Deadly Forecast: A Psychic Eye Mystery (40 page)

Dutch’s face had drained of color at the mention of the name and he looked anxiously
to the chopper. “He’ll have a detonator,” he said, his voice so choked with pain it
was hard to listen to. “We have to get to her, and we have to get to him!”

Gaston waved at the chopper. “You four go! We’ll work on getting him!”

In the next instant M.J. was in motion again, running toward the chopper, ducking
low to avoid the blades—but she had a terrible sinking feeling that all their efforts
wouldn’t be in time to save Abby.

C
andice and I stayed late the night of the third bombing, working any lead we could
think of, and all the while I couldn’t shake the terrible sinking feeling that no
matter what we did, it still wouldn’t be enough. I felt so strongly that time was
running out, and the danger that’d been swimming around my fiancé like a cunning shark
was almost ready to move in for the kill.

In desperation I suggested to Candice that we hunt down classmates of Mimi’s at the
community college, just to see if she had ever mentioned her boyfriend to any of them.
But after several calls, it was obvious that hardly anyone remembered Mimi let alone
knew that she’d had a boyfriend.

The next day yielded no additional clues. We headed to Mimi’s apartment complex and
had a talk with the apartment manager, but again, the only thing she remembered about
Mimi was that she’d dropped off her rent checks on time, and she’d been a quiet tenant
up until she’d blown herself up. I doubted that the woman remembered Mimi at all,
and had only looked in her records to see if Mimi Greene had paid her rent before
turning on the gas and lighting the match.

The thing that Candice and I had both registered from the visit with the woman, though,
was that she knew that Mimi had committed suicide. We wondered about that enough to
track down the fire marshal who’d issued the arson report and have a chat with him.
He remembered having a talk over the phone with some guy claiming to have been Mimi’s
fiancé. He said that the man had called him to inquire about the fire in her apartment,
but he couldn’t remember if the guy had even given his full name. We asked him to
check through his calendar in the hope that he might’ve written it down, and he promised
to get back to us if he either remembered it or found it on his calendar. We never
heard from him.

At the end of another long day I headed back to the bureau with Candice and we took
our carryout dinners into the conference room in search of a little peace and quiet,
because the office was teeming with our agents, those from Homeland, and the police.
The conference room, while empty of personnel, was littered with boxes and files,
all involving the bombings. You couldn’t turn on the news without hearing about the
case, and most of Austin was petrified to go out because locals were convinced that
the bombings were a terrorist cell at work.

With a weary sigh I sat down at the table and lifted the lid of my grilled shrimp
dinner. Candice was making me eat light so that I’d fit easily into my wedding dress…if
there was a wedding. Cat was so mad at me she was practically spitting fire, and she’d
now tasked Jenny Makeanote to pin me down on the remaining last-minute details. There
were half a dozen voice mails from the poor assistant, and at some point I knew I’d
need to put her out of her misery and call her back.

We ate in moody silence for a bit. Candice and I were both frustrated with the lack
of progress and not up for casual conversation. My gaze kept drifting to the clutter
on the table. Nearby
was a photo of someone who looked familiar to me. It was paper-clipped to a thin file.
Curious, I pulled it closer and saw that the picture was the driver’s license photo
of the photographer I’d ratted on at the FedEx bombing scene. The photog’s name was
Simon Salisbury, and lifting the lid on the folder, I discovered he had a criminal
record. Busted for drugs five years previously, he spent about six months in the county
lockup. “What’cha got there?” Candice asked me.

I looked up. “This is the file on that photographer we caught snapping pictures yesterday
at the crime scene.”

“Anything interesting?”

“He has a record. Drugs. Spent a little time at county.”

“How long ago?”

“Five years.”

Candice tapped her fork with her index finger thoughtfully. “He owns his own business,
right? The photography studio?”

“He does,” I said, immediately knowing where she was going with that. “But he doesn’t
look much like the sketch Haley gave us.” Haley had sat with an artist who’d drawn
up a mock-up of the elusive Buzz. The sketch was pretty generic, showing a round-faced
man with a thick neck and flat nose. He could have been anyone, really.

“Oh, that sketch is ridiculous,” Candice scoffed. “It doesn’t even look like a real
person. I mean, it’s so generic that it
could
be this dude,” Candice said, leaning over to look at the photo.

My radar wasn’t buying that theory, however. “I don’t think it’s him.”

“No?”

I shook my head. “We should still run it by Haley to make doubly sure, but…” My voice
trailed off.

“What?”

I closed the folder and stared at Simon’s photo. I didn’t like
him. He seemed like a sort of weaselly character and his energy was suspicious—like
he often skirted the line between right and wrong. “I’m not sure,” I said. “But I
feel like he’s connected to all this somehow.”

“Connected? You mean like he’s connected to this Buzz guy?”

A small lightbulb went off in my mind. “Yes!” Turning to her excitedly, I said, “I
think he knows who this Buzz guy is!”

Candice checked her watch, then pushed her partially eaten dinner aside and slid the
folder out of my hands. She opened the flap and trailed her finger down the page,
which was a list of general information collected by the agent who’d interviewed Simon.
“Let’s give him a call,” Candice said, pulling the conference room phone close to
her so that she could dial. She waited through the rings and then mouthed, “Voice
mail.” She left a message for Salisbury to call her, then hung up and gathered her
purse and the file.

“Let’s go to Haley’s first, then see if Simon’s home.”

We met Haley in her living room with her parents sitting on either side of her protectively.
We showed her the picture of Simon Salisbury, but her face showed no sign that she
recognized him. “Who is he?” she asked.

“Someone who may know Buzz,” Candice said casually. “Have you ever seen him before?”

Haley shook her head. “No. He looks creepy.”

