I checked my watch. Preston and I were meeting with a new client soon. The whole new-boyfriend conversation with Mum would have to wait until I had time for a more prepared inquisition. “Are you two in town for a little shopping?” I asked Dovie.
“Actually, no,” she answered.
I tipped my head at her serious tone. “A court hearing?” She and Mum had been arrested not long ago for disturbing the peace. I thought everything had been worked out, but—
“Time served.” Mum sounded like a felon who’d been locked up for decades instead of a protester sentenced to serve community service.
Dovie pulled the latest issue of the South Shore Beacon from the hobo bag at her feet and handed it to me. “We actually came to see Sean.”
“Sean? Why?” I scanned the headline.
LOCAL MAN STILL MISSING
“I’m hoping you won’t mind sharing,” Dovie said, “because I want to hire him.”
2
Macalaster Gladstone had been missing for six weeks.
Talk about poof, gone.
He’d last been seen walking his golden retriever, Rufus, along Cohasset’s picturesque side streets just after the New Year. Rufus had come home; Mac had not.
The black-and-white photo on the front page showed a smiling older man with a thick shock of dark hair and full beard (who, I noticed—and not just because I was hungry—looked a lot like the Gorton’s Fisherman). His arms were looped around a beautiful dog. A dark bandanna was tied around the dog’s neck, and Rufus looked to be smiling, too, with his tongue lolling, his eyes bright and shiny.
Preston snatched the paper from my hand. I’m not sure why she needed to see it—she had written the story. “So sad. By all accounts they were inseparable.”
“Exactly,” Dovie said. “Something awful had to have happened to Mac. The police have run out of leads, so I want Sean to look into it. Fresh eyes.” Her voice grew thick.
“Do you know him well?” I’d heard about the story, of course—it was hard to live in Cohasset and not. There were open conversations about what had happened to Mac at the local coffee shop, the pizza parlor, the produce department at Shaw’s. I hadn’t known Dovie was so invested.
“Not well,” she conceded. “His wife, Betty, used to be in my Scrabble club. From what I know of Mac, he was a sweet man. One of those strong, silent types. He was a bit of a recluse, especially after Betty died, but still a big patron of the local theater and all the arts. He was an illustrator, you know.”
I’d never personally met Mac, but his name was well-known in not only the South Shore community but the art world as well. His work was on par with Norman Rockwell’s and J. C. Leyendecker’s.
Preston handed the paper back to Dovie. “The police aren’t doing much because they think he’s dead.”
“And that may be so, but I want to know the truth. Where’s his body? What happened to him? His daughter, Jemima, isn’t exactly going out of her way to get answers. She thinks he committed suicide. Ha!”
Mum tsked and sipped her coffee.
“Isn’t it possible?” I asked softly, not wanting to be at the wrong end of a Dovie tirade.
“Anything is possible, but there was no note. Plus, I can’t imagine Mac would willingly leave Rufus behind. From everything I’ve heard, that dog was Mac’s best friend.”
“What’s the story with Jemima?” Suz asked, propping her elbows on the desk and her head in her hands.
Dovie stood, paced. “At eighteen she married a man almost twice her age, some rock star she met when she dropped out of college and became a music groupie. You can imagine how Betty and Mac felt about that.”
Mum shook her head like the decision had been a fate worse than death. “Poor parents.”
I was suddenly relieved my vast résumé didn’t include “music groupie.”
“Mac and Betty never approved,” Dovie said. “Betty hinted there was something in Rick’s—he’s the husband—past that made them nervous, though she never said what. And of course, who wants a rock-star lifestyle for their baby girl? Unfortunately, they didn’t have a say.”
“Is he anyone famous?” Suz asked.
Dovie tipped her hand in a “so-so” motion. “Rick Hayes.”
“The Rick Hayes? I’d say he was famous.” Suz blinked. “Wow.”
Rolling her eyes, Dovie said, “Maybe. At one time, a long time ago. Now he’s a down-and-out aging rocker. Rumor is he’s trying to put together a reality show about his family as they deal with him trying to make a comeback. He’s not finding the financing, however.”
