remark about his sibling masked how he really felt about the situation. Since I wanted to keep the focus on Tipper, I decided not to pursue the subject. If Kyle mentioned it again, I could always probe a bit deeper to learn more.
“And then? You and your brother left Tipper at her house?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I can’t get that picture out of my mind either, the one of her on the front porch. She’d been in the living room, rearran
ging the things on the mantel. Clark—that’s my brother—came back from using the restroom before we hit the road. I gave Tip a big hug and kiss, she walked us to the front door and then we took off. He was driving, so I looked back at her waving until we went around the bend.”
The pain in his voice was jagged and dense; the razor-sharp sting of regret for leaving Tipper alone two days earlier. According to the timeline Trent had shared with me in response to an email I’d sent, Kyle and his brother left for Denver approximately forty-five minutes before someone gained entry at Tipper’s and held her at gunpoint. During the next twenty-four hours or so, they’d ransacked the house, vandalized the walls in her bedroom with obscene graffiti and sent the fictitious text explaining why Tipper and Kyle couldn’t make it to Blanche Speltzer’s for dinner.
“Trent told me that you found the dead woman in the kitchen,” Kyle said. “Is that right?”
I frowned. “She wasn’t dead when I found her, but she’d lost quite a bit of blood. She was rushed to the hospital, but died a short time later in surgery.”
“Do you know who she was?”
“Trent might, but I haven’t heard anything on that. I’ve learned it’s best to wait. He’ll share whatever he can when the time is right.”
Gallagher nodded. “Yeah. We all know how that goes. Ongoing investigations aren’t the place for nosy ex-DEA agents or PIs.”
I heard another subtle shift in his tone. He sounded lighter, less rigid and tense.
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a look around,” I said. “Or ask a few questions of our own.”
“You said that you’ve already done some preliminary checking?”
“A little.”
“Anything helpful?”
“I don’t know yet. Why don’t we go into the kitchen and I’ll fix us something to eat. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t had much today.”
“Shouldn’t we be out there trying to find Tipper?”
I followed his gaze through the window. The sky was traced with gauzy streaks of pink and deep blue as the sun slowly dipped toward the mountains.
“We will be,” I said. “But we can’t do it on an empty stomach.”
CHAPTER 24
Dina Kincaid was sitting behind the desk when Kyle Gallagher and I walked through her office door. She was engrossed in a stack of papers and idly sipping from a can of Red Bull. It was an hour after we finished the omelets and toast that I’d prepared in the Sky High kitchen. While we ate, we’d mapped out a plan: meet with either Dina or Trent for the latest on Tipper’s case before returning to Hanover Lane so we could talk to neighbors about the twenty-four hours leading up to her disappearance.
“Detective Kincaid?” I said as Kyle waited just outside the door.
Dina squinted as she stared at me on the far side of her office. “Oh…hey, Katie! Sorry I didn’t hear you come in. I’m trying to decipher someone’s notes from a suspect interview and it’s turning my brain into goop.”
“Messy handwriting?”
She ignored the question as Kyle followed me into the room. “Are you two together?”
I quickly connected the dots, introducing Kyle and explaining that he and I met through Trent.
“Deputy Chief Walsh,” she said. “Always trying to intercede.”
I couldn’t tell if she was peeved at Trent or the remark was Dina’s attempt at humor. Either way, I simply skipped over the comment and asked if she could spare a few minutes.
“Social?” she asked. “Or professional?”
I walked over, dropped into one of the guest chairs and motioned for Kyle to take the other.
“All of the above,” I said. “I haven’t talked to you much since you got back from Cabo. And Kyle asked me to help him search for Tipper.”
She narrowed her gaze again. “Cabo was a disaster,” she said. “Torrential downpours. My sister caught a stomach bug. And the hotel smelled like spoiled fish.”
As she finished the list of disappointments, I noticed a faint smile flutter across her face.
“I can tell there’s more,” I said.
She glanced at Kyle. “Will you indulge me for, like, ten seconds?”
He grinned. “Go right ahead, detective.”
“Thank you,” Dina said, turning back to me. “Before she got sick, my sister met the nicest guy, Katie! He lives in Boulder, doesn’t have any baggage and he’s coming down to take her to dinner next weekend.”
“That’s fantastic! I’m so happy to hear she met a good guy.”
“That makes two of us,” Kyle said. “It’s hard to find someone that you connect with these days. When Tipper and I met…” At the mention of her name, his voice cracked slightly. “We just felt a good connection, so I kind of…” He paused and straightened in the chair. “Anyway, we didn’t come to talk about dating. We wanted to find out where you are with the case. Has anything happened since I talked to Trent a couple of hours ago?”
