Page 10 of The Psychic

Taft, an ex-cop who, as a rule, lived in the same cold, hard reality Cooper did, had shaken his head and lifted his hands. “While you’re at the firm, talk to her. She’s not a kook. You want to find this woman. Use everything you got.”

A week earlier, Mary Jo Kirshner, their surrogate who was eight months pregnant with Cooper and Jamie’s baby, had walked out of the home that she lived in with her husband and her own two children, leaving a note that said she needed to be alone for a while.

Stephen Kirshner, the woman’s husband, told Cooper his wife had a tendency to do this kind of thing and not to worry.

Mary Jo had been a surrogate before. It was all perfectly normal.

Not from where Cooper sat. Mary Jo was carrying a child that wasn’t hers and she’d disappeared to God knew where.

So, he’d demanded to know her whereabouts, but Kirshner said he didn’t know where she was.

Though Cooper had pressed, the man seemed honestly bewildered …

and maybe more scared than he was admitting.

Maybe it wasn’t “perfectly normal.” Maybe his “business as usual” attitude was a facade.

From Cooper’s point of view, Stephen Kirshner had no idea where his wife was, but since she was calling in occasionally, her disappearance hadn’t quite risen to the level of a missing person.

That didn’t stop Cooper from turning to his River Glen P.D.

partner, Elena Verbena, for help. Temporarily ex -partner, actually, as Cooper was currently on leave with the department for breaking expected political rules by investigating some of the wealthiest and supposedly most untouchable people around town.

The chief had put Cooper on administrative leave, hoping it would all blow over.

But since Jamie was also pregnant—a crazy surprise after Cooper was told there was virtually no chance his wife could conceive—it looked like Cooper might be moving into paternity leave as well.

Generous of Chief Duncan, but he knew it was really to keep him out of range for a good, long time— exactly what he didn’t want right now.

But Verbena understood his frustration. She had also checked with Kirshner, who’d been somewhat alarmed the police were involved now.

Verbena had simply told the man that he’d be wise to get his wife to come home before it looked like she was possibly stealing the baby, but it had thrown a scare into the man.

Kirshner assured both Cooper and Verbena that he was speaking to Mary Jo regularly, but that she didn’t really want to talk to any of them, not Cooper, not Verbena and not Jamie.

To add to the overall tension of the last months of the two pregnancies, Jamie was in the midst of medically prescribed bed rest, a precaution to make sure she carried to full term. She was frustrated and “had a million things to do,” as the holidays were fast approaching.

Which was why Cooper had yet to tell her the full extent of Mary Jo’s disappearance.

He’d mentioned she’d been gone a few days, missing, taking some time to herself before the delivery.

Jamie had been alarmed at the news, but Cooper had said he was on it, everything was going to be fine.

He needed more information, something concrete, before he told his wife the true extent of Mary Jo’s disappearance, that she was basically MIA.

And the hell of it was, Jamie had never quite trusted Mary Jo in the first place. She’d felt the woman was too … flaky, for want of a better term. Now Cooper, who’d pushed for Mary Jo, was going to have to admit she’d been right to worry after all.

Kirshner had continued to assert that Mary Jo was just seeking solace and quietude at the end of her pregnancy, something she’d done during her two other surrogacies.

Would have been nice to know, Steve. And the tightening of your skin when you said that? And the fact that you’re the only one who’s talked to her? That she hasn’t spoken to either of her biological children or anyone else? Well, that’s a big problem.

Now Cooper shifted in his chair. He was meeting with Prescott to determine what his legal standing was concerning his and Jamie’s baby should Mary Jo do anything that would unintentionally harm it.

Though he was alarmed by her sudden departure, he truly did not believe Mary Jo would hurt an unborn child. She was unsteady, not evil.

At least that’s what he told himself.

He checked the time on his phone and inhaled slowly. Dawn looked over at him. “Would you like some water?” she asked.

“No. Thanks.”

He’d initially wanted a full-on manhunt to find Mary Jo.

