If Thomas was what Alice Metcalf had been running from, maybe all I need to do to find her is locate what she’d been running to.
Alice Metcalf had seemingly vanished off the face of the earth. Had Gideon Cartwright gone with her?
I didn’t really mean to call Serenity. It just sort of happened.
One minute I was holding the phone, and the next, she was picking up on the other end. I swear, I don’t even remember dialing, and I hadn’t had a single drop to drink.
What I wanted to ask when I heard her voice was: Have you heard from Jenna?
I don’t know why I was even concerned. I should have let her stomp off like a kid throwing a tantrum and said good riddance.
Instead, I couldn’t sleep at all last night.
I think that’s because the minute Jenna first stepped into my office, with that voice that haunted my dreams, she ripped off a Band-Aid so fast that I started to bleed again. Jenna may be right about one thing—this is my fault, because I was too stupid to stand up to Donny Boylan ten years ago when he wanted to bury an inconsistency in the evidence. But she’s wrong about another—this isn’t about her, finding her mother. It’s about me, finding my way.
The thing is, I don’t have a great track record with that.
So there I was, holding the phone, and before I knew it, I was asking Serenity Jones, the so-called lapsed psychic, to come with me on a fact-finding mission to Gordon’s Wholesale Produce Market. It wasn’t until after she agreed, with game-show-contestant enthusiasm, to pick me up and be my de facto partner that I understood why she was the one I’d reached out to. It wasn’t that I thought she would actually be helpful in my investigation. It was because Serenity knew how it felt not to be able to live with yourself if you didn’t right what you had done wrong.
Now, an hour later, we’re in her little sardine can of a car, driving to the edge of Boone, where Gordon’s Wholesale has been in existence for as long as I can remember. It is the kind of place that sells mangoes in the dead of winter, when the whole world is dying for a mango and the only place growing them is Chile or Paraguay. Their summertime strawberries are the size of a newborn’s head.
I go to turn on the radio, just because I don’t know what to say, and find a little paper elephant folded and tucked into the corner.
“She made that,” Serenity says, and she doesn’t have to say Jenna’s name for me to understand.
The paper slips out of my fingers, like a Chinese football. It arcs in a perfect loop into Serenity’s massive purple purse, which gapes open on the console between us like Mary Poppins’s carpetbag. “You heard from her yet today?”
“No.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Because it’s eight A.M. and she’s a teenager.”
I squirm in the passenger seat. “You don’t think it was because I was an asshole yesterday?”
“After ten or eleven A.M., it will be. But right now I think it’s because she’s sleeping like any other kid during summer vacation.”
Serenity flexes her hands on the steering wheel, and I find myself staring—not for the first time—at the furry cover she has stretched over it. It’s blue, and has googly eyes and white fangs. It looks a little like the Cookie Monster, if the Cookie Monster had swallowed a steering wheel. “What the hell is that thing?” I ask.
“Bruce,” Serenity answers, as if it’s a stupid question.
“You named your steering wheel?”
“Honey, the longest relationship I’ve ever had is with this car. Given that your closest companion has the first name of Jack and the last name of Daniel’s, I don’t think you’re in a position to judge.” She smiles sunnily at me. “Damn, I’ve missed this.”
“Bickering?”
“No, police work. It’s like we’re Cagney and Lacey, except you’re better looking than Tyne Daly.”
“I’m not touching that one,” I mutter.
“You know, in spite of what you think, what you and I do isn’t all that different.”
I burst out laughing. “Yeah, except for that desire for measurable scientific evidence thing that I have.”
She ignores me. “Think about it: We both know what questions to ask. We both know what questions not to ask. We are fluent in body language. We live and breathe intuition.”
I shake my head. There’s no way what I do could be compared to what she does. “There’s nothing paranormal about my job. I don’t get a vision, I focus on what’s right in front of me. Detectives are observers. I see a person who can’t look me in the eye and I try to figure out whether it’s grief or shame. I pay attention to what makes someone cry. I listen, even when no one’s speaking words,” I say. “Did it ever occur to you that there is no such thing as clairvoyant? That maybe psychics are just really good at detective work?”