“As I was about to start placing the tarot cards, I became so dizzy I was sure I would pass out. Obviously, I didn’t, but I kid you not ... I had a vision. I saw a brilliant white light, then an incredibly bright shade of red. It blew me away because this woman was waiting for me to start turning the cards, and I was in the midst of this ... this experience. I’m not sure how long it lasted, and at first I couldn’t figure out what the images were. Frankly, for a minute or two, I thought I was about to lose it, but I didn’t. I ran out to the car without much of an explanation. Then I sat there a good long time until I figured out what I had been seeing.”
“And?” Ida hissed.
“I’m sure what I saw was a red car covered with a mountain of snow.”
Chapter 17
“That fits with the information I just received. One of the reasons I turned around and came back. I had a colleague run a check on Chris’s phone records. He was able to locate the last phone call made from that number. The last possible tower that could have recorded a ping was a tower five hours away from here. If the information I have is correct, and I have no reason to believe it isn’t, Chris is somewhere just southeast of Lake Tahoe,” Goebel informed the others. “Do any of you know if he has a GPS tracking device on his cell phone?”
“I’m sure he does. I just can’t believe he’s in Lake Tahoe. What would he be doing in that area?” Abby asked, then remembered Chris’s friend Steve, who was staying at Chris’s condo. “Chris has a friend staying in his condo, and I’m sure he knows where Chris is.” Abby took her cell phone out of her pocket. “I’m going to call Chris’s house. Maybe Steve will answer and tell me where the heck Chris took off to, though he swore he didn’t know when I asked him. I’m not sure I believe him now.”
Quickly, she punched in his home phone number, and paced back and forth. Several rings later, Abby was greeted by Chris’s overly cheerful voice. “Hey, I’m not here. Sorry, peeps. Call my cell.” His answering machine. She clicked the END button on her phone.
“Nothing. I don’t even know if Steve’s still there. Maybe I need to take another drive over to Chris’s condo and question that guy again. I can’t believe Chris could leave, let someone stay in his condo, and not tell them where he was going. What do you think, Goebel?”
“It can’t hurt.”
“Should we call the police, check to see if there have been any accidents in that area? Maybe Chris is in a car somewhere and needs help. Maybe he’s stranded.” Toots’s voice was laced with new worry.
“Sophie, you said you saw something red in your vision, right?” Abby questioned.
“Yes, a very bright red. It had little sparkles in it, almost like there was a gold-colored glitter mixed in with the paint. And the snow, wouldn’t that mean something, Goebel? If he’s in the Lake Tahoe area, he could be at one of those damned ski resorts. Stuck without phone reception.” Sophie was excited. Maybe her vision really did mean something, maybe she and Chris were connected psychically.
Abby yanked her phone out of her pocket. She placed her hand over the mouthpiece. “I’m calling one of my sources at the police department. Give me a minute.” She stepped outside on the deck.
Now in full-blown investigator mode, Goebel asked, “Do any of you know if Chris has any friends in the area? Any business he might have had? A reason for being in the Nevada area?”
“Chris has friends all over the country. If he had business to attend, I don’t know that he would’ve told anyone, especially me. He’s a grown man. He comes and goes as he pleases,” Toots explained. She’d never had a reason to question Chris’s business practices, and now she wished she had been a bit more nosy. In a motherly way, of course.
“I think we can work with the cell phone. I should be able to pinpoint his exact location. I just need to make a couple more calls. Cross your fingers he has a GPS locator on his phone.”
Goebel removed his cell phone from his pocket. He punched in a number, then walked out to the deck, where Abby was trying to hook up with her police department source.
Toots had a flash of the two of them working together. A pair of private investigators. Both knew the business. With Abby’s reporter instinct and Goebel’s experience and contacts, they would make a formidable team. A tabloid, a bakery in Charleston, and a private investigation firm. She could follow in Warren Buffett’s footsteps and become a pillar of American enterprise. It was something Toots could give serious thought to later.
