Vanished (Private Justice Book #1): A Novel

by Irene Hannon

  Boy, had she read the receptionist wrong. You’d think after her experience with Jack she’d have learned that appearances could be deceiving—in either direction.

  “Are you finished?” Cal indicated the pizza box, where two pieces remained.

  “Yes.”

  He closed the lid. Checked his watch. Hesitated. Some odd—but pleasant—vibes wafted her way, sending a tiny trill down her spine.

  “Since you brought the dinner, can I treat you to dessert? There’s a great ice cream place by the old train station. It’s only a short walk.” He rose and began gathering up the trash, avoiding her eyes. As if he was embarrassed by his suggestion. “But given your early start, I understand if you want to call it a day.”

  Was he having second thoughts about the invitation already? Trying to talk her out of accepting?

  She waffled. Having ice cream with the handsome PI who was doing pro bono work for her probably wasn’t wise. Theirs was a business relationship, nothing more.

  But then she remembered the sound advice Cal had given her earlier.

  Trust your instincts.

  So she did.

  “Thanks. I’d like that.”

  Trash in hand, he sent her a tentative smile. “Okay. Let me get rid of this stuff.”

  A moment later he disappeared out the door.

  Leaving her to wonder why a man who came across as decisive in every other way seemed uncertain about an impromptu little outing like this.

  7

  Cal slipped his wallet back in his pocket and gestured to a bench a dozen yards down the street from the ice cream stand. “We’re lucky. This place is usually packed.”

  Moira led the way, and he followed—still unsure if he should have extended the evening. She’d given him enough information to take the investigation to the next level. It might have been wiser to call it a night and go home.

  Yet as he watched her tip her head to get a better angle on her double scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream, he couldn’t conjure up one iota of regret. Sharing dessert with a beautiful, intelligent woman was far better than spending yet another evening alone.

  “This is great stuff.” She sat carefully, balancing her cone as the bench shifted under their weight. “However, I’m not certain I should thank you for introducing me to temptation. I see many more trips here in my future, and my hips will pay the price.”

  He gave her trim figure a discreet scan. “Hard to believe.”

  “Hold that thought. So do you live close by?”

  Her casual question brought to mind far less casual subjects.

  “Glendale.” He took a bite of his rocky road ice cream. When would he ever manage to get through just one day without being reminded of things he’d rather forget? “Not quite walking distance, but I could jog it on a good day.”

  “You jog?”

  He latched on to the new topic. “Three times a week. How about you?”

  “No. Nothing that ambitious.” She paused to wipe an errant chocolate flake off the corner of her mouth. “I do walk with a friend two or three times a week, though. So do you have one of those century houses that are all over this area?”

  His cone cracked as he involuntarily tightened his grip. He grabbed for the top with his free hand, supporting it as it collapsed.

  “Whoops! Let me get you a paper cup. Hang on.”

  Before he could respond, Moira jumped to her feet and took off for the stand with her long-legged stride, smiling and offering some comment he couldn’t hear as she bypassed the line that had formed. She was back in less than a minute, brandishing the cup.

  He dumped his ice cream into it. She stuck a spoon in the top, then handed him some napkins she’d tucked into her pocket.

  “Close call.” She retook her seat and examined her own waffle cone as he wiped the sticky residue from the melting ice cream off his fingers. “They must not be making these as sturdy as they used to. Okay, where were we? Oh . . . I’d asked about your house.”

  So much for any hope that the ice-cream incident might have distracted her.

  He finished cleaning off his fingers, wadded up the napkins, and picked up his spoon. “It’s a small older home, but not in the century category. Most of those are in Webster and Kirkwood.”

  “Have you lived there long?”

  His throat constricted, and he swallowed. “Seven years. My wife and I bought it when we got married.”

  “Oh.”

  Her sudden lapse into silence told him his attempt at a conversational tone had failed. As he was fast learning, Moira had a keen aptitude for picking up nuances.

  “You know, there’s one thing I forgot to mention in this whole weird story about vanishing people.”

  Her change of subject was telling as well. The lady also had a well-developed sense of empathy—and consideration.

  “What’s that?” He took a bite of his salvaged ice cream cone.

  “The Good Samaritan guy said there was broken glass on my seat. And I felt it digging into my thigh. Now here’s the weird part. Other than the taillight, the repair shop didn’t find any broken glass. But I had a bruise in the exact spot where I felt something sharp.”

  If she was trying to take his mind off their previous topic, she’d succeeded.

  “Any other bruises?”

  “No. Except for my forehead. Mainly I had sore muscles. And the bruise wasn’t big. Quarter size, at most.”

  He took another spoon of ice cream as he mulled that over. “How much glass was there?”

  “I don’t know. The man who stopped thought he saw blood on the passenger seat, and I twisted sideways to check it out. That’s when I felt the glass. I think I said ow, and he had me hold still while he brushed it off the seat. Except . . . there wasn’t any glass.”

  “And not long after that you lost consciousness. For an hour. From a mild concussion.”

  She let a beat of silence pass. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Maybe he injected you with some kind of knockout drug.”

  Her eyes widened. “And I thought the ring connection was a stretch.”

