Chapter Two（1）

“Him?” Kevin said, and he did not seem to be sharing my happiness. “That guy? The cop? You’re kidding. Is he still around?”

“Yes,” I said. “He’s still around. He’s a PI now. He’s also my…” I can’t explain why I felt so self-conscious saying the word. Maybe because it was still a word new to my vocabulary. Maybe it was because Kevin’s tone reminded me that not everyone was overjoyed that Jake was still around. That plenty of people were just as astonished as Kevin.

“Partner,” I finished.

“You’re kidding,” Kevin said again.

“No. I’m not kidding.”

“You mean like really your partner or you’re in the PI business together?”

I swallowed my exasperation. “Really my partner. Yes. We live together. I’m not in the PI business. He is.”

“Wow,” Kevin said. “I did not see that. No way.”

“Yes way,” I said with a hard and determined cheerfulness. “We’re still together.” Not counting the two years when he wasn’t and we weren’t.

“You’re a way better detective than him,” Kevin told me.

That made me laugh. “Not so much—though I can’t wait to tell him you said so. Anyway, I’m meeting him for lunch, so I can talk it over with him then. Where are you staying?”

Kevin gave me the particulars of his hotel and then said cautiously, “Is Jake expensive? Because Ivor and I don’t have a lot of money. When he came out, his family cut him off financially.”

Of course! Because what Jake needed right now when he was struggling to get his business off the ground was me saddling him with another pro bono case.

“We’ll figure something out,” I promised. I glanced at my watch, finished my coffee, and said, “I’ve got to get back to the store, but I’ll call you this afternoon.”

“Okay.” He was still gazing at me with all that hope shining in his eyes.

It weighed my heart down because I didn’t think this was going to end well for Kevin.

“Try not to worry. One thing I’ve heard from Jake over the years is that most of the time someone goes missing, it turns out to be nothing. They show up a while later, and they’re perfectly okay. The odds are, Ivor is fine. He may just need some time to think.”

Kevin shook his head, not bothering to answer.

“Or maybe not. But do me a favor. Keep a low profile. Don’t try to contact the family again. If they think you’ve given up, their guard will go down, and that would be better.”

He brightened. “You know a lot about this stuff.”

“Uh, no. I honestly don’t. That’s commonsense. So go back to your hotel, and rent a movie or something. I’ll be in touch.”

* * * * *

Let nothing ye dismay…

There seemed to be a lull in the stream of post holiday returns, and the bookstore was quiet and mostly empty when I pushed inside. In the background Sarah McLachlan softly reassured the merry gentlemen and anyone else who was listening, while the rain made flick-fleck sounds against the windows. Natalie and Angus stood in a huddle behind the tall counter—not a romantic huddle, a co-conspirator kind of huddle—but they guiltily jumped apart at the cheery warning jingle of the door.

“Angus, can you handle things for a few minutes? Natalie and I need to ta—whaa?”

Nothing will make you lose your train of thought faster than a cat pouncing on your head.

Tomkins, who was part-Abyssinian and part-kamikaze pilot, had developed a fondness for prowling the tops of the towering bookshelves and dropping down on me at unexpected moments, like my own personal Cato Fong.

“The hell, cat!” I clutched at my cat-hat. Tomkins gave my face a couple of friendly swats—claws in ’coz we’re pals, fortunately—before I lifted him off, but clearly I was not nearly as menacing a figure staggering around trying to remove a feline limpet from my head as I’d been two seconds earlier. Natalie was smirking, while Angus turned purple, as though about to combust with the effort of not laughing openly at me.

“We are not amused,” I said, although I think Tomkins was.

“You were saying?” Natalie spluttered with merriment.

I handed Tomkins off to the nearest shelf, which coincidentally carried a row of Lilian Jackson Braun’s Cat Who books. “I was saying you and I are going to have a chat. Now.”

That wiped the smirk from her face, and she followed me into the tiny back office. However, if I thought she was going down without a fight, I was sadly mistaken.

And, more sadly, not for the first time either.

No sooner had I closed the door behind us than it was launch on warning.

“You had no right to burst in on me like that this morning, Adrien! I’m not a child. I’m entitled to my personal life. I know you own the building, and you’re family, but I should still have the same rights and benefits as any other tenant.”

“What? Whoa. First of all, I didn’t even know you’d be upstairs. I didn’t think you were here at all. You were supposed to be at the house, taking care of Scout. It was an hour past when the store was supposed to open.”

“You thought it was okay to barge in on Angus?”

“Ye-no! I wasn’t sure what was going on. The store should have been opened, and everything was still locked up.”

“Oh my God! Do you know how late we worked Christmas Eve?”

“No. How would I know? I said you could close early.”

She pointed at me like a TV prosecutor springing her carefully laid trap on a guilty witness. “We were busy, so we stayed open until the last customer had gone at ten o’clock on Christmas Eve.”

I noticed—belatedly, I admit—that she had colored her hair over the holiday. Natalie, like her older sister, Lauren, is a natural blonde. For some reason she had dyed her hair dark except for two thick swatches in the front, which she had bleached…white.