Lethal Outlook: A Psychic Eye Mystery (32 page)

The poor girl then dashed to the back and Candice and I were left to stare at each other in puzzlement. “I guess she didn’t know,” I said.

“We don’t even know,” Candice reminded me. “I mean, all we have is the word of the exterminator, who says he saw a guy in jeans and a ball cap go up her driveway a couple of times. That’s hardly evidence of an affair.”

“True,” I said with a sigh, swiveling back around as Jamie came back.

“Sorry,” she said, blushing slightly. “You just really surprised me with that one. Kendra’s the last person on earth I’d ever expect to cheat on her husband.”

We asked Jamie a few more questions about Kendra, digging for any clue we could think of, but Jamie and Kendra hadn’t been as close as they once were and she had little more to give us.

After a while we all lapsed back into silence again, and an hour and a half later, after my hair was cut, highlighted, and fluffy, she seemed relieved to see the back end of us.

“You look great,” Candice said as we exited.

“Thanks!” I told her, running my hand through my fresh do. Dutch was gonna wish it was still Wednesday. “Are we off to Bailey’s?”

“Yeah. She’s not too far from here.”

“You okay?” I asked. Candice didn’t look right.

“Fine,” she said, holding her stomach. “Just a little indigestion.”

We rode to Bailey’s and rang the bell. It was answered by a good-looking guy with light brown hair and somewhat elfin features. He was striking in a way that caught you off guard and sort of took your breath away. “Yeah?” he asked, staring hard at our chests.

Also, he was clearly an asshole. (Swearing doesn’t count when an asshole is ogling your boobs.)

“Is Bailey here?” Candice asked, ignoring the fact that he was watching her cleavage like he expected it to perform a circus act.

“That bitch moved out,” he said.

Let’s add “dickhead” to his list of characteristics while we’re at it.

Candice pushed a smile to her lips and bent sideways, trying to make eye contact. Dickhead kept his eyes trained on her boobs. “Do you know where we can find her?” she asked next.

He shook his head slightly. “Nope. Try her cell. Maybe she’ll pick up.”

“Could you give us her number?” I asked.

His sleazy gaze shifted over to me, and I had the urge to cross my arms over my chest, but then I realized that wasn’t going to get us far. Instead I tugged my blouse open a little and bent ever so slightly forward.

“Got a pen?” he asked, staring hard.

Candice whipped out her phone and tapped the screen. “Go for it.”

He rattled off the number; then, without so much as a good-bye, he wiped his nose with his hand, turned, and went back inside to shut the door in our faces.

“Can you believe Bailey left
him
?” I asked loudly.

Candice chuckled. “Come on, Sundance,” she sang, turning her back to the door to head down the walk.

We called Bailey from the car and convinced her to meet us at Starbucks. She arrived later than she said she would, but at least she showed up. “We met your husband,” I said by way of a greeting. “
Great
guy.”

Bailey smirked as she took her seat. “He’s a dickhead and an asshole.”

I smiled huge. “Our sentiments exactly.”

Candice stirred her second cup of tea and got right to the grilling. “Bailey, we know that you and Tristan had some sort of…incident the night of his bachelor party.”

Bailey nearly choked on her latte. “
Who
told you that?” she demanded, but then she immediately caught herself and tried to pull it back. “I mean…that’s just a rumor that a former friend of mine made up, but it’s not true. I swear.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire…,
went my crew.

“So you didn’t try to have your way with Tristan when he
was drunk as a skunk the night before he got married?” Candice pressed.

Bailey’s fingers curled around her cup. “No.”

My lie detector went off again, and I tapped Candice’s foot under the table to let her know.

“Okay,” she said easily, making like she really believed Bailey. “Sorry to ask, but we have to follow every lead, even if it’s just a rumor.” Bailey didn’t say anything, so Candice continued with, “Your husband tells us you’ve moved out.”

“Yes. I left him. I’m staying with a friend for a few days before I move back home to Dallas.”

