It looked good. Painting over the blue-speckled cubical wall, which gave me the illusion of an office, had turned out better than I had thought. As long as I didn’t look up to the water-stained ceiling tiles or down to the wafer-thin, worn shiny, steel gray carpet, the place was looking good. Professional even.
Looking back to the reception area, I thought of the empty suite on the other side of that wall. If only I could afford to lease that suite and remove the wall. That’d be progress! But Heart Mates wasn’t that big yet. I could barely afford the lease on this small, run-down suite. Still, the paint was an improvement and the open house was going to help fill out my client list.
“Painting, huh?”
Startled, I whirled around. In the open doorway of Heart Mates stood a woman holding a large box of See’s candy. I recognized the sleek black box—truffles. I loved truffles. I tore my gaze from the candy and headed toward her. “Uh, yes. Heart Mates is closed today.” I fixed a professional smile on my paint-splattered face. My old shorts and tight black T-shirt probably didn’t convey a real businesslike impression.
She stepped into the office, meeting me halfway. “I can see you are busy, but I’ll just take a moment. I wanted to give you these.” She held out the box of truffles.
I felt my thighs thicken just from looking at the candy box. Trying to ignore the chocolates, I studied her face and thought there might be some Cuban ancestors swimming in her gene pool. Large brown eyes set deep into a strong face and lots of black hair. She wasn’t pretty, exactly. My impression was,
forceful
. As much as I loved chocolate truffles, I couldn’t think of a reason why a woman I didn’t know was giving them to me. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“I’m Zoë Cash. I read your reviews in
Romance Rocks
magazine all the time. You mention chocolate truffles sometimes, so I guessed you liked them.”
Surreal weirdness mixed with the paint fumes. It was true that I wrote reviews of romance novels for
Romance Rocks
magazine. Occasionally I got mail, either telling me what a no-taste bonehead I was or agreeing with my reviews. But so far, no one had ever tracked me down and brought me chocolates. I dropped my gaze to the box she held out. What if . . . they were poisoned? What if she was a writer I wrote a less than glowing review for and she was trying to kill me?
Stop it,
I told myself. My husband, Trent, had died of a peanut allergy from eating peanut-butter-laced chocolate candy his mistress had made for him. So I was a little skittish about unexplainable gifts of chocolate. But murder seemed unlikely. “Zoë, nice to meet you. That’s very kind of you to bring me chocolates, but I’m not supposed to accept gifts like this for reviews that I write.” That sounded good. Who knew if it was true; I’d never been in this situation before.
“Oh well, this isn’t for a review you wrote.” Zoë held the box in one hand, and gestured with the other. “I just knew that you’d understand.”
OK, that line never brought good news. It usually meant that someone was in trouble and thought I could help. Once in a while, I did a little private investigating under my PI boyfriend’s license. But this woman felt a little . . .
off
. . . to me. “Maybe you should make an appointment for when we are open, Zoë.”
She shook her head. “Don’t you see? When I found out that you owned a dating service named Heart Mates, I knew you were destined to help me.” She waved her hand back and forth. “Help me find my heart mate.”
Relief sagged through me. She wasn’t a nut. She was lonely and wanted to sign up for one of our dating packages. Paint fumes were making me paranoid. I gestured around the office, “I can’t sign you up today, since everything is a mess, but I’d be happy to get you all signed up Monday morning. In fact,” I started around my assistant’s sheet-covered desk. He always had a set of sign-up sheets attached to clipboards tucked into a drawer. “I can give you the paperwork to take home and fill out.” I leaned over to pull open the bottom drawer.
“But I already know who my heat mate is. I don’t need your dating service, Samantha.”
I shut the drawer to the desk and stood up empty-handed. “Zoë, I’m not sure I understand what it is you want from me.” I was hoping it wasn’t something that was going to end up with me bleeding. Uneasiness curled inside of me again. But my sons and Blaine would be back any second. They had gone to the liquor store to buy some sodas, then grab something out of my car for me.
She sighed and blew a thick strand of hair out of her face. “My heart mate is R.V. Logan.”
Omigod. R. V. Logan was the pen name of a local homicide detective who kept his romance writing a secret. Hot little giggles danced up my throat and tugged at my mouth. I fought it down. “R.V. Logan? The romance writer? She’s—”
Zoë wasn’t having any of that. “I heard at a romance convention that R. V. Logan is a man!”
