Chapter Ten

Filling the kettle once more from the five-gallon container of filtered water on the counter, Royce set it on the smooth black top of the stove to heat. Chrys paced around the island work center and stopped in front of the open-front hutch. She touched the silver tea set Royce had found at an estate sale, black with tarnish. Royce had polished the elegant pieces to mirror brightness. Chrys straightened one of the small antique silver trays beside it. Sighing, she sank into one of the breakfast nook chairs in the bow window.

Royce watched her without being obvious as she set cups and tea bags, cream, and sugar on the table. “Are you positive she hasn’t, oh, just gone for a Sunday afternoon drive with a friend and lost track of time?”

“She would have called me. I know it. We’re never out of touch. Not ever.”

“How did she feel about you moving to Fall Creek?”

“Sad, at first. Then she seemed to be resigned to it, even encouraged me to make the move. It puzzled me.”

“Maybe she was thinking of joining you here one day.” The kettle whistled, and Royce placed a tea bag in each cup, pouring the boiling liquid over them.

“I don’t think so. She likes the city, museums, art galleries, plays, lots of people.”

“She’s always lived in Atlanta, then?”

Frown lines creased Chrys’s smooth forehead. She looked into her teacup, seeming to study it. “No-o. She moved there just after she found she was pregnant with me. She was walking the streets, trying to decide what to do. She saw a Help Wanted sign in a shop window and went inside.”

“Where had she come from?”

“She never told me. Said she wanted to forget.”

“Maybe you have family wherever she came from. Aunts, uncles, cousins.”

“The only thing she ever told me was there were two people she hoped I’d meet someday. Said it wasn’t likely, but she dreamed I would. She never said they were family. Or anything else about them.”

“She must be a strong and brave woman. Bringing you up alone. And did it well, I must say.” Royce smiled, trying to lighten the young woman’s mood.

“Uncle Matt helped. He owned the shop, hired her when she asked him for a job that day. Provided emotional support as well as financial help during her pregnancy. He was a wonderful father substitute for me.”

Royce listened as the younger woman spoke, her eyes distant, focused in the past on a much-loved figure. Telling the story appeared to calm her spirit. She sat with more ease in the chair, picked up her cup, and took a sip.

“When I was born, a state social worker was going to take me from her, put me in foster care and up for adoption. After the woman left Mom’s ward, she heard a nurse arguing with the woman, told her she couldn’t just take a mother’s baby. The woman said she’d be back with a court order. Mom left with me before she got back.”

“Some of them are—arrogant. So sure it’s best. Sometimes I wonder where the state finds these people. Did they come after her?”

“Oh, yes.” Bitterness touched the girl’s voice. “But Uncle Matt had taken us to a cabin he had out in the country. He told them, truthfully, that Mom had left town with me.”

“A cabin in the country. Does he still have it? Maybe they’ve gone there.”

“Uncle Matt died my first year of high school. He hadn’t any family either, so he left the shop and cabin to us.”

“So could your mother have gone there?”

“No. We’d had so many happy times there with him, we couldn’t bear to go back after he died. And not much time, with taking care of the shop and all, on our own.”

Chrys seemed to come back to the present and remember her worry. She looked at the clock and shoved her chair back. “I’ll go call again, then try to get some sleep.” She began speaking on a hopeful note, but her voice trailed away and worry lines creased her forehead.

“Are there no neighbors at all in your mother’s apartment building that you can call?”

“We lived—she lives in a little apartment above the shop. We lived there with Uncle Matt until he died. It was—it’s convenient.”

Chrys opened the door and stepped out onto the deck.

“Wait, Chrys, I’ll walk you over.” They walked silently through the gap in the hedge and along the flagstone path that bordered the Sages’ formally landscaped back garden. At the door, Royce hugged the girl briefly and murmured a few, she hoped, soothing words. Then she retraced her steps home.

The shrill jangle of the telephone split the quiet evening as she crossed the yard. Hurrying across the deck, she bolted through the door and grabbed the extension on the wall nearby.