Dina’s forehead creased. “You talked to Trent?”
“Yeah. Right before I stopped at Kate’s place.”
“Okay, so…” She looked down at the paperwork on her desk. “Did we know about the BMW at that point? I’m not sure exactly when it was found or if…” Dina stopped to study Kyle’s expression. “And from the look on your face, I can tell Trent hadn’t heard the news yet.”
“No,” he said. “This is the first I’m hearing about it.”
“When was it found?” I asked. “And where?”
Dina got up, shut the door and returned to her desk. “I can’t discuss all the details,” she said. “But as a courtesy…and because of your friendship with—” She paused, smiling softly. “I should say, because of your friendships with Trent, I can tell you that Tipper’s BMW was found parked in the driveway at a house on Yukon.”
I let the news sink in for a few seconds, envisioning the street and trying to recall if I knew anyone who lived in that part of town.
“And Tipper?” Kyle asked.
Dina shook her head. “Nothing. The car was wiped clean, but there were six pine tree air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror.”
“Is that significant?” I asked.
“Very,” Dina said. “Because someone wrote a ransom note on them, one sentence per pine tree.”
Kyle Gallagher pitched forward in his chair. “What did you say?” he bellowed. “A ransom note?”
Dina cringed at the sudden outburst. “Mr. Gallagher?”
“Tell me what you said!” he demanded. “I just…did I even hear that right?”
“I’m talking to you as a courtesy, Mr. Gallagher. If you’re going to get…” Dina stopped long enough to take a sip of Red Bull. “Why don’t we all just start again?” she suggested. “I know you’re going through a very traumatic situation, but those kinds of...uh, maybe you could try to refrain from getting aggressive with your tone.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it, Dina,” I said calmly. “He’s concerned about Tipper and—”
“It’s more than that,” Kyle said. “My last case as an agent involved an abduction.”
Dina nodded solemnly. “I understand, but we need—”
“And the kidnapper wrote the ransom note on a half dozen air fresheners,” Kyle said. “Six air fresheners that were left hanging from the mirror in the victim’s car.”
For a brief moment, it felt like the room was filled with concrete. It seemed to take an incredible amount of strength and concentration to turn my head and look at Kyle Gallagher.
“Are you serious?” Dina asked, finally breaking the silence.
“You better believe it,” he said.
“When was your last case?” I asked.
Kyle didn’t even look in my direction. He kept his eyes on Dina until he suddenly stood and headed for the door.
“Kyle!” I shouted, getting up to follow. “Where are you going?”
“I’ve got to check on something,” he yelled from the corridor. “I’l
l call you as soon as I can.”
CHAPTER 25
Dina’s face was pale and motionless when I returned to her office a few minutes later. After Kyle Gallagher suddenly bolted from the room, I’d followed him into the hallway, hoping to get at least a brief explanation for the startling departure.
But he was gone when I scrambled around the corner toward the elevator. The display above the door indicated that the car was headed up to the fourth floor, not hurtling toward the lobby. I knew that his long legs would mean he was probably already at the bottom of the stairs, so I retraced my steps back to Dina’s office.
“He’s gone,” I said.
She frowned. “You think?”
“Well, I’m sorry to state the obvious. I just…what the heck was that all about anyway?”
“You heard him,” Dina said. “His last case. I’d say it’s pretty obvious that he just made some kind of connection between that and Tipper’s disappearance. I’m guessing he wanted to check out a gut feeling about something.”
“We should ask Trent,” I suggested. “He and Gallagher are friendly. Maybe they discussed Kyle’s last case before he retired.”
“He’s retired?” Dina’s voice was sharp. “What is he—forty or forty-five?”
I shrugged. “Beats me. I just know that he was shot while working one of his last assignments. After a full recovery, he went back to work, but then decided to switch careers.”
“What’s he doing now?” she asked.
“Besides running the hundred yard dash out of meetings?” I quipped. “I actually haven’t got a clue what he’s doing now; we were supposed to meet him the other night at Blanche’s. But they didn’t show up, so we couldn’t quiz him on his past, present or future.”
“We?”
“Zack and I.”
Her eyes flashed wider. “That romance thing’s still working out for you?”
“It is. And I count my blessings every day.”
Dina tapped her manicure on the desktop. “Was that the night Tipper went missing?” she asked. “When you and Mr. Handsome were supposed to meet Gallagher?”