Chief Duncan, nicknamed Humph for his long-faced Humphrey Bogart appearance, had pointed out that she was in contact with her husband, so was she really missing?

But then, though he didn’t show it, he was deeply angry with Cooper for putting the mayor and her well-connected friends under the microscope.

Didn’t matter that Cooper was just doing his job. He was paying the price.

He got up, stretched his arms, thought about heading outside for a short walk, but didn’t trust that they would wait for him should Paula Prescott call his name, so he returned to his seat.

Dawn had apparently finished with scheduling and was taking calls.

The elevator bell dinged just as Cooper reseated himself, and the doors slid open.

An older woman, hair wrapped in a scarf, makeup a little too thick and garish for her age, thumped a cane imperiously against the oak floor as she strode forward, a young man busying himself around her as if worried she might topple over.

“I’m here to see Veronica Quick,” she announced regally.

Dawn smiled, nodded, but was on the phone again, making an appointment. The younger man said to the woman, “Let’s take a seat.”

“I’m going to stand right here until I’m heard,” she snapped.

Dawn quickly ended her call, scribbling something down before giving the woman her most beaming smile. “Hello, Mrs. Langdorf. Let me check the appointment log. I’m not sure I saw your name.”

“You won’t find it. I told Veronica I would see her this week. I know she’s busy, but she saved my life, you know. Now, I just want a few moments with her. Please let her know I’m here.”

Respected client , Cooper decided. Likely pain in the ass. Wealthy. Lackey beside her working hard to get some of that money. What was his relationship to her? Assistant? Son? Lover?

Dawn’s dark eyes revealed little of what she was thinking as she picked up the phone and pressed a button.

The young man sat down in a chair on the opposite side of the room from Cooper. Mrs. Langdorf stayed exactly where she was.

Cooper’s phone buzzed silently in his pocket. He pulled it out again and saw that Jamie had texted him: Where are you? Coming back soon?

He’d been unspecific about his destination on purpose.

Didn’t want to worry her. He couldn’t decide whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that he was on leave from the department.

A bad thing because he didn’t have work to occupy his mind.

A good thing because he didn’t have his job getting in the way of finding Mary Jo, although apart from choking the information out of Stephen Kirshner he really didn’t have a further plan.

And though choking Kirshner might work in the short run, the department probably wouldn’t look favorably upon it …

“It’s her own vision quest. Communing with herself,” Kirshner had told him.

Bullshit. A vision quest was a whole lot more than that, Cooper had thought at the time.

Although it could be for anyone, he supposed, it was generally considered a ceremony practiced by certain Indigenous peoples as a means of reconnecting with their history and making a connection to the spiritual world.

Cooper knew Mary Jo had once had ties to a splintered commune who practiced their own rituals.

Not a cult per se, though some of its own members seemed to take it that way.

But it was not a group of Indigenous people.

And it was not without its own secrets.

Mrs. Langdorf glanced pointedly at her bejeweled gold watch.

Cooper texted Jamie back: About an hour.

Fifteen minutes later Paula Prescott walked into reception and in her raspy voice asked him to join her in her office.

He followed her down a hallway that branched into an office with a large window that looked toward the East Glen River, not visible from this distance but he could make out the row of trees that lined its banks.

Only about a block away he could see a top-floor community room that was often booked for weddings and other large groups.

It sat above floors of luxury condominiums, which in turn rose above the ground level River Glen Grill.

Through the gray and slanting rain he could make out blurry, twinkling multicolored Christmas lights.

Maybe someone had rented the room for a party, or maybe it was just festooned with general pre-holiday decorations.

In the uncertain late-morning light the illumination seemed dull and a bit sad.

“Let’s go over your contract with Ms. Kirshner,” Paula said briskly, having already been alerted to Cooper’s concerns. “Make sure its ironclad.”

The Bernard K. Waters Law Firm was a four-person operation in a silver building of corrugated metal.

The siding was clearly designed to look strong and industrial but it appeared more like a repurposed garbage can desperately trying to be chic.