“Royce?” The chief’s voice, much more brusque than usual, came over the line.

“What is it?” She managed to get the words past the sudden lump in her throat.

“You won’t need to go to the hospital in the morning. Fern Rock died a few minutes ago.”

She swallowed the relief she could not help feeling along with the lump. Not Palm, thank God.

“I’d still like for you to see her at the morgue. Are you up to it?”

She swallowed again. “I—suppose so. If you want. I can’t say I look forward to it.”

“Appreciate it. And Royce—”

She heard the reluctance in his voice and dread again squeezed her throat. “What else, Jared?”

“We’ve arrested Palm.”

“Arrested…What charge? Where has he been? How did you find him?” She managed to grab those questions from the dozens whirling in her head.

“You know the charge—robbery. Possibly murder. He surfaced at the Fall Creek Inn a little while ago. Ten thousand of the stolen money from the dealership was in his possession.”

“The inn? He’s been there since—when? Friday? And you’ve just now found him?”

“His name on the register was overlooked. No reason to connect him with Fern Rock.” The chief’s voice was flat, but she knew somebody would be hauled on the carpet for the oversight.

“Wanted to relieve your mind, Royce. Shouldn’t have, I suppose, but I knew you were worried.”

“Thank you, Jared. But you know you’re wrong. Palm’s not a thief. And certainly not a murderer.”

“Royce, I have a robbery and two murders on my hands. And Palmer Woodstone is now connected to all of them.”

“Palm can’t possibly be guilty of robbery, let alone two murders.” Certain as she was of that fact, she heard the tiny note of question in her voice. Why was Palm at the inn?

“I have to go by—” His voice faded slightly. “What the hell? Where?” He slammed the receiver down before Royce could say anything else or ask what had happened at the station.

Royce slowly hung up her own receiver. She tried to think of a reason for Palm’s being at the inn on Friday night. The inn operated a small, dingy nightclub. She’d seen the colorful flashing sign advertising the local bands that provided live music on the weekends. She didn’t know for sure that Palm ever patronized the place, but young people needed diversion. Palm probably looked for acceptance from his peers, his childhood shadowed by an indifferent father.

Maybe he had been there with Sloan, his girlfriend, had a little too much to drink and didn’t want to go home. Sloan was a fairly new police department employee, still on her year of probation working the night shift at the jail.

Eddy had stopped by his home while Sloan was on a ride-along with him last summer. Royce and Palm were in the front yard discussing a sickly rosebush, and Eddy introduced Sloan. The two young people hit it off and began dating.

“I’m glad they’re seeing each other. She seems a nice young woman,” Royce commented when she and Eddy ran into the couple as they were leaving Frankie’s Cafe one night.

“They make an attractive pair. Should make Hal happy.” Eddy’s appreciative glance followed Sloan and Palm as they walked to Palm’s truck. “I think her family must be well off.”

“Why do you think so?”

“The way she talks. Her self-confidence. Chuck said she was in school in France for a year.”

“Foreign exchange student?”

“Maybe.”

Royce had noted the diamond earrings which would have done Amanda Sage proud, as well as the designer jeans. The Gucci bag on her shoulder looked like the real thing, too. A couple of weeks before at the beauty shop, Royce had leafed idly through an issue of Vanity Fair and noticed the ads for exorbitantly priced accessories.

“I wonder why would a young woman from a well-to-do family decide to become a police officer. In Fall Creek?”

“Hey! It’s not all bad. We’ve done okay.”

“Of course.” Royce smiled. “You know what I mean.”

Palm hadn’t brought Sloan around much since Eddy’s death. Maybe he was afraid seeing the girl would be painful for Royce. Which it would have. Though the memory of their inner-city courtship which led to her marrying Eddy seemed like remembering another world, it had been so different.

He had taken her back to her dingy walkup one night after a hamburger and movie date. When she fumbled for her key, she dropped her wallet and a picture fell out. Eddy picked it up, glancing at it as he handed it back.

“Hey, the Dump. That’s where I lived when I was a kid. Is this you?”

