Gone Missing

“Do you recognize him?” Clay asked.

“No.”

“Me, neither.”

“How long have they been following us?”

“I didn’t see them on the way to Fiona’s workplace, but they appeared behind us when we started for the museum.”

They’d gone to the air-conditioning parts manufacturer Fiona worked for, only to hear that three weeks ago, a man had called, claiming to be her brother, asking for extended leave for her, citing a family emergency. However, the manager hadn’t been able to get in touch with her after that and she’d been fired.

Who had called? It obviously wasn’t Clay. That may be why the police hadn’t followed up on the missing person’s report—if they checked with Fiona’s company, the manager had heard from her and so there wasn’t a problem, at least at the time Mary notified them of her disappearance.

Perhaps that had been the point of calling in to Fiona’s workplace—to forestall the filing of the report. Joslyn and Clay had exchanged tense looks. Did someone have Fiona?

They’d spoken to a couple of her coworkers who had been outside for a smoke break, but they hadn’t learned much—Fiona apparently wasn’t close with anyone at work, even though she’d been working there about fifteen months. It had seemed like a dead end.

But Joslyn remembered that Fiona often visited art museums in Los Angeles. She’d been friends with the guards at the museum and had formed friendships with other people who visited the museum regularly, mostly artists and critics. Clay had agreed that she’d done the same in Chicago, when she had lived with him in the years during college and after she’d graduated. So they’d left Joslyn’s car in the business parking lot and headed to the largest art museum in Phoenix, the Kevin Tran Museum of Art and Art History.

But they apparently weren’t alone.

Were their pursuers aiming to finish the job, since the explosion at Fiona’s house hadn’t gotten rid of them, or did they simply want to question Joslyn and Clay? “I wonder if they want to stop us from finding Fiona, or if they think we know where she is,” Joslyn said.

“It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to stop and ask them.” Clay signaled and switched lanes.

Joslyn had been in this exact situation barely a year ago, running from her ex-boyfriend, nervously looking behind her to make sure she wasn’t followed. Feeling as if her life wasn’t her own anymore. She had thought she’d put those days behind her, yet here she was again. “Phoenix is a grid. How are you going to lose them?”

“I have to get onto a freeway.”

He got onto the 101 almost casually, as if he’d always meant to head in that direction, and moved into the leftmost lane. He then slowed down, and soon the white Taurus was directly behind them. Clay was driving so slowly in the fast lane that cars were passing them on the right, and the Taurus couldn’t stay hidden. There were two men in the sedan, both with sunglasses on. The shorter one had curly, dark hair, while the other had close-cropped, dark hair. They also both had identical frowns.

“They know you’re on to them,” she said.

“It won’t matter in a moment. Hang on.” He cranked the wheel hard to the right and cut off an SUV. Its driver honked at them as Clay swerved right again and cut off a Toyota. He then zoomed right in front of a Mustang in the freeway exit lane only a few feet before it split from the highway, separated by a concrete divider. Joslyn knew the circumstances were extreme, but the sight of the cars looming so close in front of them made her heart shoot up to her throat.

His aggressive driving had carried them too quickly across the lanes for the Taurus to keep up. The driver couldn’t make it to the right hand lane in time to exit, and Joslyn saw both men glaring at them as they were forced to continue on the freeway.

“You lost them.” Joslyn had always been rather cautious behind the wheel, trying not to annoy anyone around her. Clay had cut off three cars in fewer than three seconds.

“Not yet.” Clay wove his way through the traffic and began driving in random circles.

He was a good driver, his motions controlled and precise, the car moving smoothly, almost effortlessly through traffic. But there was tension radiating from the corners of his eyes as he glanced in his rearview mirrors.

Joslyn kept an eye out behind them, also, and her heartbeat continued to gallop in her chest as she waited to see if the white Taurus or some other car would suddenly appear. But after several miles, she never saw the same car twice.

Clay finally nodded. “I think we did lose them.”

“How did they find us? Why are they following us?” She didn’t like not knowing. “Are you sure they followed us from her workplace?”

“They could have followed us from her house and we just didn’t see them,” Clay said. “Although I don’t like the thought that they were watching us the entire time.”