  He leaned forward, the explanation feeling more credible by the second. “It never did make sense to me that you’d be unconscious for so long. But if you were drugged? Absolutely. And getting you out of the picture could let him finish whatever you stumbled across.”

  Her fingers clenched around her napkin. “You’re thinking he wasn’t a passing motorist at all. That he was with the woman I saw.”

  “Were there many other cars on that road?”

  “I only saw one. It wasn’t the kind of night people would be out driving unless they had no choice.” A glob of melted ice cream snaked down her cone, onto her hand. She didn’t seem to notice.

  He reached over and wiped it away.

  She didn’t seem to notice that, either.

  “And who better to have access to a powerful knockout drug than a medical professional—like a doctor. But why would he have had such a thing with him?” She blinked and blew out a breath. “Are we grabbing at straws here?”

  “A thorough investigator looks at every possibility. However remote.”

  She caught her lower lip between her teeth. “Maybe it’s a good thing you’re going to check his alibi.”

  “First thing tomorrow.”

  She crunched into the bottom of her cone, holding her other hand underneath. The pieces that splintered off left a mess in her palm.

  “My turn to come to the rescue.” This time he handed her the napkin rather than take care of the problem himself. He didn’t want another blood pressure spike when their fingers brushed.

  “Thanks.” She cleaned herself up, then leaned back against the bench while he finished off the last of his ice cream, her expression pensive. She didn’t appear to be in any hurry to leave.

  Neither was he, but he couldn’t come up with a legitimate excuse to prolong their outing. And if he lingered over his ice cream, it would soon melt anyway.
/>   “So do you come here often?”

  At her question, he scraped up the last bite of his collapsed cone with the plastic spoon. “More now than when . . . than in the past. I like ice cream.” He didn’t mention that Lindsey hadn’t, but Moira nevertheless seemed to follow the direction of his thoughts.

  She shifted toward him on the bench, her eyes soft with sympathy. “You know, you took me off guard in the coffee shop that day when you told me you’d lost your wife, and I don’t think I responded adequately. But I want you to know I’m very, very sorry. Was it . . . an illness?”

  He almost wished it had been. That might have been easier to accept.

  “No. She was killed by a hit-and-run driver while she was taking her daily walk, two years after we got married. She was twenty-eight.”

  Shock parted Moira’s lips. “Oh, Cal. I’m so sorry. Was the driver caught?”

  “No.” But he knew who’d arranged it. Had always known.

  That, however, was a story for another night.

  Maybe.

  “It’s a terrible thing to lose someone you love.”

  At her soft words, tinged with sadness, he looked over at her—just in time to catch a quick flash of pain in her green irises. Curious. Their preliminary background check on her hadn’t revealed a spouse or ex-spouse. And in light of her comments about her faith at their first meeting, he doubted she’d have been involved in a live-in relationship.

  But he sniffed a failed romance here.

  That was none of his business, of course. If he didn’t want her venturing into his private territory, how could he expect her to welcome probing queries from him?

  Yet he was curious enough to make a cautious foray.

  “You sound as if you’re speaking from personal experience.” He left it at that. If she blew him off, he wouldn’t push.

  Silence stretched between them, broken only by a mournful whistle in the distance, along with a faint rumble from the nearby tracks that signaled the approach of a train.

  She wasn’t going to respond.

  But as he searched for some other topic to introduce, she suddenly moistened her lips and focused on scrubbing a smear of chocolate off the back of her hand.

  “I am. No one died, but I did lose a fiancé to another woman. A year ago.” She gave a small, mirthless laugh. “Isn’t it funny how someone can be smart and intuitive on the job yet wear blinders in her personal life?”

  Instead of answering what he assumed was a rhetorical question, he posed a question of his own. “What happened—if you don’t mind me asking?”

  She shrugged. “It was the classic story. He was cheating right under my nose. I might not have found out until too late if I hadn’t returned early from a visit with my dad and decided to surprise him. When I showed up at his apartment with Chinese takeout and fortune cookies, his neighbor answered. Based on what she was wearing—or I should say, not wearing—it was obvious she wasn’t there to borrow a cup of sugar. At least not in the literal sense.” Her mouth flexed into a mirthless smile. “Guess what my fortune cookie said? ‘Beware of false hope.’ Here’s the irony. Her name was Hope.”

  As the rumble of the train grew louder, Cal had just one thought.

  What kind of idiot would cheat on a woman like Moira and risk losing her?

  “I’m sorry.” He had to stifle an impulse to twine his fingers with hers. “Were you together long?”

  “Two years. He was the assistant youth director at my church, and the congregation loved him. Everyone considered him a fine role model for the teens. No one ever suspected the values he professed were a sham—including me. In hindsight, I don’t even know why he proposed, unless he figured marriage would give him an added aura of respectability. Maybe position him for the director job, since his boss was getting ready to retire.”

  The train appeared in the distance, and she watched it approach. “I suppose my experience with him is one of the reasons I’m not yet convinced Blaine isn’t my man. People aren’t always what they seem. Including your receptionist.”

  “True.” He raised his voice slightly to be heard above the growing rumble. “And if it’s any consolation, time does take the edge off loss.”