“Is he broke?” Suz asked, clearly infatuated with his story.
Dovie said, “Completely. He and Jemima have been living with Mac for a while now, but he’s been supporting them for years. I wouldn’t doubt if they’re just chomping at the bit to go to the courts and declare Mac dead so they can get their hands on his bank accounts. From what I hear, Mac had been threatening to cut them off financially if Rick didn’t drop this whole reality project.”
Preston, I noticed, had perked up, her broken heel all but forgotten. “I haven’t heard any of this. Do you think his daughter or her husband had something to do with his disappearance?”
Arching a snow-white eyebrow, Dovie said, “I don’t know, but the possibility needs to be explored.”
Preston reached for her notebook. Obviously this was one angle to the story she hadn’t probed. “Have you mentioned all this to the police?”
“Of course.” Dovie still paced. “I believe they looked into it for precisely half a second. That’s why I need Sean.”
Sean. My blood thrummed at the sound of his name. We’d been dating since the fall and things were heating up and getting serious. Really serious.
Which was exciting and scared the hell out of me at the same time.
Valentines and commitment didn’t exactly go together, despite the fact that we matched others for a living.
The problem was Cupid’s gift to us had also come with an attached curse: Valentines could match others based on their auras, but we couldn’t see our own—or one another’s—color. Which made finding true love nearly impossible. Not one relationship in the Valentine family had withstood the test of time. Not. A. Single. One.
I’d grown up in two different worlds. One where true love existed, thrived. And one where my parents lived separate lives and my grandmother was left scarred by a secret divorce and delusions of happily ever afters. And though, technically, Dovie wasn’t a Valentine, she often said she was cursed by association, which doomed her every relationship.
“He’s due back any minute,” I said.
Sean, a former firefighter, had been working as an investigator for his brother Sam’s PI agency for almost a year now. Lost Loves, which had been created to reunite long lost loves by employing Sean’s private investigating and my own special sleuthing abilities, was now an official division of not only Valentine, Inc., but SD Investigations as well.
Dovie plopped down in a wing chair. “We’ll wait, then.”
“What about using Lucy?” Suz asked, wiggling her fingers like a magician over a magic hat.
I didn’t take offense, though my abilities were hardly on the hocus-pocus level.
“Wish I could,” Dovie said. “Mac disappeared with only the clothes on his back. No jewelry, no cell phone, not even his wallet.”
I checked my watch again. My new client was due in five minutes. “Were any of his clothes gifts?”
There were essentially two rules to how my gift of finding lost objects worked. The first being that I could only do readings on the person who owned the lost object. The other was the object couldn’t be human or animal. I couldn’t find lost dogs. And I couldn’t find lost people. Just inanimate objects.
There was one big exception to Rule #1. Gifts. It was the only time an object had more than one owner. This exception had led to the creation of Lost Loves and explained why my work with the Massachusetts State Police had been so su
ccessful.
“I asked Jemima. She said no.”
“We believe she’s lying,” Mum added pointedly.
Preston scribbled. “You don’t think she wants him found.”
Mum winked at her. “You got it.”
Preston beamed. Sometimes she reminded me of a long-haired Chihuahua, with her spiky hair, eager eyes, and love of attention.
“Where is Sean? Shouldn’t he be here if you have a client coming in?” Dovie asked.
“He’ll be here soon. He’s apartment hunting. But you don’t need to wait. He’s coming over tonight. We can pop in at your place.”
Easy enough. I lived right next door to my grandmother, in a little beach cottage on her vast oceanside property. For my pride’s sake, she allowed me to pay rent, but I knew she was putting the money aside to give back to me one day.
Everyone looked at me. “What?”
“Apartment hunting?” Suz asked. “Why not just move in with you?”
“He does spend a lot of time there,” Dovie said, a knowing smile lurking on the corners of her lips. She was desperate for great-grandkids and was hopeful Sean and I were just one missed birth control pill away from producing one—or six.
