Ultimate Concealer, A Toni Diamond Mystery: A Toni Diamond Mystery (Toni Diamond Mysteries) (3 page)

“She’s my baby, Luke. I don’t want to see her hurt.”

He pulled her closer, if that was possible. “What makes you think he contacted her?”

“Because she asked about him. Said a father has a right to see his daughter, which sounded exactly like something Dwayne would say, when he’s tried very hard for the past sixteen years not to see her, or know about her and definitely not to support her. I couldn’t even find him for the divorce. Had to do that without him, too.”

“Probably it was coincidence,” he said, kissing her. Not that he believed his own words, but he didn’t have much to offer.

The next morning, Luke was barely in the office when Toni called. He picked up with a grin. “Hey, sexy.”

“I want to report a missing person,” she said, sounding unlike herself. No smile in the voice.

“What happened?” But in his gut, he knew.

“It’s Tiffany. She’s gone.”

“You know where she’s gone, right?”

“Yes. She emailed me this morning.”

“The sleepover?” He was pretty sure there hadn’t been any sleepover, which gave Tiffany a big head start.

“There was no sleepover.” She tried to stifle a sob, which sounded more heartrending than an actual sob.

He scanned through everything he knew about teenaged runaways. “Her cell phone must have GPS. We can track her.”

“She left her cell in her room. The messages were all wiped clean.” She sighed. “I’m looking up the phone log online, at least I’ll be able to see what numbers she was calling and texting, but none of the content.”

“Hang tight. I’m coming over.” There wasn’t much he could do, but Toni needed him.

As he headed out, he said to Henderson, his partner, “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.

“But we brought the guy who shot his neighbor in for questioning. I was going to put him in the interview room.”

“Put him in the holding tank. Let him sweat.”

Toni couldn’t panic. She knew emotion could only make her do something foolish. Still, when Luke arrived she wanted to throw herself against his strong chest and sob. But Toni didn’t have time for weakness. She had to find her daughter.

He pulled her to him and hugged her anyway, as though knowing how much she needed it. “Tiffany’s smart,” he said against her hair. “She’ll be okay.”

“But how’s she getting to Vegas? What if she’s hitchhiking?”

“Let me see the email she sent you.”

“Of course. I’m sorry. I can’t seem to think straight.” For the first time since she had joined Lady Bianca, Toni had no cosmetics on. She hadn’t even combed her hair or dressed. Her robe swished before her as she ran upstairs to her office. The article Tiff had pinned to her corkboard fluttered as she opened the door, filling her with a pain so sharp she almost couldn’t breathe.

The email was still open on her computer screen. All she had to do was push a button on her keyboard to get rid of her screensaver, the kaleidoscope of relentlessly positive motivational mantras that seemed pretty hollow right now.

Success wasn’t achieved in a series of small steps. Right now, success would be achieved when she got her daughter home where she belonged.

Luke sat in her office chair and she read the message over his shoulder, as though it wasn’t burned into her brain.

“Hey, Mom,” it began. “Don’t worry. I’m going to visit my dad. He and I both figure it’s time we got to know each other. I know you don’t want me to go, but I have a right to know my own father. I’m fine. My schoolwork’s up to date. I’ll call you when I get to Vegas. DON’T WORRY! Love, Tiffany.”

Apart from the nagging drag of fear, she felt furious with both of them. “That’s Dwayne, right there. That line, I have a right to know my own father. That’s him. Putting ideas in her head.”

Luke turned his head and regarded her, his dark eyes serious. “She does have a right to know her father,” he said.

“He abandoned her. Plus, she’s underage. Can’t the police do something?”

He shook his head slowly. “She’s getting close to the age of emancipation. With no sign of foul play, and an email telling you where she’s going, which is to her father…” He made a gesture with open hands that seemed very Italian considering he’d been born in the states, and clearly implied that the cops weren’t going to rush out and bring her daughter back home.

“Her father,” she exploded. “He can come here and see her if he wants a relationship so bad. Why the hell would he want her to go to Vegas? It’s not like Dwayne. He’d never want to be bothered with a teenager. She’ll remind him he’s getting older. She’ll be an expense. She’ll sure as hell curtail his sex life.”

“Think about it, Toni,” he said in his calm way. “If you’re right about Dwayne, and I really hope you’re not, he wants Tiffany there for one reason. To get to you. He wants money.”

“That low-life snake. Oh, that’s sleazy even for him. He’d kidnap his own daughter to get money out of me?”

“Toni, it’s not kidnapping. He is committing no crime whatsoever.”

“How can you say that? He abandoned her, never sent a dime--”

“He also never signed any divorce documents, right?”

“No. Because I couldn’t find him and I couldn’t afford to track him down. I got divorced without him just like I did everything else without him.”

“So he’s not violating the terms of a custody agreement because he never signed one. His daughter decided on her own to go see him. He’ll act delighted to see her, and he’s got to know that you’ll be there almost as soon as she is. He wants money. You want your daughter back. Maybe he’s looking at this as a simple business proposition.”

“He’s not that smart,” she snapped.

Then she put her hands over her face and pressed her palms into her burning eyes. She gave herself a minute, then said, “You know, I am so tempted not to go. Let her spend a few days with Dipshit Dwayne. She’ll appreciate how good she has it with me.”

“I think that’s an excellent idea.”

If it was somebody else’s kid, she’d think so too. “But what if she’s hitchhiking? Anything could happen to her. She’s only sixteen.”

“She’s not hitchhiking. ” He grabbed her shoulders and squeezed. “Come on, Toni. She’s your daughter.”

“Dwayne never came to get her. And she doesn’t have the money to fly.”

“My guess is she took the bus.”

“The bus?” She could barely stand to think of her baby riding a long distance all alone on the bus.