“I don’t, either.” It made her feel vulnerable, right when she had been working so hard to get back control in her life.

Clay’s mouth grew hard. “Maybe they were the ones who rigged her house to explode and they were waiting to see who would show up.”

For a moment, he looked so much like her ex-boyfriend that Joslyn had to look away. Tomas had hated being trapped by other men, and it had brought out an ugly side of him. He’d had many ugly sides.

She took a deep breath. That chapter in her life was over. Tomas was in jail. She was safe. She had been doing everything in her power to make sure she stayed safe.

Except that it hadn’t saved her from walking into this situation. “If they did rig her house to explode, they either wanted to kill her or anyone after her.”

“I don’t think anyone would expend manpower to watch an empty house for weeks, just to make sure the explosion killed someone looking for Fiona,” Clay said. “If they were staking out the house, it’s because they want to find Fiona, dead or alive.”

“So Fiona might be alive. On the run.”

“Let’s hope so. But if those men weren’t staking out the house already, it could mean they followed one of us to Fiona’s house.”

Joslyn thought back to what she’d had to do to find Fiona’s address. Had her digging around alerted someone that she was after Fiona? But who? What in the world had Fiona gotten into? “Did you have any idea Fiona was in serious trouble like this?” Joslyn asked.

He shook his head slowly. “I hadn’t talked to her in years. I didn’t even know where she’d gone after she left Chicago. I tried to find her but then...”

He’d gone to prison. Joslyn wondered why Fiona hadn’t reached out to him, especially when it seemed that he still loved her. Fiona hadn’t indicated there had been any bad blood or grudges between them, so why hadn’t she wanted to see her brother again?

“I didn’t know, either,” Joslyn said. “Fiona was just like any other girl when I knew her in Los Angeles, going to classes, hanging out with friends. Except...” She thought back. “She seemed a little sad sometimes, but I knew her mother had died and she didn’t like to talk about her father. I thought she just missed her mom.”

“She and Mom were close,” Clay said quietly.

“I still can’t get over the job she got here in Phoenix. She was qualified for a position that paid so much more.”

“She must have gotten into some kind of trouble, something that made her need to take a different job than she normally would have.”

“She didn’t have many friends at her workplace, so maybe the answer isn’t in her job, but in what she did outside her job.” Which meant that if she did visit the museum here, as she had done in Los Angeles and Chicago, they might find something about what she’d been involved in. A standard tactic for skip tracers was to find out as much about the person as possible to figure out where they’d go.

The Kevin Tran Museum of Art and Art History was a beautiful sandstone building that rose out of the desert like a castle, surrounded by artfully arranged rock formations and different types of cacti. As they paid the entrance fee, Joslyn grabbed a pamphlet about becoming a season pass holder or a museum patron.

“If I’m right, Fiona would have gotten at least a season pass for the museum. She had a season ticket for one of the museums in Los Angeles that she enjoyed going to. She got invited to private showings and a few art galas.”

“She had a season pass for one of the museums in Chicago, too,” Clay said. “She took me to an art opening once. I had to wear a suit.” He grinned, suddenly. “She told me I looked like a bouncer.” But then something, some memory, made the light dim from his eyes and his smile. Joslyn had to stop herself from asking him what had made him so sad.

She consulted the pamphlet and saw that the patron services department was in charge of handling business with season pass holders. “This way.” There were signs pointing the way to the patron services office.

They passed through several galleries. Some had ethnic themes, such as one long room with art from several premier Chinese American artists who had first settled in Phoenix at the turn of the century, and another room with huge murals of Native American art. One gallery housed a display of sculptures that looked like they were made from desert rocks of various colors.

“This is a museum Fiona would love,” Clay said as they crossed a room where Native American woven blankets hung from the walls. “She always talked about how art can tell you all about different cultures and periods of history.”

“I have to admit I didn’t always see it,” Joslyn said. “But then again, when Fiona went with me to a concert, she didn’t go into raptures about the musical nuances the way I did.”

“What kind of concerts?”

Out of habit, Joslyn hesitated before answering. “Mostly classical music. Fiona was my only friend who’d go to concerts with me and not fall asleep in the middle.”

