ALSO BY CYNTHIA ST. AUBIN
The Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist
Unlovable
Unlucky
Unhoppy
Unbearable
Unassailable
Undeadly
Unexpecting
From Hell to Breakfast
The New Adventures of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist
Unraveled
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Cynthia Olsen
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542045506
ISBN-10: 1542045509
Cover design by David Drummond
For my oma, Marion Elizabeth Matilda. You are all things brave and beautiful.
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Epilogue
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chapter One
I can tell you the exact minute my mother disappeared.
Right after my full name was read but before I stuck my hand in Dean Koontz’s crotch. No, not Dean Koontz of gripping-horror-novel fame. Dean David Koontz of Denver’s Sturm College of Law.
Mind you, the dean and I were on a first-name basis, but this wasn’t our standard handshake, nor a last-minute bid on my part to finagle the three-tenths of a GPA point that would have launched me into the padded valedictory chair of Melanie Beidermeyer, my nemesis.
This was about me—Jane Marple Avery—striding across the stage to claim the certificate proclaiming me a doctor of jurisprudence while repeating my mantra of I will not fall. I will not fall. Please, dear God, don’t let me fall.
I stopped on the cue, aligning myself with a spray of mums at the edge of the stage, the photographer just beyond it. My eyes sifted through myriad faces, returning to the area where I had spotted my mother earlier among the other graduates’ restless relatives trapped in the standing-room-only section at the back of the auditorium. Searching, searching, and finding . . . nothing. A space where my mother’s face had been, but no longer was. I hesitated, scanning the crowd past the purple tassel swinging in one corner of my vision.
A flat leather folder pushed its way into my clammy palm. My right hand swung up instinctively to shake the dean’s hand, as we’d practiced at the rehearsals. Only, with my eyes glued to the space that did not hold my mother, I miscalculated.
By at least five inches.
My mind did not process this information in time to keep my fingers from squeezing. Only when I heard the grunt and a sudden exhalation of air and turned to look into Dean Koontz’s reddening face did I realize what I had done.
Somewhere in my desk’s overcrowded junk drawer, there exists the photo taken at the exact moment when I released the dean’s man tackle with a horrified gasp and covered my mouth with the leather diploma case.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, blood boiling up to vent an instant sheen of sweat on my upper lip.
“Please go, Jane,” the dean said, a phrase oft uttered on my visits to his office after many, many spirited debates with my professors.
And I did. Looping around in the prescribed manner back toward my seat to make way for the next graduate, and the next.
As I sat there, looking out on the indistinct sea beyond the overhead lights, watching the lazy flutter of hundreds of programs used as makeshift fans, I searched the crowd once more. I could almost hear my brain’s engine milling through and rejecting image after image, looking for the familiar bone structure that had been imprinted on my retinas since birth.
My mother’s face was nowhere to be seen.
And what about my mother’s voice? Why hadn’t I followed the sound of her screams of jubilation when I walked across the stage?
Because she hadn’t cheered.
The realization filled me with a cold and settling dread.
In twenty-eight years of school plays, ballet recitals, high school debates, and college award ceremonies, my mother had never—not once—been absent.
Her world turned on cogs of perfectionism long worn smooth by habit. A stark contrast to my world, fueled mostly by last-minute panic and lies.
Lots of lies.
My eyes remained fixed on the doors at either side of the auditorium, which were propped open to encourage air circulation on the unseasonably warm spring afternoon. My mind manufactured my mother’s shape in the light box of those glowing rectangles at least a dozen times. It was the only reasonable ending to the current situation.
Any minute, any second, she would appear backlit in the doorway, sending me a little finger wave and an apologetic smile. Later, over our postgraduation dinner of sushi, warm ceramic shot glasses of sake cradled between thumb and forefinger, she’d explain how she’d had to nervous pee on my behalf and had fought it until her eyes turned yellow, then darted to the bathroom at the last second. The story of How Mom Missed My Graduation would weave itself into the tapestry of our small family’s history, and that would be that.
It had to be.
Time takes on an odd, slippery quality in the minutes after your world begins to slide from its moorings. I sat through endless protracted silences interrupted by the occasional rise of applause as my fellow graduates made their way across the stage. A roller coaster of sound carrying me further into my growing worry.
“And the university wishes to express its fervent thanks to the following for their generous contributions . . .” Dean Koontz had taken the podium again, droning on in a register perhaps slightly higher than the one he’d used at the beginning of the ceremony. “Archard Everett Valentine and Associates, Grace and Garland Beidermeyer, the Swedish Hospital of Denver, B-Tech Incorporated, Front Range Contractors . . .”