Oh Lord, Detective Vance was not going to like this. On the other hand, I loved it! Vance was so arrogant, so sure no one would find out he wrote romances under a pen name. And his comeuppance stood right here in my dating service. The trouble was, I had a complicated relationship with Vance. I couldn’t afford to piss him off. I stalled for time. “I don’t really see what that has to do with me.”
Zoë sighed. “You review all his books, so you must know where he lives. I want you to give me his address. I’ll do the rest.”
Oh, boy. This woman had to be a nut to assume I knew R. V. Logan’s address. It was time to get rid of her. “Zoë, I review lots of romance novels, but they are sent to me by the author’s publisher. I don’t know where any of the authors live.” But I did know where R. V. Logan worked—a couple of miles away, at the Lake Elsinore Police and Sheriff’s station. I thought I should keep that detail to myself.
Anger stiffened Zoë’s shoulders. “I don’t believe you. Why won’t you help me? I brought you these truffles.”
Cripes. “Listen, Zoë, I—”
“Mom! We got the pillows, but what’s this? Is it a present? Can I open it?”
I looked past Zoë to see Joel bounce through the door holding . . .
Uh-oh. Joel held the blue velvet box tied with the creamy ribbon. What if he opened it? Joel was only thirteen! I didn’t want him to see what was in that box! Sex toys. How would I explain that? I’d purposely kept that hidden in the trunk of my T-bird so the boys wouldn’t stumble across it. I rushed over to him. “Joel! That’s . . . uh, Angel’s. Here, let me have it.”
Joel’s blue eyes widened in surprise when I snatched it from his hands.
TJ walked in behind his brother, carrying two blue throw pillows. “Where do you want these pillows, Mom?” His serious face tightened in teenage disgust as he glanced down at the embroidered pillows, then back up at me. “They are kind of lame.”
Still caught in the sex-toy panic, it took me a second to focus on TJ. He was holding the pillows, which were embroidered with
Get Hitched With Heart Mates
, and
Get Hot With Heart Mates.
“Grandpa had those made, TJ. He was trying to help with my refurbishing.” The velvet box felt like a big neon sign in my hands that read SEX TOYS. I had to hide it. “Set those pillows under the sheet on Blaine’s desk.”
I turned and headed through a door into the freshly painted interview room to a second door that led to the storage room. I flipped on the light switch and looked around. Where was a good place to hide this box? The small bathroom to the right? No. Hey, the filing cabinets. We were mostly computerized, thanks to my assistant. I rushed to a filing cabinet and stuffed the velvet-covered box deep into a middle drawer. Relieved, I turned around.
Zoë stood behind me. “I know he’s my heart mate. You have to help me.”
A low throb beat at my temples. “I can’t help you, Zoë. I know you probably came a long way, plus there’s the trouble you went to in finding me.” Where had she come from? She wore black yoga pants, a white T-shirt, and a short zip-up black jacket. Taller than my five foot five in heels, she looked strong. Yoga-strong.
She smiled, crinkling her brown eyes. “It wasn’t that hard. You seem to be in the newspapers a lot.”
There was that. “Look, maybe this R. V. Logan isn’t who you think. Maybe by searching R. V. Logan down, you are missing out on finding your real heart mate.”
Zoë adjusted the zipper on her jacket and looked around the storage area. “That your bathroom? Mind if I use it?”
“Sure.” Anything to change the subject from R. V. Logan/Detective Logan Vance.
Zoë disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door.
“Boss?”
Blaine appeared in the doorway. For painting, he had shed his customary blue button-down work shirt to reveal a white undershirt. He still looked like the car mechanic he had been when I recruited him to come work for me. “I got you a Diet Coke, and there’s some chips and onion dip.” He gestured his thumb toward the bathroom door. “Who’s that?”
I walked past Blaine and said, “She just showed up. She believes that R. V. Logan, the romance writer, is a man and her heart mate. She also believes that I know where R. V. Logan lives because I review all his books.”
“No shit?” Blaine followed me out into the reception area. “What did you tell her?”
I shrugged. “Told her I didn’t know where he lived. That his publisher sends me the books.”