She snatched it back, jammed it into her purse. It was the only picture she had of her mother or she would have thrown it away. “No. My mother.”

“Pretty. You look like her.”

She jerked her head up to stare at him. Was he making fun of her? No. He smiled and reached to touch her hair. She willed herself not to shrink back. “Did you recognize me when you gave me the ticket?”

“I thought so, but not for sure. You’ve changed from that scared, skinny little girl.” His eyes widened, and he lifted her chin. “You’re the only good thing I remember from that time. My sister has blocked it out, won’t acknowledge any part of it.”

Royce could understand Eleanor’s refusal to acknowledge living in the slums of Atlanta. “I’ve tried to forget it all, too.”

Her life in the slums and her mother’s death were indirectly responsible for Royce’s inability to have a child. While in the group home, a girl attacked her, and another kicked her in the abdomen, damaging Royce’s ovaries.

He said gently, “Your dad brought you along several times when he visited my mother. Mom sent Eleanor next door, but I stayed and we watched Star Trek on our old black and white TV set.”

The Dump, their name for the noisome city housing project, was a fearful place, but at least Royce had had her parents for a few years. Eddy and Eleanor’s father had been killed in Vietnam. They’d had a rough time. If Eleanor hadn’t been a scholarship student at Agnes Scott College by the time Eddy started seeing Royce, they probably would not have gotten past the first date. Royce saw Eleanor only once during the courtship, and Eleanor absolutely refused to be a part of their city hall wedding.

Did Sloan’s parents mind her dating a cop? Did Hal approve of Palm dating Sloan? Not much else Palm did pleased him. But if Sloan had been with Palm at the inn on Saturday night, surely she would have told Jared. And Palm would have been found sooner.

Where was he, if not at the inn, when Royce reluctantly went next door for dinner on Saturday? She’d wondered if perhaps Palm would be home. He had stayed for one previous dinner, though it had been obvious he would have preferred to be anywhere else. In retrospect, his father had probably instructed him to make himself scarce this time. At any rate, Palm was nowhere to be seen when she arrived at seven, as they had agreed the day before when she ran into him at the pharmacy.

On the Friday afternoon before their dinner, she had just swiped her debit card to pay for her vitamins and favorite brand of natural nail polish. She glanced at the clerk in time to see her smile and wink at someone behind her. Turning, she saw it was Hal.

“Royce, are we still on for dinner tomorrow night? I’m doing something special.” In spite of all evidence to the contrary, Hal fancied himself a gourmet cook.

Unwilling to embarrass even Hal in public, she’d accepted with reluctance.

Saturday evening, Royce rang the Woodstone doorbell, and Hal ushered her inside.

They made small talk over the beef Wellington. But the meal did not live up to its redolent boast. When she detected an aftertaste of MSG but dismissed it. Maybe he’d had to deliver some plants and been forced to fall back on a frozen dish. But over her favorite dessert, fresh strawberry shortcake, he dropped his bombshell.

Perhaps even Hal realized his angry outburst about other women was counterproductive to his plans for their marriage. He tried to be persuasive. “Think about it, Royce. It would be good for all of us.”

When she remained unconvinced, his eyes grew mean and narrow. Slamming his fist on the table, he shouted coarse accusations. “You’re no better than my cheating ex-wife. You and Eddy deserved each other.”

His words rang in her ears as she had hurried across to her own house. How could Lily leave her baby to her husband’s ravings? To Royce’s knowledge, Hal had never actually struck Palm. But the outrage he’d portrayed to Jared about checking the hospital to see if Palm had been brought in didn’t fit his words to her on the telephone.

To distract herself, she belatedly cleared the table and placed the teacups in the dishwasher. Her thoughts jumped from Devon to Palm’s trouble to Chrys’s worry about her mother, to the woman who died from a brutal beating. The woman who, the chief said, as her last conscious act, had called Royce on Saturday morning. Why? Who was she? Something tickled at the edge of her mind. Something the chief said? Here at the house? On the phone? She sensed it was important. Leave it alone. Maybe it would come to her when she stopped trying to remember.