Mitchell’s clutching the steering wheel so tightly he’s leaving finger impressions in the leather.
“Maybe you should let me do the talking,” I say.
“Yeah, as in introduce yourself and read the bastard on the spot. I want this case closed.” He cuts the engine and gets out of the Explorer.
I meet him in front of the car. “It’s not that simple. I saw Tanner getting yelled at for hitting on Maggie, but I don’t think he was stupid enough to do something to her.”
“Are you saying your vision was a dead end?”
“No. It means something.”
He sighs, which is the most frustration he ever shows for my unclear visions. “Are you still trying to expand your abilities?”
I walk up to the door to the apartment building. “Always, but I’m not overdoing it if that’s what you’re thinking.” He’s seen how that can mess with my ability to interpret my visions. He must be convinced that’s happening again now.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” He turns toward me, his hand on the door.
“I appreciate you wanting to, but I’ve got this.” Having him there while I practice would only be a distraction.
“Is Jez helping?” He knows me too well.
“Yeah. Now enough about that. Let’s go talk to Tanner so I can hopefully make sense of what my brain is trying to tell me.”
He opens the door, holding it for me to enter first. Mitchell got Tanner’s address while walking Jez, so we know he lives on the fourth floor in apartment 412. We take the elevator up, and as discussed, Mitchell stays one step behind me so I can take the lead on questioning Tanner. I raise my hand and knock three times.
Tanner comes to the door in workout clothes consisting of a sleeveless top and basketball shorts. He looks back and forth between us. “Can I help you?”
“Are you Tanner Montgomery?” I ask, even though I recognize him from my vision.
“That’s me. Who’s asking?” He looks me up and down, and I can feel Mitchell tense behind me.
“My name is Piper Ashwell.” I extend my hand to Tanner, who looks hesitantly at me before shaking my hand.
“Come on, Maggie. Your husband would never find out. Just coffee. That’s all I’m asking for.”
“No. I told you, Tanner. I’m happily married. Now please leave me alone.”
Tanner’s hand is yanked from mine. When I open my eyes, Mitchell has Tanner by the front of his shirt.
“Stop.” I pull Mitchell off him. “What the hell are you doing?”
“You didn’t... He...” Mitchell’s chest is heaving.
“I don’t know who the hell you are, but I’m calling the cops,” Tanner says, fixing his rumpled shirt.
“Don’t bother. He’s a police detective,” I say, dipping my head in Mitchell’s direction.
“I wish I’d videoed this. I could have your badge. You assaulted me for no reason.”
“I stopped you from assaulting Piper,” Mitchell says, keeping his body positioned between Tanner and me.
“What are you talking about?” My vision was seconds long at most. What could Tanner have tried to do to me in that time span? Mitchell’s letting what he knows about Tanner’s father cloud his judgment. “Maybe you should wait downstairs.”
“Not a chance in hell.” Mitchell’s gaze is locked on Tanner.
I step to the side so I can see Tanner without the back of Mitchell’s head blocking my view. “Mr. Montgomery, are you aware that your coworker Maggie Burns is missing?”
Tanner eyes Mitchell for a moment before returning his gaze to me. “Maggie? No. I haven’t seen her since work on Thursday. I have the early shift on Fridays, and today is my day off.”
“Did you happen to call her on Thursday night?” I ask.
“Call her? No. Like I said, we were both at work Thursday night. There would be no reason for me to call her. Besides, I don’t have her number.” He’s the picture of calm, which means he’s either innocent or a really good actor.
“Do you know if she had any plans for after work?”
He shrugs. “We didn’t talk much.”
More like Maggie didn’t talk to him much. He definitely tried to talk to her.
“I think I remember her complaining about a headache.”
Did she tell him that, or does he stalk her social media and saw her post? He doesn’t follow her online, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t visit her pages.
“How much did you two interact that night?”
“I work in the meat department, and she’s in produce. We run into each other from time to time, but that’s about it.” He narrows his eyes at me. “How did you find out where I live?”
“We were checking out Maggie’s personal belongings at the store, and I asked for a list of employees working on Thursday night. We’re following up with as many people as we can track down to see if anyone has information that might be helpful in finding Maggie.”
Mitchell gives me a look, most likely because I sound like him. I don’t really want to let Tanner in on what it is I can do, though.
Tanner leans on the doorframe. “Well, sorry I can’t be of any help. Do you have a card or number if I think of anything?” His question is directed at me, but Mitchell produces his card and holds it out to him.
“If you think of anything, you can call me,” he says in a stern tone.