Ronnie yanked open the heavy wooden door with its tiny window that resembled a welder’s mask, and entered a concrete foyer with a wide counter desk, its support a curve of matching corrugated metal.

A young woman with dyed black hair that seemed to swallow the light from the overhead crystal chandeliers looked up from a cell phone that she surreptitiously slid to one side as Ronnie entered.

“Galen Hillyard,” said Ronnie.

“I’m not sure he’s in, he’s—”

“He is expecting me.”

“You’re … ?”

“Veronica Quick.”

Her brow furrowed. Ronnie wasn’t certain she knew she was Galen’s wife, but somehow didn’t want to get into it all, especially given the circumstances of their upcoming meeting.

The receptionist picked up the desk phone, pressed a button and said, “A Veronica Click is here to see you.” A moment later she hung up and said, “He is in his office, apparently. First door down the hall.” She swept a languid arm toward the right.

Ronnie passed through a glass door that swung inward and down the charcoal-gray carpeted hallway to the rough wooden door with Galen’s name beside it.

The Bernard K. Waters Law Firm was fairly new in River Glen.

Waters himself was a lawyer whose fortunes had been made from a business his family had owned for three generations and that Bernard K.

Waters had driven into bankruptcy in quick order as soon as he gained control.

This firm was the phoenix born from the ashes of the original and, though it brandished Waters’s name, was apparently owned by one of the firm’s other attorneys whose money was really behind it.

She didn’t know how adept a lawyer any of them were, but their style and decor was the polar opposite of the venerated halls of Tormelle & Quick.

Galen opened the door at Ronnie’s knock. “Don’t you look lovely,” he greeted her.

He made a move as if to hug her and she automatically stiffened.

“Oh, is that the way it’s going to be?” He feigned disappointment.

“Here.” She handed him the envelope. “Maybe you should have your lawyer make sure everything’s in order.”

“A joke?” He grinned, showing an actual smile, the smile that had won her over in a past life where now she wondered if she’d been unconsciously taking some kind of hallucinogenic drug that had skewed reality.

She looked past him to his desk and realized it was exactly as her mind had made it: the dark wood, the black chair, the space beneath where Shana had been crouching. A gentle fizzing ran along her nerves.

“What?” Galen asked, regarding her closely.

Ronnie inhaled sharply. No. It hadn’t been Shana. It was someone else kneeling in front of Galen. Similar body type, but not Shana. Someone else …

Mrs. Bernard K. Waters.

Oh.

“Having one of your ‘moments’?” Galen asked, long-suffering. “Can’t we forgo all that and have a nice lunch? There’s a bistro across the street. Nothing fancy. Just somewhere we can be civilized and toast the end of our marriage.”

“Why would you even care?”

“I’m trying to be nice here, Ronnie.”

“Why start now?”

“You always have to be such a fucking bitch, don’t you?” he said on a sigh. “You whined to your father and he kicked me out. Okay. One of us, at least, is trying to put it all behind us.”

“That’s not why he asked you to leave.”

“Asked me to leave?” He scoffed. “I could sue him for nearly ruining my reputation. Luckily, Bernard saw my potential. I didn’t want to leave River Glen, but I almost had to, thanks to Jonas and you.”

“You did that all by yourself. Although, looks like you’ve been having some recent help.”

“What do you mean? No. Keep it to yourself. I’ve had enough of your predictions.”

“Blow jobs under the desk? Not sure Bernard’s going to like that one.”

“More aspersions. You’re making it hard to stay nice.”

“Who did the interior design work here?”

“Why?”

“Maybe Mrs. Bernard K. Waters? Just kneeling on the carpet to test its weave?”

A flush crept up Galen’s neck. He lifted a finger, as if he wanted to shake it in front of her face. A moment later he collected himself, turned away and snipped, “Okay. Fine. I’ll get this filed immediately.”

“So … no lunch?”

“Goodbye, Veronica.”

“It’s Ms. Quick to you.”

She found herself smiling a little as she hurried through the rain to her car.