“Did you check her phone records?” She knew he dealt with murders and terrible crimes all day long and was thankful he was taking her missing daughter seriously.

“I printed them out. Lots of calls to the same number Dwayne called me from.” She picked up the printout and handed it to him. “I’ve sheltered her. I know I have. I overcompensate because I’m a single parent. My mom thinks I feel guilty because I chose such a loser to father my child.”

“Your mom is a lot smarter than she looks.”

“I should have listened to her when I was young. She told me Dwayne was no good for me.”

Everything about this mess was stressing her out. While she watched, he scanned the numbers rapidly. Then he banged a blunt fingertip onto a number. “That’s the number to buy bus tickets. That number right there.”

It wasn’t a huge relief to find her daughter had taken a bus hundreds of miles, but it was better than hitchhiking.

“Did you call Dipshit Dwayne?”

“Of course I did. Got his voice mail.”

“You leave a message?” He sounded wary.

“Honey, please, I’m also a lot smarter than I look. I did not say anything except, ‘Please call me.’ There’s nothing he could play for Tiffany that would make me sound like a hysterical witch.”

“Good.” He kissed her. “You tell me what you need.”

She looked at him knowing he meant what he said. “Dwayne’s not listed in any directory I can find. All I have is his cell number and he’s not picking up.”

He nodded. “I’ve got a buddy in LVPD. I’ll get you everything I can on him.”

“Thank you. I can’t get a flight out today. Everything’s booked. I’ll head out tomorrow morning.”

“Okay. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

“Luke?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you do one more thing for me?”

“What?”

She hated feeling needy, but she felt like her head was going to explode from worry. “Could you stay with me tonight?”

He nodded once. “Yeah.”

Chapter Three

“I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.”

— Sigmund Freud

Tiffany Diamond scraped a ribbon of black nail polish off one thumbnail with the nail of her opposite thumb. The bus rolled along with boring monotony. A fat woman with b.o. sat beside her, kind of melting over from her seat into Tiffany’s. She pushed her earbuds deeper into her ears as though she could drown out her own thoughts. But they wouldn’t be drowned.

What if he didn’t like her? What if he was disappointed? She hadn’t sent a picture. Hadn’t thought of it. He’d sent her one, though.

Her dad looked kind of like Josh Duhamel. He had the same killer smile and the confidence of someone who’d always been hot. She scraped off another ribbon of black. The silver skull ring on her index finger gleamed. He’d known her mom back when she was the same age as Tiffany was now.

She’d seen photos of her mom when she was young and she’d been all blond hair, cuteness and boobs. If he thought they looked alike, he was going to be sorry. She wished she’d got her hair cut. She wanted to think about something else, but it was tough with Dwayne singing in her ear. He’d sent her a couple of tracks off his latest album. The country and western songs made her think of Dolly Parton, which made her think of her Gran.

The bus dragged on past small towns and fast food joints. She slept a little and ate a granola bar she’d packed from home and sipped on a bottle of water, but she didn’t have much of an appetite. She felt like she was coming down with the flu or something. Kind of dizzy, nauseated from the endless movement of the bus and the sick smell of the woman beside her.

Most of the people on the bus seemed excited to be going to Vegas. Like they were going to come back millionaires or something. A group of loud guys in their twenties joked about driving back home in a limo. Yeah, right.

They were passing around a bottle. One of them tried to pass it to her, but his buddy said something to him. All she heard was jail bait. And after that they left her alone.

When the bus finally pulled into the station in Vegas, she was exhausted, a little car-sick — bus sick, she supposed — -and her stomach was so clenched she was having trouble breathing.

She was almost glad the fat woman beside her was taking her time packing up her stuff. It gave Tiffany a few extra minutes to pull herself together.

Finally, the fat woman hauled herself up with a lot of huffing and Tiff got out behind her.

She was hyperventilating when she walked through the grimy doors into the bus station.

Stop it
, she mentally yelled at herself. Of course he’d like her. She was his daughter, wasn’t she?

He’d found her on Facebook, that’s how he’d finally got in contact. She’d immediately messaged him her phone number and he’d called her right away. It was like a Disney movie in real life. When he’d called she’d almost cried. He sounded so happy to talk to her. Dwayne had told her on the phone that he’d wanted to see her for a long time but her mom had stopped him. She wouldn’t even give him Tiffany’s cell phone number.

Tiffany had always suspected her mother was partly to blame for her having no dad, not even a weekend and summer vacation dad. Other kids might complain about having stuff at two houses and drama between the exes, but at least they knew their own fathers.

It had seemed like such a good idea to avoid the inevitable fight with her mom. Get on the bus and tell her mom after. Easier to ask forgiveness than permission, Dwayne had said with a chuckle. Now she kind of wished she’d waited.

It was just nerves, she reminded herself. She glanced swiftly around the waiting area almost sick with excitement, but unless he’d changed gender, race or gained a hundred or so pounds, Dwayne Diamond wasn’t among the handful of people obviously waiting for her bus.

She gave him ten minutes and then wished that at least she had her cell phone with her. She’d seen on TV how easy it was to trace people with cell phones and her mom was dating a cop. But it would have been comforting to have her phone with her.

Could he have forgotten? Got sick? Been in an accident?

Worse, had her mother somehow found out and used her cop connections to have Tiffany’s father thrown in jail or something?

Wild thoughts chased around in her head as she fidgeted on a hard bench until finally she noticed a pay phone stuck to the wall. She’d never used a pay phone before. She had to read the directions twice and then she fumbled and dropped the money before getting the hang of the thing. She’d written down her father’s cell number, but she didn’t need to look. She’d memorized it.

“Darlin’,” he said, picking up right away. “I’m on my way. Hold tight, I’ll be right there.”