[For Rory]

[sandandwater]

When Pippa didn't show up for her Tuesday night shift at Last Call, the owner came in to make sure set up and opening was completed. Then he started making phone calls. No answer on her cell phone. No answer on her home phone. Mike left messages on both voicemail systems: Pippa, where are you? You're on the schedule for tonight in case you forgot. Call me, dollface.

She didn't return his calls or even show up at the bar. By the time the musical act of the night started their second set, Mike was getting worried. Not agitated. Pippa wasn't the irresponsible type. Where some of the other girls might simply pull a no-show for a shift, Phillipa Kerr had never once done that in the almost three years that he'd known her. Not once.

A thought occurred to him and he went back into the storeroom/office and pulled out the binder that held contact information for the bar's bookings. Pippa was dating one of the musicians that played at the Call regularly. Rory, wasn't it? The Irish guy...Stone. Finding the cell phone number for the man, Miked dialed. Maybe she'd been whisked off somewhere. Or maybe Rory knew where she was...hopefully.

Comments

[fey-fire.livejournal.com]

Rory was trying and failing to concentrate on the arrangement for a new song when his cell rang. Pulling it out of his back pocket, he let out a soft sigh when he checked the display and recognized Last Call's number. Pippa calling from the bar no doubt meant that she'd misplaced her cell somewhere. No wonder he hadn't heard from her.

He flipped open the phone. "There you are," he said cheerfully. "I've been waiting to hear from you all day, sweet."

[sand-andwater.livejournal.com]

Mike frowned at the greeting, not because of the mistaken identity but because it meant that Pippa wasn't with her boyfriend after all. "It's Mike...Owens."

He cleared his throat, giving the other man a chance to process that. "Look, I was calling because I thought Pippa might have been with you." A beat. "She hasn't shown up for work."

[fey-fire.livejournal.com]

Mike. Pippa's boss. Rory felt disappointment wash through him, followed by confusion ... and a prickle of nerves. Punctual, conscientious Pippa had missed a shift at work?

"I haven't heard from her since yesterday morning, Mike," he said slowly. "Have you spoken to her since her shift last night?"

[sand-andwater.livejournal.com]

He leaned forward, elbows on desktop, the phone cradled between his ear and shoulder as he rubbed one hand over his smooth, bald head. Dammit, girl...where were you? "No. I came in tonight when she was a no-show. She didn't return my voicemails to either her house number or her cellphone."

Normally, tracking down an errant employee wasn't something that would interest him, but Pippa was more than that. She pretty much ran this little pet project for him. She was more of a manager, a business partner than a waitress. Not that she'd ever let him give her that title. "None of the girls know where she is either. I've asked."

[fey-fire.livejournal.com]

Rory swallowed. "I checked with the rest of the band earlier. They haven't heard from her either."

He spent all of five seconds trying to quiet the tiny alarm bells going off in the back of his mind before giving in. "I'm going to head over to her apartment. This ... isn't like her." He'd rather risk getting teased for being an over-protective boyfriend than ignore his instincts where Pippa was concerned.

[sand-andwater.livejournal.com]

Mike picked up the note of worry in Rory's voice and unfortunately had a hard time trying to tell himself the guy was overreacting. This wasn't like Pippa. "You do that. And give me a call when you find you find her. I'm too old for this shit."

He tried to make light of it. He really did want a return call saying she was just home, sick with the flu.

[fey-fire.livejournal.com]

"Will do, Mike." Rory ended his call with the bar owner and shoved his phone back into his pocket, already headed for the front door. After pulling on his leather jacket, he reached for his helmet -- and paused.

Hell with this. Taking a deep breath through his nostrils, he shifted into the borderlands and flowed into his stallion form. Normally he wouldn't bother with fey travel for such a short distance, but it cut the transit time down to minutes. Whatever had happened to Pippa, he needed to know now.

But what he found when he let himself in did nothing to answer his questions ... or quell his rising nerves.

He keyed in a call back to Mike with one hand and tried to soothe an anxious Mr. Beaker with the other. "Mike? I'm at Pippa's. Her things are still here, as near as I can tell, and so is her puppy. It doesn't look like he's been fed, watered or walked today."

[sand-andwater.livejournal.com]

Mike hadn't been expecting a return call so fast, then again with cell phones these days who the hell could judge where a person was while you were talking to them? And what he was being told made him frown. Even if he could believe that Pippa took off for parts unknown and unannounced, there was no way in the world the redhead would leave her dog behind. Mr. Beaker was nearly all she talked about, besides Rory and his band.

Between the noise in the bar and the noise of a yipping, barking dog on the other end of the line, Mike spoke up as he responded, "What about her car? Is it there?"

[fey-fire.livejournal.com]

Rory had checked on his way in. "No, it's not." Car missing, but nothing else, no provisions made for her pet. It was getting harder and harder to say that this was nothing to worry about.

"Mike, I have a few other phone calls I'm going to make, but do you know of anyone else I should contact? Anyone who might know something?"

[sand-andwater.livejournal.com]

He thought for a long moment. Even as long as he's known Pippa, he didn't know much about her personal life. It wasn't that she had an issue with honesty, she was simply a very private person. It was hard to say what she did in most of her off hours. Although..."Her grandmother lives on Martha's Vineyard. She's a fairly feisty old woman from what little Pippa's said about her. Maybe she took off last minute to see her?"

It sounded far-fetched to him, still the issue of the dog.

"She doesn't much about family, I'm not sure she's particularly close to them..."

[fey-fire.livejournal.com]

Possible, and yet nothing about an emergency visit to her grandmother would prevent Pippa from calling both him and Mike to keep them up to date. Surely she would have at least called to ask him to look after Mr. Beaker.

Rory sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I'll try to find some contact information here." Unlikely, and even less likely that he'd find anything for any of the rest of her family, but he'd try. "Just ... call me if you hear anything, okay?"

[sand-andwater.livejournal.com]

"Right." Mike hung up the phone and decided he was going to ask some of the waitresses yet again if they knew of anywhere or anyone Pippa might go to. Setting his jaw, he also decided that he'd ask if there might be anyone who had a grudge against the young woman, though that thought was almost as unlikely as her taking off somewhere. People just didn't not like Pippa Kerr.

[fey-fire.livejournal.com]

A search for other contacts proved as fruitless as Rory had suspected. After feeding, watering and cleaning up after the Doberman pup, Rory braced himself for the next round of calls he had to make. The police likely wouldn't care about a woman who'd been missing for less than twenty-four hours, but he knew his family would take him seriously.

But first he tried Pippa's cell once more, gritting his teeth when he got her voicemail again. "Pippa, love, I'm at your place. What's going on? Please, mo muirnín, call me. Please."

[sand-andwater.livejournal.com]

Mike didn't just ask the staff once more for ideas, he also asked them when they last saw Pippa. If she left work early, if she stayed later than anyone else. Didn't anyone make sure she got to her car safely after locking up?

A few of the waitresses looked genuinely concerned. One of the bartenders looked guilty as hell for leaving early and letting Pippa lock up on her own. Mike chewed his ass for it and then some.

Still, none of this got him any closer to an answer about where she could be.