more like a mule?” Kenzie suggested with a smile.
Connie sighed. “He could be so stubborn, there was just no talking to him.”
Kenzie nodded. “I know what you mean. I have a few relatives like that of my own,” she told the woman. She saw a little of the color returning to Connie’s thin cheeks. “Feel better?” she asked.
“A little,” Connie admitted. “I’ll feel a whole lot better once you find him,” she said.
“So will I,” Kenzie assured the other woman. When people came in to file a missing person report, she took great care in making those people feel as if this was a joint undertaking and that she was in this together with them. It seemed to help them hang on. “Now, if you could give me as many names and addresses of your dad’s friends, that would be a great help.”
“I’ve got my mother’s old address book at home. I kept it as a souvenir,” Connie explained. “Will that help?” she asked.
“That will be perfect,” Kenzie assured her.
“And you’ll find my father?” Connie asked again, desperately needing to hear Kenzie make a promise to that effect.
“We’ll do our very best to find your father,” Kenzie told her.
Connie nodded, rising to her feet. “Okay. I’ll get that address book to you today,” she promised.
“That’ll be great,” Kenzie told her.
In her opinion, Connie looked a tiny bit better as she left the office.
Now all she had to do, Kenzie thought, was to deliver on her promise and everything would be fine.
“Here, you look like you could use this.”
Detective Jason Valdez placed a slightly misshapen container of coffee on the desk directly in front of his sometimes partner, Detective Hunter Brannigan.
Hunter raised his half-closed green eyes slowly from the container and fixed what passed for a penetrating look at the man who worked with him in the police department’s Cold Case Division.
“You got this from the vending machine?” Hunter went through the motions of asking even though the answer was a foregone conclusion on his part.
“No, I had a carriage drawn by four matched unicorns deliver it. Yes, it’s from the vending machine,” Jason answered. “What do you think, I’m going to drive over to the closest coffee house to get you some overpriced coffee just because there’s a fancy name embossed on the side of the container?”
Removing the lid, Hunter sniffed the inky-black coffee in the container and made a face. “This is swill,” he pronounced.
Jason took no offense. Everyone knew that the coffee from the vending machine was strictly a last resort, to be consumed when nothing else was available.
“But it’s swill that’ll open up those bright green eyes of yours,” Jason told him, sitting down at the desk that butted up against Hunter’s, “and I’m betting after the night you’ve had, you could use any help that you can get.”
Hunter moved the container aside. “How do you know what kind of a night I had?”
“Because I’m a detective,” Jason answered. “And because you always have that kind of a night, especially when it’s on a weekend. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, women seem to gravitate to you, willingly buying whatever you’re selling.”
Hunter laughed. “You’re just jealous because you’re married and Melinda would skin you alive if she even saw you looking at another woman.”
“Yeah, there’s that, too,” Jason agreed. He shook his dark head that recently sprouted a few gray hairs. He blamed that on his wife, as well. “I swear, ever since my wife got pregnant, she’s turned into this fire-breathing, suspicious monster.”
Hunter shook his head, suppressing a laugh. “There’s no accounting for some people’s taste, I guess.” And then he grew more serious. “Just don’t give her any reason to be suspicious.”
“Any reason?” Jason questioned. “She’s got me too busy running all these errands for her and going around in circles. Any free time I used to have now gets totally eaten up. I couldn’t hook up with anyone else if I wanted to—which I don’t,” he emphasized in case that point had gotten lost in the conversation.
“Just hang in there, Valdez. Once the baby comes, Melinda will turn back into that sweet little woman you married.”
Jason looked skeptically at the man sitting across from him. “You really believe that?”
Hunter lifted and then dropped his shoulders in a careless shrug. “Hey, it’s good to have something to hang on to,” he told Jason with a grin.
“I guess,” Jason murmured. “It’s for damn sure that these cold cases certainly don’t fill that void,” Valdez said. “Sometimes I wonder why we keep beating our heads against that brick wall.”
Instead of a flippant remark the way he’d expected, his partner addressed his question seriously. “Because, every once in a while, there’s a crack in that wall and we get to give someone some closure about a loved one. That, my friend, in case you’ve forgotten, is a good feeling,” Hunter said.
Without thinking, he picked up the container Jason brought him and took a sip. Hunter made a face almost immediately, setting the container down again. This time he banished it to the far corner of his desk.
“I think the vending machine people have outdone themselves. This tastes like someone’s boiled socks,” Hunter declared in disgust.
“How would you know what boiled socks taste like?” Jason asked, apparently intrigued.
Hunter never hesitated. “I have a very vivid imagination,” he answered.
James Wilson, a prematurely balding, heavyset man, peered into the squad room. Spotting whom he was looking for, he crossed the floor over to Hunter.
By the time he reached Hunter’s desk, Wilson was breathing heavily, sucking in air noisily.
“You really should see a doctor, Wilson,” Hunter said. It seemed to him that each time he saw the detective, the man just got heavier and heavier. There had to be a cutoff point.
“Yeah, yeah, you and my wife,” Detective Wilson said dismissively. He made an annoyed face. “You want to hear this or not?”
“Sure,” Jason answered, speaking for both of them. “What brings you huffing and puffing into our corner of the world, Wilson?”
Wilson looked from one detective to the other, then answered with a single word. “Rain.”
“You’re a bit late, Wilson,” Jason told the other man. “It rained yesterday. Unseasonably so,”
