Runny noses and runny eyes made her clench. She couldn’t get sick again—not even a cold, because colds sometimes masqueraded as stealthy pneumonia with its filled lungs and hacky cough. And then pneumonia led to health questionnaires that requested information she didn’t want to share with staff here or at sketchy clinics that passed ibuprofen off as penicillin.
“Next.” Behind the registration desk, a black woman beckoned Gray to step forward. She pushed an admissions form toward Gray. “What’s going on today?”
Questions, even though she had dry eyes and clear lungs.
And a missing appendix. And minor abdominal pain. And possibly a fever.
“Actually, I’m not here for a medical visit,” Gray said. “I’m here to see Dr. O’Donnell on business. I was asked to come by this afternoon.” She scribbled her name on top of the admissions form, then pushed it back.
The clerk said, “Okay, have a seat over in the chairs. He may be tied up, though. As you can see, we’re busy today.”
Since Gray would rather wait near blood than perch close to viruses she couldn’t see, she selected a seat near an old man holding a saturated bloody towel against his forearm. She winced at him to show sympathy, then found her phone in her purse.
It was time to create a new phone number for this, her first major case as a private investigator. She used Burner, an app that allowed her to generate as many phone numbers as she needed while keeping her personal phone number private. Nick Rader had a number. Jennifer, Zadie, Clarissa, and her other coworkers had a number. Utilities, taxes, her apartment’s management office—those shared the same number.
That virgin-at-a-prison-rodeo nervousness crackled through her, and she grinned as Burner generated a new number for the Isabel Lincoln case.
Yee-haw!
She pulled intake forms from her leather binder.
Isabel Lincoln had been missing since May 27 and her birthday was just a day away. She had brown hair and brown eyes. Tall at five nine. There was a butterfly tattoo on her left thigh.
A heartbreaker. That’s what Gray’s father, Victor, would say about pretty girls like Isabel Lincoln. Big, innocent eyes. Sweet, innocent smile. Long ponytail and Vogue cheekbones. The kind of girl you married. A Mary Ann. You’re not a Mary Ann, Victor would tell Gray. You’re … the Skipper. No-nonsense. Reliable. Resourceful.
Gray reread Isabel’s race as listed on the intake form. White?
Isabel Lincoln was not “white.” Mixed, maybe. High yellow, definitely. Isabel Lincoln was as white as Halle Berry.
The second intake form had been completed for a dog with curly chocolate-blond hair. The Labradoodle, named Kenny G., belonged to Dr. Ian O’Donnell and had been with Isabel on the day she disappeared.
“Gray Sykes?”
Gray looked up and over to the door that separated the waiting room from the treatment areas. That voice belonged to a tall, sun-kissed god with dirty-blond hair and swimmer’s shoulders that strained beneath his blue scrubs.
“Dr. O’Donnell?” When he nodded, she floated over to him with her hand out to shake. Something quickened and fluttered in her belly—he’d knocked her up by simply standing there.
His eyes peeked at her short, boy-cut hairdo, her Rubenesque hips, and her Victorian bosom, and then his eyes glazed and he stopped seeing her altogether. He finally accepted her hand. “You can call me Ian. I was expecting…”
“Nick assigned your case to me.”
“Ah. Let’s talk in my office.”
Past the double doors, past the bleeding and asthmatic, and past the beeping machines, Gray finally landed in Ian O’Donnell’s office. It was a clean, ordered space with folders placed on the corner of his desk and pictures of patients pinned on a corkboard. Near the desk phone, there were pictures of Ian holding Kenny G., a picture of Kenny G. wearing a doggie surgery cap, and then another picture of Kenny G., romping on the beach.
Gray sat her bag in the other guest chair, then noted the one picture of Isabel. In this shot, the sun was setting at Isabel’s back and her face was hidden in shadow. Gray could barely see Ian’s one-and-only.
Did the nurses they’d passed—the ones who’d gazed at him as though he lit the skies each morning—did they believe that Isabel was his one-and-only? Had she been his one-and-only?
According to the good doctor, yes, Isabel had been. They’d been so happy. They’d rarely argued. They had plans, ambitious plans—a wedding, then a honeymoon in Barcelona and Pantages Theatre season passes.
“I really thought we were happy.” Ian was pinching his bottom lip, and it now looked cherry red and bee-stung. “I just want her to come back home. I want her to just … talk to me, you know, and explain why she left this time. And why she pulled my dog into all of this.”
“You think she’s alive and well?”
His hand froze mid–lip pinch. “Of course. The police would’ve found her and my dog by now if something had happened, right?”
In her mind, Gray shrugged. “Did you contact the police?”
“Yep. End of that week she disappeared. June first.”
Gray wrote “June” on the pad, but then the pen stopped writing. She scribbled. No ink. Her pen was dead. She offered Ian an apologetic smile, said, “One minute.” She reached for her purse and her nervous hands knocked the bag to the ground. Wallet, hand sanitizer, chewing gum, coins, all of it, clattered out and around the linoleum floor. Gray dropped to the ground and shoved spilled contents back into the handbag. The doctor’s stare burned her back and she wanted to cry as she hurried with the cleanup. And, in all of the ruckus, she neglected to find another pen.
Slipping back into the chair, she said, “Sorry,” then pushed out a breath. She’d have to remember as much as she could.
He was staring at her. “All done?”
“Yes.” She was boiling inside—heat jumped off her skin like flares off the sun.
“Are you okay?” the doctor asked. “You look a little—”
“I’m good, thank you. So … June first. What did the police say?”
“They said that she broke up with me, that the text message she sent proved it.”
Gray ran her palm across her sweaty hairline. “And what did the text say?”
He swiped around his phone, then set the device before her.
The text had been sent on Monday, May 27:
LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE. YOU CAN GO STRAIGHT TO HELL. WE ARE DONE!!!
Gray nodded. “Yeah. Reads like a breakup.”
“The cops said that I pissed her off enough that she decided to take the dog, and unless there was evidence of foul play, they had no reason to look for her. I could report Kenny G. as stolen, but they said that reporting could backfire. They think she’ll get tired of the dog and will bring him back. They obviously haven’t met Kenny G. He’s a keeper.”
Gray held up a hand. “Let’s back up. You said, ‘left this time.’ She do this a lot? Leave?”
“Are you going to write any of this down?” he asked, eyeing her.
Gray’s cheeks burned. “Umm…” She pointed to the cup of pens near his computer monitor. “May I?”
He nodded.
She scribbled as much as she could in five seconds. A bead of sweat trickled down her temple but she didn’t swipe it.