The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(4)
“What if he comes back?”
“The killer?” Catalina thought about that. “It would be a huge risk for him. He knows we can identify him.”
“But he also knows there’s no evidence that he committed murder.”
“True,” Catalina said. “Still, I don’t think he’ll want to take a chance like that if he can avoid it.”
“I wonder what he and the guy with the glasses were looking for.”
“Who knows?” Catalina said. “Dad told me that from time to time strangers still show up asking questions about what happened in the caves all those years ago.”
“Those two weren’t asking questions. You saw them, Cat. They knew where they were going, and they had some kind of high-tech gadget that they were trying to tune. They were looking for something.”
“I know,” Catalina said. She hugged her knees and studied the fog. “I wonder if the killer found what he was searching for. Maybe that’s why he disappeared.”
Olivia perked up. “In that case he doesn’t have any reason to come back.”
“If he does, we’ll tell our parents. That’s all we can do. Meanwhile, we have to get our act together and at least look like we have full control. Otherwise we’ll be stuck in this town for the rest of our lives. Dad says that on the outside they put people like us in institutions.”
“Ms. Trevelyan told Mom that you and I will probably have some really bad nightmares for a while on account of we’re at a sensitive state of development or something. She gave my mother a tisane to help me sleep.”
“She gave my mom some, too.”
Nyla Trevelyan was the local healer. If you broke a leg or developed heart problems or an infection, you made the trip down the mountain to a regular medical clinic. But if you were plagued with insomnia, parapsychological disorders or lack of control over your senses, you sought help from Nyla, because she was a member of the community. She understood that seeing visions and auras and other manifestations of the paranormal did not automatically mean you were crazy.
“Do you think we’re going to have some kind of PTSD from this whole thing?” Olivia said.
“Who knows? We’re from Fogg Lake. We’re weird.”
CHAPTER 2
Seattle, present day …
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Catalina said. She used the gentle, consoling voice she reserved for announcements that she knew would either break the client’s heart or send her into a rage. Or both. “I’m afraid our investigation turned up a lot of red flags. I’ll be blunt. Angus Hopper is not the man he pretends to be.”
That was putting it mildly, she thought. Hopper was a very bad piece of work. The background investigation she and Olivia had conducted had turned up strong evidence that he was a slick, smooth-talking con man who specialized in bilking vulnerable women out of their life savings. But that wasn’t the worst part. Hopper had a history of violence.
“I know I should be grateful to you,” Marsha Matson said. “You saved me from making what would no doubt have been the biggest mistake of my life. But I was hoping for a different outcome.”
Matson was a thin, tense woman in her early forties. A successful real estate broker, she had made a considerable amount of money in the hot Seattle market. But her personal life was a string of disappointments. She had been married and divorced twice. In both cases she had been dumped for younger women. Now Catalina had been obliged to inform her that her latest Mr. Right was another Mr. Wrong.
“I understand,” Catalina said. “My associate and I also hoped that the results would be more satisfactory. Here’s what we know: Most of what Hopper told you about his past is a lie. He never served in the military, and he never received any medals. He did not graduate from Stanford. He never made a fortune with a tech start-up. But I think you suspected the truth. That’s why you came to Lark and LeClair.”
“There were just too many stories about his exploits in various war zones, and that garbage about the tech start-up sounded a little too good to be true.” Marsha pushed herself up out of her chair and went to stand at the window. She stood quietly for a moment, watching the rain dampen the city. “I’ve been a businesswoman my entire adult life. I like to think I’ve got a fairly good bullshit detector, but it almost failed me this time.”
“You were right to listen to your intuition,” Catalina said. “Too many people fail to pay attention to what that inner voice is trying to tell them. They choose to believe what they want to believe, or they are afraid they’ll look foolish or paranoid if they act on what their intuition is telling them.”
It was that astonishing observation that had sparked Catalina and Olivia’s decision to go into the private investigation business. They had been brought up to trust their intuition. Everyone in Fogg Lake accepted it as a normal and natural thing. Sure, occasionally it provided misleading or confusing information, and there were certainly times when people deliberately chose to ignore a subtle warning sign, but for the most part they at least acknowledged the risk.
It had come as a startling revelation to discover that people in the outside world routinely overrode their intuition, especially when it came to matters of money and matters of the heart.
Catalina and Olivia had founded Lark & LeClair six months earlier, in the wake of what they privately labeled Catalina’s Total Fiasco. Catalina had had no option but to reinvent herself after the scandal that had cost her a job she loved and a relationship that, while admittedly not the kind to set the bed on fire, at least appeared to have a solid foundation.