Still Missing: Amethyst Cove, #3

By Christiane France

Ever since Greg Stewartson, ex-cop, private investigator, and half-owner of Amethyst Cove Security & Investigations, first met Ash Tyler, a handsome and very sexy nurse, he’s been trying to find Ash’s biological family—the one Ash says he had before he was taken into care and adopted by the Tylers more than twenty years ago. Greg and Ash are now a couple, but Greg’s leads have all turned into dead ends, so Ash told him to let it go.

Then one night a half-drowned man is brought into the urgent care clinic where Ash works. He says he’s looking for Jack Smith, the man Ash knew as grandpa. Suddenly Greg is up to his ears in new information and new leads. Will he finally get Ash the answers he so desperately wants or is he being conned by a pair of clever hustlers determined to conceal the truth?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christiane France
• Release date: Apr 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524284589

Book preview

For My Boys

STILL MISSING

I awoke just before six, chilled to the bone. The reason for this was twofold: my lover, Ash Tyler, had stolen all the covers, and a stiff ocean breeze that was a little too cool for me came in through the partially open window.

Since Ash was a nurse, and last night had been his turn for the late shift at the emergency clinic, he was still sleeping. I retrieved enough of the duvet to cover myself and snuggled closer to him for warmth.

For now, I was content to remain in that pleasant stage between sleeping and coming fully awake. This was the time I could let my thoughts run free and perhaps find a new perspective on an old problem. Such as the promise I’d made to Ash to forget about trying to find his biological parents and just concentrate on us.

More than a month had passed since I’d made that promise and I’d tried to forget. I truly had. But my mind refused to let it go. As a former cop turned private investigator, and half owner of Amethyst Cove Security & Investigations, solving mysteries is what I do. It was why the basic facts of the case continued to revolve around and around in my head like one of those endless belts that power a machine.

Thirty years ago Ash was born here in the Cove in an old abandoned warehouse that has long since been destroyed. He’d lived there with a homeless woman named Rosie, who might or might not be his biological mother, and a bunch of other people. One day, when Ash was about four, with no explanation, Rosie had packed up their stuff and told Ash they had to leave. For the next few days they’d lived rough. Then, after dropping Ash off at a gas station in the care of a man named Jack Smith she claimed was his grandpa, Rosie vanished.

That was all I’d had to go on until a random remark from a former police officer convinced me to pay a visit to Mary Smith, a local beachcomber and longtime resident, who’d helped me with a previous case. Mary was the right age to have known about the old warehouse. And, while Smith was a common surname, the possibility Mary either knew or was somehow related to this Jack Smith made it worth a shot.

The visit had paid off in spades. As it turned out, Mary was not only Jack’s sister, she’d also lived in the old warehouse for a while herself. She knew about Ash, and she was there when he was born.

Mary didn’t think Rosie was Ash’s mom. All she knew for sure was that Rosie and another girl had turned up at the warehouse late one rainy night, and sometime after that Mary had heard a baby cry. I’d asked if she saw a baby when the girls arrived, but Mary said no. With no electricity, and only candles for light, it had been too dark to see much of anything. Mary had gone on to say that an ex-army medic, who was also living in the warehouse at that time, claimed to have assisted the girl in giving birth. Whether this was true or not, Mary couldn’t say. The guy was medically trained, but he was also a drunk, and for all Mary knew the man may have imagined it.

She’d said Rosie was still at the warehouse the following morning, feeding a baby with a bottle. When Mary asked who the baby belonged to, Rosie said he was her friend’s child. That the friend had given birth during the night, and she was just babysitting for a day or two while the friend took care of some urgent business.

This suggested the friend would be returning, but for whatever reason, as far as Mary knew, that never happened.

Mary’s brother, Jack, told her at some point that Rosie was a girl he’d known when he lived in L.A. As far as the other girl was concerned, Mary knew nothing at all about her and neither did Jack. Not her name or anything else. She’d arrived with Rosie in the dark, left some time later and had never come back.

Mary said she’d moved to San Francisco soon after that, but she’d kept in touch with her brother. That’s how she knew Rosie took off a few years later, leaving Ash in Jack’s care. She also knew when Ash was eight that Jack had been taken ill. Since Ash was too young to care for himself, the child protective service or CPS had stepped in to arrange for temporary care. Before the social worker could get in touch with Jack to establish their relationship, Mary had called someone she knew at CPS and informed them that Jack had left town and wouldn’t be returning.

Assuming everything Mary told me was true, and she had no reason to lie that I was aware of, I still had no idea where Ash fit into the picture?

On the one hand, it seemed odd for a new mother to take off right after giving birth. On the other, if the girl who arrived with Rosie that rainy night was a scared teenager with no money and no one to turn to for help, then anything was possible. It wouldn’t be the first time a child had been abandoned at birth. At least the mother had left Ash in Rosie’s care rather than drop him in the nearest Dumpster.

But it didn’t explain why Rosie had continued to take care of him for the next four years, or why Jack had taken over for four more years after that. If neither Rosie nor Jack were related to the boy, why hadn’t Rosie turned Ash over to the CPS the moment he was abandoned by his birth mother?

The only reasons I could think of were the usual things—love, money, or the fear of authority in view of the circumstances surrounding his birth. Maybe his real mother wasn’t the helpless teenager I’d pictured her to be. Maybe she’d needed to conceal his existence for some reason. Such as getting