No Love Lost Read online

  No Love Lost

  Lynn Bulock

  Published by Steeple Hill Books™

  To Joe, Always

  And to two of the real-life couples who’ve shown

  me what marriage should be,

  Jack and Bonnie David

  Elton and Edna Peterson

  Halfway to Ventura I wanted to leave Nicole’s sister by the side of the road.

  She was whining, “Gracie Lee, Mom, this is so stupid. You know it’s not going to be her. They said they found this girl naked washed up on the beach. That is so not anything Nicole would do.”

  “Paige, shut up,” her mother finally snapped. “The goal of this trip is to make sure it isn’t Nicole. And we all know it wouldn’t be like her to go skinny-dipping in the ocean in June. Nobody in their right mind would do that.”

  Beside me in the front passenger seat, Hal gripped the armrest so tightly I was afraid it might come off in his hand. I almost felt like reaching over and patting his hand.

  Regardless of who was there at the morgue to be identified, this would be a rough night for everyone involved.

  Books by Lynn Bulock

  Love Inspired Suspense

  Where Truth Lies #56

  No Love Lost #59

  Love Inspired

  Gifts of Grace #80

  Looking for Miracles #97

  Walls of Jericho #125

  The Prodigal’s Return#144

  Change of the Heart#181

  The Harbor of His Arms #204

  Protecting Holly #279

  Steeple Hill Single Title

  Love the Sinner

  Less Than Frank

  LYNN BULOCK

  has been writing since fourth grade and has been a published author in various fields for over twenty years. Her first romantic novel came out in 1989 and has been followed by more than twenty books since then. She lives near Los Angeles, California, with her husband. They have two grown sons.

  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.

  —1 Corinthians 13:6–7

  Acknowledgments

  Those who read my books know that the real Ventura County and Gracie Lee’s version are a little different. I have taken literary license with quite a few things including geography, county government and structure of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department. Any errors are totally of my own making, and I am indebted to more people than I can mention who keep me from making more errors than I do. Special thanks to Linda Fisherman M.A., M.F.T., Sgt. Patti Salas of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and Dr. Robert Hoffmann for their professional advice.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  ONE

  My ex-husband stood in the courtyard of his luxurious house, looking as agitated as I’d ever seen him. “Surely you realize that all of this is your fault,” he said with a glare in my direction.

  “Wow, what a big surprise. Twenty years later, a whole different wedding and Hal Harris is still totally blameless for any crisis that arises.” Okay, so that wasn’t very mature. But I couldn’t find my son, my ex-husband was marrying a teenager he’d lost track of and perhaps I was under just a little more stress than usual. I’d work on mature later.

  My name is Gracie Lee Harris. I’m a thirty-nine-year-old single mom, divorced—once—and widowed—once—still getting used to the fact that after a lifetime in Missouri I picked up and moved to Southern California about two years ago. Life has never been the same, but usually I mean that in a good way. Today I wasn’t so sure.

  I moved out here to follow my charming new second husband Dennis Peete. In a supreme act of love I even moved in with my mother-in-law, but that soon became the least of my problems. Dennis had a nasty car accident and an even nastier turn of events led to his murder, with the police suspecting me of the crime for a while.

  The best thing about my move to California has been the wonderful group of women who have become my friends at the Conejo Community Chapel here in Rancho Conejo. The Christian Friends group has kept me together through two murder investigations, not to mention sane and striving toward a faith that would normally keep me from mouthing off, even to my ex-husband.

  I’d married Hal Harris at nineteen, and we’d divorced before I was twenty-three. Our early shared history is probably one of the reasons that he can bring out the worst in me quicker than almost any person on the planet.

  And of course today he’d done it again. I was fuming because he seemed to care a lot more that his fiancée Nicole was not where she should have been than he was about our son, Ben, being totally out of contact with both of his parents.

  I exaggerated before about Nicole being a teenager. She is almost thirty, but looks younger than Ben does at nearly nineteen. She definitely doesn’t look any older than Ben’s girlfriend Cai Li who’s just finished up her sophomore year at Pacific Oaks Christian College. Of course that may be because Nicole is so tiny she always looks like she’s playing dress-up in her white medical coat over her size-0 wardrobe.

  Tiny or not, I’d still argue that she’s a grownup and can take care of herself, whereas Ben is still navigating those waters into adulthood and far more likely to be in trouble. If he’d been at school I never would have known he hadn’t come home the night before and I wouldn’t be in such a panic. Instead, he’d come back to my apartment two days earlier when the semester ended. So it came as a shock on Saturday morning when his bedroom door was open and his bed still made.

  “You’re just overreacting,” Hal said loudly, bringing me back to the present. “How do you know that Ben didn’t come in after you went to bed, sleep a few hours and is already up and gone this morning?”

