I didn’t finish. This was because I saw more movement on the deck and that movement was Celeste running, yes, running toward the door.
I was picking her up and wasn’t supposed to be at Luci’s place for another hour and a half. I didn’t even know how she got there since Luci was driving her everywhere and Celeste didn’t have a car. It was my understanding that Luci lived in a beach house down from Sam’s but it was a trek, at least a mile of beach and more if you took the winding coastal road.
What I did know was her running and the look on her face when she got inside did not bode happy tidings.
Memphis felt it instantly and yapped.
“Celeste –” I started but she cut me off.
“Luci’s disappeared.”
My chest depressed.
“What?” Hap asked and Celeste looked to him.
“This morning, she said she was going for a walk on the beach. That was three hours ago. She hasn’t come back. I’ve been up and down the beach. No sign and no one I asked has seen her.” Her eyes came to me. “I called you four times. You didn’t answer. I found the keys to her car and came here.”
My phone was upstairs in my purse in the bedroom.
Shit!
“She take her phone with her?” Hap asked, on the move to his bag which was sitting in a corner of the living room.
Celeste shook her head. “Left it on the kitchen counter.”
“Oh God,” I whispered.
“What’s goin’ on?” Skip asked, looking around the lot of us, eyes stopping on Celeste. “And who’re you?”
“I’m –” Celeste started but I bolted into action.
Darting toward the front door, my eyes on Hap who was pulling his cell out of the jeans he wore the night before, I said, “Gordo.”
“Yeah,” Hap said to me.
“Gordo what?” Skip put in.
I ignored him, shoved my feet into the flip-flops I left by the front door and asked Hap, “Where would she go?”
He pressed his lips together and shook his head, flipping open his phone. “This isn’t my place, babe. I come down. I crash at Sam or Luci’s. I hang but I don’t know their gigs.”
I turned to Skip. “Where would she go?”
“What in the sam hill is goin’ on?” Skip fired back.
“Luci’s not good,” I told him.
“Sam, Hap,” Hap said into his phone.
“Tell me somethin’ I don’t know,” Skip said to me.
“Celeste is here. Says Luci went for a walk three hours ago, didn’t come back,” Hap kept talking into his phone.
“Luci’s more not good than the normal not good, Skip, we have to find her,” I said to Skip, watched his leathery face pale and I finished, “Fast.”
“Would she go to his grave?” Celeste asked quietly.
“He’s buried in Arlington,” Skip muttered.
“Well that’s out,” I whispered and my eyes went to Hap.
“Right, we’re there,” Hap said into his phone, flipped it shut and looked at me even as he started striding to the front door. “Sam says Luci and Gordo used to spend time in Ruler Bay. It was their spot.”
“Let’s go,” I replied.
“Kia, ma belle, you’re in your robe,” Celeste reminded me.
“I’m covered,” I murmured, following Hap out the door.
“Darling, it’ll only take –” Celeste’s voice followed me, I stopped, Skip almost ran into me but my eyes went straight to Celeste.
“I’m fine. Let’s go,” I stated then turned and rushed behind Hap.
“Coastal road, Hap, Kia’s with me, Frenchie’s with you,” Skip ordered as we all rushed down the walkway.
“Sam’s on his way,” Hap said to the walkway, not even looking back as his legs moved with wide strides down to the drive.
We hit the vehicles, Celeste moving directly to the passenger side of Sam’s SUV, me going straight to the passenger side of a decrepit pickup in which Skip was already at the wheel. I was still swinging in when Skip turned the ignition and was still closing my door when he started reversing with scary speed, narrowly missing Luci’s Corvette in the drive. He cut the wheel severely when he hit road and my body swayed nearly to the seat. He righted the truck, took off, I righted myself and clicked my seatbelt in place.
“Tell me what more than the normal not good is,” Skip ordered on a bark.
“She loves Sam, she likes me, she wants us together and even meddled a little to make that so. Still, Sam and I getting tight, Luci seeing it, Celeste thinks it’s making what she lost, already a constant reminder, more intense. She says Luci has dark moments where she can’t hide her despair. And Luci told me herself that one day everything is great and the next everything can turn black. So she already wasn’t good, Skip, but now she’s more than normally not good.”
He took a hair raising turn out to the main road then gunned it as I turned to look at him.
“You know her,” I said softly. “Will she do anything crazy?”
“Never seen a love like that, not in my life,” Skip replied, my stomach clenched and my heart started hurting.
Still.
“That’s not an answer, Skip,” I whispered.
His eyes flicked to me and the old pickup increased speed.
Then, to the windshield, he whispered back, “Yep.”
That was what I was afraid he was going to say.
“Shit, shit, f**k,” I hissed. Then I asked, “What’s Ruler Bay?”
“Can walk it from Gordo and Luci’s place but it’s a ways. On foot, takin’ your time, maybe half an hour. Thing is, you gotta climb some rocks and then descend into it. Got a trail, it’s not treacherous but enough so it’s pretty private. Gordo was home, he ran it nearly every day. He loved it there. Took Luci there all the time. She loved it there too. Far’s I know, she hasn’t been back, not since he died.”
“Is this the only place they’d go?”
“Fuck if I know. Served ‘em fries and crab sandwiches. Got drunk with ‘em. They didn’t whisper their secrets to me.”
“What I’m saying is, maybe we should diversify our search,” I explained.
“And what I’ll say is, if anyone knows where she’d go, it’s Sam. First, he and Gordo were like brothers. Nope, strike that, what they had was bigger than blood. Sam stepped in with her when Gordo bit it and when I say that I mean big time. They were close before, Sam and Luci, but now they’re really friggin’ close. Anyone knows where she’d go, it’s Sam. So that’s where we’re goin’.”