Page 16 of Jasmine Street Blues

Mac walked with Zach to the back of the house, through the kitchen to the back porch. The mutt stared into the back yard, watching the squirrels and birds, dancing a little, barking on occasion.

“Man, he’s a big one,” Zach said. “What’s his name?”

Mac sighed. “Bubbles. I didn’t pick it. The name came with the dog.”

Zach moved closer to Bubbles, reaching down to stroke the dog’s neck. The mutt didn’t mind, at first, but then he turned his head, sniffed, and growled. Zach backed up. “I guess he smells Fluffy and Bingo.”

“Your dogs?” Want another?

“My girlfriend’s cats.”

There goes that idea…

Mac escorted Zach to the front door. To his credit, the man didn’t ask again about using Colt to solve crimes.

Colt was his friend, one of the closest he’d allowed himself to have for a very long time. It hadn’t been easy to be social when he focused all this free time and many working hours searching for Carrie. She was his obsession; his need to find her eclipsed everything else. He’d asked the Seawolf Beach ghost whisperer more than once to try to talk to Kylie. Crap. That made him no better than an ambitious, young police officer.

Maybe Colt was right and it was time to let it go. For all he knew Carrie was dead, and had been for a while. Otherwise wouldn’t he have found some trace of her? A clue? If she was dead he wanted to know how and when, he wanted the nightmares and the constant “what ifs” to stop. It was time to accept that maybe there were no answers available to him.

Kylie’s ghost might’ve asked him to find Carrie just to torment him. Colt had suggested as much. She might’ve purposely disappeared on the tail end of that “She needs…” leaving him hanging and spun up. Hell, she’d done it before. She’d taken pleasure in making his life hell. Shit, he was Bubbles. His ex was the Three Bs.

He’d had no leads on Carrie in years. He hated to think that all he could do was hope and pray that she’d landed in a safe place, that she was well, that she was okay.

If he couldn’t find his stepdaughter, if he had to give up on that quest, he didn’t know who he was anymore. Carrie had been his focus for so long, looking for her had become much more than what he did. It was who he was. The search defined him. Was it time to move on? Could there be a place in his life for a dog, and a woman?

* * *

Tuesdays were usually the slowest day of the week, so Loran didn’t feel bad about closing for lunch, even though she wasn’t hungry and didn’t stop at any of her favorite restaurants. She walked, up one sidewalk, around a corner, and down another. She’d been feeling antsy since her “date” with Mac, and needed to work off a bit of stored up energy. She didn’t run into anyone she knew along the way. Those strolling on the streets were all tourists, checking out window displays and eating ice cream for lunch. Many of them, most, were couples. Young and old, relaxed or moving with purpose from one shop to the next. Seeing all these people paired up, sharing their lives, shouldn’t bother her, and it definitely shouldn’t make her think of the Police Chief, but it did both.

Mac was bad news, she knew it to her core, but at the same time he was appealing on a primitive level. To top it all off, he was nice. Guys who looked like that shouldn’t be nice. The combination made him too hard to resist.

Loran was very good at resisting what she knew she couldn’t have.

During her walk she passed the record store three times. She was tempted to go inside, to ask questions, to search for answers — maybe even a cure — for the dead portraits. But she never even slowed down. She wasn’t ready to let anyone know her secret.

After about twenty minutes of exercise she felt no better, but she walked back to her studio where she found an older couple, potential customers, waiting on the porch. They didn’t seem to be in a hurry, and weren’t annoyed that she hadn’t been open when they’d arrived. Instead they’d claimed a couple of rocking chairs in the shade, and they smiled at her when she unlocked the door and invited them inside.

She’d inherited enough money after her mother’s death to live modestly without ever working again, but she loved to paint. More than that, she had to paint. It was in her blood, an obsession, a compulsion. She did wish she could stick to flowers and landscapes and leave the portraits behind, but she had to take the good with the bad. If she stopped painting she’d slowly, certainly, die inside. There would be nothing left of her.

Loran had tried hiding away, painting only for herself, and it hadn’t worked at all. She’d become such a hermit she’d gone weeks without seeing anyone but the checkout guy at the grocery store. She avoided her neighbors. Anyone who said hello on the street made her jumpy, paranoid. Did they know? Were they looking for her? Who could she trust? Anyone?

No one could live that way. It wasn’t healthy. Besides, it fed her soul when someone found just the right painting, a canvas small or large that called to them, a piece of art they loved.

Like the older couple, who after browsing for a while purchased one of the larger florals and took photos of a few other paintings they were going to consider.

The expression on a customer’s face when they loved a painting, when they connected with it, fed her soul. That was her reason for doing what she did, for persevering. For living.

Loran was surprised when Mac walked in right before closing time. He didn’t strike her as someone interested in pretty things, and that’s what she painted for sale. Pretty scenes, flowers, maybe the occasional arrangement of fruit. If he had anything hanging on his walls it was probably dogs playing poker.

Which meant he was here for her, not to shop. Why? They’d both been clear about not wanting any kind of relationship.

Even if he was tall, dark, and handsome with piercing, steely eyes. Even if he was actually a nice guy under all the muscles, the badge and the gun.

Even if…

Before she could rudely ask Mac why he was here, he asked, “Do you have a dog?”

Not the question she’d been expecting. “No.”