A Good Day for Chardonnay by Darynda Jones

18

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—SIGN AT DEL SOL BROKERAGE AND PSYCHIC READINGS

Instead of accompanying Levi to the cabin to look for Elliot like she’d wanted, Sun spent the last few hours going over the case files and the trial records for Matthew Kent’s conviction. Levi went without her. He promised to call the minute he knew something one way or another, but she didn’t know if he had cell service. If he had a way to contact her.

Matthew Kent refused to name any of his accomplices, the people he said were actually pulling the strings, exclaiming to anyone who would listen that they would kill him. He played the fall-guy part for everything it was worth. And with Elliot’s disappearance, he very nearly got away with it.

Investigators lost the money trail after it left a bank in the Caymans. Tens of millions of dollars. Money didn’t just disappear. Someone had it, but by the looks of Addison Kent, it was not her or her husband.

In the pictures from the trial, Addison looked exhausted. Her dark hair unkempt. Her pale face hollow. She’d been through the wringer thanks to her husband. The fact that they were still married baffled Sun, but maybe Addison just didn’t want to file for divorce while her husband was in prison.

She looked over at Rojas. He was still there, going through the footage from both the bar and the Quick-Mart, hoping to catch a glimpse of the men in the pickup. Without it, they had nothing.

“Rojas, I was impressed with you before I blackmailed you into joining the team. Go home. This can wait until tomorrow.”

“What’s your excuse then?” he asked. “You know, if it can wait.” He stood and walked over to her. “You want me to make a fresh pot before I go?”

She smiled like he’d just offered her a little slice of heaven.

Headlights filtered through the front glass of the station. Levi pulled up and parked. He must not have found Elliot.

“I got it,” Rojas said, going to let him in.

Her phone rang. She looked at the clock. Eleven thirty on a school night. Her daughter had better have a good excuse for staying up so late.

She clicked on the green button. “It’s late. And you are grounded from your phone for all eternity. This better be good.”

“Mommy,” Auri said, her voice so soft she almost didn’t hear her.

“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

“I—I think I found a dead body.”

Sun scrambled to her feet and followed Rojas out the front. “Where are you?”

“I fell.”

She snapped her fingers at Rojas and signaled him to get to his cruiser. He nodded and took off toward his parked SUV while she commandeered Levi’s vehicle. “Where, baby?” she asked.

Levi didn’t hesitate. He climbed back into his pickup while Sun got into the passenger’s side.

“You know that little bridge on Sunrise?”

“Saviata. Yes. I’m almost there.”

Levi backed out and had her on Sunrise in less than two minutes. Rojas followed with his emergency flashers on.

They skidded to a halt and Levi was out the door faster than Sun could get unbuckled.

“Don’t come down here!” Auri shouted.

Rojas brought out a flashlight and searched with the beam until it found her.

Levi started down the ravine.

“Don’t come down here!” Auri shouted, giving it another shot. “It’s a crime scene.”

The smell hit Sun about that time and served only to spur her panic into hyperdrive. She followed Levi down.

“Crime! Scene!”

Ignoring Auri, Levi replied as eloquently as ever, “Bite. Me.” He skidded to a halt on the incline, maneuvered around to her, then looked up at Rojas and clapped his hands once. Rojas tossed him the flashlight while he called for an ambulance.

“Levi,” Auri said, visibly shaking.

“What the hell, Red?”

Sun kicked up enough dirt to bury them both when she tried to stop on the incline beside Levi.

“What part of crime scene is no one but me understanding?”

“Auri, baby, what happened?”

“I fell,” she said. “And my bike came with me.”

Levi shined the light. “Can you stand?”

“My foot is caught in the chain. Nothing is broken though. I’m not experiencing any nausea or extreme pain. I’m also not experiencing any dizziness or other signs of a concussion. I’m just tangled up. And there is a shooting pain in my ankle every time I try to move.”

“Thank you for that assessment, Dr. Vicram,” Sun said.

Levi shined the light on her ankle. “Ouch,” he said. “We may have to cut this off you.”

“With what?” Auri asked, panicking.

“Unless …” He studied it a bit more. “Can I try to lift this end up, Red?”

She nodded and took Sun’s hand.

“If it hurts, tell me. I’ll stop.”

“Okay.”

Sun kneeled closer to her. “Should I even ask what you’re doing with a bike tangled around you in a ravine in the middle of the night?”

She pressed her lips together, then said meekly, “I had to apologize to Cruz.”

“You couldn’t text him?”

“He wasn’t answering. I got worried.”

“Auri,” Sun admonished, but the girl drew in a sharp breath.

“There,” Levi said, letting go of the bike. It slid the rest of the way down the ravine.

“You did it?” Auri asked, trying to sit up.

“Nah-uh.” He pressed her back to the ground. “You stay where you are, Ricky Road Racer.”

But she didn’t. She threw her arms around his neck, shaking even harder.

“Where’s that ambulance?” Sun shouted.

“On the way, boss,” Rojas said. He’d found another flashlight.