“I like classic rock, myself. But I’ve been known to listen to some instrumental movie scores, too.”

She blinked at him, then laughed. “The classic rock I would have guessed.”

His smile was open and charming. “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

It would be so easy to fall for that charm. But then again, Tomas had been charming, too, at first.

They arrived at a door marked “Patron Services” and went inside. A woman sat behind a desk with horn-rimmed glasses and smiled at them. “May I help you?” Her name plaque read Ruby Padalecki.

Joslyn gave her one of her new business cards. “I’m an investigator with the O’Neill Agency. We’re looking into the disappearance of a young woman who might have been a season pass holder with the museum, Fiona Crowley.”

Ruby’s mouth grew pinched. “I’m afraid I can’t give any information about our museum patrons.”

“We’re just worried about her,” Clay said. “I’m her brother.”

The woman looked at him with her brow furrowed. “Oh, my, you look exactly like...” She swallowed and lowered her voice. “I’m sorry, but I could lose my job.”

“No, we don’t want you to do anything to jeopardize that,” Joslyn said quickly.

Clay held his hands up. “We’re just museum patrons chatting with you, okay? We’re not after any confidential information that might get you in trouble.”

Ruby relaxed and smiled. “Okay, sure.”

He looked harmless, approachable. She envied the easy way he could engage with Ruby. Joslyn always felt awkward socially. It was the reason she liked computers so much.

Clay leaned a hip against the edge of the desk. “My sister likes visiting art museums. She visited all the ones in Chicago.”

“She also liked visiting museums when I knew her in Los Angeles,” Joslyn said.

Ruby nodded. “Oh, she comes in here every week. Sometimes a few times a week.”

“Once, a museum had a new exhibit by a well-known artist and she went five times that week,” Joslyn said. “I began to wonder if she was in love with the artist until I found out he was sixty-five years old.”

“There was one artist in Chicago who was twenty-five,” Clay said dryly. “I was a little worried since she was only seventeen at the time.”

“What did you do about that?” Ruby asked.

Clay scratched the back of his head. “I have to admit, I was really mean. I was at some party with her, and I went to where she was talking to the artist. I told him an embarrassing story about when she was in kindergarten that involved feathers, glitter and pink panties. She didn’t speak to me for a week, but she didn’t talk to the artist again, so it was a win for me.”

Joslyn and Ruby laughed. “She actually told me that story,” Ruby told him, “so she must have gotten over it.”

“No artists here that she’s currently in love with?” Clay said.

Ruby winced. “Well, there is one Native American artist who’s tall, dark and swarthy—he looks like a pirate. All the girls on staff here think he’s incredibly handsome. Fiona’s friendly with him, but then again, she’s just as friendly with Rufus, one of the guards.”

Clay cleared his throat. “How often is the, uh, artist here?”

Ruby giggled. “Not very often. Don’t worry.”

“When’s the last time you talked to Fiona?” Joslyn asked.

Ruby sobered. “It’s been several weeks. Rufus and I are a little worried. I even called her house a few times, but she didn’t answer.”

“Why do you think she’d stop coming to the museum?” Clay asked.

“Rufus thinks it’s because of that man who came a few weeks ago.”

“What man?”

“Some older man talked to her in the ancient Chinese art room. You should talk to Rufus about it. He was on duty that day and saw them.”

“Fiona didn’t say anything about what was wrong?” Joslyn asked.

Ruby shook her head. “But I didn’t see her the last day she was here. I had taken a sick day.”

“Is Rufus here today?”

“He’s wandering around, just keeping an eye on things. Tall, lanky African-American man.” Ruby reached out to grab Joslyn’s hand. “Please find out what happened to Fiona. I hope it’s nothing serious.”

“We’ll find her,” Joslyn said. Fiona had left a hole in Joslyn’s life when she left Los Angeles. Joslyn didn’t have many women friends, and she always wondered if she might not have dated her abusive ex, Tomas, if Fiona had still been there with her frank opinions and logical insights. The least she could do was find out what happened to her friend now that it looked as if she’d gotten into something dangerous after she’d left the master’s program in LA.

