* * *
“So you wantto find this Beth person?” Blossom frowned as she shuffled her favorite tarot deck.
The sunroom was warm with the autumn sun slanting through the windows. Burt barked cheerfully in the backyard as his favorite cow friend, Daisy, chased him around and through the vegetable garden.
A series of thumps and thuds came from the second floor where Mrs. Penny was riffling through her parents’ possessions.
Riley nodded. “Yes.”
Gabe was already seated in lotus position on a meditation cushion. He rolled out his neck and shoulders as if preparing for a workout.
“Are you sure?” Blossom pressed, her forehead lined with concern.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Beth was someone important to not just Detective Weber but also Nick. We don’t know what the consequences of finding her could mean for your relationship.”
“Mom, I’m more concerned with the consequences for Beth if we don’t find her. What if she’s been tortured every day of her life since she disappeared?”
Blossom waved a dismissive hand. “That only happens onThe Vampire Diaries.”
“Then what if some sicko took her and has her locked up in a moldy basement where she became one of his eight wives—”
“Okay. Fine. Real life is terrifying too. I just wanted to make sure you were considering the consequences. I once gave a reading to a woman whose husband emptied their retirement savings and bought his twenty-two-year-old stripper girlfriend a condo. The wife ran him over and then smashed her car into the condo’s lobby. She went to jail.”
“Did they meet in the champagne room?” Gabe asked.
“You know, I never thought to ask,” Blossom told him.
Riley waved her hands to get everyone’s attention. “Every day that Nick doesn’t find Beth, he spirals deeper into this obsession. He’s hardly sleeping. When he eats, it’s using six-year-old case files as paper plates and napkins. Seriously, there’s mayonnaise and bread crumbs all over his office. He’s putting all paying work aside so he can focus on finding Beth. The sooner we locate her and bring her back, the sooner things can get back to normal.”
If normal was a possibility.
When Riley was being honest with herself, late at night when Nick hadn’t come to bed yet while she was eating a bowl of ice cream under the covers and binge-watching her favorite survival show, she could admit that she was maybe the slightest bit nervous about finding Beth.
Nick had never dated the woman—one of the very few in the Harrisburg region apparently. He’d claimed that his flirtation with Kellen Weber’s little sister had been just to annoy his friend. But his life had been so tangled up with her disappearance that there were a million ways saving Beth could change things. Including Nick rescuing the long-lost woman and falling madly in love with her on the spot, kicking Riley to the curb, and forcing her back to the Bogdanovich mansion where she would have to share a room with Lily…or worse, Mrs. Penny.
Riley looked at Gabe, who was twisting his arms together in pretzel-like fashion. “If I ever need to move back to the mansion, can Burt and I share your room?”
Her muscular spiritual guide beamed. “It would be my greatest honor. We would have Ice Cream Wednesdays until you recover from your broken heart.”
Riley patted her friend on his beefy forearm. “You’re the best, Gabe.”
“It is kind of you to notice.”
The front door opened and closed softly. Riley’s sister, Wander, floated into the room looking ethereal and glowy in yoga clothes. “I’m here to help,” she said. “Hello, Gabriel.”
A saccharine-sweet moment of moony-ness passed between her sister and Gabe. Riley was fairly certain that they were in love but that neither one of them had made a move beyond hand-holding. Something she would have to poke her nose into later.
“I called in your sister in hopes that Wander’s powers might give us an extra boost,” Blossom explained.
“Good idea, Mom.”
All Basil women had psychic abilities. Riley’s grandmother, Elanora, was a terrifying person and a powerful medium. Blossom was a gifted tarot card reader. Riley saw visions of the future, talked to the dead, and could sometimes read the minds of the living.
And Wander had a psychic snoot.
Her sister could sniff out echoes of scents long since passed, like a dearly departed grandfather’s aftershave…or the dead guy in Riley’s secret passage…or the cooler of fish Uncle Jimmy had accidentally left in the Jeep one humid August.