A rush of warmth climbed my neck, settled in my cheeks. “It’s too soon.”
Mum said, “Nothing wrong with shacking up, LucyD.”
Preston said, “You should definitely ask him.”
I should have known she wouldn’t take my side. “Don’t you have somewhere to go?”
“You know I don’t. We have a meeting in a couple of minutes. Don’t get snippy with me because you have commitment issues.”
“I don’t have commitment issues!” I had fallen for Sean Donahue the moment I laid eyes on him—love at first sight. Wham, bam—I was a goner. As far as I was concerned, there would never be anyone else. But like everyone in a relationship, we had our issues.
Mum snorted. “Denial.”
I groaned. “It’s not commitment; it’s Cupid’s Cur—” I cut myself off, realizing I’d almost said too much. Preston didn’t know about the family curse. Or the auras, either, though she was suspicious, thanks to overhearing a conversation between my brother and me at Christmastime.
My brother.
I drew in a breath. I still wasn’t used to saying “my brother,” even in the quiet of my own thoughts. Oliver “Cutter” McCutchan’s true parentage had been kept secret for over twenty-five years, and the revelation had come as quite a shock to everyone. Mostly Cutter. His adjustment to suddenly having a whole new, somewhat dysfunctional, branch of his family tree hadn’t been all that smooth, but he was trying.
We were slowly building a relationship. We spoke at least once a week, swapped e-mails, and met for drinks on occasion.
I clamped my lips closed before I revealed anything else. The decision to keep the family’s psychic ability secret had been made centuries ago, around the time witches were being burned at the stake in Salem. No one in the family wanted the notoriety or the possibility of being labeled a fake or having their lives put under a microscope. The tradition of silence had been passed down from Valentine to Valentine just like the gift itself. No one dared break the secrecy, except in the rarest of situations. It was a legacy destined to continue. And a legacy Preston was dying to uncover.
“You and Sean belong together, Lucy,” Mum said softly. “Living together is the next step.”
“Better to sample the milk before you buy it,” Dovie said. “Make sure it’s not sour. And doesn’t leave its socks on the floor every day.”
This conversation was not happening. I was dreaming. The whole day had been one big Dallas episode. Where was my father when I needed him? He’d hate the idea of Sean moving in with me. Raphael, too. My father’s valet and all-around right-hand man had been like a second father to me. He might be more upset than my dad.
“I thought the saying was ‘why buy the milk’—”
Dovie cut me off. “Work with me, LucyD.”
I was shaking my head when the buzzer chimed. “It’s too soon,” I repeated as Suz said, “Valentine, Inc.,” into the intercom. Was I the only one with any sense?
“Meaghan Archibald here to see Lucy Valentine.”
I jumped up, grateful for the reprieve as Suz buzzed Meaghan upstairs. Preston pulled on her boot.
“Can you send her back to my office, please?” I asked Suz, heading that way. Preston gimped ahead of me and turned into the little kitchenette off the hall. I gave my mother and grandmother kisses. “You two behave yourselves.”
“We always do,” Mum said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ears.
“Hardly.”
“Shoo with you,” Dovie said. As I headed down the hall, I heard her say, “Shall we throw a shacking-up party for her?”
“You’re not funny!” I yelled.
“Are, too!” echoed back to me.
In my office, I set down my tote bag, pulled a pad of paper from my desk drawer. Preston limped in, carrying a coffee urn and mugs on a silver tray. She pushed back her spiky blond bangs and looked at me out of the corner of her eye.
“What?” I asked.
“You were about to say something earlier before and cut yourself off.”
“Was I?”
“You’re not a good liar.”
Ha—I had her fooled. I was a great liar. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She sank into a chair. “It sounded like you were about to say ‘Cupid’s Curse.’ ”
“Cupid’s Curse?” I forced a laugh. “Sounds like a bad attraction at a haunted house.”
“You may as well just tell me. You know I’ll figure it out.”
That’s what I was afraid of.
