Q: Lost some contacts from my desktop computer.  How did that happen and how can I retrieve? Am using v 10.8.4;  thank you?

First, tried to contact a friend on my iPhone.  All her information is gone.  Went to my desktop computer... all her information is gone from my contacts, also gone from my iPad.  What happened?

Also, used to have a cloud image under the hard drive image on my computer.  That's been gone for a while, yet my iCloud account works. Is this significant or can I just forget about it?

Thank you for your support.