“But for real,” Auri said, talking into Levi’s neck. “Dead body. Like two feet away.”

“We’ll worry about that in a minute,” he said.

She let go. “I thought maybe whoever did it was still out here.”

“Oh, baby.” Sun pulled her into her arms.

“I have to take credit for this one,” Levi said after shining a light on the half-covered body.

Sun heard the sirens getting closer. She put her hands over Auri’s ears, fully aware she could still hear their conversation, but it offered Sun some consolation. “Is that your guy?”

He nodded. “That’s him.”

“You weren’t kidding. He didn’t even last two blocks.”

“I never thought they’d dump him in the middle of town.” He shined the light around the whole area. “He wasn’t even dead when they tossed him. Look at all the blood.”

“With friends like that.”

“You guys know I can still hear you, right?” Auri asked.

Sun hugged her tighter, then looked up at Levi.

“I’m going to lift you up,” he said to Auri. “If anything hurts, let me know.”

“What’s the plan?” Sun asked him.

He scanned the area. “I’m going to take her down and walk her to the railing. I can get her up from there.”

Sun nodded. “Rojas, get Quince here to cordon off the area and call Albuquerque. We need another forensics team to process the scene.”

“You got it, boss.”

Levi lifted the lovebug of Sun’s life into his arms. Auri wrapped herself around him as though he were a chocolate kiss and she was a piece of tinfoil.

Sun walked beside them, shining the light to help him maneuver the uneven ground.

“And wake up my parents!” she called over her shoulder.

Sun and Levi were watching the team from Albuquerque load the deceased man—naturally he had no ID on him—into the back of an ambulance to transport him to the OMI. They’d already been to urgent care with Auri, got her checked out, and sent her home, once again, with her grandparents. Maybe Sun was putting too much on them.

“Man,” she said to Levi, “when you set out to kill a guy, you really throw yourself into the job.”

“I try.”

Her phone dinged with a text from Carver. She didn’t even bother. It was almost three in the morning.

“That kid of yours is something else,” Levi said.

“If that’s your way of saying she’s a trouble magnet, I agree.”

“No more so than her mother.” He said it with a lopsided grin that had nothing to do with the battered state of his face.

“True.”

Auri had been beside herself at urgent care. “Grandma and Grandpa are going to be so mad.”

“You don’t think they have a right to be?” she asked as the nurse wrapped her sprained ankle.

She buried her face in her hands. “I keep screwing up. I just wanted to check on Cruz and—”

“Auri,” Sun said, steeling herself. Her daughter needed to understand sneaking out would not be tolerated. Not in today’s world. Hopefully the whole finding-a-dead-body thing would act as an extra layer of deterrent.

Auri’s distress was killing Levi. He stood beside the divider curtain, arms crossed over his chest and working his jaw hard. A bigger sucker than even herself. Somehow that made her feel better.

“You purposely waited for them to go to bed before sneaking out. What does that imply?”

“Intent?” she asked from behind her cupped hands.

“Exactly. So what’s going on?”

A ragged sob filtered through her fingers. “Cruz didn’t pick up. I thought he might be in serious trouble with his dad. I wanted to explain to him that it was my fault. Since I was grounded for breaking and entering, I snuck out to go see him and apologize.” She broke down into a fit of sobs. Getting her friends into trouble seemed to be the best punishment of all.

Still, there was more to it than that. It wasn’t that Sun didn’t believe her. She did. But there was something else going on. Now, however, was not the time to try to find out. Sun had to get back out to the crime scene. Her absence would give Auri some time to calm down. The fact that it would also give the inventive creature more time to come up with a better cover story did not escape her. But discipline could wait. Torment, however, could not.

“Auri, I’m just going to say this once.”

She lowered her hands and looked at Sun, the tears glistening in her eyes like vise grips around Sun’s heart.

Levi felt it, too. He shifted and dropped his gaze.

“When a young girl sneaks out to go see a boy in the middle of the night, no matter how noble the reason, sometimes the boy’s little friend—we’ll call him Mr. Penis—wants to meet the girl’s little friend—we’ll call her Ms. Vagina.”

“Oh, my God, Mom.” She covered her face again.

And therein began the lesson as the nurse, who’d first regarded Sun with a shocked expression, struggled to suppress a smile. Others in the urgent care center gathered ’round to hear the timeless tales of Mr. Penis and Ms. Vagina. Because who wouldn’t?

Well, besides Levi, who scrubbed his face and went for coffee.

When Sun finished with, “And that is why little girls never order nachos on a first date,” she received a round of applause worthy of the greatest of thespians. “Finally, someone appreciates my talent.”

“I’m filing for emaciation immediately.”

“You do that, hon.”

Sun turned and saw her parents standing in the doorway.

She stepped to them. “Do you think, and I know this is asking a lot, but do you think you could possibly keep your granddaughter from getting into any more trouble for the rest of the night?”

Her father shook his head. “I can’t make any promises, Sheriff. Look who her mother is.”

He had a point. They wheeled Auri out in a chair three times too big for her tiny body. Sun’s chest tightened as the image replayed in her mind.