“I’m not interested in talking to you,” Tanner responds before his gaze turns to me. “You, on the other hand, are welcome to stop by any time. Alone,” he adds before closing the door.
“Man, I want to punch that guy right in the jaw.” Mitchell turns away from the door, pocketing his card.
“Relax.” I follow him back to the elevator. “I didn’t see anything but him asking out Maggie. She turned him down, and it obviously wasn’t the first time, but I didn’t sense that she was afraid of him at all.”
“I doubt you had time to sense much.”
“No, I didn’t, thanks to you. What was that about anyway? Why did you break my contact with him?”
He jabs the button to call the elevator and then stares up at the ceiling. “You didn’t see the way he looked at you when you were holding his hand.”
“First, I wasn’t holding his hand. I was shaking it.”
“Tell that to him. He was way too happy that you weren’t letting go. He’s just lucky I can’t read minds or...”
“Or what? You’d risk your badge because some guy had a perverted thought about me? What the hell, Mitchell? I’m not helpless, you know. I can handle myself. Believe it or not, I’ve had guys have impure thoughts about me before, and I’m still here to tell the tale.”
“This isn’t a joke, Piper. Knowing his father was a...” The elevator arrives with three other people in it, cutting off our conversation for the time being.
Dad has dinner waiting for us when we arrive back at the office. “I figured neither one of you bothered to stop for food all day.”
“You’re a lifesaver,” I say, slumping into my desk chair and digging into the chicken Caesar salad waiting for me.
“Any luck with Tanner?” Dad eyes me and then Mitchell, sensing the tension between us.
“I might have had more luck if this one”—I jab my plastic fork in Mitchell’s direction—“hadn’t lost it.”
“What did you do?” Dad accuses him.
“I protected your daughter. Jeez, I’d think someone would be happy about that.” He shoves a huge chunk of chicken into his mouth.
“I don’t need you to protect me. I’m not—” I stop myself from saying “your mom” because Dad doesn’t know that Mitchell’s mother was psychic. He doesn’t know Mitchell’s insane need to be around me stems from the fact that he couldn’t save his mother. “I can take care of myself.”
“She’s right, you know. The more you try to intervene, the more she’s going to fight you on it.” Dad turns to me, his face beaming with pride.
“Fine. What’s the plan from here? Do you suspect Tanner at all?” Mitchell reaches for his bottled water on my desk.
“I want to talk to Maggie’s husband. See if Maggie complained about Tanner at home. I didn’t feel like Tanner was a threat. He hit on Maggie, yes, but I don’t think he ever took it beyond asking her out.”
“Who asks out a married woman?” Mitchell shakes his head. “I really don’t like that guy. Are you sure—?”
“I didn’t get anything else from reading him. I think I’d know if he were the one who took Maggie.” Sure, my visions have been unclear before, and in my last case one of the prime suspects was able to withhold information from me, but that was because I was taxing my abilities. I’m not doing that anymore. Trying to expand on what I can see has actually been getting a little easier. The other night, I sensed Jezebel was going to get sick after she ate some of my leftover Chinese food. I managed to get her outside before she threw up on any carpeting in my apartment.
Mitchell has the decency not to bring up times I’ve missed things. Instead, he eats in silence. In fact, he doesn’t say another word for the rest of the evening.
Sunday morning, Dad accompanies Mitchell and me to Maggie Burns’s house to talk to her husband, Glen. They have a small place just outside of Weltunkin. It’s not in a community, giving them some privacy since the road they live on is a back road and not well traveled by the looks of it. Dad parks in the gravel driveway and immediately checks to make sure none of the loose stones kicked up and scratched the underneath side of his BMW. Men and their cars. I’ll never understand it.
The house is a brick bi-level with black shutters. I walk up the front steps and ring the doorbell. Mitchell is right behind me, but he’s not very talkative today. I guess my comment about not needing his protection really got to him. He needs to get over it, though, or we won’t be working many cases together after this one.
A man in his early thirties with blond hair answers the door. He’s wearing workout clothes, and his upper lip and brow are glistening with beads of sweat. “Can I help you?”
“Mr. Burns,” Dad says, “I’m Thomas Ashwell. We spoke on the phone this morning. This is my daughter, Piper, and Detective Brennan from the Weltunkin PD.”
“Oh.” Recognition washes over Glen’s face. “Yes. Please come in. I thought I’d be able to finish my workout and get cleaned up before you arrived, but I must have lost track of time.” He steps aside and motions for us to go up the stairs.
