Cat Playing Cupid

5

AT ABOUT THE TIME Charlie entered Dr. Firetti's clinic, Mike Flannery was headed for Molena Point PD to pick up Dallas, to go on to the party at Clyde 's place. He was stopped at a crosswalk in the center of the village, waiting for a pair of overdressed tourists to wander past, when he saw her-he caught his breath, felt his heart do a flip even after all these years.

She had started across the street when she paused, studying the car uncertainly, looking at the license plate and then to his driver's-side window; she wouldn't see much in the reflected light from the setting sun. He put down the window, when she saw who was driving she stepped back, looking as uncomfortable as he felt.

"Mike? I thought it was Detective Garza. The tan Blazer, the police license…The sun was in my eyes…"

"It's his car," Mike said. "Hello, Lindsey. Let me pull around the corner."

He'd dreaded this moment, he hadn't known how he'd feel when he did see her. He'd considered telling Dallas he didn't want to work this case.

Well, here it was. So what was he going to do?

Take the case and throw himself back into the old feelings? They were still there, he knew that now. Or distance himself, be polite but turn away from her? Hand the case back to Dallas?

Lindsey had called Dallas early in the week concerning what she thought was a new lead, a body found up in Oregon, time of death maybe ten years ago…If that wasn't grasping at straws.

She had never gotten over Carson. As far as Mike knew, that was why she'd broken with him and left the village. He'd been pretty shaken when suddenly she'd told him she was moving back to L.A., gave him no reason.

They hadn't fought, they had been getting along fine, or so he'd thought. He had, in fact, been feeling pretty serious, almost to the point of proposing-a commitment he had not once considered since his wife died.

Lindsey's excuse for leaving was that she still felt involved with Chappell, that she'd realized she still cared for him. That not knowing whether he was alive or dead had left her unable to commit herself fully.

That had seemed fair enough-even if, he thought wryly, Chappell had run out on her.

Mike had wondered if maybe she hadn't wanted to be saddled with his three daughters, but he couldn't see why, they were all grown up by then and out on their own. Still, though, they were family. Lindsey had not had a pleasant family experience, none of the closeness that had warmed his own life, and maybe she was wary of that involvement.

To Lindsey, having grown up in a dysfunctional family and with an older sister who bullied her, maybe the whole idea of family was abhorrent, was not a relationship she wanted.

But why hadn't she said so? Why the hell did women have to be so devious? He'd never thought of Lindsey as devious.

For a long time after she left, he'd been angry, bitter.

Strange that now, despite his painful memories, he wanted to work the ten-year-old case, that this last week he had found himself looking at the case as a challenge.

And so who was devious? So who wanted to get back together again, and was afraid to admit it?

Parking in a green zone in front of the library, he watched her approach on the passenger side; the moment seemed almost in slow motion. She was just as beautiful, slim, willowy, her creamy oval face meant to be touched and kissed, her huge hazel eyes too painfully familiar, her soft brown hair floating around her face, changing in the glow of the dropping sun from chestnut to dark gold. Light, feathery brows, no makeup but a hint of pale lipstick. Her hands gave her age more clearly than her face, smooth hands but the veins standing out, her oval nails colored a soft salmon tone. She was around forty-five, ten years his junior. She wore a pale blue sweater with a V-neck over a white, open-collared shirt, her long slim legs easy in faded jeans. She leaned down, smiling in at him.

He reached over, pushed the door open. " Dallas is at the station," he said almost curtly. "How have you been, Lindsey?"

"I…Fine," she said uncertainly. "And you? I talked with Dallas a few days ago. I had to be out of town, I didn't know when I'd be back, to make an appointment. When I saw the car, I thought…" Slipping into the car, she studied his face questioningly, her hazel eyes picking up amber lights. "You've retired, Mike. You're moving down to the village?"

"I'm staying with Dallas at the moment." He didn't tell her he'd be moving into Clyde's house, would be staying there alone while Clyde and Ryan were on their honeymoon, nor that he'd then be moving into Ryan's vacated apartment. Was he afraid he might weaken and ask her over? Afraid she'd ask herself over? His reticence both amused and annoyed him, he felt as awkward as a kid.

He told himself he was just protecting his privacy. It was true that he'd been looking forward to some downtime, to a period of quiet isolation during which he could do a little unhurried work at his own pace, his own hours. His daughter's big, airy studio with its expansive view of the village rooftops and of the sea beyond was just what he wanted, an ideal bachelor pad.

Was that what he was afraid of? That he'd invite her up? Afraid to be alone with her?