I hid a smirk. Haley was pretty sharp. “You’re sure you’ve never seen him before?”
I pressed. “He was never in the store with Buzz?”

Haley shook her head again. “Buzz always came in alone.”

“Did he ever mention having a friend who owned a photography studio?”

Haley shook her head for a third time.

Still, I was convinced there was a connection. We thanked
Haley and her parents for their time, then headed out in search of the photographer.

We went to the address listed on the info sheet, but there was no sign of either him
or his car. We then headed over to the crime scene in case he’d decided to ignore
the crime-scene tape and had entered his studio, but the entire strip mall was dark
and quiet—the burned-out hull of the FedEx store still filling the air with an acrid
smell.

“Where is this guy?” I wondered.

Candice yawned. It was going on nine o’clock and we’d already had a loooong couple
of days. “Let’s camp out at his house until ten and see if he comes home.”

After stopping at a nearby Starbucks, we did just that, but the stakeout was fruitless.
We waited until midnight and Simon never came home.

Calling it a night, we headed back to Candice’s, finding Brice asleep on the couch,
surrounded by files. Candice gently woke him and made sure my “bed” was free of clutter,
then promised to help track down Simon with me the next day.

We had a slow start the next day, the three of us waking up exhausted and grumpy.
I dug through my suitcase for something appropriate to wear, but I’d packed most of
my business outfits and sent them on to the new house, so in the end I had to settle
for jeans and a waist-length leather jacket. At least I had my black boots with me.
Candice gave me a subtle once-over when she came out of her room, but she didn’t comment.
Still, I made sure to let her know that my business attire had been packed up.

She moved to the hall closet and retrieved a sharp-looking scarf. “Here,” she said,
winding it around my neck. “It’ll dress you up a bit.”

We made our way to Simon’s and parked in front of his house, nibbling on pumpkin spice
muffins and sipping more Starbucks
coffee. The air was crisp and the sky was gloomy—perfect weather for Halloween, and
decidedly imperfect for a wedding. It was like the universe was trying to tell me
something.

Salisbury didn’t show up at all, and around noon we decided to head back to the office
to see if anything else had come up. Brice was in his office with Gaston and the chief
of police along with a stern-looking man in a black suit and shiny gold tie. I assumed
he was part of Homeland Security.

My phone buzzed. It was Cat. For once I took the call. “Abby,” she began, in that
voice that said, “I will kill you if you say no….”

“Hi, Cat,” I said, trying to muster up that same enthusiasm that I’d been lacking
for weeks.

“I need to take your final measurements, and you have yet to sit with the hairstylist!
The makeup artist also needs to settle on a palette for you, and if I know you, you
have yet to get yourself a manicure and pedicure.
And
I need you to pick out which headpiece you’re going to wear. You keep putting all
these things off, and you’re making me so stressed-out!”

Cat’s voice broke with emotion and I felt myself stiffen. I knew I drove her crazy,
but I hadn’t realized I was actually making her break down. “I can come right over,”
I told her.

Candice turned her head to look at me, her brow raised.

Cat sniffled. “I need Candice too. She has to go through a dry run with the stylist
and makeup artist.”

“We’re on our way,” I said, reaching for Candice’s arm. Her eyes widened and she began
to shake her head, so I clamped my hand firmly on to her elbow. “We’ll see you in
fifteen minutes.”

We arrived at Cat’s offices and were met at the elevator by Jenny. She was holding
a basket and when we stepped off the elevator, she pushed the basket forward and said,
“Mrs. Cooper-Masters would like you to place your cell phones in here.”

Candice laughed. Not nicely. Sort of evilly. That worried me. “Of course!” I said,
immediately dumping my phone into the basket.

Candice crossed her arms in a move that said, “I double-dog-dare you to take away
my phone.”

Jenny gulped, but the young woman held her ground, continuing to hold the basket out
expectantly.

I nudged Candice with my shoulder. “Come on, Cassidy. It’s only for an hour or two.”

“What if there’s a break in the case?” she said.

“Then there are a hundred agents and police who can act on it.”

Candice took in a deep breath and let it out slow, all the while glaring hard at Jenny
Makeanote. Still, Cat’s assistant stood her ground, and I gave her huge props for
that. Maybe she didn’t know that Candice had a black belt in judo. And maybe she didn’t
know that my partner had also trained with the merchant marines. And maybe she didn’t
know that Candice’s hands were registered with the FBI as lethal weapons.

…Okay, so I made that last part up, but seriously, Candice wasn’t someone you stood
up to if you knew how formidable (deadly) she could be. And yet, Candice at last handed
over her phone, and when she did, I saw the slightest hint of approval in her eyes
for little Miss Makeanote.

We walked to the back of the suite, and this time I was definitely convinced that
Cat had hired more people. She was building up her Austin office really quickly. Too
quickly for my taste. I loved Cat, but I loved to love her at a distance…say, the
distance between Austin and Boston.

The minute we walked through the door of the conference room, we were pretty much
assaulted. There was the hairstylist, dress stylist, seamstress, makeup artist, manicurist,
aesthetician, and of course my sister acting like the ringmaster at Ringling Bros.

She deftly issued orders, talked on the phone, and constantly checked the weather
reports for the weekend—which held a small ray of hope. “We might get a bit of clearing
skies by midafternoon,” she said. “Which means we’ll want to photograph you and Dutch
after the ceremony rather than before. You might be a little late to the reception,
but a good wedding photo is worth making the guests wait a bit.”

Cat kept us for the entire day. At one point, Candice and I simply glanced at each
other across the room and dissolved into laughter. We were both so tired, anxious,
and worried about solving the case that Cat and her circus were actually the perfect
ridiculous distraction.