“No sign of Elliot?” she asked Levi when they went back out to the scene.

He shook his head. “He hasn’t been back to the cabin.”

“I get that he can take care of himself,” she said, worry gnawing at her. She put a hand on his arm. “Levi, do you think they took him?”

He looked at her hand, then back at her. “No. He took off on his bike. And he had supplies. He was prepared. I’m sure Seabright had a contingency plan and Eli knew to go into hiding. I just don’t know where.”

“Can you find out?”

“I’ll go back out in the morning and try to pick up his trail.”

“Thank you. So, do you think the trauma of finding a dead body is enough of a punishment for the little vixen?” she asked, not sure why she was consulting Levi about parenting tactics.

“I do, but she doesn’t need to know that. A few threats might go a long way.”

“Oh, yeah? What kind of threats?”

“The usual. Cancel her cell service. Put a padlock on her bedroom door. Tell her the next dead body she’s going to find will be Cruz De los Santos’s.”

She nodded. “Look at you, being all dadlike.” She’d caught the tail end of a surprised expression a microsecond before he recovered. “You’re amazing with Jimmy,” she added, referring to how he was with his sister’s kid. A kid who happened to be on the spectrum. It didn’t stop Levi for a minute. “And with Auri.” Honestly, the way he was with her astonished Sun to no end. “You’ll make a great dad someday.”

He regarded her for a long moment before commenting with an inscrutable, “You don’t say.”

Her phone rang before she could think up a comeback, which was too bad. She was great at comebacks.

She didn’t recognize the number. “Sheriff Vicram.”

A female voice, small and reminiscent of Auri’s in the ravine, floated through the speaker. “Sunshine?”

“Speaking.”

“Sunshine, it’s Addison.”

Sun’s first thought was that Addison had Elliot with her. That he’d found his way home. But her voice was too thin. Too frightened, and alarm shot through her. “Addison, what’s wrong?”

“It’s Adam. My seven-year-old. He’s”—her voice cracked—“he’s missing.”

Thirty minutes later, Sun and Levi pulled up to the Kent house in Santa Fe. The local police had the place surrounded and had flooded the area with lights.

Sun recognized several of the officers on duty as they ducked under the tape and strode into the house, making sure not to disturb the area.

Ronald Aranda, a detective she’d worked with for years, sat on a wingback across from Mr. and Mrs. Kent in the living room.

“I put him to bed at nine,” Addison said, her voice breaking, “like I always do.” She sobbed into a tissue. Mr. Kent sat beside her, but they did not touch. There was no comforting in either direction

“Did you hear anything?” Ronald asked.

“No. I—I didn’t go to bed until late and went to check on him before I turned in. He was gone.” She broke down.

Addison was dressed in jeans and a white button-down, sneakers, and a light jacket, none of which looked hastily thrown on. Meaning she’d still been wearing them at three in the morning.

Sun couldn’t help but note that Mrs. Kent’s anguish was more … genuine this time around? She’d cried when Elliot went missing, but Sun had always felt that she and Matthew were holding something back. She’d been devastated, but in a different way. This was as real as it got.

“Detective,” she said to Ronald when she and Levi entered.

The detective stood and took her hand, genuinely pleased to see her. There was nobody better, in Sun’s opinion. The Kents were in good hands.

Addison jumped up. “Sunshine.” She rushed into Sunshine’s arms while her husband, Matthew, looked on, his posture guarded, his expression pensive.

“What happened?” Sun asked.

Levi stood back and did as she’d asked him to do in the cruiser. He observed. Maybe he would see something she didn’t.

“I went to check on him and he was gone,” she repeated, this time leading Sun to Adam’s bedroom.

Sun tossed Ronald an apologetic look over her shoulder; he shook his head and sat back down to talk to Matthew, basically giving Sun his okay. She was butting into his case, after all.

Levi followed them back. He tapped her shoulder and gestured toward the Kents’ bedroom. A suitcase sat open on the bed as though she was packing it. Or repacking it.

“He was right here,” Addison said, sweeping into Adam’s room and gesturing toward a bed in the shape of a race car. “I put him to bed, and then I stayed up to get some work done. When I came back, he was gone.”

The woman visibly shook, her pale face full of apprehension.

Sun took her hand to try to steady her. “I thought you guys were going to Albuquerque to stay with your mom?”

She tossed a furtive glance over her shoulder. “Matthew asked me to stay. Said we needed to work things out.” She stepped forward and pleaded with her. “You have to find him, Sunshine.”

Besides being utterly confused, considering her failed first attempt at finding a missing Kent child, Sun understood her grief, and her heart broke for the woman.

“Addison, Ronald Aranda is an excellent detective. Any interference from me would be frowned upon.”

“Do you think I care?” she asked, “He can frown all he wants. You know us. You know me. I want you on this case.”

“Okay, besides the fact that this is out of my jurisdiction, why would you want me, Addison? I never found Elliot. I never even got close.”

Addison sank onto the bed. “You’re wrong, Sunshine. You did find him. You almost ruined everything.”