They had to circle almost the entire museum before they found Rufus, an older man so slender that his guard uniform hung loosely on him. He had a short, gray beard and almost completely bald head with his curly, gray hair cut short. As they approached him, he frowned at them as if he were trying to look menacing. “Something I can help you folks with?”

Then his eye fell on Clay, and his brows rose halfway up his forehead. “Well, I’ll be. You look just like Fiona. You must be that brother she told me about.”

Clay grinned and shook the man’s hand. “Anything she told you about me, it wasn’t true.”

Rufus guffawed. “She said you’d say something like that.” He nodded to Joslyn. “This your missus?”

Joslyn felt as if her head was in a furnace, and Clay turned redder than a beet. “I’m Joslyn. I’m an old college friend of Fiona’s.”

His handshake was firm, his fingertips calloused. “So you went to school with her in LA?”

“Yes, sir. She and I had most of the same classes.”

“We’re here looking for her,” Clay said. “We hear she hasn’t been around for a few weeks.”

Rufus sighed heavily. “Don’t know what’s happened to her. I’m worried. It didn’t seem like she was into anything shady, but that man she met with the last time she was here seemed awful slick, if you know what I mean.”

“Who was he?” Joslyn asked.

“This older guy, although not quite as old as me. Seems like nobody’s quite as old as me, these days.” He flashed a grin, his smile bright in his dark face. “He was sitting and chatting with Fiona, and she looked pretty shaken.”

“You didn’t hear what they talked about?” Joslyn asked.

“Naw, I was standing by the door. There were some high school boys in the next room making fun of the abstract art, so I was keeping an eye on them in case they got rowdy.”

“Maybe she and the guy were friends,” Joslyn said.

“No, she didn’t come in with him. She was alone when I saw her enter the front door—she gave me a smile and a wave—and this guy came and met her in the antique Chinese art room only half an hour later. She seemed surprised to see him, so I don’t think she was intending to meet him here. They only talked five or ten minutes, but it was enough to make Fiona look upset and leave the museum early.”

“Did he leave with her?”

“Nope. He sat in the Chinese room for another few minutes—looked sorta down, if you ask me—and then he left.”

“Anyone with him?” Clay asked.

“Nope. But he was wearing some fancy suit, like those rich guys. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a driver waiting outside.”

“I wonder why she was upset,” Joslyn said. “Did Fiona say anything to you before she left?”

“No, she just smiled and waved, but she looked kinda distracted,” Rufus said. “Sometimes she chats with me, sometimes not. But that was the last time I saw her. No police have been by, so I wondered if maybe she was on vacation or something. But I think she’d’ve told me if that was the case. It must have been that guy.”

“You said he was slick.”

“Dressed real smart, navy suit—even in this heat—and big silver cufflinks on his sleeves.”

Clay had suddenly stilled. “What did he look like?”

“Oh, roundish face. Black hair, but receding like there was no tomorrow.”

“Kind of heavy-lidded eyes?”

Rufus’s eyebrows rose again. “Yeah.”

If Clay knew who the man was, Joslyn would have expected him to be more triumphant. Instead, he seemed even more perplexed. “Do you know him?” she asked.

Clay was frowning at the floor. “I think so, but it doesn’t make sense.”

“Why not?”

He looked up at her, and his eyes had turned a stormy gray. “I think that was Martin Crowley—her father, and my stepfather.”

THREE

Why would Fiona disappear after talking to Martin? As far as Clay knew, they were still on comfortable terms. Maybe not chummy, but not at odds with each other. And Martin wouldn’t do anything to hurt Fiona, no matter what he’d done to Clay.

The memories, more bitter than medicine, burned his tongue and throat, and he swallowed to get them out of his system. Even after all these years, it still made him react as if his stepfather’s utter rejection of him had happened yesterday.

“Her father?” Rufus said. Clay had forgotten he was still there. “Now that’s interesting. Fiona never seemed happy when she talked about her daddy. And she certainly wasn’t happy that man had come to talk to her that day.”

Joslyn had been shocked when Clay had said the man was Martin, but now she looked thoughtful. “Can you remember anything else?” she asked Rufus.

He pursed his mouth, but then shook his head. “Sorry, I didn’t hear anything that they said, and that’s about all I saw.”

