Healing Stones by Stephen Arterburn, Nancy Rue Page A

one. She was in this place, at this time, and that was where he was.
    He’d told patients that—he’d written about it—he’d soothed the beast of the past in radio listeners who sobbed to him over the phone. He wondered now if they believed it any more than he did.
    Sully grabbed a rag and went to work on the taillights again. He had to believe it, because it was true. The flashback was evidence that he wasn’t ready to go back to Colorado, to work. Not a problem. He needed to focus on the now. On bringing an old passion back to life. On repaying a debt to a friend. Maybe even on bringing somebody else out of a dark place, like the one he’d been in. That was, after all, why he was in business.
    Sully stood up, rag still in hand, and looked at the grungy office beyond the third bay. The landlord said he could use that too. Cleaned out, furnished with a couple yard sale chairs, it could make a decent place to meet with this Dr. Costanas.
    Ethan showed up around six with Reuben sandwiches. Sully found two metal folding chairs and set them on opposite sides of an upended box of the quarts of oil that were soon going to fill the Impala like a youth serum.
    Ethan set the bag on the makeshift table and made the appropriate appreciative sounds over the car.
    â€œAs long as I have this place,” Sully said as he unwrapped his sandwich, “you might as well bring your vehicle in for a tune-up.”
    â€œI’ll be buying a new one before you get done with that—”
    â€œWatch it now. She’s sensitive.”
    Ethan smiled with his eyes as he chewed.
    â€œSo let’s talk about the photographs,” Sully said. “Did you bring them with?”
    Ethan nodded, mouth in a grim line.
    â€œHow do you think Estes and the Saint Bernard got them?”
    Ethan dug into the bag and produced a stack of napkins. “Estes said somebody gave them to him. He wouldn’t say who, but I gather it was right after they were taken. He said whoever it was brought them late at night.”
    â€œI bet that put him in a good mood.” Sully rescued a glob of sauerkraut before it dropped onto the table. “He looks like an old curmudgeon.”
    â€œHe’s still sharp. Goes to the office every day, still micromanages his conglomerate.”
    â€œHe’s playing this pretty shrewdly.”
    â€œWe’re not going to get any names out of him, if that’s what you mean.”
    â€œWhat about the Saint—”
    â€œSt. Clair.” Ethan’s eyes crinkled as he wiped his mouth. “Kevin may be narrow-minded, but he’s honest to a fault. If he says he doesn’t know where the pictures came from, he doesn’t.”
    â€œSo Estes—and the photographer—are the only ones who know.” Sully put his sandwich down on the wrapper and rubbed his hands together. “We had a patient—recently, in fact—whose wife paid a detective to follow him and take pictures of what he was doing.”
    â€œI thought that only happened on TV,” Ethan said.
    â€œThis was for real.”
    â€œSo what was the guy doing?”
    â€œBlowing their life savings on sports bets. But the point is, what if that’s what’s going on here?”
    Ethan grunted. “I would bet my life savings Rich Costanas did not hire a PI to follow his wife. In the first place, according to Demi, the photographer was already there when she got there, hiding on the boat.”
    â€œWhat if Estes hired him?”
    â€œWhy would he? Nobody knew what was going on between Archer and Demi.”
    â€œYou sure about that?”
    Ethan broke off a strand of cheese that stretched from the wrapper. “Look, Wyatt Estes has strong ideas about how things should be done, and he definitely uses his power to get his way. That makes him an opportunist, not a stalker. I firmly believe the pictures just fell into his lap, and he saw a perfect opportunity to take me