Deeply, Desperately (2 page)

That other turned out to be Charles Winston. With him she had had one son, David. When Leo found out, he'd been devastated. It took time, but Leo eventually settled down. However, he never forgot about Joanne, especially after his wife passed away fifteen years ago. He'd been looking for Joanne since.

"What now?" he asked.

The sadness in his eyes tore at me. "We tried all the conventional methods. Now we try a little bit of the supernatural."

He nodded, leaning forward. "How does that work?"

"Oh, it's something," Preston interjected, leaning forward. "Have to admit, I thought it all hocus-pocus at first, but Lucy here is the real deal. You're in good hands."

I scanned her face, looking for any sign of sarcasm
beneath the unexpected compliments. Surprised, I found none. Well. Hmmph. Color me shocked. "Thank you," I murmured.

She tipped her head in acknowledgment.

I said to Leo, "All I'll do is hold your hand while you think of something you may have given Joanne."

"That's it?"

My abilities didn't come without rules. I could only locate inanimate objects. Not humans or pets. And I could only get a reading from the object's true owner. However, there were exceptions to my rules. Most notably, gift giving, when objects had two owners. In this case, I hoped it would lead Leo straight to Joanne.

"That's it. The trouble is, if she didn't keep whatever you gave her, then we're back to square one. Can you think of something?"

His eyes lit, sparkling. "My class ring. Gave it to her on our one-month dating anniversary. She cried."

Preston scribbled away. I tried to swallow over a sudden lump wedged against my windpipe. "Okay, let's try."

I reached out my hand. Tentatively, he laid his palm against mine. Images swirled as the room tilted. After a minute, I pulled away, fighting waves of dizziness.

"Does she have it?" Preston asked.

Leo's eyes widened with hope.

I shook my head. "I don't think so. I saw it in a store. Not a pawnshop, but more like an antiques shop."

He barked out a laugh. "Antique it is."

Preston laughed, a tinkly musical sound that didn't seem to fit her personality.

I smiled. "It's mixed in with a jar of buttons."

"So a dead end," he said.

I didn't like that term. "Anything else you gave her?"

He closed his eyes, thinking. "I don't know. I didn't have much back then. And Jo and I, well, we had to keep our relationship quiet for the most part because my parents didn't take a liking to her."

"Ooh," Preston mumbled, jotting notes.

"Why's that?" I asked, still trying to pretend she wasn't there.

"She was Catholic," he said, smiling. "They were stubborn about that sort of thing."

"That's so wrong." Preston shook her head. "People should have been more open-minded."

"We snuck around mostly." Amusement brightened his eyes. "Had ourselves our share of fun."

"You devil you," Preston said, poking him in the ribs with her elbow.

He loved the attention, blushing to the roots of his white hair.

I bit the inside of my cheek, wondering at the type of love that would last over sixty years. Amazing. I had to find her. Had. To. "Did you give her any clothes? Pictures? Books?"

He slumped in the chair. "I don't think there's anything else."

"There has to be!" Preston urged.

Looked like Ms. Professional Reporter had become emotionally involved in this article of hers.

"I'm sorry, Leo. We'll keep trying on our end. There has to be a trail somewhere."

"Surely you're not giving up," Preston said to me.

My phone vibrated in my pocket, an incoming text message. "No. I'll contact the antiques store about the jar of buttons."

Slowly, Leo stood and held out his hand. "Thanks, Ms. Valentine."

I didn't offer mine. "If you don't mind ..."

He laughed. "Guess you had enough for today, eh?"

I was still a little dizzy from his reading. It always took a few minutes to shake off the lingering effects of a vision. "A little. But please call me if you think of anything else."

"Yeah," Preston said. "Call her."

He smiled, squinted at us. "You two aren't related, are you?"

We both snorted.

"Us?" I said. "No. What makes you think so?"

True enough, we were both blondes, though mine was more of a natural honey and hers was straight-from-the-bottle platinum, but that's where the similarities ended. I was five inches taller than her five foot three and probably a good forty pounds heavier, as I didn't think she weighed more than a hundred pounds. Her eyes were an inquisitive blue, mine were smoky amber. She had Kewpie-doll lips, while mine were wider, plumper. I had a long nose, a heart-shaped face, eyes that turned slightly downward. Her nose was upturned, her face a perfect oval, and her eyes were just a hairsbreadth too close together.

