Obsession
Authors: Kathi Mills-Macias
Table of Contents
DEDICATION
To Yeshua,
the faithful Lover of my soul,
and to my husband, Al,
the love of my life.…
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A
note of thanks to the many people who worked with me, prayed for me, and inspired me during the unfolding of this book:
To Dave and Becky Bellis, who generously gave of their time and expertise in the development of
Obsession's
proposal.
To my agent and friend, Lawrence Jordan, who continues to impress upon me that God's purposes will be accomplished “in the fullness of time.”
To my “eagle-eye” proofreaders: Detective Doug Lane, Laurel West, and Jane Hall.
And, finally, to the wonderful people at Broadman & Holman, particularly editorial staff members Vicki Crumpton and Kim Overcash. (I hope you got a finder's fee, Kim!)
Many blessings to you all.
CHAPTER 1
T
he ringing phone was no surprise to Toni Matthews. It was, in fact, just one more interruption to an already long and frustrating day. Yet, in some ways, Toni welcomed the distraction. Having thrown herself into the business at hand in an effort to forget the aching in her heart, she wondered if she would ever make sense out of the mountains of paperwork staring her in the face.
And what if I do?
she asked herself as she reached for the phone.
Even if I finally manage to figure out what to do with all this… mess… then what?
She took a deep breath and tried to focus. “Matthews and Matthews Detective Agency, Toni Matthews speaking. May I help you?”
The brief pause was followed by a soft, hesitant voice, obviously that of an elderly woman. “Matthews Detective Agency? Matthews and Matthews?”
Toni suppressed an impatient sigh as she ran her fingers through her short blonde curls. “Yes,” she answered. “This is Toni Matthews. How can I help you?”
Another pause. “I… I'm calling about Julie Greene, my… granddaughter. Is… Mr. Matthews available? He knows all about her case.”
Hot tears stung her eyes as Toni swallowed the unwelcome lump in her throat. “No,” she managed to choke out. “Mr. Matthews is not available. He's… deceased. This is his daughter, and I'm taking care of his affairs. I'll be happy to help you if I can, Mrs….”
“Lippincott. April Lippincott. Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry! I had no idea. How did it happen? When?”
Toni sighed. One more client who hadn't read the local obituary columns in the last few weeks. One more explanation to give. One more contract to refer to another agency. She cradled the phone against her shoulder and rubbed her pounding temples. “I'm sorry, Mrs. Lippincott. Let me take your address and mail you a letter explaining the situation. I'm in the process of doing that with all my father's clients. It may take a week or so because Lorraine—my father's secretary—quit about a month ago, just before he… just before his heart attack. So I'm filling in. I'll get those letters out in the next few days. Would that be all right?”
“Oh, certainly, my dear. Of course. But…” There was that annoying pause again. “It's just that your father was… so close to finding my Julie. He was supposed to get back to me a couple of weeks ago and he… he seemed so sure of having news for me by then.”
Stifling another sigh, Toni grabbed a pen. “I'm sure he was, Mrs. Lippincott. And I'm sure that whatever information he may have found out about your granddaughter is in her file. Let me get that letter off to you with some agency referrals and an explanation of how to obtain the necessary files from my father's office. Now, is that Lippincott with one t or two?”
Finished at last, Toni hung up the phone and looked around at the small but comfortable office. Paul Matthews was never one for
decorating. In fact, since his wife, Marilyn, had died of cancer twelve years earlier, little about the familiar two-room business had changed. It was as if Toni's mother were still here, working alongside her husband in the detective agency they had started together soon after they were married. Paul had set up his desk and files in this back room and had done all the agency's field work. Marilyn had her desk in the front office and had served as bookkeeper, secretary, and receptionist. Together they poured over cases, searching for overlooked clues, sometimes late into the night. When Marilyn died, leaving Paul to care for two-year-old Melissa as well as fourteen-year-old Toni, he had resolved to keep the agency going and to retain the name of Matthews and Matthews, hoping that one or both of his daughters would one day join him in the business.
Now, twelve years later, Paul was gone too, having died of a heart attack while on a fishing trip just three weeks earlier. Suddenly Toni, the older of the two remaining Matthews family members, was forced to face the decision she had wrestled with for years. With graduation less than a month behind her and a fresh master's degree in literature under her belt, should she fulfill her father's dream of keeping the detective agency going? She had, after all—strictly in an effort to please him—obtained the necessary license to do so. But now, with her father gone, should she put the agency up for sale and pursue her own dreams of settling down and marrying her fiancé, Brad Anderson; teaching part-time at the local college while she attempted to develop the writing career she had longed for since she was a little girl? Thanks to her dad's prudent financial planning, Toni had the financial means to take her time in making that decision.
She shook her head.
Enough of this daydreaming and feeling sorry for yourself,
she scolded silently.
There's work to do
—
and lots of it. The first thing is to take care of that client before she shows up on the doorstep wanting to know what's taking so long. What was her name again? Lippincott, April Lippincott, asking about her missing granddaughter,
Julie Greene, and wanting to see her file. Guess I'd better see what I can find out about this girl before I start on anything else.
The phone rang again. Toni looked at it and decided to let the call go on the answering machine. If it was Brad, she'd hear his voice and pick up. Anyone else could wait. Rising from her chair, she walked over to the gray metal filing cabinet, ignoring the slightly agitated male voice on the answering machine wanting to know who would be taking over the agency's current cases. As Toni pulled out the top drawer marked “Active Cases,” the machine beeped, signaling the end of the message. Even as her fingers walked through the files looking for Julie Greene's name, a smile tugged at her lips.
Only my dad would insist on keeping his files in this antiquated metal cabinet. No matter how hard I tried, I could never get him to even consider a computer.
“Your mother and I bought this office furniture together,” he had explained to her many times. “And she set up the filing system. It worked just fine for us then, and it'll work just fine as long as I'm here to keep this office going.”
Toni's smile disappeared, and the ache in her heart, as well as the pounding in her head, returned at the reminder of her father's sudden death. Pulling up Julie Greene's file, she shuffled back to the desk and plunked down in the worn leather chair. Reaching into the top right drawer, she rummaged around for a bottle of aspirin, gave up, and then opened the file. Toni gasped at the picture of the pretty young girl staring back at her. The long, curly blonde hair, the wide blue eyes, the tentative smile… she knew she was looking at a recent picture of Julie Greene, and yet it could almost have been a picture of herself ten years earlier. Toni wondered what her father must have thought when he first saw the picture of this runaway teenager from Colorado.
Taking a deep breath, she began to turn the pages. Suddenly the words on a piece of scrap paper, written in bright red ink—obviously her father's handwriting—jumped out at her: “Eagle Lake, 6 A.M., Wednesday.”
Toni's headache was forgotten.
Eagle Lake? But that's where Dad was when… Why would he have put a note about Eagle Lake in Julie Greene's file? And Wednesday? That was the day of his heart attack. Could it have been the same Wednesday? What was supposed to happen at six o'clock on Wednesday morning at Eagle Lake that could possibly have involved both Julie Greene and my dad?
Frowning, she began to read through the file. Just who was this Julie Greene anyway? Was there a connection between Julie and Paul Matthews's trip to the lake? If so, did it have something to do with Mrs. Lippincott's assertions that Toni's father was about to close in on Julie's whereabouts?
“Miss Matthews? Excuse me, are you Toni Matthews?”
Toni jumped as the voice penetrated her concentration. Snapping her head up, her blue eyes opened wide at the sight of the tall, broad-shouldered man standing beside her desk, his gray sport shirt open at the collar. From the expression on his face, he appeared almost as startled as Toni.