MOIRA CIRCLED PROSPECT Street for a few minutes before a spot opened up near Eddie V’s Prime Seafood Restaurant. She pulled into one of the angled parking spaces in front of the sidewalk. We each cracked our windows to keep the car from fogging up if we had to sit for a while. The salty funk of the ocean a street below floated into the car.
“How far are we away from Eddie V’s?” I asked, sorting through my memories of Prospect. A street I knew better than any other in La Jolla. Except for the one I grew up on in the tract home section of town.
“About five spaces north of Eddie V’s. Between it and the entrance to the Crab Catcher.” I appreciated Moira’s specificity. She understood my need to picture what I couldn’t see. “I have a good view of Eddie V’s from here.”
The restaurant was set back from the sidewalk and had magnificent ocean views. It opened a couple years before I left Muldoon’s and was its biggest competitor. Higher end and advantaged by a view that Muldoon’s didn’t have, it was winning the battle. The restaurant biz was brutal, especially in La Jolla, but Muldoon’s had managed to keep its doors open for almost fifty years since Turk’s late father first staked his claim on Restaurant Row.
“Did you learn anything else about Shay?” I asked Moira and stared in her direction through my blackout sunglasses.
“Twenty-nine. Lives in Bird Rock. Born in Bellevue, Idaho. Her mother, June, died three years ago at the age of fifty-three. Mother and father never married. The father, Colt Benson, died in 1997 at the age of forty-six.” Moira’s rapid-fire professionalism. “Shay went to college at Portland State. Graduated with a degree in Business Management in 2013. Worked in a Hilton hotel in Portland until she moved to San Diego eighteen months ago. Has held four restaurant and hotel jobs in San Diego since then. Hostess, waitress, front desk.”
“Twenty-nine. Fourteen years younger than Turk.” Just an observation. He’d dated younger women back when I knew him, but never that much separation.
“Very pretty from the photo Turk gave me and the ones I’ve seen on her limited social media footprint. Blond hair, blue eyes. Kind of a girl next door who blossomed into a beautiful woman. There’s a sweetness to her …”
Moira’s voice drifted off as if in thought. Maybe thinking about Rachel Donnelly, murdered by her physician husband after Moira reported to him that she was having an affair.
“Limited social media? No leads there?” I wanted to bring her back to the present.
“No. All of her posts are from her years in Portland.”
“You seem to have everything covered. What’s my role in this partnership?”
I’d avoided the elephant in the car up until now. Even as I realized how much I needed this gig with Moira to regain a sense of usefulness in my life, I needed to believe that she really thought I could be of use even more.
“What do you mean?” A bad liar. She knew what I meant.
“How can I help with the case?”
“As I said before, you already have helped with your read on Turk. Going forward, I’ll run things by you for your opinion. And if we have to give him bad news, I want you to be there with me.” A wavering exhale. “I need to know how he’ll react.”
Moira did need me. The fiasco with Doctor Donnelly had really shaken her. She didn’t want to make the decision alone about how to handle Shay Sommers if we had to tell Turk she was cheating on him. A familiar roil that I hadn’t felt since Santa Barbara filled my gut. What if I misread Turk and gave Moira bad advice? Shay Sommers was my responsibility now, too. Her life could be affected by a decision I made. The kind of decisions I thought I’d never have to make again. Decisions I didn’t want to make anymore, but knew I’d have to one more time. Moira needed me. And even with the turmoil in my gut, I needed to be needed.
“You got it, Boss.”
I angled my head away from Moira and toward the windshield. I’d made a habit of facing people that I talked to since I lost my eyesight and started wearing sunglasses at night. A faint shimmer of light haloed out the corner of my right eye, possibly above the thick temple of my sunglasses frame. I turned my head toward the light. It disappeared through the blackout lenses.
“Are we parked near a streetlight?” I asked.
“Yes, there’s one to your right about fifteen feet away.” Business staccato. A pause, then a slight lilt of optimism. “Why?”
“Just trying to get my bearings and adjust my memories of the street accordingly.” I couldn’t tell her about my light revelation. If it even really was that. Not yet. I wasn’t ready yet to say it out loud and make it real. Not until I was sure that the glimmer of light I could now see was some sort of path to regaining at least some eyesight. “Any action down at Eddie’s?”
I wanted to be sure Moira was looking in the other direction. I turned toward the passenger window and took off my sunglasses. There it was again. A circle of light around the dark ball was just like I saw when I looked at the chandelier at my house. The streetlight. I did the individual eye tests. Both registered the dim halo. A flicker of hope accelerated my heartbeat. I rubbed my eyes and put the sunglasses back on in case Moira had looked over at me. Even blind eyes get itchy.
“You know, you don’t have to wear the sunglasses on my account.” A gentle tone of voice she rarely used with me. “The scar is not as bad as you think it is. You’re the same Rick to me. Still a major pain in the ass. But’s that’s okay, I’m used to it.”
Moira had definitely softened to me since Santa Barbara. But I didn’t hear the faint pity I thought I’d heard in her voice this morning. This was affection. Comfort from a friend. The change still had me a little off balance.
“Thanks, but you have to admit they do make me look like the Terminator. I even have the same damaged face.” I turned toward her and did my best Arnold robot impression. “I’ll be back.”
“Yep. Still the same asshole.”
We sat silently for a while and the minutes ticked by.
“Bingo.” Moira broke the silence.
“She headed this way or toward Muldoon’s?”
“Muldoon’s.” The sound of her door clicking open. “I’m pursuing on foot. If she follows her routine, I’ll tail her to Muldoon’s and then to La Valencia. Maybe we can rap this up tonight.”
“Text me every fifteen minutes with updates.”
“Half hour.”
“I’ll be sitting in the car staring at nothing while you’re outside in the world tailing a target.” A little of the desperation I felt seeped into my voice. “Play along so I can, too.”
“Roger. Fifteen minutes.” The swish of Moira getting out of the car, then the thunk of the closed door.
An adrenal rush spiked my body, then bled out and left me hollow. The chase. And I couldn’t participate. A sounding board left behind waiting for updates and the opportunity to give an opinion.
I wanted back in the game.
The game that had broken me and nearly taken my life now beckoned me to reenter. To rejoin the quest for the truth that was in my blood. It hadn’t ended with the truth I found in Santa Barbara.
I just had to find a new way.
A smell folded in under the ocean brine through the window. Familiar. My heart double-tapped. Dove for Men deodorant coupled with a distinct human musk. The same scent I’d smelled today on this very street. The man who Moira didn’t notice, but I knew had been there. I faced the window. The scent hovered. Then a soft shuffle of footsteps toward the sidewalk.
The Invisible Man.