TJ and Joel had spread out the chips and dip on the sheet covering Blaine’s desk. The box of truffles sat unopened next to the bag of chips. TJ said, “Mom, that lady said we could have this candy. But I thought we should check with you.”
I smiled at TJ. “If they are sealed, go ahead and open them, TJ.” Let’s be logical. I doubted Zoë would poison us with truffles if she wanted information from me.
“Here, Mom,” Joel handed me a can of Diet Coke.
“Thanks, Joel.”
Zoë came out from the bathroom. “Samantha, take a day to think about it. I know R. V. Logan is my heart mate, and once you realize that, you’ll see that giving me his real name and address is the right thing to do.” She stared hard at me, as if willing me to do what she wanted.
Her eyes were a darker brown than mine were. “Zoë, I’d like to help you, I really would. But I just don’t know where R. V. Logan lives. Maybe if it’s meant to be, you should look for book signings that R. V. Logan will be appearing at or something like that.”
She shook her head. “You know he doesn’t do those. He only signs stock at the distribution centers. No, Samantha, you are going to have to help me.” She fixed her stare on me for another ten seconds, then said, “I’ll be in touch.” She turned and walked out.
“Mom,” TJ said, “she’s whacked.”
I looked at my oldest son. He was growing more and more to resemble his good-looking dad every day. Fortunately, his character was nothing like Trent’s. “Whacked? That fits. Pass me those truffles.” I figured I’d better taste-test them just to be on the safe side.
Joel handed me the box. “Mom, you should really think about going into private investigating full-time. This romance stuff is dumb.”
2
S
unday morning brought a whole new batch of aches from all the painting at Heart Mates. But the thought of the sex-toy kit got me out of bed. After a long hot shower, I pulled on a pair of black shorts, a white T-shirt, and a short, lightweight zip-up jacket. Layered to take off as I spent the day cleaning and finishing up at Heart Mates.
But first, I would meet Gabe at Angel’s house. We’d get the couch onto his truck and he’d take it to Heart Mates, where Blaine would help him unload it. Then Angel and I would have a few minutes to see just what went into a sex-toy kit.
After breakfast with the boys, I headed to Angel’s house. I was early; it was about 9:30 when I turned down the tree-lined street that wove through the hills looking over the lake for which the city of Lake Elsinore was named. Bright sunshine had dissipated the last of the morning fog, making for another beautiful spring day.
I pulled into Angel’s driveway and parked the car. Gabe wasn’t there yet. Hey, maybe we would have time to look through the sex-toy kit first. I had it stored deep in the
Romance Rocks
tote bag that I was using as a purse that day.
Getting out of my car, I looked at Angel’s closed garage door. She must have parked her car in there when she got in the night before. I headed up the flagstone path to the wrought-iron gate that led to the atrium. Lots of plants and flowers in brightly colored clay pots were set around a wrought-iron table and cushioned chairs. Angel had a green thumb.
I did great with silk plants myself.
Smiling, I headed to the front door and knocked.
After a full minute of listening to some birds chirping in the distance and wondering about the mysterious sex-toy kit, I knocked again. Finally, I dug my keys out of the tote bag. I’d known Angel since high school, and knew she was a very sound sleeper.
Once I had my keys, I selected Angel’s silver house key and slid it into the dead bolt. I turned it left and used my left shoulder to push open the door. Walking in, I shouted, “Time to get up, Angel!”
I had the door half-closed when I got a good look at the living room. The wood floors were littered with glamour and lingerie magazines, couch cushions, books, and more. The big custom-built entertainment center’s doors hung open, spilling out DVDs, CDs, and . . .
It was all too much for my brain to identify.
Cripes, had Angel’s house been burglarized while she was at Daystar? Had she called the cops when she got home the night before? And how had she managed to get to sleep knowing this mess waited for her when she got up?
But if someone had broken in, why hadn’t they taken her flat screen TV? I could see it in the middle of the entertainment center.
Something was really wrong here. Angel would have called me if her house had been broken into. But Angel wasn’t a slob like this, either. Hugging my tote bag close to my body, I stepped over pillows and magazines to head toward the hallway, which opened on the right of the living room.
“Angel?” I called out, then jumped at a creak.
Stop it,
I thought. It was just the old house groaning. There was lots of beautiful wood molding around the floors and ceilings that probably contributed to creaks. I turned left down the hallway toward Angel’s bedroom.
