The Fountain of Infinite Wishes (Dare River Book 5) Read Online Free PDF

his father and his roots. His mother and grandparents had been violently opposed to his return to Nashville, even more so the direction he’d taken with his studies, and it had been the last break in their already strained relationship.
    Vander hadn’t wanted to be a cop like his father, but he’d loved the idea of investigating things and uncovering secrets, so he’d majored in criminal justice. Becoming a private investigator had seemed the best course, and he’d pursued it wholeheartedly. He’d opened his own private investigation company in Nashville after securing his license, serving the same community his father had.
    “Of the two sisters, Shelby looks more polished and tougher, although I bet they’d both still run in the opposite direction if I so much as said boo to them,” Charlie said, leaving his side to open up the mini-fridge disguised as a cabinet.
    She was tough, it was true, but something told him that Charlie might be wrong about the McGuiness sisters—or at least the older one.
    “I’m not convinced Shelby would back down,” Vander told her, following in her wake. “It took guts to come here. The mother doesn’t know about their interest in finding their father, and their other sister is against it. The brother sounds like he’s supportive.”
    “But he wasn’t here today.” Charlie handed him a bottle of Perrier—sue him, he liked the fizzy water—and grabbed a regular bottle of water for herself.
    “No, he wasn’t.” And Vander wondered about that too.
    “What’s your gut tell you about this case?” Charlie asked.
    “Home troubles, I’d bet,” he told her, running through what little he knew of the case so far. “The mother is currently a preacher. Sounds like they all went to church together like a good Southern family before their father cut out on them.”
    “Going to church disguises a lot of deadbeats,” Charlie said in that jaded tone of hers. “Foul play doesn’t feel right to me.”
    “Me either,” Vander said, and truth was, he could usually smell violence on a case before he had the facts to support it. “The reason isn’t as important as the amount of time he’s been gone. He went missing when Shelby was two, and from my guess of her age—”
    “That was twenty-six years ago,” Charlie told him with a smirk. “I looked up her driver’s license.”
    “Of course you did, even though we’re not supposed to use databases to look up our clients unless we suspect them of something,” he said, rolling his eyes, doing the math. Shelby was seven years younger than him. Not that he had any business calculating things like that.  
    “Shelby Marie McGuiness also likes to speed,” Charlie continued. “She got a ticket for doing eighty-eight on I-64 last month in a new white BMW convertible licensed to her and her alone.”
    The car suited her understated elegance. He ignored Charlie’s additional confirmation that Shelby wasn’t married. Neither woman wore a wedding ring. Besides, any husband worth his chops would have been holding his wife’s hand during an appointment as big as this one.
    “I’m surprised she didn’t talk her way out of it.”
    Charlie’s smirk widened. “The officer was female.”
    “ Ah ,” was all he said.  
    “I’ll run the father’s name today,” Vander said, taking a sip of his water. He hated to make clients wait on a case like this.
    Charlie shook her head. “I already did.”
    “Dammit, Charlie! You didn’t even have confirmation it was a lost father case.”  
    “ Please. You’re insulting me. I always know. What was the use in waiting? It’s a dead end, Vander. There are no records of any addresses or credit cards for Preston Matthias McGuiness after he left the Dare River area. He dropped off the face of the earth. He clearly didn’t want to be found.”
    “You don’t need to do my job for me, Charlie,” Vander said, setting his water on the edge of his desk. “You have plenty of your own