I nodded. They would. “Anyone else at Starbucks see your wife?”
“No one.”
“What about customers?”
He shook his head. “By the time I went looking for her, anyone who might have seen her was long gone.”
“Did you ask around?”
“I did. Like a crazy man. No one had seen her. This isn’t your typical Starbucks, you know. People were coming and going, not staying long. There weren’t, you know, those hipster geeks in there with their laptops. This Starbucks straddles Corona with Yorba Linda.”
I nodded. I knew the area, of course. It was actually a rather great divide, many miles of empty, although beautiful, land, with one lush county segueing into another, harsher, drier, hotter county. The Starbucks wouldn’t be your typical hangout for moms and students and guys with square glasses and thick, mangy beards.
No, this Starbucks was a stopover, a place to get coffee while waiting out traffic. Or to use the bathroom. This Starbucks was an outpost. An outlier. Other than the occasional morning commuter who hit up this Starbucks, employees would rarely, if ever, see the same customer twice.
“So, no one else remembered her?”
“No.”
“Just the one employee?”
He nodded, said nothing. His aura was crackling with blue energy, split occasionally with streaks of yellow. I wasn’t sensing any deception on his part. I felt that I could trust his memory, and I felt that I could trust him, too, although I didn’t like the part about him considering hurting her.
“Did you ever hurt your wife?” I asked.
“I told you, she just disappeared—”
“That wasn’t my question. Did you ever hit your wife? Hurt her in any way?”
“No, never.”
“Did you fight often?”
“What’s often? We had your typical fights, I guess.”
Despite my desire to stay out of his thoughts, I dipped in quick enough to see him yelling at her—“going off” on her, as he called it. Yeah, he fought like a crazy man. His face twisted. And, no, he didn’t hit her. At least, not in the memories I saw. But he was verbally abusive.
“So, what happened next?” I asked, easing back out of his mind again, to my great relief.
“I called the police. Reported her missing.”
The police had come out. Had interviewed him and the workers. A massive search had been conducted. The search had lasted for days, and I even remembered it. Whether or not she had been found hadn’t made the news. Or, if it had, I was too knee-deep in my own issues to have noticed.
After three days, the search had been called off. There were no leads, nothing to indicate that his wife had ever left the Starbucks. There was video surveillance of her going in, but none of her leaving. A true mystery.
“I didn’t kill her, Ms. Moon.”
I knew that he didn’t kill her. But there was always the slim possibility that his memory had been replaced with a false memory, one so powerful that even his own mind believed it. But I doubted that. Then again, he could have been delusional, of course. Mentally ill. But I doubted that, too. His aura was normal enough. Those with mental health issues had very erratic, scattered auras. Distorted auras that flashed with many colors. His pulsed blue and yellow, and mostly blue. Blue was the color of trust. At least, according to my own experience.
Not to mention, I had seen his memories. Hell, I had lived through them. And then, there was the minor issue that his wife was never seen leaving Starbucks.
“My wife needs help, Ms. Moon. Something has happened to her. Something very, very bad, and the police aren’t doing a damn thing about it.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. The detective on the case, last I heard, was dead.”
“Dead? How?”
“I have no clue. They won’t tell me anything, other than they’re working on it.”
“Are you a suspect?”
“They say only that I’m a person of interest. That all husbands are when wives go missing.”
True enough. And as I contemplated his words, I checked the time on my cell. Ah, hell. I was going to be late again. Damn.
“Will you help me?” he asked.
“Yes. But first, I need to pick up my kids.”
Chapter Four
Principal West was a middle-aged man with whom I once had a run-in when Danny had told me I was not allowed to pick up our kids from school. Today, the principal gave me the eye, but this time, he did not try to prevent me from picking up my kids.
I waved politely, ducked my head a little, and mouthed, “Sorry I’m late” through the minivan windshield. The principal wasn’t happy—and probably made a noise that sounded like, “harrumph,” although I could only guess at the noise, since my hearing, although enhanced, wasn’t magical.
When I came to a full stop, the principal, who always waited with students for their delinquent parents—I was late far, far too often—finally released my kids to me.
Anthony’s jeans might have been hanging down a little in a style that I didn’t approve of. Anthony slid into the back seat, and immediately went to work on his Game Boy.
Tammy was sporting a frowning face, in a style I definitely didn’t approve of. Since it was her week to sit in the front seat, she rode shotgun.
“I’m almost thirteen, Mom. Thirteen. I don’t need a principal to wait with me for my mother. It’s so embarrassing.”
“Your face is embarrassing,” said Anthony.
I waved to the principal again, who gave me a tight, half-smile and turned his back on me as I pulled out of the parking lot.
Once we were cruising down Rosecrans, I looked at Anthony in the rearview mirror. “Apologize to your sister,” I said to him.
“No.”
Aghast, I looked in the mirror again. “What?”
“Just playing. Sheesh, can’t you take a joke?”
“No, I can’t. Now apologize.”
“Fine. Sorry, butthead,” he said in Tammy’s direction.
“Give me your Game Boy.”
He did, passing it to me between the seats. I opened the center console and deposited it within, along with untold work-related receipts, boxes of gum and one mostly covered box of cigarettes. I quickly shut the console again.
“He just called me a butthead, Mom.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You said it and thought it.”
“I can think anything I want. There’s no law about thinking.”