Almost two hours later Hurricane and Jewel made their way into a small restaurant. He looked around, smiled, and nodded. “This looks like quite the place.”
“It’s an artist haunt,” she murmured. “A decent place to come, and, while they don’t really know me, they do.”
“Good choice. Not so close to your loft as to be an obvious choice for you, yet not so new and different as to stand out.”
“I don’t think anybody ever stands out in these places, but I could be wrong.”
They took a seat, and a waitress came over, handed them menus, gave them a perfunctory smile, and then quickly left.
“She didn’t seem to know you.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing.”
Sitting in the back, he looked around, as she watched him. “Do you see anything?” she asked him.
Startled, he turned to her and shrugged. “No, not really. Was it that obvious?”
“You’re doing the same thing I’m doing. We’re looking to see who might have recognized me and who might be surprised that I’m, you know, alive and well.”
“The thing is, if they know you’re alive and well, would they come and approach you or would they disappear and maybe even pull up stakes and leave town because of what they did?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Would you have taken a stranger home?” he asked after a moment.
She stared at him. “You mean, like, literally pick up a stranger and take him home to my bed? Ah, no, that’s not my style.”
“I didn’t think so, but …”
“No, absolutely no way.” He hesitated. She looked at him and asked, “Now what?”
“Just your … relationship status.”
“As in, do I have one? The answer is no.”
“Okay, and why not?”
“Because the last one was bad, and I didn’t want to get into another similar scenario, particularly when I was working so hard on my show.”
“You talk about the show as if it was pretty well a done deal.”
She hesitated and shrugged. “I don’t think it was a done deal at the time, but I think it was definitely … not in the bag, but something I was expecting.” Knowing he wanted her to say more, she continued. “And, no, I don’t think my ex would have had anything to do with this. He was one of those irrationally jealous types, and, when I started expressing interest in putting together pieces for a show, first he just laughed and scoffed at me. But, when I wasn’t deterred, he got really upset and immediately decided I must be sleeping with all the gallery owners in town, trying to get into a show. He went so far as to suggest that I was offering sexual favors to convince them to give me a shot, since my jewelry sucks so much and all.”
At that, Hurricane’s eyebrows went up. “So, insecure, jealous, and not nearly as talented.”
She laughed. “Something like that. Art brought us together. I don’t know what kept us together though,” she murmured.
“Circumstance is what often happens. So often people get into something like that, and it just seems like too much trouble to rock the boat and to get themselves out.”
She nodded. “I would never have thought that I’d wind up in a situation like that, but I guess we don’t really know what we’re dealing with, not until enough years go by. Then, at some point, you wake up and look back, shaking your head, wondering what the hell that was all about.”
“Yep, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell,” he agreed, with a smile.
“What about you?” she asked. “Do you have a relationship with someone who doesn’t have a problem with you bouncing around the country, helping other women?” Her tone was nothing if not shrewd.
“I don’t have one right now, and, in my world, it’s probably a whole lot better that way.”
“Or at least have one who would understand,” she corrected.
“Yeah, is that possible?” he asked, with a smile. “Anyway, some of the work I do takes me all over the globe.”
“So she just has to be self-confident enough in who she is to not hate that you’re gone a lot of the time. Surely that’s not too hard to find.”
“I haven’t found it yet,” he shared, with a bright smile. Just then the waitress came back and poured them coffee.
Jewel immediately pulled hers close and wrapped her hands around it.
Noticing her movements, he asked, “Are you feeling cold again?”
“No, I’m fine,” she replied. “That walk was good though. It’s just, now it feels like we have to get back to the other stuff that we really don’t want to deal with. We’ve talked about everything but that.”
“Anytime you want to talk about that other stuff, go for it.”
“That’s the problem. I don’t really have anything to say,” she stated. “It feels like I should have something to say, and I should know what that is, but I don’t.”
“I guess the question for me is, do you have any idea who might have done this to you?”
“Done this? You mean dumping me out on the highway? No, I don’t. Now I’m wondering if I was drugged or attacked somehow, and yet I didn’t know. It’s possible, but I don’t know by whom or what.”
“That’s always the question, isn’t it?” he noted. “Would you have opened the door to a delivery guy?”
“Well, yeah, I would have. I get deliveries as part of my business. And particularly when you don’t know of any looming danger out there, you do it without a thought. I mean, you only become wary after something has already happened. Most of my clients send in deliveries, and I return them in a similar fashion.”
“Very true,” he muttered. “Okay, and we already know you have no cameras at the loft.”
“No, after an incident, when I first moved in, where somebody got drunk one night and smashed them up, they were never replaced after that.”
“Of course not,” he murmured, with a nod. “That would be way too simple.”
“I’m sure you already checked that.”
“I did. Right after we got to your place, I checked and had the manager questioned about it. He’s supposed to be getting them fixed.”
“I’ve also heard that same story from him a couple times.”
“What about your house? You don’t stay there at all?”
“No, I don’t.” She hesitated, now staring at him. “It just feels wrong to stay there.” At that, his gaze narrowed, and she added, confused, “I don’t really know what that means.”
“That’s an intriguing statement to say that and then not know why.”
“It goes along with the rest of my life at the moment,” she noted, with a smile.
“Do you think you lived there with him, this ex-boyfriend of yours?”
“I wondered, but I don’t know. If you’re wondering if the relationship was violent, I don’t think so. I don’t have any memories of that, but again I don’t really know.”
