Perfectly Matched

by Heather Webber

  He looked at Raphael. “Can’t hurt to try, right?”

  “It can, in fact, hurt. Especially if Sean finds out.” Raphael wiped his forehead with a napkin.

  Graham had met Sean a few times at our meetings. “Let’s forget I even asked, okay? Here’s my number in case the police need to talk to me.” He dropped a business card on the table, waved, and walked back into the sunshine.

  I smiled as he left, then turned my attention to the pink bear, sitting on the counter next to the salt and pepper shakers. Relief flowed through me. Raphael put his hand atop mine and gave it a squeeze. Then he glanced over my shoulder. “The police are here.”

  By the time the police took a report of what happened, and I’d called and canceled all my credit cards, it was after four o’ clock.

  And there was still no sign of Sean.

  Chapter Ten

  “He doesn’t have much, does he?” Raphael set a stack of boxes on the floor and inspected Sean’s room at my father’s penthouse.

  I’d been calling Sean practically nonstop for the past hour. No answer. The calls went directly to voicemail, and after the third message I stopped leaving them. It hadn’t seemed right for Raphael to pack Sean’s things alone, so I’d tagged along.

  “Most of his belongings are in storage,” I said, looking around. After his previous relationship didn’t work out, Sean and his dog Thoreau, a tiny Yorkie, had moved in with Sam and his family. When they overstayed their welcome, they moved here. It was win-win. My father had someone to watch his beloved penthouse while he cohabitated with my mother, and Sean had a place to live rent-free while we tried to figure out our future.

  Thoreau had not greeted us at the door with his usual yips and bouncing, so I figured that wherever Sean was, he had the dog with him and that Thoreau had not been dognapped (again!).

  Why wasn’t Sean returning my calls?

  Taking a deep breath, I let Ebbie out of her carrier and tried not to stress out about Sean.

  Raphael lifted an eyebrow. “Your father’s allergies...”

  I still wasn’t feeling too kindly toward my father, so I said, “Just make sure his Epi-pen is around.”

  Raphael shook his head. “If he finds out...”

  Limping, I walked over and closed the door to keep Ebbie confined to the room. After I solemnly promised him I’d have my injury looked at by a doctor, Raphael wrapped my foot with a thick bandage, and I’d abandoned my wedges in favor of a pair of flip-flops bought from a street vendor. “You weren’t here.”

  “I’ve trained you well, Uva.”

  Smiling, I gathered up some bubble wrap and went to work. It wasn’t all that long ago that Raphael had moved out of this very room and in with Maggie at her home.

  I’d had a rough time letting Raphael go, but the transition had been smoother than I thought possible. It helped that he worked downstairs in the Porcupine. I saw him almost every day.

  Looking around, I noted that Raphael hadn’t been exaggerating when he said Sean didn’t have much here; bedding, some clothes, some pictures of us, Sam’s family, and his parents—his adoptive parents, that is. I picked up that frame.

  “What were their names?” Raphael asked, peeking over my shoulder.

  “Daniel and Winifred Donahue.”

  “Odd how Sean rather looks like Daniel, don’t you think?”

  “Sean thinks that’s why Daniel took such a liking to him; he reminded Daniel of himself.”

  In the photo, Daniel, dressed in his firefighter blues, stood next to fancily-dressed Winnie. Daniel had an arm hooked around a grinning Sam, and Winnie had her arm around a hesitantly smiling Sean.

  Sean once told me about this photo, about how he had been too afraid to believe his good fortune that a family like this would take him in. He’d been afraid to be happy. Afraid to trust. Afraid to believe that nothing else bad would ever happen to him.

  I believed he still felt that way much of the time.

  Raphael chuckled. “Had Daniel been a scrapper as well?”

  “I don’t know.” I stared at the photo. Getting any information out of Sean about his upbringing was incredibly difficult. I barely knew anything about his real family. And what I knew about the Donahues could barely fill a page.