I might have been in my seat for five minutes or five years when a strange shadow passed over my lap, and I looked up just in time to catch a leather folder in the eye.
My hands flew to my face, where tears started to leak from the offended ocular cavity.
“Oh, honey, are you okay?” I recognized the pecan-praline, syrupy Texas drawl of Melanie Beidermeyer approaching from the direction of my newly minted blind spot. She continued, “I’m so sorry. I just got so excited that I threw the first thing I could grab.”
“I’m fine,” I said, unsuccessfu
lly trying to blink away the tears. Not only was I not fine, but I was wishing I had a spoon to dig out my own eye.
“Well, if you decide to seek damages against the university, I know a good lawyer.” She winked her artificial beauty queen eyelashes at me. “I think you have a case.”
The sound that came from me wasn’t so much a laugh as the unholy offspring of a hyena and a buzz saw.
“Of course, you might want to lie low. Just in case Dean Koontz decides to file a countersuit.”
We both looked in the direction of the faculty seats, where the dean stood a few degrees south of plumb as he spoke to the broad shoulders of Brioni-suit-wearing architect and entrepreneur Archard Everett Valentine. Apparently the man was rich enough to buy himself the honor of a commencement address a hundred times over despite his recent tango with allegations of nose candy and whores in the tabloid press.
“Might want to stop by a restroom, darlin’,” Melanie said, leaning into me, her shampoo-scented corn silk hair brushing across my cheek like a kiss. “Your mascara is running, and you look a mess.”
I entertained a brief but vivid fantasy of yanking the purple doctor of jurisprudence hood against the slim column of Melanie’s neck and riding her to the ground with my knee lodged between her shoulder blades.
Instead, I swiped my fingertips below my burning eye and came back with a grayish sludge. Lovely.
“Yoo-hoo!” Melanie waved over my shoulder. “Well, those are my people. Gotta go.”
I didn’t turn to look, but I imagined a tribe composed of blond-haired, blue-eyed, waspy types. Lots of blazers and diamonds and whitened teeth.
My people. Why did the phrase induce within me such instant, teeth-grinding, orphan-kicking irritation?
Because I had only one person.
And she was missing.
I stood below the Frank H. Ricketson Jr. law building’s clock tower, a meeting spot my mother and I had arranged over her famous homemade maple bacon cinnamon rolls that morning. I’d sat there watching her back from the vintage ’50s table we’d scored during one of our weekend trips to the flea market.
It was my habit in the mundane moments to commit every possible detail to memory. You never know what might be important, Janey.
Today it had been the threads of silver winding their way through the neat coffee-colored braid my mother had tamed her hair into before shuffling downstairs to start the coffee. She stood at the ironing board in her black silk bathrobe, scratching the back of one shapely calf with the toe of her opposite foot.
Curls of steam sighed in time with the practiced sweep of the iron up and down my graduation gown at the end of her arm.
“You’re stopping by your apartment?”
I licked maple glaze from my finger after picking at the rubble of crispy bacon on the top of my roll. “Mmhmm. I forgot my cap.”
“Well, don’t forget the bobby pins. It’s a real bitch keeping those things on. Especially with hair like yours.”
“I won’t,” I said, pushing myself up from my chair to offer her the badly used hanger the robe had come with.
We both stood back to admire her handiwork.
Perfect, as usual.
Her arm slid around my waist and hugged me into her side, into the familiar softness of her scent—a mix of Dove soap and the cream she slathered on nightly as part of her elaborate bedtime ritual.
“On a scale of one to ten, how sick are you of hearing how proud I am?”
I pretended to consider for a moment. “A solid three. You’ve got wiggle room.”
She planted a kiss on my temple. “Baby, I couldn’t be prouder of you if you got away with murder.”
“I understand getting away with murder is the next step after making partner.”
I felt her laugh in my ribs. The short, unrestrained bark she made when something really tickled her. It was one of my very favorite sounds on all the earth.
Not so for the pealing of the old clock tower’s bell tolling out over the University of Denver campus. Especially now, when it reminded me I had been there for half an hour, watching the crowd streaming from the Magness Arena thin to a dribble, then to a drool. Occasional puffs of marigold-scented air from the mound of landscaped flowers opposite the building’s main entrance lifted strands of dark hair across my vision.
My mother failed to materialize beyond them. I reached into my gown to pluck my phone from my bra in the off chance that I might have a text.
“I found her!”
I looked up to see a handful of classmates I recognized from occasional study groups making their way toward me. At the head of the pack was Lauren Hayes—short, curvy, and with enough black hair and scarlet lipstick to give a ’40s pinup a run for her money—our class’s self-appointed social coordinator who had, for the last three years, attempted to pry me from my monk’s cell of study.