“Did you know that Kendra was leaving her husband too?” I asked.

Bailey flushed again. “I did.” That familiar wave of guilty energy came back into her ether. “In fact, I might’ve had something to do with it.”

Candice and I both sat forward. “You did?” we both said.

Bailey took another sip of her drink. “Kendra told me she was thinking of leaving Tristan, and I gave her the number to my divorce attorney.”

“Garrett Velkune?” Candice asked.

Bailey nodded. “Garrett’s great. He’s not like most of these attorneys who just want your money. He sits down with you and really asks you if you’re sure, and if you’re not sure, then he tells you what to do to protect yourself until you are.”

“Protect yourself?” I asked, thinking she meant physically.

“Your assets,” she explained. “He advises you about what’ll happen when you file, how it’s likely that your liquid assets will be frozen, so if you want to pull out some money
from any joint accounts, then you better do it before you file.”

“He said that?” Candice asked, her face troubled. “Attorneys aren’t supposed to advise their clients to do that.”

“He doesn’t say that
exactly
,” Bailey amended, already backpedaling. “But he implies it, because he knows that we women have to protect ourselves.”

“How much does he suggest you put aside?” I asked.

“As much as we can get away with. I said as much to Kendra before I sent her to Garrett, and I know he told her the same thing.”

Candice’s eyes flashed to me for a second before she asked, “Do you know if Kendra took the advice?”

Bailey shrugged. “She’d have been a fool not to.”

“Bailey?” I said next. “Can I ask you one last time what the fight between you and Kendra was about?”

Bailey looked away. “Stupid girl stuff,” she said evasively.

Frustrated by her constant dodge of that question, I opened my radar wide and searched for the truth. What came back to me made me gasp. “It
was
you!” I said, pointing my finger at her. “You told Kendra Tristan had cheated on her!”

Bailey’s jaw fell open, and she stared at me with a stunned expression. Then her face flushed with shame, and I managed to pull even more detail out of the ether. “But,” I said, my tone now accusing, “true friend that you are, Bailey, you didn’t tell Kendra
who
Tristan had cheated on her with; you just told her that you knew he had.” I remembered Tristan telling us that his wife reacted to a touch from him like it’d repulsed her, and I suspected I knew why. “I think you told
her that on the night of his bachelor party you and Jamie had gone over to the party to spy on the boys, and that you’d seen the strippers there, and maybe you suggested that you’d seen Tristan having sex with one of the girls. Does that sound about right to you, Bailey? That’s why she called Jamie and told her she was thinking of leaving Tristan but she wanted to talk to her. She’d wanted to know if there really were strippers at the party.”

Bailey stared at me with such shock and anger, but I could also see the terrible regret in her eyes. I’d nailed it. I’d nailed exactly what she’d told Kendra.

I continued my accusations. “It was your story that sent Kendra storming over to Tristan’s office that night, and when he lost his temper with her, you were the one who tried to get her to leave him, plaguing her with doubt, sending her to see Velkune. You wanted Kendra to leave so that you could move in on Tristan, comfort the heartbroken divorcé, am I right, Bailey? But Kendra began to see through you, didn’t she? Maybe she poked holes in the story by talking to some of the other guys at the bachelor party? Maybe she began to doubt your story, realized you were the one who had tried to get him into bed, and that’s what your falling-out was about!”

Bailey’s eyes welled up and waves of guilt poured off her. “I never thought she’d actually go off and just leave Colby alone in the house like that!” she said defensively. “But, I mean, that should show you what kind of a person she is! She just took off and left her little boy in his crib without a backward glance!”

It was my turned to stare at her in shock. “You think she’s still alive, don’t you?” Bailey’s brow furrowed. “You think she left that house on her own. You have no idea about what’s really happened to her, do you?”

“She took off,” she said, swiping her tears away with shaking fingers. “I know it. She took my advice, grabbed some cash from the bank so that Tristan couldn’t trace where she went, and she’s getting even with me by pulling this stunt!”