  “He made no other mess in his room, made the bed and is gone before 8:00 a.m. on a Saturday? It would never happen.” I was surprised Hal could even suggest it. “Of course I might say about the same regarding Nicole.”

  “No, you couldn’t. At least her car is here.” Hal motioned toward a small silver sedan that looked quite new and shiny. Probably a wedding present from my husband’s part of the family business selling security systems. Or maybe it was a gift from one of Nicole’s parents. I’d heard from Ben they competed for her loyalties as fiercely as Hal’s mother and father did for my son’s favor. In any case I was pretty sure that a doctoral student in psychology hadn’t just gone out and bought a brand-new car.

  “So her car is here but she isn’t? Are you sure she didn’t just go for a walk or something? I mean, surely you’ve talked to her in the last twelve hours?” Unlike Ben, I felt like adding. “And how on earth is any of this my fault?”

  “That’s two questions. Do you want me to answer either of them?” Hal ran a hand through his dark blond hair, only a couple of shades darker than Ben’s and almost as long. I wondered if he was coloring it. Surely at forty he should have a little bit of gray, shouldn’t he? Or had he left that all to me, along with the raising of our son?

  “Second one first, I guess. I can understand how you’d blame me for Ben being gone, but Nicole? I don’t follow your logic on that one.”

  “Aw, Gracie Lee, lighten up. On both of us, okay? Ben’s a normal college kid with a girlfriend. There are half
a dozen things he might be doing that would keep him out all night at his age. He’s a little old to always be checking in with Mommy.”

  I wasn’t going to give in on that point, because I knew Ben didn’t drink, didn’t do drugs, didn’t hang out with people who did and was dating a girl who was even more serious about her faith than he was. But pointing out any of this to Hal right now would just mean another explosion. “And Nicole?” I prompted. I wasn’t ready to give up on that issue.

  He sighed, and for a moment Hal looked forty. His shoulders slumped and he looked so much like Ben I had a momentary impulse to hug him. It passed quickly. “Nicole’s usually good about keeping me informed about where she is. And she’s been so uptight about running into you in public, because she thinks she has this image to live up to.”

  I decided not to point out to Hal that Nicole and I had met on a regular basis in the last three weeks. If she hadn’t shared that information with him, I wasn’t about to do it now. “So where do you think she is?”

  “Honestly? I don’t have a clue. She went out last night, some last fling with a couple of girlfriends, but neither of them is the wild type. She told me she was going to sleep on the couch when she got in because she didn’t want to wake me in the middle of the night. So I haven’t seen her since six yesterday evening. Still, her car is here and the couch looks disturbed. Besides, she wouldn’t just flake out on me this morning of all times.”

  “What makes today more important?”

  “Her mom and her sister Paige are coming in later today and planning to stay through the wedding. Nicole’s been obsessing for a week over having things perfect when they show up.”

  That explained some of Hal’s stress right there. Two weeks of in-laws before an event as big as a wedding would put anybody on edge. And I knew he loved this young woman impossibly young in my estimation that he was getting ready to marry. “Okay, so maybe you should just hang tight here and wait for Nicole to call you. I assume you’ve tried her cell?”

  “It’s off, dumps me right to voice mail. And I can’t find a number for either of her girlfriends, either. Both are probably on her PDA but I feel funny using it.”

  Hmm. Age had changed Hal. Fifteen years ago he wouldn’t have given a second thought to someone else’s boundaries like that. Not when the someone else was his wife, or in this case fiancée. “Do you want any kinds of official checks run on her yet?”

  He shook his head. “No, because if I did that and she is really only out taking a long walk to clear her head or something, she’d have a fit when she got home. Besides, I don’t want you or your cop boyfriend to do me any favors.”

  “Ray isn’t just a cop and he isn’t my boyfriend,” I snapped. Ray Fernandez was a Ventura County Sheriff’s Department detective and our relationship, although cordial, wasn’t getting serious any time soon. For one thing, neither of us had time for serious.

  Most of my time is spent finishing up my master’s degree in counseling at Pacific Oaks Christian College, or keeping track of Ben. Then there’s working as a barista at the Coffee Corner on campus, keeping active with my Christian Friends group at Conejo Community Chapel here in Rancho Conejo, and if there’s any time left over after everything else I work in an occasional date with Ray.

  Of course he’s even busier than I am, so those dates are few and far between. The department had gone through a budget crises like every other government agency in California, and his already-crowded life as a homicide detective had gotten even more convoluted by the creation of a major crimes unit. Ray now investigates serious crimes involving live people as well as dead ones, and there are far more of those crimes in the county to keep him busy. All this added up to way more than I wanted to explain to Hal.

  My frustration level had reached the boiling point and Hal was still being as obnoxious as ever. “I think maybe it’s better if I go back home and wait for Ben to call, and you wait for Nicole. Call me if you hear from either of them.”