So why the hell, then, did he take the case?

Her smile was like the sun coming out. She made him feel too vulnerable; he hadn't meant to be thrown back into this. He'd intended to keep the investigation strictly business-or that's what he'd told himself. He'd thought he'd see her again and it would mean nothing, just old friends who'd moved on. Had told himself that was a long time ago and now they were both different.

But now, suddenly, it was all with him again. Every detail of their time together seemed like yesterday, their casual dinners at her place, their runs on the beach, nights before the fire, holding her close.

Forget it. Keep your mind on the case. Or step back, tell Dallas you don't want to work this one. He looked at her sternly. "Why, after ten years, have you decided to pursue the case again?"

"You know I spent a year, after he disappeared, trying to find him, Mike. You know how I pushed the police and the California Bureau of Investigation. You know I didn't have any evidence that would put him across state lines, that would make it a case for the FBI. But now, maybe there is something."

He studied her, seeing how tired she looked suddenly, and older.

"When Carson disappeared, I came up with nothing but dead ends. You know I was weary, so scared and worried for him sometimes-not knowing whether something awful had happened to him, whether he was dead or hurt somewhere. And then at other times so angry, feeling totally betrayed. Wishing, if he had walked out on me, that he'd just told me, and broken it off." She reached to touch his hand. "Have you forgotten how it was, Mike?"

He hadn't forgotten. But he'd thought that, over the years, she would have come to terms with this, with not knowing-just as he had turned off the memory of her, or thought he had.

"When I felt so down, you helped me to heal. Without you, Mike, I couldn't have gotten through that year."

She was making him uncomfortable. Had she needed him, then, only for the sympathy he supplied?

But she looked at him with sudden fire in her eyes, a look that startled him.

"Now…," she said, "maybe there is something. Maybe Carson has been found. Did Dallas show you the clipping, the body found last week, up in Oregon? A hiker, somewhere deep in the forest, some private land that I guess no one goes into much. The man was a hiker, Mike. They have his backpack, what's left of it. I can't get this out of my mind."

"I read the article," he said noncommittally. "But Carson was supposed to have gone camping near the village."

Camping, the week before their wedding, up in the hills south of the village. Lindsey had had no plans to go with him, she'd said there was a lot to do even for the simple wedding they'd planned, reminded him it was tax season and she had too much work to do, and that anyway, she'd never liked camping.

He remembered her saying, "Carson likes to hike alone, he likes those times of solitude-we both believe there are some things each of us can enjoy alone," and she'd laughed softly. "I don't like sleeping and cooking out in the cold, with no hot shower in the morning."

She'd worked for Carson Chappell's accounting firm at the time. She'd said that three of her biggest accounts had sent in very late tax figures and that she'd needed to finish those. Each of Chappell & Gibbs's employees had been solely responsible for their own accounts; she'd said Carson 's accounts were all in order and filed.

Now, she looked at him levelly. "I want to know if that hiker in Oregon is Carson. Is that so hard to understand? I know it's unlikely, but…If I could put an end to it, to the questions…

"When I saw that newspaper article, I had this…certain feeling. A sudden jolt, as if I knew." She looked at him intently, her hazel eyes now as green as the sea. "I felt so sure. And I needed again, desperately, to find out what happened to him. To find out, and to let go of it at last, for good."

They looked at each other for a long time, Lindsey's hands folded quietly in her lap. "I know it's grasping at straws. Carson didn't say anything about going to Oregon, he told me he'd be hiking just above Molena Point. He gave me a map, marked where he planned to go." The betrayal and hurt in her eyes was just as raw as it had been ten years ago.

When she'd reported Carson missing, there'd been searchers all over the open land above the village, crisscrossing the miles of woods and hills that made up the state park land. The county sheriff, then the forestry department, volunteers, tracking dogs…They'd found no sign that Chappell had ever been there.

Mike studied her for a moment, then started the engine. "I'm headed for the station to pick up Dallas. We can talk there for a few minutes, maybe set up something for Monday." Pulling out into the slow village traffic, he could feel her watching him and he wondered again if this was smart, taking this case.

Sitting turned away from the door, she glanced into the backseat at the dog-hair-covered blanket, and smiled. "You have a dog? I miss Newton, I finally had to put him down."

"The blanket belongs to Dallas 's pointer," Mike said. "The last of many, and he's getting along. Timber's partner died this last year, so Dallas takes Timber with him when he can-no, I have no dog now, it wouldn't have been fair to confine a big dog in the city."

