Deadly Forecast: A Psychic Eye Mystery (41 page)

Around six o’clock Cat released us, and Jenny returned our phones. We both immediately
checked our screens—not a single message for either of us. Candice called Brice from
the car and put him on speaker. He sounded worn down to the nub. “We’ve still got
a big fat nothing,” he said. “Unless you count the four hundred phone calls that’ve
poured into the tip line in the past two hours.”

“Whoa!” I said. “Four
hundred
tips? What the freak?”

“APD released Haley’s sketch to the local news, hoping it’d generate a lead. I fought
hard against the idea, because that damn sketch looks more like Charlie Brown than
a real person.”

I glanced at the clock. The six o’clock news would just be airing, which meant another
round of calls was about to roll in.

“Did you want us to come there and field calls?” Candice asked. I held in a groan.
There was nothing worse than fielding calls from a tip line. The vast majority of
them were a complete waste of time.

“Nah,” Brice said. “You two were working some other lead, right?”

“Simon Salisbury,” Candice reminded him. “Abs thinks there’s a connection between
him and the unsub.”

“Yeah? Do you think the bomb was really meant for Salisbury and his studio?”

I blinked. I hadn’t connected that very important dot, but hearing Brice say it out
loud confirmed it in my gut. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I think that’s exactly who the target
was.”

“Our explosives expert says that the device strapped to Debbie didn’t go off early.
He says the timer ran out and she was trying to get out of the harness when it detonated.”

“Any footage from security cameras?” I asked hopefully.

“None,” Brice said. “The cameras that would’ve caught anything were connected to the
FedEx store and it burned to the ground.”

“Has the coroner confirmed that it was Debbie?” I asked next.

“About an hour ago. It took a while to track down her next of kin and her dentist.”
Brice then changed tacks again and asked, “Have you already talked to Salisbury?”

“Not yet,” Candice said, without going into detail about how we’d spent our afternoon.
“We’ve been running by his house, but nobody’s home.”

“Okay, well, keep on that,” Brice said, sounding distracted. “On line three?” we heard
him say. “Okay, tell him I’ll be right there. Babe, I gotta go. The director’s on
the other line.”

We clicked off with Brice and headed back over to Salisbury’s place. The house was
dark and leaves were beginning to pile up in front of his door from the large red
oak on his front lawn. There was no garage, just a carport, and no car in sight of
the house either on the street or in the carport. “Where the hell could he be?” Candice
asked, opening his file again to skim the pages.

“My guess is that he’s gone into hiding. I mean a guy with a record like that…the
last thing he needs is for the FBI to start poking around in his life.”

“Or he’s hiding because he knows that he was really the target,” she countered.

I nodded. “Exactly. We have to find him, Candice. This unsub’s gotta know he missed
his target. Salisbury could still be in danger.”

Candice closed the file and set it down. Then she reclined her seat a little and laid
her head tiredly against the headrest. “We’ll wait here a while, and if he doesn’t
show, then I’ll call his parole officer in the morning and see if there’s someplace
else Salisbury goes in his off time.”

“Like where?”

Candice shrugged. “A girlfriend’s or a relative’s. Or a buddy’s house.”

We sat in silence for a while, but something kept niggling at me. I picked up the
file and clicked on the overhead light to read it. “The question I have is, why?”

“Why what?”

“Why Salisbury? I mean, what connection would he have to Mimi?”

“What connection did the beauty shop have to her? Or the dress shop at the mall for
that matter?” Candice said, laying her head back and closing her eyes.

I tapped the back of the folder with my finger and the answer suddenly came to me.
At almost the exact same moment, I saw Candice sit straight up and turn to me. “Wedding
vendors!”

I nodded. “Yes!”

Candice turned her head to look out the front window again. “Do you think Buzz picked
them randomly? Or do you think that he picked them because they were the ones he used
for his own wedding?”

I sighed. Besides Buzz himself, there were only four people who could’ve answered
that, and three of them were dead. “Since
we can’t ask Mimi, Rita Watson, or Carly Threadgill, the only person left who can
tell us is Salisbury.”

Candice nodded. “We gotta find him,” she said, moving her seat back to upright again,
and looking more alert than I’d seen her all night.

