“Not once.” Angela shook her head. “I would like to.”
“She’s always been a person—even as a child—who had very high expectations of herself. Because of that, she has a hard time forgiving people when they do things she considers wrong.”
“Like cheating on her mother?”
Megan nodded. “That’s a pretty good example, don’t you think?”
“Yes.” Angela looked out the window, watching the ocean in the distance. “I think Trina and I might share that trait. I have a hard time forgiving others when they wrong me.”
Megan sipped her under-sweetened iced tea. She’d added sugar, but it just wasn’t the same. “I think Trina will reconcile with her father in her own time, but she won’t be rushed, and I know that’s what Rodney wants.”
“He wants to move forward,” Angela said.
“Yes. But it’s not simple for her the way it is for Cami.” Or Adam. She almost said her son’s name, but then Adam hadn’t been acting like himself. “I think you just need to be patient,” Megan said. “Teenagers are young people, and I’ve raised my kids to think for themselves. Give them time to warm up to you. If you stick around, they’ll come around.”
Angela’s smile said that wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear, but she wasn’t going to argue.
Before they could say anything else, their meals came, and Katherine diverted the conversation to news and information about the internet.
Megan tried to relax, but something wouldn’t let her. She had too many questions on her mind.
Why had Rodney’s girlfriend wanted to meet her so much?
Why was this woman dating Rodney to begin with?
Why was Adam so negative about a woman who seemed fairly pleasant?
What was going on with Adam in the first place?
She kept a smile on her face and made all the appropriate noises as Katherine steered the conversation, but Megan’s mind was a thousand miles away.
Chapter 15
The next day, Megan drove back to Katherine’s house on the beach to meet Val and her boyfriend Sully. The giant truck roaring up North Beach Street in the middle of the afternoon was better than an alarm clock. Katherine and Baxter were still at work, but Megan waved at the truck and pointed toward the small driveway behind Katherine’s cedar-clad house.
“Hey!” She walked to Val’s side when the vehicle parked. “You made good time!”
“Sully got a few days off work.” Val shot her burly man a look. “Which was way overdue. My kid is getting ready for midterms and can stay with Robin and Mark for a few days—he likes them better anyway.” Val opened the door and jumped down from the lifted pickup truck. “So we decided to come down and help with your mystery this week.” She clapped her hands together. “Fresh fucking air. Thank God.”
A giant man walked toward the front of the truck, his hands stuffed in his pockets.
“You must be Sully.” Megan walked over and held out her hand. “It’s very nice to meet you. I’m Megan, and I’ve heard nothing but good things.”
“You must have been talking to Robin and Monica then.” The man was the size of a brown bear and had a beard to match. His voice, his manner, it was all gruff. Megan loved it.
“You look like a lumberjack.”
Val cackled, and Sully got red in the cheeks. “I’ve worked in timber. It’s not… We don’t use the word lumberjack anymore. I’m the sheriff up in Glimmer Lake now.”
“Oh, I’ll have to introduce you to our friend, Drew Bisset. He’s the local detective in Moonstone Cove.”
“There’s just the one?”
Megan shrugged. “You have much call for a full-time detective in Glimmer Lake?”
Sully glanced at Val. “With this girl and her friends around? Not much.”
Megan ushered them up to the wraparound deck and the table at the far end that overlooked the ocean. Once they were sitting, she felt herself relax.
“I’m so glad you’re here.”
Val closed her eyes and let her face relax in the breeze coming off the sea. She was a thin, dark-haired woman with half her head shaved up the side, numerous tattoos, and a keen, penetrating gaze. She wore black gloves that came up past her elbows along with black cowboy boots and a black denim jacket.
And Sully really did look like a lumberjack. He was burly and tall, had a bit of a belly and a scruffy beard, but he was handsome in a rough, square-jawed way. His sandy-blond hair was grey at the temples, and his beard was sprinkled with silver.
“So let me get this straight,” Sully said. “You’re investigating a robbery, but all that was stolen were grapevines?”
“Well, yes.” If you didn’t know the backstory, it all seemed a bit silly. “These were experimental grapevines. Clones from a specific vine in Northern California that were grafted onto local rootstock. My client is trying to revive a rare variety of wine grape and grow it commercially here in Moonstone Cove. Normally this type of grape is only grown in a tiny area of France, so if they could grow it here, it would be a big deal.”
Sully nodded. “Okay, so these are not normal grapevines.”
“Not even a little bit. The winery owner and his winemaker—who is Toni’s boyfriend—have been working on this project for about three years. They were going to do the first field trials this spring.”
Val opened her eyes. “Until the vines were stolen. And did you say something about blood?”
“That’s the newest development. Detective Bisset dropped by and told us they found the truck used to carry out the theft, and there was a sizable amount of blood in the truck bed. Like, enough that they suspected someone hadn’t survived that kind of blood loss.”
“Not good,” Sully rumbled.
“Definitely not. And the day before they found the truck, Katherine had a very short vision of soil going over someone’s face. She didn’t get much more than that, but she’s working on a sketch now. Just a face, which she said looked dead, being covered by loose soil.”
“As if someone was burying a body,” Sully said.
“Exactly.” Megan turned to Val. “That’s why I’m desperately hoping you’ll be able to pick something up from Nico’s greenhouse. We are at a dead end in this investigation, and I think the police are too. It’s very possible the vines are already planted somewhere and we’ve lost our chance to recover them, but we can’t ignore a man’s death even if we have no idea who he is.”
“Cheery,” Val said. “How’s your telekinesis doing?”
Megan picked up the pile of keys sitting on the table in front of Sully and floated them over to Val. “You want to drive, or should I? I’ll tell you on the way.”
Val grinned. “That’s wicked cool.” She stood and patted Sully’s shoulder. “You want to come along? Or hang out here and wait for more people you don’t know?”
He heaved himself up and out of the chair. “I’ll come along. Who knows, I might even be able to help with my rusty old nonpsychic eyes.”
“You drive,” Val said. “We’ll leave the truck here. We can’t check into our hotel until about four anyway.”