"And little dogs don't appeal," she said, remembering. He didn't mention that he would be babysitting Ryan's Weimaraner this coming week, that he would be running the dog on the beach, as they used to run Newton.

She was quiet for some time, then, "Your girls are doing well?"

When Mike's wife died of cancer, her brother Dallas and Mike's brother Scotty had moved in with him to help raise the girls, to share the time-consuming responsibilities, to fill a little of the emptiness, to offer steadiness and love.

They had lived in San Francisco then; he'd met Lindsey during a family weekend at their Molena Point cottage; she had been the first and only woman he'd dated since his wife's death.

They'd packed a lot into their discreet weekends when he could get away to the village or could meet her somewhere halfway, along the coast. Lindsey had been interested enough in his family, from a distance; she had asked about the girls and enjoyed seeing their pictures, but she'd made it clear she didn't want to be involved.

"The girls are doing well," he said briefly, never having liked her distancing herself.

All three girls had turned out to be strong and resourceful young women. They worked for what was important to them, and they could take care of themselves. Hanni was a bold and original interior designer, Ryan an equally inventive architectural designer and hands-on building contractor. And their older sister, with a degree in economics from Stanford, had married an electrical engineer and moved to the East Coast where they were raising five fine kids. He had eight grandchildren, counting Hanni's three boys.

Maybe now, he thought, Ryan and Clyde would decide to have a family. Or not. Whatever they did, he felt more than sufficiently blessed.

He felt lucky, too, that in the process of raising the girls, he and Dallas and Scotty had grown as close as any brothers ever were. They'd run a tight household, and had taught the girls as many skills as they could.

Turning in through the wide parking area that served the Molena Point courthouse and the PD, moving in between its gardens and oak trees, he parked in a reserved slot in front of the station, then turned to look at her.

" Dallas said you still have Carson 's clothes and personal possessions?"

"I've kept everything that was in his apartment-clothes, books, even the kitchen things-everything but the furniture. After the police were finished with the apartment and the office, everything they didn't hold for evidence was given to his mother. When she died, four years ago, she left a simple will that gave those things to me. I put it all in a small storage locker here in the village.

"I had to come up from L.A. to claim it, and I didn't want to ship it down there. Didn't want it handled any more than necessary. I thought that someday the police might want to look at it all again."

Mike swung out of the car, and before he could move around to open her door, she was out and on the sidewalk. He caught a glimpse of the two of them approaching the glass door to the station, and was startled by the rightness of the reflection, his lean build and her slim, long-waisted figure seeming to cleave together naturally. Watching the reflection, he felt as if they had never broken off their relationship.

He held the door for her, and when he looked up, Dallas stood in the foyer, beside the dispatcher's counter, watching them with that unreadable, dark-eyed gaze that would intimidate the hardest felon. The Latino detective was freshly shaved, his short, dark hair newly cut, and was dressed for the party in jeans, a white turtleneck, and a tweed sport coat. The look on his face, as he studied Lindsey, gave Mike pause. It was a look of interest that Mike seldom saw in his brother-in-law's eyes- Dallas 's warm Latin temperament embraced his good hunting dogs in a far more constant manner than it had ever done with any of his short-lived love affairs.

Mike tried not to bristle at Dallas 's interest as they moved down the hall to the detective's office where Dallas made Lindsey comfortable in the leather easy chair and offered her coffee, which she refused. There was a brief discussion of what the cold file contained, and they made an appointment with her for late Monday morning, at the station, the morning after the wedding. If not for Dallas 's watchful interest, Mike might have asked her to join him for breakfast before they were to meet. Dallas rose first, to escort Lindsay out to the front. Watching the two of them walk down the hall together, Dallas's broad, tweed-covered shoulders and dark hair, Lindsey's slim, graceful walk in the pale, faded jeans and sweater, the two of them looked, he thought, startled, as if they had known each other for a long time-maybe it was a trick Lindsey had that he'd never before noticed, maybe her way of bonding with a man.

Or maybe her compliance was totally unconscious. Whatever the case, the effect was charming-or, in this instance, damned annoying.

He didn't want to be at cross purposes with Dallas, certainly not just before Ryan's wedding. He watched Dallas escort Lindsey out, then he and Dallas headed for the party, saying little on the short drive, their silence not their usual easy quiet, but tense-they were, for the first time he could remember, at odds over a woman.

But as they pulled up in front of Clyde's house, he looked at Dallas and grinned, and they put their bristling aside and went in, wisecracking and looking for a beer.