"Just something," he said.

"Only child," I added, just for further clarification.

Preston shot a look at me I couldn't quite interpret, then quickly dropped her gaze to the ground.

Odd. Very, very odd. Where were her jaunty remarks? Her ribbing? It was unlike her not to take a stab at teasing me.

"Maybe it's just 'cause you squabble like siblings," Leo finally said.

Okay, the squabble thing I could see.

Leo crossed to the door, stopped, and looked back at us, a serious spark in his eye. His hands twisted nervously. "I loved my wife, Ms. Valentine, I really did. But my heart never let go of Joanne. I'm not getting any younger. If she's able and willing, I'd like my last days to be spent with her."

Throat tight and unable to say anything, I nodded.

Preston reached for her notebook, scribbled away as Leo turned left into the reception area at the end of the hall. My phone buzzed again.

"You gonna get that or do you like the vibration?" Preston tucked her notebook and pen into her bag. She hauled it onto her shoulder.

"You're very charming," I told her. I pulled out my phone, checked the message. It was from Marisol.
RECON 1 PM. DONT BE LATE
.

I was due to meet her downstairs in fifteen minutes, which didn't give me any time to run upstairs to SD Investigations to tell Sean about my meeting with Leo.

Preston blatantly read over my shoulder. I quickly cleared the screen.

"Recon, huh? Reconnaissance? Sounds exciting."

"Good-bye, Preston."

"Maybe I should come along? Is it for a client?"

"Good-bye, Preston."

My phone vibrated in my hand, an incoming call. I checked the ID screen--Aiden Holliday, a Massachusetts State Police detective lieutenant. Through him I'd become a police consultant helping to solve missing person cases--mostly cold cases but some current ones as well. Was there a new case?

Or did his call have something to do with the strange letters I'd been receiving?

I'd have to keep wondering. A conversation with Aiden wasn't something I wanted to have in front of Preston. I let the call go through to voice mail.

"Not going to answer?" she asked. "Rather rude of you."

"Good-bye, Preston."

She leaned against the doorjamb, smiling. "C'mon, you can tell me."

"What?" I asked, biting back a sigh.

"Fruit of the Loom, right?"

She must have seen the murderous look in my eyes because she quickly said, "I'm going, I'm going." Halfway down the hall, she looked back, over her shoulder. "But I'll be back."

I didn't need the reminder.

Thirty minutes later, I was reconnoitering with Marisol. I glanced around nervously as we tiptoed down the spacious corridor that linked four nearly identical loft-style condos. No one seemed to be around on a Wednesday afternoon, but we couldn't be too careful.

We didn't want any witnesses.

" 'Twas two weeks before Christmas and all through the house--"

"Will you stop it?" I asked, my whisper harsh. "Someone will hear you."

9 x 6 is 54.

In times of stress, I turned to solving simple math problems in my head. For some reason it soothed my troubled mind like nothing else.

Marisol Valerius stopped short, and I bumped into her. Glancing up at me, she said, "Where's your holiday spirit?"

"You shouldn't be so giddy. I'm pretty sure breaking and entering is a felony."

"Lucy, Lucy," she tsked. Her brown eyes danced as she slid a key into the lock of unit 4A, twisting the
knob and pushing open the door. "It's not breaking and entering if we have a key, now is it?"

"I'm pretty sure it is."

"Spoilsport."

"One of us has to be reasonable here." I quickly closed the door behind us while she disabled the beeping alarm, punching in the code we both knew by heart.

"You didn't have to come along." Her sleek black bob shone as she swung her head from side to side, taking in the living room.

I'd known her since we were three, had been best friends with her since the age of five. There was nothing I wouldn't do for her. "As if I had a choice."

"You could have stayed downstairs in the lobby."

"If Em finds out ..." I said.

"She'll thank us."

After Marisol picked me up at the corner of Beacon and Charles, she dropped the bombshell: she was on a hunt for irrefutable evidence that Joseph Betancourt was a "cheating, slimy scuzball who needed to be exposed before the wedding."