  “Well, they must have been remarkable people.” He turned away and wrestled open a cardboard box. He was exceptionally patient as Ebbie tried to help him.

  Remarkable.

  I’d say so. Taking in Sean and Sam from the streets. Probably saving their lives. Giving them a home. Love. All the nurturing they could stand—and then some.

  Until, sadly, Sean’s apprehensions about bad things happening had proven true.

  He had only ten years with Daniel, a fire chief, before Daniel died during a horrible warehouse fire. Not long after, Winnie had been diagnosed with colon cancer and succumbed quickly. And of course, then there was the day Sean himself had died in the middle of a busy Boston intersection.

  He’d been a firefighter called to the scene of an accident when his heart suddenly stopped—a genetic flaw he hadn’t known about. His fellow firefighters had brought him back to life. With that, however, came a huge upheaval. He’d needed a defibrillator implanted; he had to leave his job; his girlfriend couldn’t handle the stress... To him it felt as though he’d lost everything.

  But because of his heart problems, he had taken a job at Sam’s P.I. firm—where he found me.

  Fate had an interesting sense of humor.

  Carefully, I wrapped the frame and placed it inside the cardboard box, alongside Ebbie, who’d climbed in.

  After I gave her ears a quick scratch, I went to wrap the other frames.

  I nearly dropped one of them when my cell phone rang. Quickly, I set it down and grabbed my phone, hoping the whole time that it was Sean finally checking in.

  My ruminating on his heart problems had increased my anxiety about his lack of contact. Did he have an episode? Not long ago, I’d witnessed him being shocked by his defibrillator, and the memory made my hands clammy and my stomach ache. I kept telling myself that if he had been shocked, that I would have heard by now. Someone would have contacted Sam or me...

  Checking the Caller ID, I practically deflated when I saw that it was Suz.

  “Don’t sound so happy to hear from me,” she said dryly when I answered unenthusiastically.

  “I thought you might be Sean.”

  “Now I understand your disappointment. Ha-cha-cha!”

  I couldn’t help but smile. Suz made it no secret that she thought Sean was one hot tamale. “How come you’re not on a beach reading a steamy novel?”

  “It started to rain.”

  I took the phone and limped my way into my father’s living room. His floor-to-ceiling glass windows looked out onto Boston Harbor. It was, in fact, raining. “Bummer.”

  “Tell me about it. Anyway, when I came back inside, I decided to check the office voicemail in case an important call came in or whatnot. You know how I like to stay atop of things.”

  Rain drops slid down the window panes. Thunder crackled in the distance. “You have to talk to my father about getting a raise, Suz.”

  “Could you at least put in a good word?”

  “I’ll see what I can do. I should probably go back to helping Raphael now...”

  “Thanks. But a raise is not the reason I called.”

  Sometimes Suz took the scenic route around a conversation. “No?”

  “I was checking the messages and there were about ten of them from that guy in your group. Graham? Something about a lost wallet. I took down his number...”

  “It’s okay. I ran into him earlier. The wallet’s been found.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “Thanks for letting me know, though,” I said.

  “Wait. There’s more.”

  I thunked my head against the thick window, and then frowned at the mark I’d left on the glass. I tried to rub it away, but it only made it worse. It just wasn
’t my day. “What else?”

  “Annie Hendrix keeps calling and leaving messages for you.”

  Oh, for crying out loud. Not Annie, too. There was only so much of the Diviner Whiners I could take in a day. “Did she lose her wallet, too?”

  “No, but she’s quite insistent that you call her back as soon as possible. She’s left about seven messages now.”

  I didn’t really want to call her back, but seven messages hinted that it might be something important. “Give me her number.” I jotted it down, and said, “Anything from Dr. Paul?”

  “Nope.”

  Thank goodness for small favors. “Anything from Orlinda or Jeremy Cross?”

  “Not a thing.”

  Of course not. The two people I actually wanted to hear from. I thanked Suz for calling and promised again to talk to my dad about a raise and hung up.