Of all my classmates, I easily disliked her the least.
Lauren sidled up next to me and squeezed my elbow, her friends—my acquaintances—filling the space around us.
“We’ve been looking for you everywhere,” she said. “A bunch of us are going to head over to the Tilted Tiger for a quick drink to celebrate. Please tell me you’ll come.”
She was so damned jubilant, so rosy cheeked and bright eyed, that a celebratory thrill almost shifted the thunderhead of worry gathering in my chest.
“I wish I could,” I said. “But—”
She pooched out her painted lips in a mock pout.
“Oh, come on, Jane. For three years I’ve been inviting you out, and for three years you’ve turned me down. It’s graduation day! What possible reason can you have for turning us down today of all days?”
The same reason I’d always had.
My mother.
Today, because she was missing. For the three years before that, because I couldn’t help but hear her constant refrain in my head.
Be careful whom you get close to, Janey. Everyone wants something from you, and sooner or later, they’ll show you what it is.
“Look, Lauren, I really appreciate it, but I’m waiting for my mom.”
Her penciled brows drew together, creating a crease in the otherwise smooth porcelain of her forehead. “Do you want me to wait with you?”
I bit my lip hard. Of all the tendencies about myself I resent—and they are many—my propensity to burst into tears at the smallest offer of kindness has got to be in the top five.
“Oh, no. You don’t have to do that,” I said. “Really, I’ll be okay. She should be here any minute.”
Lie.
Lauren held up a hand, her abbreviated fingers decked out with all manner of chunky vintage rings. “Say no more. But if you change your mind, you know where to find us.”
She gave my elbow one last squeeze before departing. The simple warmth of that gesture tingled all the way into my shoulder.
And so I stood.
And I waited.
“Excuse me?”
The voice had already spoken once, but my mind had made no record of what it had said previously. Sudden hope fluttered tremulously in my heart.
“Yes?”
“I said, would you mind moving? You’re in our shot.”
“Oh.” The pinpoint of my awareness expanded to register one of my three hundred fellow graduates flanked by Mom and Dad and both sets of grandparents, smiles growing overly toothy from being held too long. “Sure.”
I descended the wide cement steps, my hand already mining my pocket for the cell phone I’d checked about every thirty seconds over the last half hour.
No messages. No missed calls.
Calls placed to my mother had gone straight to her voice mail.
Still, I listened again, wanting this connection with her to thicken from an invisible thread to a tangible lifeline.
“You’ve reached Alexis Avery, private eye. Spring is cheating season. Do you know where your husband really is? Leave me a message.”
I waited through a few beats
of silence, knowing that somewhere in the world, a repository caught the absence of words I couldn’t bring myself to speak. My throat tightened as I thought of the slim, nondescript gray phone warm against my mother’s chest, tucked in her bra. She never carried a purse, and neither did I. Phone in one cup, slim wallet in the other.
Never carry more than you can conceal on your body, baby girl. My mind recalled her voice so easily. Warm, sleepy, smoky enough that people assumed she had a lifelong cold.
I saw her wink then, her iris disappearing beneath dark lashes for a split second as she adjusted her bra. Anyone looking at me at that moment would have seen eyes the same odd color. Not quite blue, not quite gray, pale enough to look eerie by moonlight.
Someone cleared his throat, and I looked up to find the same photographer with one hand holding his expensive-looking camera aloft, the other propped on his hip.
“Again?” I asked. “Why don’t I just crawl into a dumpster and be done with it?”
“We want to get one in front of the flowers,” he said by way of an apology.
“Good for you,” I said. “Am I okay to go to the parking lot, or is there a sedan the family wants to get a picture with?”
His affected smile dissolved quicker than toilet paper in the rain.
I didn’t wait for an answer, jamming my phone back in my pocket and threading my way through the startled family without further comment.
The parking lot was already clearing of cars by the time I started walking its perimeter. I had taken the light-rail from my small off-campus apartment to the arena, having had to arrive an hour before the ceremony started, but I’d recommended the north parking lot to my mother for its convenience to the law building where we had planned to meet.
I often had trouble finding my mother’s car—a gray Honda Civic, not too old, not too new—even in smallish supermarket parking lots. Add to that the vehicles of three hundred graduates, plus faculty and staff, and you have a task about as fun as looking for a needle in a turd pile.
Flashy cars get made early. Never get made in the first hour, Janey. My mother had spoken these words with the same significance she reserved for explaining why I had to brush my teeth before bed or take a bath after playing in the rain.
Private Lies (Jane Avery Mysteries Book 1) Page 1