Aware that Angel wasn’t answering me, I felt a tight band of uneasiness forming around my chest. I stopped dead in the doorway of her bedroom.
Her beautiful jade green comforter and matching sheets were torn off the bed and thrown into a pile on the floor. Her dresser and nightstand had gaping black holes where the drawers had been ripped out and thrown on the ground. The king-size mattress listed halfway off the box spring.
“Angel?” It came out a whisper. Where was she? She didn’t appear to be in the bedroom. I backed up, my heart thumping. I couldn’t breathe. Prickles of sharp dread skittered up my spine like dozens of spider legs and slammed into the base of my skull.
Where was Angel?
She wasn’t in the bed. I looked back at the pile of sheets. What if . . . ?
Awful thoughts and horrible images pelted my brain, making my head swim. I forced my tennis-shoe-clad feet to move into the bedroom toward the sheets piled at the bottom of the bed. I felt like I was watching myself on video or something. I saw myself bend over and grab a handful of the sheets and the comforter.
Did I want to know what was under that pile?
I had to know. I lifted up the edges of the pile.
Relief felt like a balloon releasing all its air. My lungs just let go. Nothing. I had dreaded finding Angel crumpled up under the pile of bedding. Maybe Angel wasn’t there. Maybe she had never come home from Daystar. I started to drop the covers, thinking that I should call the police, when I spotted something else.
A purse. Angel’s hand painted straw purse, which I had seen her with at Daystar on Friday night. I picked up the purse and stared at it in my hand. If the purse was there, then Angel had to have come home from Daystar. I couldn’t reason it out. If she had been home, where was she now? I opened the purse and looked inside. Lipsticks, business cards, cell phone, hair spray, but no wallet. Where was Angel’s wallet?
A creaky sound snapped through the house like a bullet. Fear rushed through my head, making it hard to think.
Stupid, stupid!
I just walked on through the house, never thinking about what I might be walking into. What if whoever had caused all this destruction was still there? I should have called 911 when I first saw the living room.
Another creak popped.
I had to get out of there and call the police. I turned toward the bedroom door and started walking, easing one foot in front of the other until I got to the hallway. I stopped to listen. Past the doorway to the living room, there was a bathroom and two more bedrooms.
Did I hear something? Leaning toward the living room opening, I strained to listen. I didn’t hear anything, except my own fear pulsing in my ears. Crap. For lack of a better plan, I thought about darting into the living room and then running right out the front door.
But what if Angel was down the hallway in her office? Or in the kitchen? Or the garage? She could be hurt and need help.
I leaned my forehead against the cool wall and tried to get my thoughts in order. Angel would not leave me if I were in danger. Angel was fearless.
I was going to have to be fearless, too. “Damn,” I muttered under my breath. Lifting my head, I listened. I could feel a slight breeze from where I’d left the front door open.
That was probably the creaking I’d heard—the front door moving in the breeze.
Not any braver, but determined to make sure Angel wasn’t in the house, I leaned around to look into the living room. I didn’t see anyone.
Quickly, I ran lightly across the opening to the bathroom on the left. I looked in to see the full bath, which was done up in black and copper. With a shower curtain that was closed and probably hiding a cloned monster that was a cross between Hannibal Lector and Norman Bates.
God, I needed to get a grip. Easing into the bathroom, I walked over the mess of towels and packaged toothbrushes, soaps, shampoos, and other oddities that Angel kept in there. Someone had dumped everything in the bathroom onto the floor and pawed through it.
I was getting pissed. Who had been going through Angel’s things? Anger overrode my fear, and I reached for the copper and black shower curtain. Holding my breath, I slid it back on the plastic holders.
An empty bathtub and shower.
Thank God.
Quickly, I turned and headed down to the guest bedroom on the left. No Angel. But the messy bandits had been in there too, ripping the royal blue comforter off the double bed. Turning, I went to the last room at the front of the house, which Angel used as an office.
What had been an organized office now looked like a volcanic eruption of lingerie. All the carefully hung pieces had been torn off the freestanding rod and
dismembered
. Bits of black silk, shreds of white lace, hunks of red satin, all tossed one way and another. The brown leather couch had a box of destroyed panties and bras dumped on it.