  I stared at my cell phone for a long second, willing Sean to call. When he didn’t, I walked into the kitchen and picked up my father’s landline. I dialed Annie Hendrix’s number—I didn’t want her to have my cell phone number, either.

  After five rings, the call clicked over to voicemail. I left a message that I would try to reach her again later.

  What did she want? Had she lost something, too?

  Like her mind, for flirting with Graham?

  I hoped she didn’t think I could match her with him. Just the thought of it made me shudder. Graham was proving to have some decency (miniscule), but dating a playboy like him was only asking for trouble. I didn’t know what she was thinking.

  Because I was a glutton for punishment, I dialed Sean one more time. Still no answer. But as I hung up, my phone rang.

  For a second I was disappointed it wasn’t Sean, but then smiled because it was my brother.

  “Oscar called and said I should keep an eye on you while he’s gone,” he said.

  Oliver “Cutter” McCutchan still wasn’t comfortable calling our father “Dad.” Not surprising, since he only found out that he was the son of Oscar Valentine about six months ago. Otherwise, Cutter had blended into our dysfunctional family perfectly. It helped that the public and the media (except for Preston) hadn’t figured out that Cutter was a Valentine. And helped even more that he was on the road a lot—he didn’t have to see us very often.

  We were a lot to handle.

  “Oh, that will be easy with you in San Francisco.” He was due home this weekend.

  He laughed. “I think he forgot.”

  I was about to say, “Welcome to my world,” but held it in. At least I’d had my father’s presence in my life when I was little—even though he was more physically absent than not. Cutter had grown up believing that his father was someone else—a stuffy, starchy executive, who couldn’t hold a candle to Raphael when it came to parenting duties.

  I’d been the lucky one. And I knew it.

  Instead, I said, “He’s getting old. His mind is slipping.”

  “It is not.”

  “I know, but he’d go crazy if he knew I said it. You should tell him.”

  Cutter laughed. “Why do I have the feeling he’s not on your good side right now?”

  “Because you have good instincts.”

  “Speaking of, have you seen Preston today?”

  He’d tried to sound casual, but I picked up an undertone of worry in his voice. “This morning. Why?”

  “I haven’t heard from her today. It’s just strange, that’s all.”

  “She’s following around Dr. Paul today, so she’s pretty busy. Lots of pre-death patient interviews going on.”

  “Do I want to know what that means?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Have you noticed that she’s been acting strangely lately?”

  I smiled. “More than usual, you mean?”

  “Lucy!”

  “Not that I’ve noticed. Oh wait, it might be because of Orlinda.”

  “Your psychic teacher?”

  “She predicted Preston was going to have another big change.”

  He laughed. “Well, that explains some things. Orlinda freaks her out.”

  I knew.

  “Her last prediction…Preston thought for sure I was going to propose to her. She kept leaving engagement ring pictures around the house, dropping hints that she liked round cuts better than square...”

  “That’s crazy! You’ve only been seeing each other for a few months.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone.

  “Cutter?”

  More silence.

  “Oh. My. God! You’re thinking about proposing to Preston?”

  He coughed. “No... I mean, I don’t think so. But maybe Orlinda knows something I don’t.”

  I needed to sit down. I glanced at my father’s fancy sofa and bypassed it. After I witnessed my parents fooling around on it, I could never sit on it again. I flopped into an overstuffed chair.

  “Maybe,” Cutter went on, “that’s why I haven’t heard from her. After the last prediction, she was so embarrassed. Maybe now she’s playing hard-to-get?”

  “This is Preston we’re talking about. She’s never played hard-to-get in her life. She’s about the most in-your-face person I know.”

  “Well, something’s going on. Can you feel her out for me?”

  “Maybe I can...”

  “Okay, LucyD, what do you want?”

  I loved that he used my mother’s nickname for me. She’d been calling me LucyD for as long as I could remember. It was a shortened version of Lucy Diamonds, which was taken from “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” My mother was a rabid Beatles fan and was a little...eccentric. She was Beatnik, flower child, and, earth mother, and Greek Goddess rolled into one.

