The problem with having a suspicious nature is that it's really hard to bury your suspicions, no matter how much you might want to. Long after Mick left, I lay awake, bothered by what he might or might not be hiding from me. I kept telling myself that it was silly to be upset about him wanting the morning to himself. Then I would recall the expression on his face and terrible explanations for it would pop into my head. Maybe Mick had stopped drinking blood from bags and was getting his refreshment from a beautiful twenty-year-old. Or maybe his blood-sucking ex-wife, Coraline, was back in his life. They were the same worries that any insecure girlfriend has, except bizarrely twisted by the fact that he's a vampire. I finally slept, but not deeply, and I woke far too early for a Saturday morning.
At eight a.m. I decided I was going to head to his apartment, regardless of what we'd agreed to last night. If I didn't, I was going to be a basket case by noon. I showered and dressed in jeans and a pale blue, feminine hoodie. I can glam up pretty well when I put my mind to it, but my preferred mode of dress is casual, especially on the weekend. I tied my hair in a ponytail, swiped on a little mascara, and took a peek in the mirror. To give you a quick visual; I'm about five-six, with sandy blonde hair and wideset blue eyes. I'm slightly curvy, despite the fact that I've dropped a few pounds since I started dating Mick. One of the side effects, I suppose, of being with a guy who never eats. I was relieved to see from my reflection that I didn't look too crazy – just a little tired.
Traffic was light and I got to Mick's apartment building faster than usual. It dawned on me as I rode the elevator to the top floor that I hadn't invented an excuse for coming over early. Nothing really plausible came to mind, so I decided to say that I was bored sitting around my place. It's lame, I know, but it's consistent with my nature and I figured Mick would buy it. And it was better than saying I was coming over to catch him doing whatever it was he didn't want me to know about.
When I got out of the elevator, I was surprised to see empty boxes in the hallway. Mick owns the entire floor and has no next-door neighbors. Typically, the area is as neat as a pin, with polished marble floors and a few pieces of modern art hanging on the walls. His PI office is next to his apartment (giving him the world's shortest commute), and the whole atmosphere screams privacy, which is a good thing for a vampire - and for a PI. I tried to guess what might have been in the boxes and came up empty as the boxes themselves.
I marched to his door and rapped on it loudly. For a few seconds I heard nothing; however, it was the kind of nothing where you're pretty sure that the person is home and taking his time to answer the door. I could feel my anger beginning to simmer and lifted my hand to knock again. Before I could, however, the door opened and Mick stood there. It was hard not to miss his face falling a bit when he realized it was me.
"Beth," he said, "you're early."
"Is that a problem?" I asked sharply.
His eyes widened. "No," he replied mildly. "It's not a problem." He shrugged. "I was just hoping to have everything finished before you got here. I still have a little bit of work left on your surprise." He stepped back from the doorway to let me into his apartment. "Now that you're here, you may as well see it."
He was working on a surprise for me? Okay – that was not one of the several dozen things I had imagined last night when I was tossing and turning in bed. I glanced around, but couldn't see any wrapped presents or changes to his apartment.
"It's upstairs," he said, as if he'd heard my thoughts.
I silently followed him up the stairs to the second floor of his airy, loft apartment. We don't typically spend much time on the second floor. It contains a king-sized bathroom with adjoining space for his sleeping freezer, as well as a couple of spare rooms that Mick uses for storage. Mick does most of his real living on the first floor. He led me to one of the storage rooms and opened the door.
"Here it is," he said. "What do you think?"
I poked my head in the doorway and then stopped.
The room contained a bed; a real, queen-sized bed, ready to be made up with the sheets, blankets and a comforter that were piled at its foot. Next to the bed was a nightstand, and there was a dresser along one of the walls, still under assembly. Mick was turning the place into a bedroom – something he had never needed for himself.
"I thought having a bedroom at my place might make things easier for us," Mick explained. "I can move back and forth between the freezer and the bed, and you don't have to sleep on the couch any longer if you spend the night." He walked into the room and slid open another door. "I've almost finished clearing out the closet, too," he added, showing me the empty space, "so you can keep some clothes here, if you want."
I could feel my jaw dropping. I had spent an entire night tortured by thoughts of Mick keeping secrets from me when the man was actually working on a plan that would allow us to spend more time together. My eyes began filling with tears.
"Beth?"
I shook my head, not trusting my voice.
"Beth – I'm sorry if I presumed too much," he said, misreading me entirely. "I realize I should have asked you before I went ahead and made a bedroom for us. It's just that I don't like having to leave your place after we…you know…and I thought maybe you felt the same. I can take it apart and leave things the way they were if you don't-"
"It's perfect."
"What?"
