In Nick’s line of work he found people to be generally deceitful. They were out to cheat the system, their spouses, the IRS, and definitely insurance companies. He was accustomed to thinking the worst of people. But Kate was different. She’d reminded him that decent people still existed.
And he’d hurt her. He’d ended up being the deceitful one and the knowledge rankled. He’d salved his conscience with the knowledge that she’d never know he’d been hired to try and seduce her, but she had found out.
Now she’d disappeared.
He paced his small office and stopped to stare out at the gray drizzle licking the street below him. Women walked by, some holding umbrellas, others hunched against the wet. He caught sight of a blonde head and for a second thought it was Kate. Then he realized the height and build were wrong.
He stood for another minute staring out the window brooding then pushed the intercom on his phone and asked his assistant, Susan, to “Bring in the Kate Winton-Jones file, will you?”
Susan brought the file in a minute later.
“Thanks.”
He spent the next couple of hours reading the dossier he’d compiled on the future Mrs. Carnarvon. He’d interviewed her mother first, then talked to past employers by posing as a head hunter. He got to a few of her old school friends by posing as a journalist writing about the wedding. He’d found over the years that most people loved to talk about other people. There was a nearly universal urge to gossip. He’d expected some jealousy and he wasn’t mistaken, but most people had warm recollections of Kate and wished her well.
He reviewed the dossier. Flipped through photos. Part of his work as a PI was psychology. What drove a person? What made them tick? And, in trouble, where would they run?
“Where are you?” he asked aloud, staring at a photo of Kate before she’d met Ted. She was laughing with a group of friends as they sat around on the beach. He went through the photos of her again. He discovered something interesting. There were two Kates. There was the young, laughing woman before Ted and there was the post Ted woman, the more restrained, more careful version.
So, what happened when you had turned into someone else and the new identity blew up in your face?
In his opinion, a person went back to where they’d been before it all went wrong.
If he could make one guess it was that she was by the ocean. Not a real genius assumption since the woman had been born and bred on the California coast, but it was a place to start.
He walked out of his office, dossier under his arm. “Okay,” he announced. I’ll be out of the office for a week. Maybe two. I’ve got to track down a missing bride.”
“Any idea where to start?”
“Nope.”
Dwight Elgar, a junior investigator said, “Follow the money.”
Susan glanced at him. “The French would say, cherchez la femme, follow the woman.”
He shook his head at both of them. “You’re both wrong. I’m going to follow the car.”
“He’s got no sense of romance,” Dwight complained.
He tracked Kate’s car to a garden apartment in Long Beach. It was parked outside and a glance inside the pricey convertible told him he wasn’t going to find Kate here. He didn’t need his extensive training and experience as a detective to tell him that the woman he’d researched would not keep her car like this. Crumpled fast food wrappers, several take out coffee cups and, even more telling, a pair of red high heels in a size much bigger than Kate’s suggested that Ted’s bride-to-be had anticipated somebody might try to track her down. She’d switched cars with a friend.
“Nice going,” he muttered as he co-referenced her friends and the area. None of her friends lived here. He closed his eyes and thought. Checked her co-workers. Bingo. And headed up the path and knocked on the door.
A harried looking Hispanic woman about Kate’s age answered, already talking as she did so. “I am about to give my notice. Seriously, this plumbing—“ Then she spotted him and said, “Oh.”
“Lissa?” he asked.
An expression of wariness came over her face. “Who wants to know?”
“I’m looking for Kate.”
“Why?”
There were a dozen smooth lies he could spin right here on this woman’s doorstep but instinct told him she would see right through any or all of them. He did not relish telling her the truth. She had the kind of eyes that had seen it all and he imagined her view of human nature was even worse than his. But he knew the truth was his best shot at getting her help.
“I am going to guess that if Kate traded cars with you that she also told you her story.”
She neither confirmed nor denied, merely kept looking at him. But she didn’t slam the door, either.
“I’m Nick.”
“Thought you might be. You’re a real piece of work, aren’t you?”
“I was doing my job.”
“Well, your job sucks.”
He didn’t argue.
“So, that rat bastard broke her heart, now what? They pay you to go find her and drag her back?”
“Nobody’s paying me.”
She did not look as though she were buying it.
“Look, it’s obvious you care about Kate and that she trusts you. That’s why she came to you when she needed a favor. But nobody’s heard from her. I was part of the reason why she ran away and I need to make sure she’s okay.”
“So she can marry that dickhead?”
“No. Believe me, I think he’s a dickhead too and there is no way Kate should marry him. He doesn’t deserve her.”
“You sound pretty hot when you say that. Sounds to me like you got an interest there yourself.”
Damn that woman was sharp eyed as well as sharp tongued. “I—I want to make things right.”
“Maybe I believe you. But I don’t know where she is. I truly don’t.”
“Okay, then tell me about your car.”
She hesitated and he could feel how torn she was between slamming the door in his face and trusting him. Finally, she said, “If you find her and you upset her in any way I will personally hunt you down and kick your ass. Got it?”
“Got it.”
So she told him about her ancient Rabbit.
“Any idea where she might go?”
“No, but I can tell you that car is not exactly reliable. I told Kate, only a fool would try and drive it more than a hundred miles.”
He got back into his own car and thought, a hundred miles in any direction was a lot of territory to cover. A hundred miles of coast, on the other hand, was a relative piece of cake.
He headed for the coast and, as he opened the windows of his rental car and threw off his jacket, he wondered why everybody didn’t live in California.