All that alert energy was to no avail, however. By ten thirty, with no sign of Salisbury
we called it a night. On the way home, Candice called Brice and put him on speakerphone.
We let him in on our theory. He said he’d try to get a warrant in the morning and
send Cox and Rodriguez over to Salisbury’s studio to look through the photographer’s
customer records. He then asked us if we needed help finding Salisbury, and I knew
that Candice wasn’t going to just hand over our lead to him. “We got it, babe,” she
said sweetly. “You guys have your hands full working all those tips. If we don’t find
Salisbury by the end of the day tomorrow, we’ll ask for help.”

I took a long shower when we got back to Candice’s, wanting very much to clean the
ugly feeling of this case off me. When I emerged, Candice held up a bowl of ice cream
and pointed to my phone. “Dutch called,” she said. “And I dished you out some comfort
food.”

I smiled and took a seat on the couch next to her, going first for the phone. I listened
to Dutch’s sweet message, wishing me a good night’s sleep and hoping that I wasn’t
working too hard.

“You okay?” Candice asked when I wiped at my eyes.

“Fine,” I told her, clearing my throat. “Thanks.” Candice rubbed my arm sympathetically
and it helped to have her company and her understanding.

I tried calling Dutch back, but the phone went straight to voice mail. It was well
past eleven; he’d obviously gone to sleep. I drowned my sorrows in the Ben & Jerry’s
my BFF had dished out for me, and a short time later was fast asleep.

I woke up the next morning to the smell of coffee and toast. “Morning,” Brice said
when I sat up.

“Hey, there, boss man.” Brice looked terrible. Like, haggard and gray from lack of
sleep and stress. I could only imagine the tremendous pressure he must be under from
his own bosses and the community at large to solve this case. “What time did you get
in?”

Brice lifted his wrist, only to see it bare, so he turned to look at the clock on
the microwave. “About three hours ago.”

“Yikes. I think you need to go back to bed.”

“No time for that,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee only to make a face and stare
into his mug. “Damn.”

“What?”

Brice lifted the lid of the coffeemaker. “I forgot to put the grounds in.”

I pressed my lips together to keep from chuckling and got up to help him with the
coffee. When I came around the counter, I noticed that the toast was a bit crispy
too, and by crispy I mean black and burnt.

I pointed to the couch. “Sit. I’ll make your coffee and a decent breakfast.”

Brice nodded dully and shuffled over to the kitchen table. While I was chopping up
some veggies to put in his omelet, he nodded off. Candice came out of the bedroom,
looking pretty exhausted herself. “How long’s he been like that?” she asked, pouring
herself a cup of joe.

“You mean asleep-asleep? Or just asleep on his feet? ’Cause if you’re talking the
former, about ten minutes. If you’re talking the latter—at least the past three days.”

Candice sighed and moved to the couch to retrieve the afghan I’d slept with. She fitted
it around Brice’s shoulders and kissed him sweetly on the cheek. “Thank God he’ll
be forced to take tomorrow off.”

I was distracted with the vegetables, which might explain why I replied with, “Why?
What’s tomorrow?”

I didn’t hear her answer, so I picked my head up to look at her. She was staring at
me with a bit of bewildered alarm. “Your
wedding
.”

I felt my cheeks heat. “Oh! Yeah…” I laughed and tried to make a joke of it. “I was
just testing you.”

Candice came to the kitchen counter and pulled up a barstool. “You okay?”

I was gently tossing garlic, peppers, spinach, and mushrooms into a hot pan. “Sure.
Why?”

“You don’t sound so keen on this idea of getting married.”

I felt my shoulders stiffen. “Well, of course I am!” I made sure to keep my face averted
from her. “I mean, tomorrow I’ll become Mrs. Dutch Rivers! Who wouldn’t want that?”

Several seconds went by before Candice spoke again. “Abs?”

“Yeah?”

“Why’re you crying?”

I hadn’t realized she’d heard my sniffles. “I’m not.”

“Abs…”

“It’s fine! Everything’s fine!”

“Sundance…”

“Please, Candice?”

I heard her sigh, but she didn’t continue to press it, and I discreetly wiped my eyes
and concentrated on making Brice the best damn omelet ever created.

