Loe raamatut: «The Carrington Twins»

Chapter 1

“I have a present for you,” a sultry feline voice said, breaking the early-morning silence.

Elise Carrington looked up from her computer screen and frowned at the petite woman heading across the reception area in her direction. Curly sandy-brown hair with copper highlights flew wildly around her heart-shaped face and bounced against her shoulders with every step she took. Her plump lips were shellacked to perfection with a frosty fuchsia-tinted gloss and curved into a smile wide enough to sink the matching dimples in her cheeks. And the naturally arched brows above her deep-set, amber-colored eyes were poised, as if they expected to take flight at any moment.

Elise was immediately suspicious of the woman’s intentions and slightly amused at the same time. Looking at another person and seeing an exact replica of herself still startled her every now and then, even though she’d been doing it for over thirty years and should’ve long since grown used to it. “Only you could manage to look bright and chipper at seven o’clock in the morning,” she drawled, reaching for a mug of steaming coffee on the tabletop. “The rest of us poor schmucks are still cracking our eyelids open.” She sipped the hot liquid gingerly, taking a moment to appreciate the creamy, caramel-flavored blend as she eyed her identical twin over the rim of the mug. She knew without having to be told that the file folder in her sister’s hand didn’t contain good news. The ones that tended to land in either of their laps these days rarely did. “What’s up?”

“We have a runaway on our hands,” Olivia Carrington said. “Well, I guess I should say you have a runaway on your hands.”

“Excuse me?” Elise watched incredulously as Olivia smoothed her silk tunic over her hips, plopped into one of the upholstered chairs across the table from her and crossed her legs. The blouse’s bright fuchsia color matched Olivia’s lip gloss perfectly, reminding Elise that she hadn’t bothered with anything more than leggings, a tunic-style hoodie and a fresh-scrubbed face this morning.

“I’m in the middle of the Donaldson case,” her sister began, “but since you wrapped up your last case a few days ago, I figured that it was okay to accept a new case for you.”

Elise’s frown deepened. “That’s my present? A new case?”

“Yep,” Olivia chirped, dimpling prettily.

“Seriously. I don’t know why I put up with you.” Unconsciously mimicking her sibling’s pose, Elise sat back in her chair and crossed her legs. “It’s not like I don’t have enough paperwork to do before I can finally close the file on my last case. Plus, I was hoping to take a break before I accepted another assignment, maybe sneak off to the Bahamas for a few days with a few of the girls and relax.”

“Okay, first of all, you put up with me because we’re twins. I’m two minutes older than you are, so you have to. Secondly, you don’t have any girls. Plus, I couldn’t have turned this one down if I wanted to and, believe me, I really wanted to. Do you remember Joel Barclay?”

“Sure, I remember Joel.” How could she forget him? He and Olivia had carried on a scorching affair for several months back in high school. Despite the fact that he was twenty at the time, almost twenty-one, and a junior in college, and Olivia was barely seventeen and a high-school senior, what had started out as a carefree summer fling had quickly turned into an intense, nearly year-long relationship. Up to that point, Elise had never known a member of the opposite sex to hold Olivia’s attention for longer than a few weeks at a time, and, as far as she knew, there had only been one or two others who’d managed to accomplish the feat since. It was a toss-up as to which of them—Joel or Elise—was more shocked when Olivia turned down Joel’s marriage proposal and then broke up with him shortly afterward. “How is he?”

“He’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” Olivia said, suddenly serious. “His daughter is missing, and we have to find her.”

Surprised for the second time in as many minutes, Elise stared at her sister as she reached across the table for the file folder that Olivia held out to her. Setting her coffee aside, she opened the folder and scanned the 5x7 color photo that was clipped to a thin stack of written notes inside. The teenage girl staring back at her was the spitting image of the Joel she remembered—raven-haired, with classic features and a warm smile. According to the notes in the file, her name was Meagan, she had just turned eighteen a little over a month ago and she’d been missing for nearly twenty-four hours.

“I remember when he got married right after college,” Elise remarked absently as she continued scanning the case notes. “You had the nerve to be upset because you weren’t invited to the wedding, as if you hadn’t just broken the poor guy’s heart ten minutes before he walked down the aisle.”

“It did seem like he got over me rather quickly, now that you mention it.”

Elise’s gaze flickered up to her sister’s briefly and then skated away. No way was she touching that subject. Of the two of them, Olivia, bless her heart, was by far the vainest. As a teenager, Elise had always preferred the company of a good crime-fiction novel and a steaming mug of chamomile tea over that of chattering girls and hormonal boys. But Olivia was the exact opposite. She’d always been smart and had ultimately graduated cum laude from Loyola University, but only after their parents had spent most of their daughters’ adolescent years worrying themselves sick over whether or not Olivia would ever get serious about something other than boys, lip gloss and gossip.

She’d also dated enough for the both of them in high school, which was just fine with Elise, since it had taken most of the pressure of adolescent expectations off her. But Olivia’s tendency to make everything about herself could be a bit much if you didn’t know her well enough to know that her heart was just as big as her head.

“So this is their kid, huh?”

“Their one and only,” Olivia said. “So you can see why I couldn’t say no to the case, but I couldn’t exactly take it on myself, right? It would be...weird.”

“Yes, I can see how it might be.”