3
Meaghan Archibald’s pale green eyes twinkled with happiness. She looked like a siren from a vintage Herbal Essence bottle. Stunning curls spiraled through her long black hair. There was a hint of color in her cheeks, a swipe or two of mascara at most. A natural beauty. We’d already run through the particulars. She was twenty-three, a graphic designer living in an apartment near Fenway. Never married, no kids. “How old were you the first time you fell in love, Ms. Valentine?”
She’d caught me off-guard. It was the sort of thing I, as a matchmaker specializing in reuniting lost loves, might ask my client, not the other way around.
Yet the question Meaghan asked was easy. A first love was almost always imprinted in the mind—and the heart—forever.
“I was five. Gabriel Harris. Angelic eyes, downturned lips, unruly hair, ninety-six of Crayola’s finest when the rest of us only had forty-eight, and he always picked me first for Red Rover. He was the love of my life from the first day of kindergarten well into second grade. That was when during the school’s Thanksgiving play I caught him trying to stick his gobbler up my best friend Em’s Pilgrim’s dress. I was inconsolable and cried for days on end. Soon after, I found out he’d been loaning his crayons to lots of girls in the class, not just me.” I smiled. “He has triplet girls now. Karma, that’s what that is.”
The noise of a delivery truck in the alley below my second-floor window rumbled through the historic brick walls. Stretching out my long legs, I worked out a nagging ache in my left calf. I smoothed a crease in my gray pin-striped trousers and tried not to think about Mac Gladstone, though, to be honest, it was hard to push him from my thoughts. I was intrigued by his disappearance. I wondered what kind of information I could weasel from Detective Lieutenant Aiden Holliday, my contact with the state police.
Preston had her digital recorder running on the table. “I was eight. Matthew Dennehy. He chased me endlessly around the playground. I had a wild crush on him until the day he finally caught me—and demanded my lunch money.” Her Kewpie lips pursed. “Last I heard he was a minister. Is that karma? Or predestination?”
I couldn’t help but smile. Okay, sometimes Preston was tolerable. Actually, these days, she was more tolerable than not. Not that I’d ever tell her.
“Do you really believe in it?” Meaghan asked me. “Karma? Kismet?”
“Absolutely.”
“I was fifteen,” she said. “My first love. His name was Tristan Rourke. I want you to find him, Ms. Valentine.”
“It’s Lucy, please. How long has it been since you’ve seen Tristan?” As I jotted the name down on a legal pad, I surreptitiously slid my gaze across my watch. I was hoping Sean would make it back in time to sit in on this meeting. He must have found a place he liked. I could easily imagine him making an offer on the spot. He was impulsive like that.
As it was, he and Thoreau, his Yorkie, had been living with Sean’s brother, Sam, and his family for a few months. It wasn’t until last week when Sam very unsubtly hinted that Sean and a suddenly leaky Thoreau might have worn out their welcome.
Sean had nowhere else to go but out on his own, no other family I knew of. He didn’t like to talk about his past much at all. Something I was more than willing to overlook before now, as I had kept a lot of my past secret from him at first, too. But eventually, I’d told him everything—Cupid, curses, and auras, oh my—and I was still wondering when he’d open up.
My palms dampened at the thought of Sean finding a place. Because as much as I tried to convince myself otherwise, I’d love to have him live with me. Leaky dog and all.
But underneath all the want, the desire, lurked the fear. That if we moved in together the more time we’d spend together, the faster we’d end. And I didn’t want it to end. Ever.
I tipped an ear to the door, hoping to hear activity in the outer office. Mum and Dovie were chatting, but so far there was no sign of Sean’s return.
My dad, Oscar, the oft-proclaimed King of Love, was at a lunch meeting, which might mean he was really in a meeting or could mean he was rendezvousing with his latest girlfriend, Sabrina McCutchan—Cutter’s mother.
Valentine’s Day had come and gone last week, and Dad’s schedule had cleared considerably. He was taking more and more time off, which he claimed was good for his damaged heart, but I suspected it had more to do with his libido. I envied other children who didn’t think of, or see, their parents in such a way. To say I’d been raised unconventionally would be an understatement.