Every Precious Thing (12 page)

“How old?”

“She could be anywhere from thirty to fifty. Sorry, best I can do. The guy’s younger, late twenties at most.”

“Where are they now?”

“They kept going straight through the next intersection, like they were going to get on the freeway.” Dev craned his neck. “Can’t see them anymore.”

Maybe it
was
nothing. Braden was small, with only so many roads a person could use, and the route they’d just taken
had
been the logical route to the highway. They’d just have to see if the car showed up again.

The Wallace Wash Mini Market was a kind of low-rent 7-Eleven—older shelves, worse lighting, and fewer choices. Behind the counter was a woman with vibrant auburn hair and too much black eye makeup. Her clothes of choice were a Lady Gaga T-shirt and a short black skirt.

Logan caught Dev’s eye, then subtly motioned to the opening in the counter that allowed whoever was behind it to get out. With a single nod, Dev walked toward it as Logan grabbed a bag of beef jerky and approached the cash register.

The woman took the bag, scanned it, said, “Anything else?”

“Can I ask you something?”

She stared at him, bored.

“Are you Tessie Carter?”

A spark in her eye. “I don’t know you.”

“That’s right. You don’t.”

She pulled back from the counter. “Then how do you know me?”

Logan raised his hands in front of his chest, palms out. “I just want to ask you a few questions.”

“About what?”

“Diana Stockley.”

“Did that bitch send you?” she spat. “You can tell her that if she wants to talk to me, she should have the balls to do it herself.”

She moved toward the opening in the counter, but Dev was there, blocking her path.

“What the hell?” she said. “Get out of my way!”

“Diana didn’t send us,” Logan told her. “We’re trying to find her.”

“Does it look like she’s here? Her place is on Sage Lane. Try there.”

“We did.”

“Well, then wait until she goes to work. The Hideaway. She starts at six.”

“According to her note, she left town and isn’t coming back.”

Logan’s phone buzzed in his pocket, but he ignored it.

The anger on Tessie’s face morphed into disbelief. “What are you talking about? What note?”

“The one she left her landlord. Said he could sell whatever was left in the house.”

“No,” she said. “No, you’re wrong. She’s not gone. She probably just went on a trip.” She paused, her face hardening. “I don’t even know you. You’re probably lying.”

“I wish I was, but I’m not. You can ask Mary Ralston. She’s the one who told us you were a friend of Diana’s.”

“Mary…? No, no, you’ve got to be wrong. Diana wouldn’t leave, not without…”

Suddenly she whipped around and grabbed the cell phone that was sitting on the back counter. She found a number and called it.

“Mrs. Ralston?” she said a moment later. “Sorry to bother you. This is Tessie. Tessie Carter. Look, um, there’s some random guy here trying to tell me that Diana’s le—” As she paused to listen, her expression grew worried, then pained. “Are you kidding me?…No. No…All right. Okay…Okay.”

She hung up, and absently set the phone back down. Her eyes began to lose focus, and she leaned against the back counter, seemingly forgetting they were even there.

Logan and Dev shared a confused look. This was a much stronger emotional reaction than Logan had been expecting. It was almost as if—

Oh, damn
.

He motioned for Dev to move out of the way so he could get behind the counter. He then stepped in next to her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize there was something going on between you.”

“Well, there’s not,” Tessie blurted out. “Not anymore.”

“What happened?”

“That’s none of your business!”

Logan paused. “We just want to talk to her. We think she knows a friend of ours we’re trying to find, a friend who’s in trouble. Diana might be able to point us in the right direction. That’s all. Anything you could tell us that will help us find her would be great.”

“I told you, I have no idea where she is. I haven’t talked to her in almost two months.”

Two months?
“Is that when…?”

“When we broke up?” She tried to sound accusatory, but the sadness that had taken over her face wasn’t selling it.

“Yes,” Logan said.

She dipped her head and nodded. “She…she started going out of town on her days off. That was usually
our
time, you know. When I asked where she’d gone, she’d give me some half-assed answer that I knew wasn’t true, so one day I followed her.”

“Where did she go?”

