Semi-Psychic Life: Glimmer Lake Book Two Page 5

  “What do you need on my end?”

  “Talk to the ex. Sometimes they know more than the girlfriend, you know? They got kids together?”

  “Yeah. They’re teenagers.”

  “Check their phones if you can get permission from the mother. Gotta be careful with kids. This guy’s a lowlife.”

  “Val?”

  She blinked and shook her head, holding Sully’s hat in her hands. “Sorry. This is just… not what I expected today, you know? It was actually an easy day for once.” She handed him his hat.

  “I know.” Sully put a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t know what to tell you. There’s no sign that someone hurt Josh or that he’s in any danger. What are the chances he’s just lying low somewhere?”

  “Where is he going to go? His vacation house at the beach?” She shook her head. “I don’t know what to tell you, Sully. I guarantee he knows nothing about the warrant though.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because there is nothing Josh Mason loves more than defending himself against accusations he thinks are unfair. Trust me. I have the legal bills to prove it.”

  Chapter 5

  She sat next to Andy on the couch, Jackson sitting in the chair across from her.

  “So…” Jackson was clearly confused. “Dad is missing?”

  “I don’t think—” Val stopped herself. “I don’t know what to think. There’s no reason to think he’s been hurt or that he’s in any danger. It’s possible he took off with some friends or he and Rachel had a fight or something.”

  Andy’s voice was shaky. “We need to find him though. I don’t think he’d do that, Mom. We talk every day. Almost every day. He would tell me if he was going away.”

  It was weird that Josh hadn’t told Andy where he was going. Her youngest son had taken it upon himself to call his dad every day after school to give Josh updates about his day and chat about whatever he was doing.

  To Josh’s credit, he did enjoy the calls and if he wasn’t working, he’d talk to Andy as long as Andy wanted, which was sometimes hours.

  Jackson was suspicious. “What do the police say he did?”

  “They’re saying that he took cash from a client and then took off.”

  Jackson was no apologist for his father, but even he seemed skeptical. “That doesn’t sound like him.”

  “I know. It was some rich guy in Pheasant Creek.”

  “What car?”

  “I don’t know, Jackson.”

  Her oldest didn’t look satisfied by that answer. “What are the cops doing? This guy is lying about Dad. But why?”

  “Right now I think they’re just asking around. Talking with Rachel. With his friends.”

  Jackson snorted. “What friends? He pissed everyone off when he slept with West’s wife. None of his friends are talking to him.”

  Andy sat up straight. “He did what?”

  “Never mind, buddy.” Jackson mussed Andy’s hair. “It’s not important. Don’t worry about Dad. He’ll show up.”

  “I think there’s something wrong.” Andy turned to Val. “What can we do, Mom? We have to do something. Can we make flyers or something and put those up?”

  “Buddy, I don’t think—”

  “You guys both hate Dad.” Andy stood, his face red and his eyes shining. “But he doesn’t hate you. He loves you both. He loves all of us, and he wouldn’t just ignore my calls if he was okay.” Andy stomped off down the hall, leaving Val on the couch by herself.

  She covered her eyes with her hand and willed back the headache that had been pressing against her temples since she touched Sully’s hat that afternoon.

  “I can’t do anything right,” she said. “I can’t tell him that his dad might have just said to hell with everything and taken off. I can’t tell him that it’ll all work out or that the police will find him. I can’t tell him it’s going to be okay.”

  “Mom, Dad and Rachel fight a lot.”

  “I know they do, but I figured that was just their dynamic or whatever.” She looked through her fingers. “Did they fight in front of you guys?”

  Jackson shrugged. “Not much. Just pissy comments more than anything, you know?”

  “Do you think he took off to avoid stuff with Rachel?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” Jackson didn’t look like he believed it though. “Andy’s right though. Dad always calls him back. Maybe not right away. But it’s been over three days since Andy talked to him and Dad’s voice mail is full. That’s pretty weird.”

  “Are you worried?”

