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The guy didn’t appear all that convinced about the potential move. He took a final swallow from his paper coffee cup, then crushed it, and folded his paper. “Who’d you hire?”
“The private investigator?” Her eyebrows shot up and he nodded. “Rex Kingston of Kingston Investigations.”
“Was it expensive?”
She shrugged. Tipped her hand back and forth. Maybe yes. Maybe no. “I guess I should’ve just waited for her to come home,” she said anxiously as if sensing the guy’s disapproval. On the heels of that thought, she said, “But it wouldn’t have worked. She would have never come back. That’s the problem.”
Scooting his chair back a bit, he tossed his empty cup into the trash.
In that moment, Ravinia peered into his heart and saw that he wasn’t really all that much of a winner. Maybe didn’t even have the amount of money he’d led the younger woman to believe.
As if he sensed her perusal, he turned to stare right at her, but Ravinia let her gaze slide away as if she were lost in thought about something else.
Sometimes people sensed something happening when she was checking them out, felt some kind of tingle or had a glimmer of insight, though they generally didn’t get it and certainly didn’t look at her to be the cause.
The man stood, grabbed his newspaper, and tucked it under his arm.
“You leaving?” the woman asked.
“I’ve got to get to work.” He glanced away a second and cleared his throat. “Have you thought about sending Kayla to her father?” he suggested as she reluctantly stood up as well.
“God, no.” She gazed at him as if he were from another planet. “You know that would be a disaster!” Then, after a pause, she said, “Wait a second. What are you saying?”
The man slid a look toward Ravinia, clearly uncomfortable having her close enough to hear every word. Tucking his hand around the woman’s elbow he led her purposefully toward the door.
As inconspicuously as possible, Ravinia followed, wandering through the tables, even going so far as to pretend interest in the various mugs, carafes, and bags of coffee on display tables when she was really hoping to hear more about Kingston Investigations. It didn’t work. The man was too aware that she was eavesdropping. He opened the door for his companion who was running on about Kayla and her father, who was an asshole, an asshole, and there was no way she could trust him to be any kind of father.
As the glass door started to close, Ravinia slipped outside and watched the couple walk across the parking area to separate vehicles. She didn’t give their continuing relationship much hope, unless the rebellious teen Kayla was actually out of the house.
Ravinia had been a runaway herself, for very different reasons. She knew that once anybody thought their living situation was untenable, they weren’t going to stick around.
The man drove off in an older Cadillac, the woman in a compact.
Ravinia turned her attention away from them and back to the crowd of coffee-drinking Internet surfers lounging inside and at a few exterior umbrella tables positioned near the building. It was slightly warmer, the temperature rising a little, the clouds lightening a bit. On a bench near the door, her forgotten drink at her feet, a teenaged girl was texting like mad. Next to her, a boy about the same age was into his phone, too, probably playing some game.
God, she wanted one of those phones, just for a few minutes.
If only I had Google, she thought, taking a recently vacated chair.
Cooing loudly enough to be heard over the morning rush of traffic, a pigeon pecked its way near her table and she absently brushed off crumbs from a previous customer.
She wanted to look up Kingston Investigations immediately and see if the office was anywhere near Santa Monica. She needed help in her mission, and it seemed providential that she’d overheard the people at the next table talking about a private investigator. From the two channels the television at Siren Song had picked up by antenna, she knew what a private investigator was, at least the TV kind. The fact that Rex Kingston had been a policeman first sounded good, like he would know his stuff.
The trouble was, it also sounded as if he might be kind of expensive.
Then again, maybe he was the kind of guy who might negotiate with her a little.
She pulled out her disposable phone to find that it was completely dead. She lifted her head and thought about asking one of the other customers if she could borrow their phone, but a quick look around at the serious expressions convinced her that was unlikely. If she were one of them and someone like her asked for the phone, she’d turn them down flat.
Time to move on.
She lifted her backpack to her shoulder and got to her feet, all the while gazing across the parking lot to the street, thinking there had to be a telephone book in a telephone booth somewhere. Maybe she could go to the library and find some kind of directory. If she—
From the corner of her eye, she spied a black convertible race into the parking lot. The driver gassed it toward a space where a young mother pushing a baby stroller was about to cross.
Ravinia sucked in a sharp breath.