“All the way to Riverside, of all places.”

The nape of Logan’s neck started to tingle. He didn’t trust his own voice, so he said nothing.

“She met with this other woman there. I watched them have coffee, but when they left, I lost them in the traffic. I drove around for a while, but couldn’t find them again, so I came home. That night I asked her if she was seeing someone else. When she said no, I told her what I saw.” Tessie looked at Logan. “She totally freaked out. Told me she never wanted to see me again. She hasn’t talked to me since.”

Not wanting to do so, but seeing little choice, Logan pulled out his phone and showed her the picture of Sara. “Is this the woman she met?”

Tessie stared at the image, her eyes welling with tears. “Fuck,” she said to no one, then nodded. “They ran off together, didn’t they? God, I’m such an idiot.”

Logan kept his voice soft. “I don’t think Diana was cheating on you with this woman. This is our missing friend,” Logan said, keeping his voice calm. He didn’t know if he was right, but he felt that he was. If Diana had been involved with Sara, then why hadn’t Sara been here with her?

“I saw them together.”

“You saw them getting coffee. That’s all,” he said. “Now think, Tessie. Do you know where Diana might have gone? Maybe she went back to where grew up?”

“She never talked about her past. I got the feeling it wasn’t all that great.”

“Were there any special places she mentioned? Places she liked to visit?”

She was silent for a moment. “Buenos Aires. Said she wanted to live there someday. She…she talked about us going together.”

Buenos Aires was a long way away, and if Sara was already there, he might as well pack up now and go home.

“Anyplace else?”

She thought about it, then shook her head. “Nothing that I can remember.”

__________

I
F LOGAN WASN’T
convinced before, he knew if he found Diana, Sara wouldn’t be far away.

“Our friends are back,” Dev said.

They were in the Cherokee again, with Logan once more in the driver’s seat. He looked in the rearview mirror. The same gray sedan was a block back, and Logan recognized the silhouettes of the driver and her passenger.

He stuffed his hand into his pocket and pulled out the keys to the El Camino. “Here,” he said, handing them to Dev. “I’ll try to lose them for a few seconds near the motel. You jump out, but make sure they don’t see you.”

Dev smiled. “Then I follow them.”

“Exactly.”

“They’re going to wonder why there’s suddenly only one of us.”

“No, they won’t,” Logan said. “Lean your chair back as far as it will go, but take your time so they can see what’s going on. Then lie back, and get them used to seeing only me.”

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

“R
EADY?” LOGAN ASKED
as they neared the motel.

Dev grabbed the door handle. “Ready.”

Logan checked the rearview mirror again. The other car was still a full block behind them.

“Don’t worry about trying to catch up right away,” Logan told him. “Call me once you get going and I’ll tell you where we are.”

Just beyond Desert Inn was a small intersecting street that was mostly blocked from view by one wing of the motel. Keeping their pace steady, Logan flipped on his turn signal so as not to alarm the other driver with any sudden movements.

“Here we go.” He slowed through the turn. As soon as the building was between them and the sedan, he slammed on the brakes and shouted, “Now!”

Dev shoved the door open and hopped out in record time. The second he was clear, Logan took off again, accelerating until he matched the speed he’d been traveling at earlier. In the mirror, he could see Dev race across the sidewalk and crouch behind a car parked at the curb. He’d barely ducked down when the sedan appeared around the corner.

“Stay with me. Stay with me,” Logan muttered under his breath.

As the sedan came abreast of Dev’s position, Logan watched to see if the others looked over, but both remained focused on him the whole time.

Two minutes later, Dev called.

“I’m south of the motel,” Logan said, using the speakerphone. “You remember seeing that Sonic Burger on Center Street?”

“I remember it.”

“I’ll drive by that in three or four minutes.”

“Which way?”

“Away from the freeway.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

Five minutes later, Dev called again. “I’m on you.”

Logan had been keeping an eye on his rearview mirror, but had seen no sign of the El Camino. When he looked this time, he caught a glimpse of blue in the distance.

It was time for part two of the plan.