Candice woke him when it was time to eat, and while she and Brice sat at the table,
I made two more omelets for her and me. Brice left just as I was plating my own breakfast,
thanking me for the coffee and eggs and promising to see me later at the restaurant.

I’d forgotten about the rehearsal dinner. Doing my best to
hide my worry from Candice, I tucked into my meal, but I wasn’t really hungry. She
in turn pretended to ignore my distress and talked about our agenda for the day. “I
need to go to our office,” she said. “I want to dig into Salisbury’s life a little
and see if he’s got any relatives living in the area.”

“You think he might be hiding out somewhere close?”

“I do. I think, if he isn’t legally keeping his nose clean, then he’ll be looking
for a way to stay close to his drug clients, especially with his studio shut down.”

“How long do you think the strip mall will be off-limits to the store owners?”

“They’ll probably release the crime scene late today, after Cox and Rodriguez have
a chance to look through Salisbury’s records,” Candice said.

“And who knows when Salisbury will show up to open his shop again?” I said. “I mean,
even if there is a customer record on file in Salisbury’s studio, would we know who
to look for, since Buzz is simply a nickname?”

Candice sighed. “That’s why you and I have to track him down today, Abs.”

I nodded. “Let’s hope we can find him, Candice, because he could be the last hope
we have of trying to find this unsub.”

“I did have another thought that I wanted to go through with you,” she said.

“What?”

“Well, I keep wondering about Banes. Why would our unsub contact him of all people?”

“When we interviewed him, he swore he didn’t recognize the voice on his answering
machine.”

“Yes. But the voice could have been disguised in some way. I mean, you heard it, Abs.
The unsub could have used a program on his phone to disguise his voice.”

“There’s an app for that?”

“There is. In fact there’re a couple.”

I made a face. “Figures.”

“Anyway, I called Banes’s nurse this morning,” she continued. “You were right about
him. He did have a stroke, a pretty massive one too. His condition is grave, he’s
in a coma, and his nurse doesn’t think he’s got a lot of time, so there’s no way to
interview him. I want to dig around in his case files and see if there’s a connection
to Mimi.”

My brow lifted. “I hadn’t thought of him having a connection to her.”

“There might be none, but I thought it’d be worth checking on just to rule it out.”

I nodded. “Good idea. We’ll run as many leads down today as we can before time runs
out.” I felt a shudder go through me, and goose bumps formed along my arms.

Candice cocked her head. “You okay, Sundance?”

I stood up. “Fine. But I better hit the shower and get ready.”

*   *   *

C
andice and I arrived at our office a little after eight thirty, and she got right
to work searching through Salisbury’s info for a relative nearby where he might be
hiding out.

I straightened up my own side of the suite for a bit, but started to feel a little
helpless. Also, I missed Dutch terribly after not seeing much of him in the past five
days. Thinking up a pretty good excuse, I called him. “Morning, dollface,” he said
with a gravelly voice.

“You’re still in bed?” I was surprised. Between us, Dutch was usually the early riser.

“The brothers took me out last night for an impromptu bachelor party.”

“Ah. How was it?”

Dutch yawned. “It was terrible. But don’t tell them that. I spent most of the night
missing you.”

I squeezed the receiver. “I know, cowboy. Me too.”

“You’re gonna stay away tonight again, huh?”

I opened my mouth to tell him to hell with tradition, that I’d be home in the next
hour, but what came out was, “Yeah. Don’t want to tempt fate by seeing you before
the wedding on our special day.”

Dutch yawned again. “Well, at least you’re mine at the rehearsal dinner tonight.”

I smiled. Yes. At least there was that. “Listen, I actually called to see if you could
give me the name of that detective from APD who’s been your little buddy lately.”
Dutch had been quasi-mentoring a young rookie from APD who thought FBI special agent
Dutch Rivers walked on water.

“Gavin?”

“Uh…yeah. Him.”

“Gavin Spivey. You want his direct line at APD?”

“Please?”

Dutch gave it to me and we chatted for a little longer before promising to see each
other later. I then pushed all melancholy and troubled thoughts out of my head and
dialed Detective Spivey’s number. The phone was answered by a woman. “Grayson,” she
said, in a voice full of authority.