  And with that I turned around and got into my car before I cried in front of my ex-husband or got into a screaming match with him. I was praying for a phone to ring, which I found ironic. It was a ringing phone three weeks ago that had led me into the mess I was in now.

  *

  A ringing phone at 5:00 a.m. is every mother’s nightmare. When Ben is at school a predawn phone call jars me awake into full panic. When he’s with me, I still startle awake then because my mom living alone in Missouri worries me almost as much as Ben.

  I would still be back in Missouri close to her if it weren’t for my decision three years ago to marry Dennis and follow him out here within twelve months of our marriage. Before we got a chance to celebrate our second anniversary I was a widow with no illusions and little money, but a whole lot more faith than I’d ever had before. And that’s still about where things stand today.

  The illusions are still gone, and so is most of the money. I lost track of thirty thousand dollars through Dennis making some shady business arrangements and then dying before I could sort out his affairs. An insurance policy finally paid off five thousand, but everything else is still tied up in a long and complicated legal battle involving his other heirs including a grandson he never really knew and a daughter by another woman.

  But going into all that in detail would take more time than I can spare, so I’ll leave it at that. So the phone jarring me out of sleep made me worry about Ben first and my mother second. Surprisingly, the voice on the other end wasn’t connected to either of them. “Gracie Lee?” the shaky voice asked. “I know it’s a terrible time to be calling but I need help and you were the first person I thought of.”

  I was touched that my friend Linnette Parks would think of me first when there are so many other people in her life that are more qualified to handle trouble. As a Christian Friends leader she’s the person I would turn to in crisis myself. If she had a problem I would have thought she would call Pastor George from church, or somebody else with ministry training.

  I’ve got little training in how to minister to others, but Linnette and some of the group say I’ve got a natural talent. I’m not sure how right they are, although I do know that people in virtually any situation feel free to come up to me in public and share their problems with me.

  “What do you need help with?” At least I had my feet over the side of the bed and felt like I was semi-alert. Already my brain shouted that coffee and brushing my teeth would both be very good ideas before doing much else.

  “I feel terrible, really down and scared. Could you come over and sit with me for a couple hours until my doctor’s office opens?”

  “Sure, unless you’d rather go to an emergency room,” I offered.

  Her answer was swift. “No, no emergency room. And don’t call Ray, either.”

  “Don’t worry, I hadn’t planned to.” Her response left me mystified but I had no intention to go against her wishes. I figure Linnette knows more about most things involving health and crisis than I do, unless the subject at hand is being under investigation for murder. On that subject I have more experience than she does, even though I hate to admit it.

  I pushed a wave of honey-blond hair out of my face—it’s actually Caramel Frappe, thanks to the same stylist who does Linnette’s Vivacious Auburn—and contemplated how to manage things. Linnette sounded awfully shaky. Did I have time for a shower? I decided that was a bad idea and put on coffee to brew while I washed my face, brushed my teeth and slid into clothes. In about ten minutes I was out the door of the apartment. In fifteen more I was at Linnette’s house, a tidy three-bedroom ranch style on one of the “tree streets” in Rancho Conejo.

  Those streets were actually all called Calle, which means “street” in Spanish, followed by something descriptive like the name of a tree. The system always made me wish I’d taken more Spanish. Linnette’s command of the language was about the best of anybody I knew from church. She said it was from living here so many years and wanting to talk to everybody. A transplanted
Midwesterner like me, she came for college and never moved back home. And now, a widow with two basically grown daughters, she wasn’t likely to leave anytime soon.

  Surprise bordering on shock hit me when she opened her front door. I’d never seen my friend look as worn or disheveled as she did now. My first thought was that something had happened to one of the girls, and I asked her. “No, they’re both fine as far as I know,” she said, voice dull. “It’s just me.”

  We went back to the family room where one lone lamp burned in the predawn, casting a dim circle of light next to a worn recliner. The afghan draped over one arm told me that whatever sleep she’d gotten had probably been here. “I put on coffee after I called you. I can’t vouch for it being any good, but it’s black and hot.”

  “Then let me get us both a cup while you settle down there.” I pointed to the recliner. “And then you can tell me what’s going on.” Everything I’d seen so far made me think of one answer. Linnette made no secret among the Christian Friends that she suffered from bouts of clinical depression. Most of the time medication, exercise and lots of prayer kept it in check. This morning those things didn’t seem to be working.

  While I poured coffee I tried to figure out why her condition felt like such a shock. We’d seen each other in passing at work, but with the end of the semester coming up fast our time to really talk was sharply curtailed. Add that to the fact that I’d been going to a different service at the chapel and it explained why Linnette’s depression slid by me.

  Putting on a more cheerful face, I came back with two steaming mugs. “We’ll have to drink it black unless you have some creamer stashed someplace,” I told her as matter-of-factly as I could.

  She gave a mirthless little laugh. “The milk’s sour, isn’t it? I haven’t been to the grocery store in a week or two.”