"It's perfect, Mick. I can't imagine anything making me happier."
His eyes lit up. For an octogenarian vampire, he can look very boyish when he's glad. I walked up to him, put my arms around his neck and hugged him hard.
"While I'm on a roll," he whispered in my ear, still holding me, "I also thought you might want a key to the apartment. You know, to go along with the closet space and the bed."
A key to his place. My knees buckled slightly and I tightened my arms to keep from falling. "I lied," I said him. "You just managed to make me even happier."
"That's good."
I suppose you're thinking this doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Men and women, at least those dating seriously, exchange keys to their places all the time. But for Mick – who has some major trust issues – this was a big step. Like all vamps, Mick is ultra-private and forever vigilant about keeping the rest of the world from knowing his true nature. On top of that, he had a very unhealthy relationship with his psycho vampire ex-wife. It was so bad that he avoided getting involved with any woman for a long time. That he was willing to trust me now with access to his home meant a lot.
I let go of him and pointed to the bed. "I can help you make this up now," I suggested.
He shrugged. "There's no rush. I still need to finish putting the dresser together and cleaning out the closet."
Sometimes men, even vampires, can be clueless.
I raised one eyebrow – or at least I tried to. My skills in that department aren't as good as Mick's. "Are your pheromone-sniffing skills on the fritz this morning?" I asked him. "I can help you make up the bed now. So we can, you know, make sure it works okay."
He inhaled quietly. "Ohhhhh," he said. Then he grinned. "It probably is a good idea to test it out." He grabbed the bottom sheet and started tugging it over the mattress, using a little of his vampire-speed to hurry the job along. As I started to unzip my hoodie, he added, "Just remember that the Fergusons are going to be here in a few hours to talk about their missing daughter. We want to leave enough time to meet them in a presentable state."
"Right."
Jill and Larry Ferguson looked like your stereotypical, middle-aged, not-from-LA couple. Jill's hair was colored an almost-believable auburn, and she wore slacks and a sweater set accessorized by a pair of pearl earrings. Larry's hair was brown with streaks of grey, thinning a bit on the top. He wore dress pants and a button down shirt that strained a little over his belly. They both seemed nervous. But then, of course, their daughter was missing.
After Mick and I had tested out the bed (which performed quite satisfactorily), we'd gone to his office and he'd filled me in on the details of his missing girl case. It was a variation of a story I'd heard more than a few times. Tammi Ferguson – cheerleader, wholesome beauty and good student – comes to Los Angeles from her home in Indiana to attend college. At some point during her first semester she tells her parents that a talent agent has spotted her and thinks she has the potential to be a model or even an actress. She informs Mom and Dad that she's decided to take a break from classes to pursue her career as a star. If it doesn't work out, she can always go back to school. Her parents are horrified and order her to get back to her classes. There's an exchange of phone calls and emails, which escalate in intensity until Tammi stops responding.
At first her parents think she's sulking; she can do that sometimes. But as the days become a week, they start to worry. And when the week becomes two and they still haven't heard from their daughter – they're frantic. They call a private investigator.
Mick had first met the Fergusons a week ago. They'd supplied him with photos of their daughter, her UCLA class schedule and not much else. Mick had then taken the typical first steps for locating a missing person; he'd checked her social media accounts and he'd gone to the campus to interview students who might know her. He'd also had his friend, Logan Griffen, a nineteenth century vampire with twenty-first century hacking skills, pull up her cell phone records. The search hadn't yielded much.
"Look at her Instagram account," Mick had said to me before the Fergusons had arrived. "Notice anything odd?"
I looked over his shoulder at the computer monitor as he scrolled through Tammi's photos. They were mostly of the UCLA campus – buildings and green lawns with trees – and they were labeled with captions like; Can't get enough of this sunny California weather, and; Am I lucky or what?
"There are no pictures of people," I'd said to Mick. "It's all scenery."
"Exactly," Mick had agreed. "There's no one here I can locate and ask about Tammi." He'd shaken his head. "I went to her classes and showed her picture to a lot of students. No one remembers seeing her."
"Some of those freshman classes are pretty big, Mick."
Mick had pushed a photo in front of me. "This is Tammi. She's a beautiful blonde cheerleader who looks like she belongs in High School Musical. Believe me, some guy is going to remember seeing her if she sat in his class. He'd be thinking up ways to ask her out."
I'd glanced at the photo and hadn't been able to argue. Tammi was slim, with flawless skin and a cute, pert nose. Her smile was amazingly symmetric and her teeth were white and even.
"I'm wondering if she ever intended to go to class at all," Mick had continued. "Maybe UCLA is a trick she pulled on her parents so that she could get out to California on her own. I wouldn't be surprised if she wanted to do the model/acting thing all along and was too afraid to tell them."