Joslyn handed him her business card. “If you remember anything else, give us a call.”

“Sure thing.”

As they headed out of the museum, Clay said, “You didn’t seem surprised that Fiona and Martin hadn’t seemed very friendly that day. Fiona had always been pretty close to him.”

Joslyn tilted her head. “Well, she was closer to Martin when I first knew her, but, especially just before she left Los Angeles, he seemed to annoy her or upset her more often. She never wanted to talk about him. I guess in the past two years, they never healed the breach.”

“He must have said something to her to make her upset. But he can’t possibly have anything to do with her disappearance. He wouldn’t hurt her.”

“But the fact is that sometime after he spoke to her, she went missing.”

“If she were in danger from Martin, he’d have taken her at the museum, and he wouldn’t have bothered to speak to her first.” Clay sighed. “Plus I have a hard time believing Fiona would be involved in anything shady that Martin might be doing.” He remembered his last big argument with Fiona in Chicago, and the reason she’d moved away from him.

“He might have helped her leave. If she was in trouble and he could help, she’d accept it.”

He remembered Fiona’s thready voice during their phone conversation. “The thing is, if she were safe with Martin, she wouldn’t have asked us for help. My phone call and your postcard happened after she disappeared.”

“Maybe it wasn’t her?”

“It sure sounded like her. I knew her voice immediately.”

Joslyn blew out a breath. “And the handwriting on that postcard was pretty close to hers. I recognized it.”

Clay rubbed his forehead. He knew what he had to do, but didn’t like being forced to approach Martin again, like a servant asking for a favor. “I have Martin’s extension at his office. I’ll give him a call and ask about Fiona.”

The look Joslyn gave him implied that she understood what he hadn’t said, saw the emotions churning in his gut whenever he thought of Martin. But she also understood, as much as he did, that Fiona came first.

There was a small hallway off the front foyer of the museum that offered them some privacy, so he headed there and pulled out his cell phone. He found Martin’s phone number and dialed.

He tasted acid at the back of his throat as the phone rang. When a man’s voice answered, he almost couldn’t speak and had to swallow before he said, “Martin? This is Clay.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Crowley’s not available at this time. This is his assistant. May I help you?”

Clay felt both relief and frustration. “Please ask him to call his stepson as soon as possible. It’s about Fiona.” He gave his phone number, but he had a feeling Martin wouldn’t call him back. Not to be dramatic, but simply because to Martin, Clay didn’t matter.

When he hung up, Joslyn asked, “He wasn’t in?”

“I left a message, but Martin doesn’t always return my calls.” Actually, Martin almost never returned his calls.

“He might since this is about Fiona.”

“But if he’s involved in all this, he’s not going to want to talk to us.”

She sighed. “I’m afraid you’re right.”

They exited the front double doors of the museum into the bright sunlight, and the heat slapped him like a ten-foot wave. Clay had to pause to adjust to the change in temperature. That’s when he saw it.

Just a slight movement from the farthest end of the parking lot stretched out in front of them. Clay squinted in that direction, but didn’t see the movement again.

He’d lost the men following them, hadn’t he?

“What is it?” Joslyn’s voice was low but sharp. Her eyes also scanned the parking lot.

“I thought I saw...I don’t know what I saw.”

“How could they have found us?” Deep in thought, she began lightly rubbing a strange-shaped scar above her left eye. It seemed she wasn’t aware she was doing it. “Maybe your rental car...I’ll have to check it.”

“Check what?”

“Maybe they put a tracker on your car or mine when we were at Fiona’s office.”

“That’s kind of high-tech. Then again, if they’re the same guys who rigged Fiona’s house, I guess I believe they could do it.” Clay kept sweeping his gaze over the parking lot even as they headed to his car.

“Don’t unlock it just yet.” Joslyn began circling the car, checking the rims, finally dropping onto the sizzling asphalt to check the underside of the vehicle. “I don’t see anything.”

Clay hadn’t stopped looking around, but they were the only ones moving around out here. The other cars in the lot seemed empty, and he couldn’t see the white Taurus, although many of the cars were white. He’d noticed that about Phoenix—lots of white and light-colored cars, probably to combat the heat. “Let’s get out of here.”