“He seems awfully calm for a guy whose wife is missing,” Mitchell mumbles as we ascend the steps.
I can’t deny he’s got a point. Although it’s possible Glen’s workout was to burn off some pent-up emotions over his wife’s disappearance, so I’m not going to accuse him of having his wife kidnapped just yet.
The inside of the house is much more impressive than the outside. Either Maggie or Glen—my senses are telling me it’s Maggie—has a great eye for design. Everything has such contrast in bright white, pure black, and medium gray tones. A contemporary light fixture hangs from the ceiling in the entryway, and the floors are all hardwood.
“Your home is lovely,” I say, turning toward the living room when I reach the top of the stairs.
Glen follows us up, wiping his brow with the bottom of his shirt. “Thank you. It’s all Maggie.” The warmth in his tone at the mention of his wife tells me he loves her.
“Mr. Burns, when was the last time you spoke to Maggie?” I ask, taking a seat on the edge of the black leather couch.
He takes a deep breath and holds onto the edge of the railing as if for support. “I think it was about a half hour before her shift was supposed to end.” His last word is choked by a loud swallow.
“I understand it’s difficult to talk about,” I say. “Just please know we are doing everything we can to find out what happened to her Thursday night.”
Glen nods. “She mentioned some sale on ground beef. She was going to talk to the butcher about getting a family pack for a party we were supposed to host yesterday.”
Mitchell’s already rigid form straightens further at the mention of the butcher. But I’m not convinced of anything. We already know Tanner was at work with Maggie that night. The fact that she spoke to him doesn’t incriminate him in any way.
“Mr. Burns, were you aware that the butcher, Tanner Montgomery, was hitting on your wife?” Mitchell asks.
Glen’s head whips in Mitchell’s direction. “She told me he hits on a lot of the women who work there, but she never said he hits on her. I assumed her wedding ring deterred him.”
“It would deter most, but Tanner—”
“What Detective Brennan is trying to say”—I stand up and glare at Mitchell before addressing Glen again—“is Mr. Montgomery has a habit of making inappropriate remarks to all the women he works with.”
Glen’s gaze remains on Mitchell. “Do you think this butcher—Tanner Montgomery—did something to my wife?” His fists are clenched at his sides.
“We don’t know anything for sure yet, Mr. Burns,” Dad says, being the voice of reason as usual.
Time to come clean. “Mr. Burns, I should tell you why I’m working on this case along with the Weltunkin PD. You see, I’m a private investigator, and I also happen to be psychic.”
“Psychic?” He takes a step back as if I have some rare disease he might catch from being in my presence. “My wife’s life is at stake, and I’m supposed to trust a psychic to save her?”
I’m surprised when Mitchell doesn’t immediately come to my defense, but then again, I told him to stop trying to protect me. “Mr. Burns, I’ve solved many missing persons cases along with the Weltunkin PD. Now, you may not be a believer, but if you want your wife to be found before anything truly awful happens to her, I suggest you get me a personal belonging of hers so I can try to locate her.”
“Personal belonging? What are you talking about? Why are you people here? Maggie is missing. That butcher probably took her and—”
“We’ve already questioned Mr. Montgomery, and we are fairly certain he had nothing to do with your wife’s disappearance,” Dad says, holding up a hand, warning Glen to calm down.
“Fairly certain?” Glen huffs and drags a hand through his hair. “Oh, well if you’re fairly certain, then I’ll be sure to sleep well tonight! We’ve got a psychic on the case. No need to worry about Maggie being hacked up into slabs of beef by some lunatic butcher. No! Not at all!”
“Enough,” Mitchell says, positioning himself directly in front of Glen. “You might have your suspicions about Tanner and biased opinions about psychics, but you don’t get to insult the woman who is your best shot at finding your wife. Are we clear on that?”
Dad eyes me, and I quickly look away.
“Mr. Burns, my abilities lie in reading objects. I’ve been able to find missing persons this way. If you’d just let me show you what I can do, I think you’ll feel better about my involvement in the case.”
Glen stares at me like I’m the headliner in a freak show. “Get the hell out of my house. All of you.”
Mitchell takes a step toward him. “Don’t—”
I grab the back of Mitchell’s jacket and yank him away from Glen. “Let’s go. The man wants us to leave, so we’re going to leave.”
Dad’s already reaching for the front door. I push Mitchell out of the house behind him. But before leaving, I turn back to Glen. “Mr. Burns, I’m going to find your wife. And when I do, I’ll look forward to your apology.”
I slam the door so I don’t have to listen to his retort.