  Jackson’s expressions were usually more man than boy, but the look on his face was the youngest Val had seen in ages.

  “I guess. Kinda. Why is this guy lying? Dad wouldn’t steal his money. I mean… I can maybe see him taking off. But not stealing.”

  That’s what had been bothering Val too. If Josh had just taken off, it would be one thing. He’d mused about doing that for years.

  One of these days, Val. I’m not gonna be here for you to bitch at me. I’ll just be gone.

  “But,” Jackson continued, “he takes off and then someone claims he stole something big? I want to know who this guy is.”

  “Agreed,” Val said. “Tell you what. I’m going to ask Sully tomorrow, but if no one has filed a formal missing-person report on your dad, I’ll do that tomorrow.”

  “What does that do?”

  “I have no idea, but it has to do something, right?”

  Her phone buzzed. For once she was actually hoping it was Josh. It wasn’t. Robin and Monica were asking how she was.

  “Word travels fast,” she muttered.

  “Who is it?”

  “Your Aunt Robin and Aunt Monica. They want to know what’s going on. Want to know if we can come over to Aunt Robin and Uncle Mark’s house.” Val looked up. “She made lasagna.” And Val hadn’t cooked anything. “You better get Andy. Lasagna is better than ramen.”

  “You’d think having a mom with a restaurant would mean we ate better.”

  “I hire a chef for a reason, Jack.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead?” Jackson looked down the hall. “I’ll grab him in a little bit and we’ll drive over. Give him a minute to cool down.”

  * * *

  Robin’s husband Mark was the one who answered the door.

  “This is bullshit,” he said immediately after he gave Val a hug. “Josh is not a thief.” He looked around her. “No boys?”

  “Andy’s pretty upset. Jackson’s going to bring him over in a little bit. He’s doing his big-brother magic right now.”

  “How are you doing?”

  Val shrugged. “I don’t know. My ex-husband is wanted for theft, but maybe he’s also missing? It doesn’t even feel real.”

  “It really doesn’t.” Mark took Val’s coat and hung it in the entryway by the winter boots and hats. “What did Sully say?”

  “Well, what he said and what I saw are two different things.”

  Mark was the only one aside from Robin, Val, and Monica who knew that all three had developed psychic abilities after Robin’s car went into Glimmer Lake and they’d almost drowned.

  “What did you touch?” Mark raised a hand. “I didn’t mean for that to sound dirty.”

  “You’re so much more polite than your wife and Monica.”

  “We heard that!” Monica shouted from the kitchen. “Why don’t you have the boys?”

  “Jackson wanted to drive. They’ll be here in a little bit.” Val perched on a barstool at the kitchen island and watched Robin prepare a salad. “So what Sully said was that Bridger PD was looking for Josh and are asking around. What I saw in his head though tells me Bridger police think he just skipped town. They think he’s not in any danger and he’s probably in Vegas right now with a bunch of money.” Val folded her hands. “They’re not going to do anything except arrest him if he falls in their lap.”

  “So what do you want to do?” Mark got her a wineglass and poured half a glass of w
hite into it. “White, right?”

  “Robin, what have you been training your husband with?” Val narrowed her eyes at Robin. “He’s being very thoughtful. I’m suspicious.”

  The corner of Robin’s mouth turned up, telling Val that whatever Robin was doing with Mark, she was having just as much fun.

  “Okay, never mind, let’s talk about my scummy ex and his problems again.”

  “Well, we have to do something,” Monica said.

  “Why?” Val took a long sip of wine. “Why do we have to do anything?”

  “Your boys love their dad,” Robin said. “We have to find him for Jack and Andy.”

  “Josh doesn’t deserve this many people worrying about him,” Mark muttered.

  “Thank you.” Val reached over and clinked his glass with her own. “I agree.”

  “But we should definitely do something,” he continued. “Sorry, Val, I have to agree with Robin. Your boys deserve to know what’s going on.”