It was a high-profile case, one that would definitely get its fifteen minutes worth of fame if the media caught wind of it. After marrying his pregnant rebound girlfriend right out of college, Joel had set his sights on a career in politics and law. He was currently in his first term as a circuit court judge, a seat that he’d just barely won in the last election, thanks to his teenage daughter’s penchant for scandalous public exploits. Add that to the fact that, before he’d become a judge, he was the kind of young brash defense attorney who himself had a tendency to take on the kinds of controversial cases that kept him in the public eye, and the result was a private life that didn’t exactly lend itself to voter sympathy. The last thing he or his wife needed was the kind of publicity that a presumably out-of-control runaway child would attract, especially since his name was now on the short list for appointment to the Illinois Appellate Court. That had to be why he’d bitten the bullet and reached out to Olivia. His was just the kind of case that Carrington Consulting specialized in.

In the three years since Elise and Olivia had grown tired of taking orders from power-hungry men and gone into business for themselves, they’d taken on countless missing persons cases and, at last tally, they were operating at a more than 90 percent success rate. With Elise’s background in law enforcement and Olivia’s forensic experience, if anyone could find Meagan quickly and with a minimum of fuss, they could.

Glancing at her watch, Elise pushed back from the table and got to her feet. She picked up her laptop, coffee mug and, as a last thought, the file. “I hate to run out on you like this, sis, but I have a videoconference later this morning,” she told Olivia. “Can I finish looking over the notes on the case right afterward and let you know what I decide?”

“This afternoon?” Olivia’s eyes widened in alarm as she tracked Elise’s progress out of the room. “Joel was frantic when he called this morning, Elise. I don’t know if putting this off until this afternoon is such a good idea.” Her wispy hair rode the wind as she swiveled in her chair. “He mentioned something about her having behavioral problems. Something could happen to her by then, if it hasn’t already.”

Elise thought about the possibility for a moment. “I won’t be long,” she said before disappearing down the hallway.

“Okay, but if your videoconference isn’t until this afternoon, where are you going now? It’s still morning,” Olivia called after her.

“I have a teleconference in ten minutes, and I can’t miss it. My last case isn’t going to close itself,” Elise called back. “When the phone rings, it’ll probably be for me, so I’ll pick up the extension in the study.”

Hoping that she had escaped having to make a decision on the Barclay case, if only for a little while, Elise closed the study door at her back and took a seat at the conference table across the room. She was almost done setting up her temporary base of operations when Olivia opened the door and stuck her head inside the room. Elise couldn’t say that she was all that surprised.

“I have an idea. Why don’t I have Harriet call Joel and set up a meeting with him for this afternoon?” she said, referring to the gray-haired dynamo who was their administrative assistant. “Just in case,” she added when Elise’s amber gaze rose from the computer screen to meet hers and narrowed in warning.

“You’re not going to let up until I agree to take this case, are you?”

“Why do you ask questions that you already know the answers to?”

“All right,” she said, nodding reluctantly. “All right. Have Harriet schedule an early-evening meeting. I should be done with everything by then, so I’ll go to him instead of having him come here. I need some fresh air, anyway. But I’m telling you, after this case, I’m officially on vacation.”

She looked away from Olivia’s smiling face when the phone rang. Pushing a button to accept the call, she didn’t see the victory fist pump that Olivia executed before the door closed softly in her wake.

* * *

Working from home did have its advantages, Elise mused as she stepped into the shower and quickly soaped herself from head to toe. It certainly made transitioning from one task to the next on her to-do list a lot easier. Ironically enough, that was precisely the argument that Olivia had used three years ago when the question of where they would set up Carrington Consulting’s business offices had come up. Elise was in favor of leasing office space in downtown St. Louis, so they could at least try to keep their private investigations business and their personal lives separate, but Olivia’s arguments to the contrary had eventually worn her down. There was more than enough room in the house for both business and pleasure to coexist, she’d pointed out, and they could save money on overhead expenses. Put that way, Elise could hardly refuse. Olivia was right on both counts, though Elise would cut out her tongue before she’d admit it.

Her parents had built the house five years ago, after her father decided to give up his thriving Clayton law practice and retire early, and, for a while, decorating it had kept both Lance and Yolanda Carrington busy. It was a showplace, something tangible that they could both appreciate and enjoy after years of hard work. It wasn’t until after it was finally completed and each room had been meticulously appointed that her parents had suddenly decided that they didn’t want to live there, after all. Almost thirty years of living in the States was long enough, her father had said. He was homesick for London, where he’d been born and raised. Leaving the house to their daughters, they had updated their passports, packed up their personal belongings and left the country seemingly in the blink of an eye, a decision that hadn’t surprised Olivia at all but that had finally confirmed for Elise the origin of Olivia’s flighty tendencies.

True to form, Olivia hadn’t wasted any time ditching her South County condo and moving in, but Elise hadn’t been quite so eager to let go of her Clayton town house. Her sister had already been living in the house a full six months before she sublet her town house and joined her.

After showering and moisturizing, she paired a cream-colored cashmere sweater dress with a wide chocolate-brown belt and matching suede boots. The steam from the shower had completely wrung the life out of her hair, so she brushed it until it was smooth and caught her wild, curly locks at the crown of her head with a jeweled clip. As a finishing touch, she added mascara and gold-tinted lip gloss before tossing her cell phone and iPad in her red Kate Spade tote and slipping her favorite Chanel sunglasses over her eyes.

Downstairs in the foyer, she grabbed a red vintage leather coat from the coat closet and then swiped her car keys from the entry table on her way out the door. With just about forty-five minutes to spare, she could just barely make it to Joel Barclay’s Waterloo, Illinois, estate on time.