Free She's Not There by P. J. Parrish Page A

out with a strip mall office in Tallahassee and one Men’s Wearhouse suit in his closet. He had that sort of trying-too-hard look about him. But then, most of the people Buchanan had seen here did. He decided he’d do a deep dive search on Tobias later.
    For now, he just watched as Tobias handed the keys to the valet, yanked off his tie, and tossed it in the SUV. Tobias came toward the bar, pausing at the edge of the patio. He took off his sunglasses, hung them on the pocket of his shirt and scanned the crowd.
    Picking up his Dunhills, Buchanan shook out a cigarette and lit it, deciding to let the bastard twist for a few seconds, letting him worry that maybe he had popped for that first-class ticket from Kennedy for nothing.
    Buchanan watched Tobias, watched him searching the crowd, watched him getting pissed that he didn’t know the face of the man he was meeting. This was a guy, he decided, who wasn’t used to being fucked with.
    Enough. It was time to get on with business.
    Buchanan met the man’s eyes across the crowd and nodded. The guy practically pushed his way over.
    “Are you Clay Buchanan?”
    “That would be me. Sit down, Mr. Tobias.”
    Alex Tobias slid into the chair and signaled the blonde server with a wave. When she ignored him, he swung his gaze back to Buchanan.
    “Thank you for coming on such short notice, Mr. Buchanan,” Tobias said.
    “A five-thousand-dollar consult fee showing up in my QuickPay account has a way of clearing my calendar rather quickly.”
    Tobias forced a smile. “I should tell you, this wasn’t my idea.”
    “What wasn’t?”
    “Hiring you, Mr. Buchanan.”
    “Whose idea was it?”
    “My law partner, Owen McCall. He said you’re the best at this sort of thing.”
    When Buchanan’s cell had chirped back in the bar at JFK, he hadn’t recognized the name McCall-Tobias. But experience had taught him not to ignore calls from law offices. Still, he had been surprised when a secretary told him that the firm wanted to “engage his services” to find a missing woman, the wife of one of the partners, Alex Tobias.
    The secretary didn’t hesitate when Buchanan told her his fee. Buchanan didn’t ask any details. The ticket to Fort Lauderdale was waiting for him at the Delta counter, and his money was in his bank account by the time he landed. This was just a consult. If things didn’t smell right, he could always walk away and keep the five grand. It went like that sometimes.
    Tobias took his sunglasses off his pocket, started to put them on, then carefully set them down on the table.
    “Owen said he read a book you wrote— Nowhere to Hide, or something. He told me about this Mexican millionaire’s son who was abducted and how you traced him—”
    “I know the ending,” Buchanan interrupted. He didn’t want to rehash his resume with this man. The book had just been a quickie thing he published himself to make some extra money. It had sold maybe twenty copies, but Tobias didn’t need to know that.
    “Owen said you’re not like any normal private eye.”
    “I’m not like any private eye, Mr. Tobias. I’m a skip tracer.”
    “A what?”
    “Skip tracer. I do one thing and one thing only. I find people who don’t want to be found.”
    Tobias frowned. “I don’t understand the difference.”
    “You will. If I take your case.”
    Tobias nodded slowly and then his eyes slid toward the bar, looking for the server again. When he turned back, Buchanan got his first good look into the man’s eyes. They were the color of the Cumberland River on a cloudy day—a muddy blue-green but shot through with tiny red veins. The guy had been drinking.
    “So if hiring me wasn’t your idea, what changed your mind?” Buchanan asked.
    “I don’t know how else to find my wife,” Tobias said. “The police won’t do anything. They say that since she walked away on her own, she’s not technically missing.”
    “She walked away on her own? From where?”
    “Broward General