Double Take

He brought Ruth against him, momentarily distracted with her warm breath on his neck. “It’s hard,” he said. “Now my mind jumped to David Caldicott. I know if he left willingly it was because he was involved in Christie’s disappearance and our visit scared him badly.”

“So you think he took off, maybe left the country?”

“Or he didn’t leave willingly,” Dix said. “He told someone that you and I had been to see him. You know it had to be Pallack, there’s simply no one else. And Pallack panicked? About what?”

“David’s been missing only a day and a half. You spoke to the Atlanta detective who’s on the case.”

“Yeah, the cops blew off Whitney Jones’s pleas for help yesterday, stating the party line—a day hadn’t even passed, and did they have a fight, was there another guy, another girl? But then, bless her heart, Whitney was bright enough to tell them about David meeting with the FBI.”

Ruth grinned down at him. “That sure woke them up, and a very good thing. You know they’re digging to locate him since the FBI is involved, for whatever reason. What did you tell the detective?”

“A bit of the truth, enough to whet his curiosity.” Ruth said, “Well, if they can’t find him, I know we will, Dix.” He chewed on his misery for a moment, then Ruth said, “What did you think of our séance this evening?”

What he’d felt had been stark moments of anger—at being there wasting his time, having to deal with what he couldn’t explain, couldn’t see, didn’t want to begin to accept, but he said only, with some contempt in his voice, “I was too tense even to be entertained by Tammerlane’s show. It was a waste of time. On the other hand, I finally got to meet a couple of crackpot psychics.” He added, “They were interesting characters, I’ll have to admit that.”

“So you think it was all B.S.?”

“No,” he said, “that’s oversimplifying it. But all the discussion about telepathy, Wallace Tammerlane sitting over there, humming, for God’s sake, trying to communicate to another psychic, and all of us sitting on the sofas, holding hands like a bunch of dummies, with the light dimmed.” He sighed. “All so Tammerlane could reach Kathryn Golden with his mind.”

And he snorted his disgust. Ruth was so charmed she kissed him. She raised her head, touched a fingertip to his mouth, and said, “You certainly have a way of cutting right to the heart of things, don’t you? Haven’t you told me how you sometimes felt Christie close by and you told her things about what was happening with you and the boys?”

“That’s nothing more than my subconscious self trying to find some comfort.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right. Go to sleep, Dix.” She kissed him again, settled back against his side, her head on his shoulder, and about thirty seconds later she was down for the count herself.

In the last room down the hall, Savich quirked an eyebrow at Sherlock over Sean’s head. He was snuggled between them, his toy Porsche Carrera tucked against his chest, snoring lightly. “I like the bright red,” Savich said, sighing. He could still see his own beloved Porsche exploding in a raging ball of flame in the midst of utter chaos that black night at the Bonhomie Club, leaving nothing to salvage but a single shiny hubcap that had rolled down the sidewalk. The hubcap was hanging on the wall in his garage.

Sherlock said, “It’s been what, three months? I’m thinking you’ve mourned your Porsche long enough. Maybe it’s time for you to graduate from driving my Volvo. My Volvo feels your pain, and it lowers her self-esteem when you compare her to the Porsche, and find her so lacking. I heard one of the agents say driving the Volvo was going to break your spirit.”

Savich very nearly shuddered whenever he had to drive the stalwart Volvo. He fondly recalled the sheer power of his Porsche, its temper when another car got too close, its spurt of insane speed when he needed it. He sighed. “It always seems like we’re up to our ears in something—like now. Here we are in San Francisco dealing with psychics and assassins.”

“We’ll get through it, we always do. Hey, maybe by this weekend.”

“That might not be so crazy. Things are coming together fast now.”

“I know, they are.” Sherlock kissed him, then leaned over to kiss the back of Sean’s small head. “He’s got so much black hair, just like yours.” Beautiful smooth shiny hair, not a single twisty curl or kinky wave, not like hers. “He’s out,” she whispered, and settled in. “I’ll take him back in a moment.”