As soon as Goebel stepped out, Abby came back inside. Toots knew immediately something was wrong from the look on her face. “You heard something about Chris?” Her stomach did a flip-flop, and her heart pounded so hard she thought it would burst in her chest. She inhaled through her nose, then exhaled, slowing her heart rate.
“No. I just remembered that Laura Leigh has a bright red Toyota Prius. The license plate is IMASTAR. Tell me that’s not conceit.”
Sophie perked up. “I knew my vision was real. I am not cracking up. Thank you, Big Man upstairs!” Sophie raised her fist high in the air, then genuflected.
“No one questioned whether your vision was real or not,” Toots said. “I’ve witnessed what you can do, and if you say you had a vision, then you had a vision.”
Abby appeared as though she’d had the wind knocked out of her. She slumped on a kitchen chair. “I think Chris and Laura Leigh are holed up together. I think they did go snow skiing. I can’t figure out why Chris’s car was towed into his mechanic’s, but I’m sure he has a good explanation for that. Maybe he was following Laura, and he actually had car trouble. Knowing that little tart owns a red car, the pings from the cell phone towers, then add all of that with Sophie’s vision, I don’t see how anyone could reach any conclusion other than that Chris and Laura are having a little ski vacation/minirendezvous. I’m sure they’re not listening to the news.”
“Abby, stop right now! You will drive yourself crazy. Goebel will find him, then we can get to the bottom of this. I know he’s in trouble, but I don’t think it’s anything that will put him behind bars. Let’s just be patient,” Toots said, even though she was anything but patient herself. She knew the scenario Abby was imagining, and she did not want her hurt in any way, shape, or form.
“It’s going on five days, Mother. The media are swooping down on this story like vultures.” Abby caught her faux pas. “The national media. Television. E!, Entertainment Tonight, Inside Edition.”
“The Informer is a national media outlet, too, Abby. Don’t you have your top reporters hanging out at Laura’s apartment and those two nightclubs she and Chris frequented?”
Mavis decided to join in the conversation. She directed her attention to her goddaughter. “Is there anything I can do? Would you like a cup of herbal tea? It’s quite calming, you know.”
“Thanks, but I’m good,” Abby said to Mavis.
“If you change your mind, just say the word.”
“You’re so good to me. All of you,” Abby said.
Goebel chose that moment to come back in from the deck.
Abby looked at her three godmothers and her mother. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you all, but I’m not going to question it. Now, Goebel, let’s put this GPS technology to work.”
Goebel put his laptop on the table. His fingertips raced across the keyboard at lightning speed. He looked up for a moment. “If his cell plan has a service locator, I’ll be able to find his location right now. Or pretty darn close. Some cell-phone providers have what they refer to as a family locator. Personally, I think it was designed to keep tabs on teenagers, but it’s handy when you want to locate someone.”
As he turned his attention back to his laptop, his hands flew over the keyboard again. He stopped and watched as a satellite image filled the screen. “Look at this.” He pointed to an image of terrain. The image was green, brown, and blue. He tapped the arrow key, and the image cleared, showing an area of mountainous terrain.
Toots leaned over Goebel’s shoulder to view the
screen. “What does this mean?”
Goebel pointed to a tiny yellow flashing circle. “This tells me Chris’s cell phone is GPS-enabled, and working.”
“What if his battery died? Would you still be able to track him?” Sophie asked.
“Yes. The tracking device is implanted inside certain phones. Doesn’t matter if they’re dead, or even turned off. You can track the phone number as long as the phone isn’t damaged by water or fire, or destroyed by some other means.”
Ida finally spoke. “Then why can’t you just drive to the place where the cell phone is?”
“I’m going to contact the local authorities, have them do what we in the business call a safety check. If all this technology works, we’ll be able to solve this mystery within a matter of hours.”
“You think so?” Abby asked. “We’ve tried using this a couple times at the paper. Trying to follow a few A-list celebs. It never worked.”
