“I think he left a voice mail for Kyle—he’s the troublemaker—Saturday morning,” Shelley said as her watch lit up yet again. “I need you to find him,” she said, leaning across the table, a dangerous gleam in her eyes.
Nick recognized it as one his own mother had displayed during his harrowing teen years.
“You see this?” She pointed at the watch. “These are appointment reminders, emails, messages from my kids. My oldest is packing for college. Another one needs a ride home from some student government summer camp thing this afternoon. And I’ve been ducking the soccer coaches calls all day on the third one because he can’t respect the authority of the whistle.”
Riley’s fingers flew over the keys.
“In the meantime,” Shelley continued, “I’ve got a meeting with marketing in an hour, and then I have to fire someone by the end of the day. I don’t have time for a missing ex-husband.”
“That’s a lot to handle,” he observed.
“It is. I need you to find my ex-husband so I can go to the beach in ten days with my girlfriends. No kids. No men. No work. Just wine and pizza and books. I. Need. This.” She stabbed the table with a sharp fingernail. “I’ve got my Kindle right here. I’ve been reading the same book for six months because every time my ass hits a chair, a kid needs something. Or work calls. Or someone is bleeding. Or there’s another fire in the microwave. He owes me this. I haven’t gone to court over all the child support he hasn’t paid. The absolute least he can do is take his own damn kids for a long weekend.”
Nick knew a woman on the edge when he saw one. “Have you talked to the cops?”
She rolled her eyes and let out a humorless laugh. “Of course I did. After Larry’s work said he hadn’t been in, I called the police. They made me wait forty-eight hours before they were even willing to go knock on his door.”
“And?” he prompted.
“And nothing. He didn’t answer. They said they’d look into it. They seem to think that just because he’s disappeared before means this is more of the same.”
“He’s disappeared before?” Riley looked up from her screen.
“We had our first kid at twenty. That man was not ready to get married, much less raise four kids. Once we started having kids, every once in a while he’d go out for drinks with the boys and not come home for two days. He was clinging to his youth. Drinking too much. Staying up all night playing video games.”
“Four?” Nick repeated. “I thought you said three.”
Shelley grimaced. “Damn it. Alice is the quiet one. I forget about her sometimes since she’s the low-maintenance one. Anyway, this is much longer than any previous quest to recapture his youth or escape his life. So since the cops aren’t worried, I’m going to pay you to worry. Worry and find him and bring him back so I can go to the damn beach and read my damn book!”
The woman looked down at her watch again, and Nick felt the frustration simmering beneath her surface.
“I’m happy to take the case, Shelley,” he said. “Let me take this off your plate so you can focus on your job and your kids.”
Her eyes filled with tears, kicking Nick into panic mode. He thrust a box of tissues in her direction. He hated when women cried in front of him. Nothing made him feel more useless.
“No one said being a parent was going to require every second of my day for the rest of my life. No one told me that once kids get just a little bit independent, then the real worrying starts. And no one sure as hell told me to marry a guy who could do dishes and drive kids to basketball practice instead of the cute one I met in seventh grade. Not all seventh graders grow up to be men.”
Riley was nodding sympathetically, and Nick could only guess how big of a seventh grader her ex-husband, Griffin Gentry, had been.
“Ineedthis weekend. Mysanityneeds this weekend,” Shelley said.
He cleared his throat. “How about you give me some details about your ex-husband, and I’ll get started right away. I’ve got a fee sheet that explains—”
“I don’t care if it costs me every dime in the kids’ college fund. Half of them probably won’t go anyway. I’ll pay you whatever you want. Just find my ex and have him back here by next weekend.”
“Do you have a recent picture?” he asked.
She reached into her cavernous bag and pulled out her phone. “I’ll text you a couple.”
In the first, Larry Rupley stood in the center of four kids looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. He was a pudgy white guy who’d gone bald on top and soft in the middle. He looked bored and checked out in each of the photos Shelley forwarded.
“Where does Larry work?” Riley asked.
“He was a billing representative for United Alpha Dental Insurance.”
“Was?” Nick noted the past tense.
“When I spoke to his supervisor on Monday, she said if he bothered showing up again at the office, he was fired,” she explained. “Larry always had a problem with being told what to do. Especially if he didn’t feel like doing it, and heneverfelt like doing it.”