  The train thundered by, and she shot him an assessing look. As if she wasn’t sure whether to believe his reassurance.

  Truth be told, he wasn’t certain, either. Thinking about Lindsey still left an acute ache in his heart. Or it had, until recently. For whatever reason, the pain had been diminishing in tiny increments since Moira had walked into his life.

  Perhaps it wasn’t time that was the great consoler, after all.

  Pushing that disconcerting thought aside, he gathered up their trash and walked to the litter receptacle to deposit it while the freight train continued past the station. Only when the caboose at last clickety-clacked into the distance and quiet once more descended did he turn toward Moira to speak.

  But she beat him to it.

  “For the record, I’m over Jack.” She regarded him, her gaze steady, letting that statement sink in before she continued. “I’ll admit he left me a little gun-shy about romance, but once the hurt and humiliation faded, I was more angry than anything else. At this point, I’m just grateful I didn’t end up married to him.”

  Was that a subtle hint? An invitation? An “I’m available” message? Or simply a wrap-up statement? An “I’m okay, everything’s copasetic, don’t worry about me” assurance?

  He had no idea. He’d been out of the dating game so long his signal-reading skills were rusty. Nor did he have a clue how to respond.

  When he remained silent, she broke eye contact and glanced at her watch. “Should we start back? It’s almost 8:00.”

  Was it? He checked his own watch. Where had the past couple of hours gone?

  “I guess it is getting late. Shall we?” He gestured down the street.

  She fell in beside him as they strolled back toward his office, confining her comments to the weather and the spring flowers.

  The trek was much too short to suit him.

  When they stopped beside her car in front of his office, she fished her keys out of her purse and hit the power locks. “Thanks for the ice cream—and for continuing to pursue a case that still has a high chance of going nowhere.”

  As she stood before him, the soft glow of the setting sun bathing her face in golden light, Cal’s heart skipped a beat. Dev was right; Moira was hot. But that term didn’t come close to capturing her true beauty, nor her depth.

  “What’s wrong?” She gave him an uncertain look.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and coaxed up the corners of his lips. “I think I’m fighting a sugar rush from all that ice cream.”

  “Oh. Well, as far as I’m concerned, it was worth it.” She hesitated, one hand resting on the top of the door, the other gripping the strap of her purse. “I had a nice time tonight.”

  “I did too.” Better than he should have, based on the niggle of guilt in his conscience. What would Lindsey think?

  She gave him a melancholy smile, as if she’d sensed—and understood—his conflict. “It was just an ice cream, Cal. No harm done.” She tossed her purse onto the passenger seat. “I hope my candor won’t embarrass you—but your wife was a lucky woman.”

  He shook his head. “No. I was the lucky one.” His voice roughened on the last word, and he cleared his throat.

  She didn’t respond in words. Instead, she reached out to him, her fingers gentle on his arm, the warmth of her hand seeping through the cotton of his shirt—and into his heart.

  Then, still silent, she slipped into her car. He shut the door and retreated to the sidewalk. Only after her taillights disappeared did he slowly circle the building toward the back parking lot.

  So much for a simple, innocent little outing to the ice cream stand. After his cautious query, Moira had shared far more than he’d expected about her painful past, baring her heart and trusting him with her secrets.

  Could h
e do the same with her? Could he dig deep and tell her about what had happened to Lindsey? Acknowledge his culpability? Hope she could forgive him as he’d never been able to forgive himself?

  Funny. He’d never wanted to talk about his past with anyone. Sure, Dev and Connor knew the basics. They also knew his suspicions, and had worked as hard as he had to prove them. All to no avail.

  Not that it mattered anymore. The responsible party was gone. It was time to move on personally, as he had professionally—if only he could get past the guilt and sorrow and pain that plagued his soul and was known but to him and God.

  He slid behind the wheel of the van and fitted his key in the ignition. Maybe talking with Moira would help. He had a feeling she’d be sympathetic, if not empathetic. And putting his doubts and remorse into words might help diminish them.

  He’d have to give that some serious thought soon.

  But first, he had an alibi to check.

  His hands were shaking.

  Ken Blaine stared at his trembling fingers, always so steady and sure in the operating room. At least he was still able to focus while working. To put his problems out of his mind. But he didn’t know how much longer he could maintain that kind of control.

  All because of her.

  He crossed to the wet bar in his den and examined the display of liquor in crystal decanters. Any of them would do. Scotch. Gin. Vodka. Brandy. He hardly knew one from the other, anyway. He left it to his guests to help themselves at parties. Drink had never been his vice. Surgery and alcohol didn’t mix, as his father had often said.

  And his father had always been right.

  After working the top off the decanter of brandy, he reached for a Waterford tumbler from the shelf above, poured a generous serving, and swirled the reddish-brown liquid in the glass.

  It was the color of dried blood.

  Perhaps brandy hadn’t been the best choice after all.

  “Ken?”

  At his wife’s summons from behind, his hand jerked. The brandy sloshed, and he grasped the glass with both hands. The last thing he needed was a bloodlike stain on the off-white carpet. The blemish might fade, but they’d never be able to remove it completely.