“They probably have their cell numbers scrambled. There’s a computer program that does that. I would expect a celebrity who doesn’t want to be found would have used such a program,” Goebel explained.
“Makes sense,” Abby said.
“So what do we do now?” Toots asked Goebel.
“Once I contact the authorities, all we can do is wait to see what they find.”
Chapter 18
For the fifth night in a row, Chris slept in front of the fireplace in a sleeping bag. Laura slept on the pullout sofa. No way was she going to lower herself and sleep in a “nasty old sleeping bag”—her exact words.
Because of the severe cold, Chris had closed off the other rooms to preserve what heat they had. He could’ve clicked on the central heating system and used the generators, but he didn’t know how much longer they would be stranded. His goal was to keep them alive. Part of staying alive meant keeping warm.
With several thick blankets under his sleeping bag, the hardwood floors weren’t too bad to sleep on. Again, he thanked Johnathan for thinking and planning ahead. Had it not been for his friend’s foresight, Chris had no doubt they would have succumbed to the cold temperatures by now.
At this point, his only hope of being located rested with Toots and the call he’d tried to make. She was a smart woman. She wouldn’t wait around for him to call again. Toots was a woman of action. As soon as she discovered he wasn’t where he should be, she’d do whatever was necessary to find him. The downside: he hadn’t told anyone where he was going, hadn’t bothered to contact any of his associates in San Francisco to tell them he wouldn’t be attending the conference. Hell, when he thought about it, he hadn’t even told Steve where he was headed, just that Steve could stay in his condo for a week and to make himself at home.
Chris wondered if Abby realized he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. But why would she? He hadn’t told her of his plans, either. He was totally screwed unless the weather did a complete about-face. Laura’s hybrid vehicle was great on the open road. It sucked at driving up a mountain. He was sure he’d ruined the transmission, but at the time all he could think of was getting Laura somewhere where no one would find her. He could only imagine the fallout if she’d gone ahead with her plans to blow up the studio.
Rolling onto his side, Chris stared long and hard into the fireplace. A log fell from the neatly stacked wood, sending orange, red, and yellow embers dancing up the flue. Small bits of the hickory log fell, shooting sparks toward him, only to die out as soon as they hit the protective screen. Hissing and popping sounds were the only noises in the large cabin. Except the wind. It had been blowing so much he’d gotten used to the sound; it had become a white noise of sorts. When he’d gone out earlier to see if he could get a cell-phone signal, the wind was bone-chillingly cold, biting right through his clothes.
Punching the down pillow back into shape, he reclined into its softness. He pushed his entire body farther into the sleeping bag. Warm, fed, and beyond tired, he closed his eyes and drifted into a dreamless sleep.
A loud pounding jolted him awake. He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep. He hadn’t bothered looking at the time when he’d called it a night because time just seemed to go on forever out there in the middle of nowhere. The only concept of time was day and night. Scooting out of the sleeping bag, Chris stuffed his feet in the dress shoes he’d had on when he’d left Hot Wired.
“What the hell is all that noise? I am trying to sleep!” Laura called out from the sofa. “This is like living in a frigging cave!”
“Be quiet, Laura. It’s just someone knocking on the door.” Maybe Johnathan. Maybe anybody. He didn’t care who it was as long as they took Laura Leigh away. He had a mental image of men in white jackets strapping her into a straightjacket. He smiled. Best thought he’d had in days.
More banging.
“Hang on,” Chris shouted as he raced to the door. “I’m coming!”
Icy gusts of air smacked him in the face when he opened the door. Two burly sheriff’s deputies, bundled in heavy coats and tall black boots that hit just below the knee, stood on the wraparound deck.
Quickly, Chris stepped aside, pushing the door all the way open. “You guys must be freezing. Come inside.”
They stomped their heavy black boots on the mat before coming inside. “Are you Mr. Clay?” the taller of the two asked.
“That would be me,” Chris said as soon as he closed the door. “I have a fire. Why don’t you guys warm your hands and tell me why you’re here?”