  “Maybe we can make a trade. Because I need your help with something.”

  “What?”

  “Reading the aura of a client, since Dad is out of town.”

  “Lucy...”

  “Oh, stop with that tone. I’m not asking you to give up your career and join the company.”

  “Good. Because I get enough of that with Dad.”

  Dad. I also loved that the word slipped into his vocabulary once in a while. “This is a special case.”

  He sighed. “Okay. Set it up for this weekend, but you better come through for me with Preston.”

  I was still wrapping my head around the whole engagement angle—and the fact that he’d obviously put some thought into it. “This weekend is perfect. It gives me time to track down my client.”

  “Wait a sec. You don’t know where he is?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “But I will find him. Make no mistake about that.”

  Chapter Eleven

  An hour later, I was back at the office, watching a locksmith work his magic. He was just about done swapping out the lock on the office door. He’d already reprogrammed the downstairs keycard reader.

  I sat on the love seat in the reception area with my foot propped up and my phone in hand. I was going from worried about Sean to being angry with him. He had to know how frantic his absence would make me. It had been over six hours since he left the office—and no one had heard a peep since.

  The movers had been here and gone, and Raphael had taken charge of Ebbie and was in the process of bringing her—and all Sean’s things—to my place. He promised not to leave Ebbie alone with Grendel, and for that I was thankful. Grendel outweighed the small cat by a good twenty pounds, at least.

  I’d promised Raphael I’d take a cab ride home instead of trying to navigate the ferry, even though it was going to cost me an arm and a leg—money that Raphael had loaned me since mine had been carried about by a hoodlum.

  Fluffing the pillow behind my head, I wiggled, trying to get comfortable. Over the noise of the window fan, the din of rush hour traffic floated in. Oddly, I found the honking, the sirens, and the bustle oddly soothing.

  My phone rang and I answered on the first ring. It was my mother.

  “LucyD! What is this about your fathe
r squiring me away? What isn’t he telling me?”

  Ah, he hadn’t told her about the arsonist. It was probably for the best. My mother was one to dwell on things. I could hear lots of noise in the background. “It’s a thousand degrees in the office and Dad doesn’t like to sweat. Are you already at the airport?”

  “Well, now it all makes perfect sense. And yes, we’re at the airport. We’re due to fly out in an hour. I could use a vacation, but I knew there was something going on. You’ll have the week off as well?”

  I felt a stab of guilt that I kept the real reason from her. “Heading home soon.”

  “How will you survive without me for the week?” she asked dramatically.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m sure Dovie will be around lots.”

  She laughed. “Oh, she’ll be around. You should see what she’s ordered for you and Sean.”

  “Not a crib, I hope.”

  “Oh, you’ll see.”

  We said our goodbyes, and she promised to send a postcard. I hung up and looked down. I’d taken the wrap off my foot to let it breathe, and wished I hadn’t.

  It was one ugly foot.

  Even the locksmith noticed. “You ought to get that looked at.”

  He was as bad as Raphael. “I’m going to.”

  Just as soon as I found Sean and kicked his ass from here to Nantucket.

  With my good foot, of course.

  “Soon,” he said. “If it’s broken, you don’t want to have to get it re-broken to fix it.”

  I glanced at him. He was sixty if a day, with bushy eyebrows and sage green eyes. “Broken? I don’t think so. Just sprained maybe.”

  He tipped his head. “I ain’t wrong about these things. I have a sixth sense, you know?”

  “Nope,” I said. I was sick of anything to do with sixth senses.

  He dropped a screwdriver into his mini toolbox. “Well, I do. And dollars to doughnuts, that foot is broken.”

  I’d already called Em, who promised she’d take a look at it when I got home tonight. It was nice having a best friend who was a former doctor. One who lived right next door—she had been living with Dovie since Christmastime. The arrangement, which was supposed to have been temporary, had turned into something more permanent and was a good thing for both of them. It kept the loneliness at bay.