“There’s a diner coming up in a couple blocks. I’ll use that.” If it was like before, their unwanted shadow would drive by, but this time Dev would be tailing
them
to see where they went.

Rosemary’s Eats sat in the middle of a lot, surrounded on all four sides by parking. Logan pulled in and grabbed an empty spot along the side, then turned and acted like he was talking to someone reclined in the chair. He kept a casual eye on the road as the sedan slowly passed. As soon as it was out of sight, he grabbed the photocopies of Diana’s rental file and went into the restaurant.

He sat at a booth in the back corner near the restrooms, out of view of the front windows.

“Something to drink?” his waitress asked as soon as he was settled.

“Water’s fine.” She set a menu in front of him, but before she could leave, he said, “Do you have a BLT?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll take that.” He handed back the menu.

“Fries?”

“Yeah. That’s fine.”

As soon as she was gone, he pulled out his phone and reconnected with Dev.

“What’s happening?”

“They doubled back after a couple of blocks, then parked on a side street just across from you.”

“What about you?”

“I’m in a strip mall a block away.”

“You can see them?”

“Absolutely.”

“That means they can see you, too.”

“Doubtful.”

Given Dev’s track record, Logan was willing to buy that. “Call me if something changes.”

“You got it.”

Logan set the photocopies in front of him. The first was the rental agreement, listing Diana Stockley as the tenant, and Hackbarth Holdings as the landlord. It was boilerplate stuff, skewed heavily in favor of the landlord. There were the terms, the rent, the security deposit, and, at the end, signatures—Diana’s, tight and clear, and Mark Hackbarth’s, large and important.

“Here you go,” the waitress said, setting his sandwich and fries in front of him. “Can I get you anything else?”

“No, this will be great. Thanks.”

Logan started in on his BLT as he moved on to the next document—the application. This one was more interesting. Under employment history, Diana had listed The Hideaway as her current employer, and someplace called Harkin Services as her most recent job prior to that, but had given no address or phone number for the latter. Next was a listing of previous addresses. There were slots on the form for four, but Diana listed only two. One was another address in Braden that corresponded to her first year in town. The other was a place in a town called El Portal, California. The name sounded familiar to Logan, but he couldn’t recall where it was. The dates she’d lived there, though, were the same dates she’d put down for Harkin Services.

But all that information paled when compared to the nine-digit number in a box near the top—her Social Security number.

Logan grabbed his phone, intending to email Callie the number, but before he could, he was greeted with a message saying he’d missed a call.
Right
, he remembered. His phone had rung when they’d been talking to Tessie. Turned out the caller was Harp.

Before calling him back, Logan accessed his email, composed the message for Callie, but stopped himself before hitting S
END
. He quickly looked through the rest of the photocopies to make sure there wasn’t anything else that could be useful, and was glad he did. The last page was a copy of Diana’s driver’s license. Not only was there the license number, but also her middle name and date of birth. If that didn’t help Callie dig something up, nothing would. He added all this to the message, and sent it on its way.

That done, he called his dad.

“Logan. Oh, good.” Harp sounded agitated.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. I…” He paused.

“Dad, are you okay?”

Still nothing.

“Dad?”

“Logan. I…I can’t find the letter.”

“What?”

“The letter Len left me. I can’t find it. It was in the book, but I checked a little while ago and it’s not there. I need you to come back, and take me to the motel. It’s got to be in the room, don’t you think?”

“Whoa, Dad. Relax.”

“How can I relax? I can’t lose it.”

“You didn’t lose it. It’s in my car.”

Silence. “Your car?”

“I saw it in the glove compartment.”

“I didn’t put it there,” Harp said. Logan could hear the phone move around, and his father’s voice became more distant. “Logan says it’s in the glove compartment of his truck.”

Even farther in the distance, Barney responded, though Logan couldn’t make out what he said.

Harp again. “You’re kidding me, right? When?” A pause. “I swear to God, Barney, if I was forty years younger, I’d kill you right now…no, I would. Don’t talk to me right now.” Harp’s voice got louder again. “Barney put it there. He…forgot. If you get a chance, drive by a drugstore and pick up some ginkgo!”