Joseph, aka the cheating, slimy scuzball, was due to marry our best friend Emerson Baumbach on Valentine's Day.

"Look, just look," Marisol said in disgust.

Everything was neat, tidy. Hard not to be with the minimalist style. There was a streamlined L-shaped couch, a sculptured coffee table, two chrome chairs. Dark hardwood covered the floors. The fixtures were black and chrome. On the wall was a hideous piece of art I'd never seen before: all red squares, silver
rectangles, oblong purples, and yellow circles with dots in the center. I squinted. Those circles looked a lot like breasts. And those oblongs ... My eyes widened.

"What?" I pulled my gaze from the suggestive painting. Aside from exhibiting some seriously bad taste in art, the place was immaculate.

"It's two weeks till Christmas and there's not a Ho Ho Ho to be seen."

I opened my mouth. Marisol spun my way, a finger jabbing the air. "Don't even."

I blinked innocently. "What?"

"Make a comment about my love life."

She knew me too well. "I'd never!"

And she was right--there wasn't a single sign of Christmas. Cheery, I mused sardonically, thinking of my cottage, which looked as though Christmas had exploded inside. It was my favorite time of year.

"You would so."

"How
is
Butch these days?" I asked, following her into the sparkling kitchen, which was smothered in black granite and stainless steel. Butch was her latest boyfriend, a match made in a roundabout way by my grandmother, Dovie.

"He's fine."

"Uh-oh."

"The fact that he looks like Matt Damon is really the only thing he has going for him. We don't really have anything in common." Marisol closed one drawer, opened another. "Maybe I should make an appointment with your dad."

My father's matchmaking had a 98 percent success
rate. It was all in the auras. Every person carried with them an aura that is invisible to most people, but not to Valentines. And though we loved to play up the Cupid theory, truth was, the ability to read auras is a type of ESP--just like my ability to find lost objects.

But our clients didn't know about the auras. Neither did Marisol or Em. I could hardly imagine how they'd react. They were still getting used to the idea of me being psychic, something they'd learned only recently. And I couldn't tell them about my father's secret--the family had decided long ago never to tell anyone for fear of being labeled a fraud. Only a select few outsiders, like my father's longtime valet and family friend Raphael, knew. The Valentines simply wanted to make matches and ... make a lot of money. It wasn't by luck that my father, the King of Love, was one of the richest men in the country. He loved being a minor celebrity, though a recent brush with the dark side of media attention had dampened his enthusiasm a bit.

"Are you really ready to settle down?" I couldn't see her married or with kids. Never mind owning a minivan, a complete set of Calphalon, or one of those enormous jungle gyms that could house a small family under its rock wall.

She opened kitchen drawers, shuffled through takeout menus. "Who said anything about settling? What's wrong with just having a companion? Shacking up, maybe?"

I should have known. Marisol was marriagephobic.
"Nothing, I suppose. But people do like to get married. Settle down." Softly, I added, "People like Em."

And me, though I didn't say it. I was fighting against Cupid's Curse as it was--making finding true love virtually impossible. There was certainly no need to tempt the fates as well. As of right now Sean and I were happy and taking it day by day. Did I want more? Absolutely. But I also knew better. Not a single Valentine marriage had ever survived Cupid's Curse--not even my parents', though they pretended otherwise in an effort to keep the public from finding out that the King of Love himself couldn't keep a marriage together.

Marisol pulled a notepad from the drawer. "No one would be more thrilled than me to see Em settled down and happy. But
he
isn't the man for her."

"He" being Joseph. Marisol never referred to him by name, simply because she had never--ever--liked him.

"I mean, look around," she continued. "There aren't even any Christmas cards out. Where's the tree? You know how Em likes a big tree."

They certainly had the ceiling height. Twelve, fourteen feet. "Maybe they haven't gotten around to getting one yet."

Marisol rolled her eyes. "When are
you
going to come around?"

"I'm thinking never. Joseph seems like a perfectly ... fine man." He was no Sean Donahue, but I kept that to myself. "Em is happy. We should just tiptoe right back out that door and--"

"Em doesn't know happy. And I can't believe you're as blinded by him as she is."