I shook my head. I was dumbstruck at the ocean of denial this stupid girl had created.

“She’s alive!” Bailey insisted, hitting the table with the flat of her hand. “She is! I can feel it. She’ll show up soon, and then y’all will see that she’s not the sweet little angel everybody thinks she is.” Obviously, Bailey hadn’t seen the news about the discovery of Kendra’s car in Decker Lake.

“You disgust me,” I told her, and I was about to tell her exactly how much when my radar gave a quick warning and my head snapped to the door just as Bailey’s soon-to-be-ex appeared in the doorway. “Uh-oh,” I said the minute his eyes locked onto the back of his wife’s head. Chase then charged right toward us. “Look out!” I yelled, pushing myself to my feet.

Bailey, who had her back to her approaching husband, appeared startled but remained seated, staring at me in confused alarm. Meanwhile Candice came out of her seat so fast her chair shot back and hit the wall. Still, she was hampered by a group of patrons at another table, which prevented her from getting to Bailey’s husband before he could get to his wife.

Grabbing Bailey by the hair, he pulled her violently backward, causing her to fall hard onto the floor. Her legs kicked up and pushed the table directly into Candice, who was shoved back against the wall and nearly went down herself. I reacted reflexively, grabbing my coffee before it was knocked off the table and throwing the hot liquid directly into the man’s face. He yelled and stumbled back, but not before I took my cane to his head. This time, the cane held strong and I gave Chase three good wallops before he too fell to the floor, where one of the male baristas tackled him and put him into a choke hold.

Around us there was a kind of pandemonium as customers and employees scattered for the exits, toppling tables and chairs and coffee as they dashed out of the place. I heard someone yell to call the police, but I was still too amped up on adrenaline to focus. Instead, as Bailey’s husband struggled to get free of the barista’s choke hold, I edged forward and gave him a hard crack across his shins. “You move and I’ll break your damn legs!” I shouted, hovering over him with my cane raised. I was so angry that I seriously wanted him to give me another excuse.

“What the hell, Chase?” Bailey shouted as Candice helped her to her feet. She was covered in coffee stains from her own drink and maybe a few others littering the floor.

“You bitch!” he replied. “You drained my savings account!”

Bailey stood there shaking from head to toe. “It was
our
savings account, you son of a bitch!”

“
Who
put all the money into that account, you whore?” he demanded. “It sure as hell wasn’t
you
!”

“Most of that was from our wedding, you asshole!” Bailey shot back, and I could see this was gonna be one bitter divorce.

Strobe lights on the wall pulled my attention away from the shouting match and over to the parking lot, where no less than three patrol cars had slammed to a stop. Six cops bolted out of their vehicles, their guns drawn, and they approached the Starbucks warily but in a hurry.

I lowered my cane and stepped closer to Bailey and Candice. As the first cop came into the building, all three of us pointed to Chase and yelled, “He did it!”

I
t took the cops about two hours to take all the witnesses’ statements and finally release us from the scene. As Candice and I pulled out of the lot, we could see Chase sitting in the back of a squad car yelling at a cop in the front seat. “I hope he gets Tased,” I said, glaring at him as we passed.

“Oh, I think that’s a given,” Candice told me.

It was then that I noticed she was grimacing. “You okay?”

“Fine,” she said. “Just a touch of indigestion.”

“Still?”

“I’ll get some Tums when we’re done for the day.”

“Aren’t we done for the day?”

“No.”

I waited, but Candice didn’t elaborate. “You gonna fill me in or should I just turn on my radar and…”

“We’re going to see Velkune,” Candice told me.

“Why?”

“I’m following through on a hunch.”

I blinked. Usually I was the one with the hunches.

We arrived at Garrett’s office and headed inside, rushing a little because it was just a minute or two before five now and we didn’t want to miss him. We found his perky secretary packing up and looking like she was just about to leave. “Oh!” she said when we came through the door, a look of annoyance flashing briefly across her face. “Can I help you?”