My stomach turned liquid. There was something—not sexual, but enraged—in the destruction. Intentionally ruined, torn, or—
I saw the knife. Angel’s butcher knife, the black hilt sticking up out of the back of the brown leather couch. The couch I was supposed to pick up and take to Heart Mates.
But that wasn’t what pulled me into the room. It was the kitchen towel lying on the couch that did it. A dish towel that had baby bunnies stealing carrots on it. Only one carrot wasn’t orange. It was reddish rust.
Blood. Dried or drying blood.
My heart hammered. The room swayed. The walls creaked.
Time to get out of the house. Now. I spun around and raced out of the room, down the hall, and out to the living room. I didn’t look left or right, I just headed for the front door.
The memory of the kitchen towel hit me hard. I skidded to a stop before I reached the front door, my lungs bursting with panic.
The dish towel was from the kitchen. I looked past Angel’s brand new couch, now torn apart, to the swinging door that led to her kitchen.
Trapped in a nightmare, I had no choice but to go into that kitchen. The kitchen knife and the blood on the towel from the kitchen propelled me. Was Angel in the kitchen? Was it her blood? I picked my way around couch cushions, DVDs, books, and other stuff toward the white swinging doors trimmed in green.
I pushed through the doors and took a step into the kitchen. My shoe slid on the wet wood floor. Windmilling my arms, I managed to get my footing and looked down.
Red liquid? My mind tried to push it away, to deny what I was seeing, when the broken bottle and the pungent smell registered. Not blood, but red wine.
It was only wine spilled on the floor. From Angel’s wine rack. I looked around. The wide kitchen had a wine rack and a kitchen table on the right. Glass-fronted cabinets over a sink and a stove on the left. The fridge was behind me. Straight ahead at the end of the kitchen, the door to the backyard hung open. Had it been forced open?
I couldn’t worry about that at that moment; I had to find Angel. She wasn’t in the kitchen.
My feet felt like lead, but I went back out to the living room. I had one more place to check. The garage. If Angel’s car was gone, then maybe she had left on her own, gotten away.
She could have been at the police station right then, filing a report about a break-in. The garage door was behind the half-open front door. I slipped up behind it and put my hand on the knob.
Turning it, I pushed open the door and flicked on the garage lights.
Angel’s fire red Trans Am gleamed under the overhead light. I peered into the passenger window, desperately hoping to see Angel sitting in there, anything to make this whole nightmare OK.
Instead, I saw the reflection of a big man standing behind me, holding a gun in his hand. I leaped into the garage and slammed the door with all my strength.
The door bounced back, hit me in the ass, and knocked me over the hood of Angel’s car. My tote bag hit the ground and dumped out its contents.
I shoved off the car and turned, thinking to get to the button that would open the big garage door. I came face-to-chest with Gabe Pulizzi.
Panting, I forced my gaze up his T-shirt-covered chest, past the hard-cut Italian face up to his dark eyes. “You scared the hell out of me.”
He arched a single eyebrow. “You’re damn lucky it’s me and not whoever trashed the house.”
“Angel’s not here—” Something registered in my memory. I dropped my gaze to Gabe’s right hand. He had his gun. Gabe had a license to carry his gun, along with his PI license. But he normally didn’t walk around with it. In fact, he usually kept it locked in the glove box of his truck when he was out.
Which meant he’d gone back to his truck and gotten his gun.
It hit me hard, and I forced myself to say what we were both thinking. “Angel’s been kidnapped.”
It was pretty standard to separate witnesses.
In this case, I thought maybe it might be more a power play than from any real need to keep our information pure. Detective Logan Vance of Robbery/Homicide had me wait in the atrium while he walked through the house with Gabe. I understood the reasoning. After all, Gabe was the trained cop.
I was sure the whole scene of Vance kissing me in front of Gabe last January, and the fight that followed, had nothing to do with Vance’s decision to separate us and leave me sitting outside worrying.
I sighed. What difference did it make? All I cared about was finding Angel. I’d do anything to find her safe. I didn’t have a sister, but I imagined Angel and I had that same connection, that sharing of a life. Angel had the ability to make me a better person than I was. If I wanted to ignore a problem, she’d make me face it.
And I’d do the same for her, make her face her fears. But Angel had only one horrible fear—dying alone.