Laura sat up on the sofa, her attention focused on the two deputies. “Did that jerk from the studio send for me? I knew it! See, Chris? They can’t make that movie without me!” She jumped off the sofa and headed for the stairs. “I’m going to get my clothes on. Don’t you two dare leave without me. And Chris, you’re fired,” she said as she ran up the stairs.
“I have no clue what the young lady is talking about. We’re here to check on a”—the deputy flipped through a small black tablet—“Mr. Christopher Clay. Your cell phone pings led us here.”
“Yesssss! Toots, right?” Chris said exultantly. “I knew that old gal would shake things up once she saw I’d called. Never underestimate a woman.” Images of Abby flashed before his eyes. He smiled. Damn, she was as smart as her mother. Prettier, too, but he’d never say that to Toots.
The deputy with the tablet skimmed through the pages again. “No, it was a man. Goebel, uh, doesn’t have a last name. Just Goebel Global. A private detective.”
“I’ll be damned! They’ve called in the big guns. This is Toots’s doing.”
Both deputies stood in front of the fire, removed their gloves, and spread them across the hearth to dry.
“We’re here to make sure you’re unharmed, that’s all. A safety check. Looks like you and the girl are nice and cozy. I guess we can be on our way,” the shorter deputy said.
“No, no, no! You cannot leave here without us! We’re trapped here. Hell, I don’t even like that little twit!” Chris’s voice was loud enough to reach upstairs.
Pounding feet raced downstairs. Laura Leigh was wearing the skimpy cocktail dress she’d had on five nights ago. “Did I hear you correctly? Did you just refer to me as a twit? A twit? You are fired, Chris Clay, do you understand? I will drag your ass through the mud when I get home.”
“Is there something going on here that we should know about? Something more than two stranded lovers? If there is, well ... then”—Deputy Short looked at Deputy Tall—“we’ll have to take you both in.”
For a second, Chris couldn’t form the right words. Only a second. “No, no, no! You have it all wrong. First, we are not lovers. God, I can’t even ... never mind. I’m her attorney, she’s my client—”
“Was your client,” the twit interrupted.
“I am her former attorney. She is my former client.” Chris watched Laura while he spoke. He did not trust her at all. “We were ...”
We were what? he thought. I was trying to prevent my client from committing a major felony. She threatened t
o blow up World Con Studios.
As much as he despised the little shit, he couldn’t rat her out. “You know, you guys are right. We came up here to have some time alone, to ourselves, if you know what I mean?” Chris looked at both men. Each wore a smile the size of an extra-large donut. A cruller, he thought.
“You lying sack of sh—!” Chris placed his hand over her mouth before she could finish. He pulled her close to him, and whispered in her ear, “You want me to tell them you’re an arsonist?” He felt the fight leave her. Gently, he removed her from his embrace. Her sky-blue eyes were cloudy, dark with anger.
Tough, he thought.
“We had an argument earlier. She’s mad,” Chris said to explain her behavior.
“You’re damned right I’m mad, you jerk!” Laura raised her hand high in the air, but before she could move her arm in a full swing, Deputy Tall caught her arm. “Domestic violence. You want me to take you in?”
It was all Chris could do to keep a straight face. He wished she had succeeded in hitting him. She thought staying in the cabin was roughing it. Wait until she had to take a pee in front of a jailhouse full of prostitutes, drunks, and dope dealers.
Laura yanked her arm out of the deputy’s grasp. “Don’t put your slimy hands on me again, or I’ll have a sexual harassment charge against you so fast you’ll never work again!”
“Laura,” Chris said. “Enough. These gentlemen are here to help us. I know you’re upset, but you need to calm down.”
She rolled her eyes. “So you’re telling me World Con didn’t send them?”
Chris wanted to say the studio wouldn’t have sent the lowliest security guard in search of her, but stopped. It would only make a bad situation worse. Until he was out of there, safely at home, he would keep his thoughts to himself.
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