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“I should hire you,” Cal said with a laugh. “Or Brandy.”
He heard the smile in her voice when she said, “Well, if I ever get tired of cutting hair …”
“And so you know, a license plate report will only show information about the owner of the car and any arrest warrants out for that person.”
“Yeah, and Brandy doesn’t want to go too far yet, because if things are fine, and her mother found out…”
“I get that.”
“Besides, Lydia has another date with the man tomorrow night. Same little town—at the movie theater, I guess. Kind of strange because Everly Falls has a beautifully renovated theater here.”
“But Lydia is still trying to keep this guy a secret,” Cal mused, “so she’s probably not offering her town.”
“True.”
He typed the name and license plate number Steph had given him into one of his databases. It didn’t take long to start a search trail on the man.
“It’s probably all innocent, but there’s something about him that bothers both of us—and I don’t know if it’s just because Lydia’s keeping him secret. Or that he’s quite a bit younger.”
“Look,” Cal said, pausing in his typing. “I’d be the first person to tell you to trust your gut. We can all talk ourselves out of almost anything. But go with your initial instinct. I can do a few record runs on him and see if anything strange comes back.”
“How much would that cost?”
Cal almost smiled. “Nothing.”
“Cal, this is your job. I can pay for those record runs. I probably can’t pay for a full investigation, but it would be nice to know a little more than the guy’s lack of traffic tickets.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Let’s do this: I’m going to be in your area this coming weekend, and I can bring you whatever I find. Free of charge.”
“You’re coming to Everly Falls again?”
“Yeah, I told Rachel I’d help her clean out her garage.”
Steph didn’t speak for a moment. “That’s pretty domestic—do you live close?”
“Grandin.” He let her process that, then said, “I can stop by when you get off work. What’s your schedule like?”
“I work a half day on Saturday, then I have Sunday off.” She paused. “I can fix you dinner. Do you want to invite Rachel?”
“Uh, maybe? I’d have to check with her.”
“And you owe me a story—you know, about what happened when you disappeared on me.”
“That would have to be a private conversation, since I only told Rachel the basics.”
Steph’s voice went quiet. “Come for dinner on Saturday, and after, we can go for a walk or drive once Pops is fed and watching baseball.”
Cal was glad she couldn’t see his smile. This was working out quite nicely. “Deal.”
After hanging up with her, Cal wondered if he was doing the right thing—pretending he was going to already be in town. Well, he’d better make his white lie into the truth. He sent Rachel a text:Remember I said I could help with your garage? How does this Saturday work?
Then he returned to his laptop screen, where a few interesting things had popped up on Greg Makin. Cal followed each of the leads when he had time throughout the week. By the time Saturday rolled around, he had plenty of information on Greg Makin that would send a normal woman running for the hills. He didn’t know what sort of woman Lydia was, but the information was definitely something that needed to be shared. Over the past few days, he and Steph had texted quite a bit, and Cal found that he’d enjoyed it. Which only confirmed why he was heading to Everly Falls again, with Steph on his agenda.
She told him her car had been fixed and was back to running, so when he drove past her house early Saturday morning and it was gone, he knew she was at work. He decided it wouldn’t hurt to get a closer look at the lawn. He parked in front and strode onto the grass. Plucking a few wilted blades, he examined them, then scuffed his shoe on the ground. The grass practically disintegrated. Maybe he could stop at the hardware store and get a fungicide treatment.
He continued on to Rachel’s and was greeted by hot coffee and bagels, neither of which he turned down.
“You know, some of your mother’s stuff is in here,” Rachel said as she pushed the garage door up, then wiped her hand on her jeans. Her dark hair was pulled into a clip, and tired lines marked her face. She was still working night shifts, but she said she preferred that to day shifts.
