Shirley Murphy - Cat Playing Cupid

But now, suddenly, it was all with him again. Every detail of their time together seemed like yesterday, their casual dinners at her place, their runs on the beach, nights before the fire, holding her close.

Forget it. Keep your mind on the case. Or step back, tell Dallas you don't want to work this one. He looked at her sternly. "Why, after ten years, have you decided to pursue the case again?"

"You know I spent a year, after he disappeared, trying to find him, Mike. You know how I pushed the police and the California Bureau of Investigation. You know I didn't have any evidence that would put him across state lines, that would make it a case for the FBI. But now, maybe there is something."

He studied her, seeing how tired she looked suddenly, and older.

"When Carson disappeared, I came up with nothing but dead ends. You know I was weary, so scared and worried for him sometimes-not knowing whether something awful had happened to him, whether he was dead or hurt somewhere. And then at other times so angry, feeling totally betrayed. Wishing, if he had walked out on me, that he'd just told me, and broken it off." She reached to touch his hand. "Have you forgotten how it was, Mike?"

He hadn't forgotten. But he'd thought that, over the years, she would have come to terms with this, with not knowing-just as he had turned off the memory of her, or thought he had.

"When I felt so down, you helped me to heal. Without you, Mike, I couldn't have gotten through that year."

She was making him uncomfortable. Had she needed him, then, only for the sympathy he supplied?

But she looked at him with sudden fire in her eyes, a look that startled him.

"Now…," she said, "maybe there is something. Maybe Carson has been found. Did Dallas show you the clipping, the body found last week, up in Oregon? A hiker, somewhere deep in the forest, some private land that I guess no one goes into much. The man was a hiker, Mike. They have his backpack, what's left of it. I can't get this out of my mind."

"I read the article," he said noncommittally. "But Carson was supposed to have gone camping near the village."

Camping, the week before their wedding, up in the hills south of the village. Lindsey had had no plans to go with him, she'd said there was a lot to do even for the simple wedding they'd planned, reminded him it was tax season and she had too much work to do, and that anyway, she'd never liked camping.

He remembered her saying, "Carson likes to hike alone, he likes those times of solitude-we both believe there are some things each of us can enjoy alone," and she'd laughed softly. "I don't like sleeping and cooking out in the cold, with no hot shower in the morning."

She'd worked for Carson Chappell's accounting firm at the time. She'd said that three of her biggest accounts had sent in very late tax figures and that she'd needed to finish those. Each of Chappell & Gibbs's employees had been solely responsible for their own accounts; she'd said Carson 's accounts were all in order and filed.

Now, she looked at him levelly. "I want to know if that hiker in Oregon is Carson. Is that so hard to understand? I know it's unlikely, but…If I could put an end to it, to the questions…

"When I saw that newspaper article, I had this… certain feeling. A sudden jolt, as if I knew ." She looked at him intently, her hazel eyes now as green as the sea. "I felt so sure. And I needed again, desperately, to find out what happened to him. To find out, and to let go of it at last, for good."

They looked at each other for a long time, Lindsey's hands folded quietly in her lap. "I know it's grasping at straws. Carson didn't say anything about going to Oregon, he told me he'd be hiking just above Molena Point. He gave me a map, marked where he planned to go." The betrayal and hurt in her eyes was just as raw as it had been ten years ago.

When she'd reported Carson missing, there'd been searchers all over the open land above the village, crisscrossing the miles of woods and hills that made up the state park land. The county sheriff, then the forestry department, volunteers, tracking dogs…They'd found no sign that Chappell had ever been there.

Mike studied her for a moment, then started the engine. "I'm headed for the station to pick up Dallas. We can talk there for a few minutes, maybe set up something for Monday." Pulling out into the slow village traffic, he could feel her watching him and he wondered again if this was smart, taking this case.

Sitting turned away from the door, she glanced into the backseat at the dog-hair-covered blanket, and smiled. "You have a dog? I miss Newton, I finally had to put him down."

"The blanket belongs to Dallas 's pointer," Mike said. "The last of many, and he's getting along. Timber's partner died this last year, so Dallas takes Timber with him when he can-no, I have no dog now, it wouldn't have been fair to confine a big dog in the city."

"And little dogs don't appeal," she said, remembering. He didn't mention that he would be babysitting Ryan's Weimaraner this coming week, that he would be running the dog on the beach, as they used to run Newton.

She was quiet for some time, then, "Your girls are doing well?"

When Mike's wife died of cancer, her brother Dallas and Mike's brother Scotty had moved in with him to help raise the girls, to share the time-consuming responsibilities, to fill a little of the emptiness, to offer steadiness and love.

They had lived in San Francisco then; he'd met Lindsey during a family weekend at their Molena Point cottage; she had been the first and only woman he'd dated since his wife's death.

They'd packed a lot into their discreet weekends when he could get away to the village or could meet her somewhere halfway, along the coast. Lindsey had been interested enough in his family, from a distance; she had asked about the girls and enjoyed seeing their pictures, but she'd made it clear she didn't want to be involved.

"The girls are doing well," he said briefly, never having liked her distancing herself.

All three girls had turned out to be strong and resourceful young women. They worked for what was important to them, and they could take care of themselves. Hanni was a bold and original interior designer, Ryan an equally inventive architectural designer and hands-on building contractor. And their older sister, with a degree in economics from Stanford, had married an electrical engineer and moved to the East Coast where they were raising five fine kids. He had eight grandchildren, counting Hanni's three boys.

Maybe now, he thought, Ryan and Clyde would decide to have a family. Or not. Whatever they did, he felt more than sufficiently blessed.

He felt lucky, too, that in the process of raising the girls, he and Dallas and Scotty had grown as close as any brothers ever were. They'd run a tight household, and had taught the girls as many skills as they could.

Turning in through the wide parking area that served the Molena Point courthouse and the PD, moving in between its gardens and oak trees, he parked in a reserved slot in front of the station, then turned to look at her.

" Dallas said you still have Carson 's clothes and personal possessions?"

"I've kept everything that was in his apartment-clothes, books, even the kitchen things-everything but the furniture. After the police were finished with the apartment and the office, everything they didn't hold for evidence was given to his mother. When she died, four years ago, she left a simple will that gave those things to me. I put it all in a small storage locker here in the village.

"I had to come up from L.A. to claim it, and I didn't want to ship it down there. Didn't want it handled any more than necessary. I thought that someday the police might want to look at it all again."