“Maybe you should ask those friends of yours.”
Her face lit up. “They would know.” She immediately pulled out the phone Hurricane had loaned her and called them. When Charles answered, she asked him about her ex.
“From what we saw, he was pretty abusive to you, but it was more verbal, and you never really understood or saw it. We kept encouraging you to ditch him, but you didn’t.”
“Great. Thanks for that.”
“No problem,” he said cheerfully. “Where are you?”
“We’re having breakfast,” she replied, then named the restaurant.
“Oh, that’s a good place. You sound better.”
“I’m not sure I’m necessarily feeling all that much better,” she admitted. “We haven’t really solved any of the issues yet.”
“That’s all right. Give it time,” he replied comfortably. “None of this stuff will happen quickly, at least I’ve never found it to.”
“We’re trying to figure out who might have dumped me on the road in the middle of the night. Do you remember if I had a courier or anything come by earlier that day?”
“I don’t know. You certainly didn’t mention it, but then we didn’t talk that much, as you were really focused on your work and the show.”
“Right,” she murmured. “That’s the problem. I apparently isolated myself those last few days, trying to work hard to get caught up, but I ended up left for dead on the road and eventually in the hospital, all with no idea what happened. But, speaking of my work, we did figure out one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“The show, I’m in it. I was invited!”
“What? Oh my God. That’s wonderful news. I can’t wait to tell Lucas. But wait, your pieces? Were they damaged when your workshop was ransacked?”
“No, as it turns out, I’d already sent them in.”
“So your show’s okay?” he asked anxiously.
“It is, though I need to get down there to see how the setup is going.”
“When does it open?”
“Not for a couple days yet, though I need to double-check that too. My schedule is a mess, along with everything else.”
“Hey, give it time. All of this has been quite a shock. I’m over the moon for you about the show, though wondering why you didn’t tell us. Never mind. I already know. You wanted to surprise us, didn’t you?”
“That’s the current theory. Thank you. I’ll be in touch about the show.” And, with that, she hung up. “So apparently my ex was abusive, but more verbal than anything else,” she shared. “I do remember that we didn’t end on good terms. I wonder if that was when I quit staying at the other place. I don’t know.” At that, she watched Hurricane’s face twist.
“We’ll check into him.” He opened a notepad and said, “I’ll need his contact information.”
She frowned, thought about it for a moment, and then gave him the name and a phone number from memory. “I hate not having my phone,” she murmured. “I wish they had left me that much.”
He chuckled. “But then that’s practically leaving you everything. If you think about it, our whole worlds are on our phones. Anybody who wanted to cut you off from others in your world would do exactly that.”
She gave him a small nod. “Still, it’s a pain in the ass.”
“Oh, no doubt.” He chuckled. “It absolutely is. But you’re holding up and managing just fine.”
When the waitress brought over their order, she looked at it. “Did you order while I was on the phone?” she asked curiously.
He nodded. “No point in waiting.”
“No. Thank you. Huh. I just blanked out and didn’t even notice.” He nodded but didn’t say anything. “Okay, you need to tell me something.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Have I been blanking out?”
He hesitated and then nodded slowly. “I’m not sure that I would call it blanking out, but, just like I saw you do the little sleepwalking scenario, you’ve been like, … I guess blanking out in the midst of conversations.”
She took a deep breath. “Any idea why?”
“No, but I can hazard a guess.”
“I won’t like it, will I?”
“I don’t know if you will or not, but I’m not really good at burying my head in the sand or letting things get to me.”
She snorted. “I’ve noticed. You also prefer to employ the sledgehammer approach to getting the job done.”
At that, he burst out laughing. “That’s hardly fair. Anyway, would I say that the blanking out is all part of it? Yes. Is it somebody else’s energy? I’m not seeing any sign of it.”
At that, she let out her breath slowly, her gaze intense as she searched his face. “But you’re holding something back from me.”
He nodded. “I am, but so are you, so we’re even.”
“What am I holding back from you?” she snapped.
“Exactly who took you out on that highway and dumped you.”
Just then his phone rang, and she felt her insides go still, like a calm before a storm that broke everything.
*
Hurricane left that statement hanging, while he answered his phone. “Hi, Grant. What’s up?” he asked.
“The names you gave me, two of them were murdered.” He gave a few details.
Hurricane frowned and stared into the phone. “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” he stated in exasperation. “Of course I’m sure.”
Hurricane winced. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“Oh, that’s fine,” he muttered. “When it comes to you guys, I’ve almost come to expect it.”
He burst out laughing. “Sorry. Sort of. Anything on the others?”
“Still looking, but nothing definitive yet. In the meantime, I wanted to let you know what we’re looking at.” And, with that, he hung up.
Jewel leaned forward. “What was that all about?”
“Two of the names, Rhea and Anna.”
She winced. “Yes, what about them?”
“They were both murdered but on opposite sides of the country. One here in Maine and the other in California.”
She stared at him. “Is that even doable?”
“Yeah, sure it’s doable, though not necessarily convenient. For somebody who was a frequent traveler, like for work, or was deliberately traveling in order to avoid getting caught, that would be possible. But one problem.”
“What’s that?” she asked, staring at him.
“The time frame in between is harder to reconcile.”
“Meaning?”
“Anna died seventeen years ago and Rhea closer to twenty-seven.”