  Val let her head fall back and groaned. “I hate him so much and he’s making my life impossible even now!”

  “I know, but you know we’re right,” Monica said. “We can help and we should.”

  “The police—”

  “The police don’t know Josh like we do,” Monica said. “And they don’t really have any motivation to look for him. They think he’s just another thief.”

  Mark raised his hand. “Guy’s opinion here: There’s a woman involved in this somehow.”

  “Why do you think that?” Robin asked.

  Val and Mark spoke at the same time. “Because it’s Josh.”

  Monica nodded. “I’d agree with that. Val, have you talked to the girlfriend?”

  “No. She kept texting me, and I ignored her.” She curled her lip. “Do I have to?”

  “Yes.” Monica walked behind Val and grabbed her phone from her back pocket. “Call her. Now.”

  Val glanced at the clock and guessed that Jackson and Andy wouldn’t be on the road yet. “Fine.” She scrolled through her contacts, found Rachel’s number, and called. “But I’m putting her on speakerphone just so you all can share in the joy.”

  Robin set the salad to the side and grabbed a notebook and pencil.

  The phone rang twice before a bored voice picked up. “It’s about time.”

  “Hello, Rachel. Nice to hear your voice too. The sheriff came and talked to me today. Have you heard from him?”

  “Would I be calling you if I did?”

  Val bit her lip. Hard. “Okay, the last I heard from Josh was about three nights ago. He left me a voice mail in the middle of the night. How about you?”

  “Did he say where he was?”

  “No. Did he tell you where he was going?”

  “No.”

  Val saw Robin scribbling. She held up a question.

  Ask her when was the last time she saw him.

  Val nodded. “Hey Rachel, when was the last time you actually saw Josh?”

  There was silence, followed by a slight hiccuping sound. “We had a fight. It’s been five days. I went to my friend’s house and the last thing I said to him was really mean and what if something happened to him and that was the last thing I told him, something mean?” Rachel’s voice was trailing off into panic by the end.

  “Rachel, take a breath.” Val rolled her eyes. The girl was way too melodramatic. “So you and Josh had a fight five days ago? But the police said he’s been missing for three days. Do you know who else saw him?”

  “I don’t know. And we were texting until Tuesday.”

  “Okay. But he didn’t say anything about leaving town or anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “Did he mention any friends recently? Maybe people out of town he might have gone to visit?”

  “I knew he was talking to West because I’m pretty sure that fancy new garage was going to fire him. He was super worried about that.”

  “Why?”

  “He said something about them being pissed he was working a side job, but is that even legal? I mean, I work two jobs.”

  “Does your second job involve working for customers from the first job?”

  “But he was giving them a better deal,” Rachel said. “I mean, if he could do the work from his truck and not have to use the garage, he could charge them way less.”

  “Yeah, that’s kind of the problem. Legally, I mean.”

  Monica closed her eyes. Robin wrote: Is she really that stupid?

  Val nodded.

  “I don’t see what the big deal is,” Rachel said.

  “If he was doing work for customers he met at Luxury Pro Autoworks and taking business away from them, do you see how they wouldn’t like that?”

  “But they were Josh’s customers.”

  Val didn’t want to argue with her about it. Rachel clearly wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box. “Rachel, do you know which customer is accusing him of stealing? Do you know where he was working?”

  “It was a guy in Pheasant Creek, but I don’t know his name.”

  “Do you know what car it was?” It was possible one of the boys would know who the customer was if they could identify the car.

  “Some waaaay expensive car that started with an M.”

  “Mercedes?”

  “No, not like a normal one I remember hearing. It was a weird name. Foreign.”

  Val looked around the room. Ideas? she mouthed.

  Mark reached for the writing pad. Maybach?

  “Maybach?” Val asked. “Was it a Mercedes-Maybach?”

  “No.”

  Mark wrote again. McLaren.

  “McLaren?”

  “No, I told you, like a foreign name.”

  Val wracked her brain. “Maserati?”