I'd shrugged. "If it's a trick, it's a pretty elaborate one," I'd said. "She had to apply to UCLA - and the acceptance rate is less than twenty percent. There are a lot of easier subterfuges that would have gotten her out here." I grinned and punched him lightly on his shoulder. "And I'm kind of surprised you know about High School Musical. You don't strike me as a Disney sort of guy. Is this another Mick St. John secret that I don't know about?"
Mick's rejoinder had been cut short by the arrival of the Fergusons.
And now the four of us sat in Mick's office, with the Indiana couple shifting uneasily in their seats. Larry settled a bit as he began talking to Mick but Jill couldn't seem to keep still. Her hands fluttered anxiously – from her purse, to her sweater, to the chair she was sitting on. It was distracting and Larry gave his wife an annoyed look before handing Mick a manila folder.
"We were able to get into Tammi's email account and found these," he said. "We thought they might help, since you don't seem to be making much progress otherwise."
Mick took the folder and opened it, ignoring the implied criticism. I expect he's used to it. People don't go to see a PI because they're happy with their lives. They go because they have a problem and they're hoping the PI can pull off a miracle. When he doesn't, they get angry.
"Do you know this Bruce Phillips guy?" Mick asked the Fergusons, pointing to the sender's name on the emails. "Did you ever hear Tammi mention him?"
Both Jill and Larry shook their heads. "It's the first time we've ever seen his name," Larry replied, "and we knew all of her friends in high school. The only thing I can tell you," he added, "is that these emails all date from after she went out to UCLA. We think Phillips has to be somebody she met in California. And he seems to be the one promising her the career in Hollywood."
"Okay." Mick nodded. "I'll look into it."
"I'm going to have to head back to Indiana," Larry continued. "My boss isn't going to give me any more time off. My wife is going to stay here for a couple more weeks, though. Hopefully, you'll have found Tammi by then." His tone suggested he had doubts about that happening.
Mick narrowed his eyes, but merely replied, "Well, I expect we'll have better news soon, especially with this new information."
There wasn't much more to say. The Fergusons got to their feet and Mick walked them to the office door. From there, he watched until they got on the elevator. Then he came back to his desk and sat down.
"What do you think?" he asked.
I shrugged. "They seem normal enough. It's a familiar story – kid comes out to LA for school and gets distracted by the bright lights of Hollywood. I'll admit it's a bit weird that no one remembers seeing Tammi, but as you said, maybe she never went to classes." I stopped and studied Mick's expression. "Why do you think there's something wrong?"
He leaned forward in his chair and rested his chin on his fist. "I agree the story seems pretty typical on the surface. It's just that there's a bunch of little things that don't add up."
"Such as?"
"Such as they didn't know if their daughter had a roommate." He shook his head. "I went into the army, not college, and it's certainly been a few years, but don't kids typically call their roommate before they get out to school? You know, just to introduce themselves? Her parents had no idea who their daughter might be living with." He sat back and sighed. "And when I call either Ferguson, they don't pick up until the third or fourth ring. Most parents with a missing kid answer on the first ring – no matter what time of day or night it is."
"Maybe they're in denial – or shock."
He gave me a doubtful glance. "After a week, they should be past denial and into desperate. You heard Larry just now. He doesn't think I'll find her. If that's the case, why isn't he hiring a different PI? A frantic parent would do anything." He scratched his jaw. "Hell, even their names – Jill and Larry Ferguson. They feel a bit too…stereotypical."
"Stereotypical. That's a big word for a guy who didn't go to college."
"Funny, Beth, very funny." He paused, then added, "Are you surprised by that?"
I started to shake my head, but then decided to be honest. "A little. You're a well-read guy and you always seem to want to learn new things. I'm surprised you didn't go to college after the army. Wasn't the G.I. Bill enacted in the forties?"
Mick nodded. "It was. I think I told you I was a medic in the army. I thought about going to college to become a doctor."
"So what happened?"
"I met Coraline and she turned me before I had a chance to go. Once I became a vampire – well, I didn't think a profession that spent a lot of time around blood was going to be a good idea."
I laughed. "That's probably true."
"And besides, I like being a PI."
"You're certainly good at it."
His shoulders slumped. "It doesn't feel like it at the moment."
I reached across his desk and took his hand. "Don't let the Ferguson's discourage you. Believe me, Mick – if Tammi can be found, you'll find her."
He gave me a rueful smile. "Thanks. It's nice to hear someone has confidence in me."
"What are you planning to do next?"
"I'll locate Bruce Phillips and see if he can tell me anything."
I nodded. I didn't have any better ideas.