  “Oh yeah! That one. It was a black Maserati.”

  Monica reached for the pad of paper and scribbled a question. What was their fight about?

  “Hey Rachel. I know you’re shook up, but what was the fight about? Did Josh maybe go to a friend’s to cool off because he was upset?”

  Rachel snorted. “Him upset? I’m not the one cheating on him.”

  Around the room, Robin and Monica both made exaggerated shocked faces and Val rolled her eyes.

  “You think he was cheating on you?” It took everything in Val to make her voice sound concerned and slightly surprised.

  For the record, she was neither.

  “Yeah, I’m like sure he was cheating on me,” Rachel said. “The bastard. And it’s not like I couldn’t have cheated on him like a hundred times. He’s super old.”

  “Hey,” Mark said quietly. “Josh is younger than me.”

  “What was that?”

  Val jumped in. “Just the TV. So cheating? No way. That totally sucks.” Her eyes weren’t going to roll back into their original position after this phone call. “Could he be at this chick’s house? Do you know where it is?”

  “No, but I don’t think he’d be there anyway. I’m pretty sure she was married.”

  Of course she was. Josh found the challenge of married women way more fun, and they usually never tried to make anything permanent. “Okay, well the boys are really worried, so if you hear anything, let me know, okay?”

  “Okay.” She sniffed. “Do you think he’s all right?”

  “Honestly? I have no idea.”

  The girl sounded on the verge of tears. “I mean, we were fighting, but I love him so much. And I was so angry with him and—”

  “I think you’re breaking up.” If Val had to listen to any more of Rachel’s weeping, over Josh of all people, she might puke. “Rachel, are you there?” She pulled the phone away from her mouth. “Sorry, the reception here is so bad.”

  “Oh, do you want me to try to—”

  “Rachel?” Val hung up. “There. I called her and we don’t actually know anything more.”

  “Wrong,” Robin said, holding up the notepad. “We know he was working for someone in Pheasant Creek who owned a Maserati. There can�
��t be too many of those. We know he was cheating on Rachel with a probably married woman.”

  “That would fit his pattern.”

  Mark said, “And we know he was worried about his job if he was talking to West.”

  “And all this adds up to—?” Val cut herself off when she heard the knock at the front door. “Boys are here.” She reached for the notebook. “Something else. For now, we talk about anything other than Josh.”

  Chapter 6

  Val knocked on the door loudly before she cracked it open. “Mom!”

  She opened the door to her parents’ house and nudged it wide with her knee. She was carrying a box of Honey’s pastries in one hand and a beverage holder with coffee in the other. “Mom Marie, I’m here with coffee.”

  She’d slipped out of the coffee shop for a midmorning break once the morning rush died down. It had been a few days since she’d seen her parents, and she knew it was because of the weather.

  A cold snap had hit the mountains, turning the roads icy and no doubt making her dad’s knees hurt. Her parents were in excellent health, but they were still in their seventies.

  “Valerie?” Her mother was in a snuggly house jacket and a pair of leggings. “You brought us pastries? How lovely. Thank you. Vincent!”

  “What?”

  “Valerie is here.”

  “Does she have the boys?”

  “No, it’s a school day.”

  “Oh. That’s right.”

  Val walked back into the kitchen of her parents’ old log house and set the pink box on the counter. She gave her mother a one-armed hug and handed over the coffee. “Eve made your latte with half and half.”

  “Oh, how decadent.” Marie’s eyes lit up.

  Her mother was so thin Val had a hard time not worrying about her. All the women in her family were built like birds, but her mother was extra dainty and had only gotten more so with age. Val was always looking for things to fatten her mom up.

  “Okay, where’s the laptop?”

  Marie waved her over to the table. “I promise I didn’t do any of the things you told me not to.”

  “It might just need to be updated.” Val sat at the end of the table as her father came in from the heated back porch where he built detailed birdhouses Robin sold for a small fortune at her shop. “Hey, Dad.”