Eden had kept a sympathetic face, but it hadn’t been easy. Part of her wanted to defend herself and point out that she had done the best she could. And, of course, she’d very much wanted to tell Melissa that she had no idea what a “bad childhood” was really like. Eden also wanted credit for all the Saturdays that she’d arranged all-day playdates for her daughter. And what about all the nights she’d stayed up after midnight cooking meals for the week so her daughter could live on something besides those hideous “chicken nuggets” that other children ate? Melissa was three before she’d ever eaten a french fry. Et cetera. There were thousands of good things that Melissa seemed to have forgotten.
But Eden knew that to defend herself would only anger Melissa more, and what good would that do? Right now her daughter was scared out of her mind about having a baby, and she was afraid that her husband was never going to come after her. Maybe Melissa’s leaving of Stuart had been her daughter’s last shot at being a romantic heroine. Maybe she’d wanted to run away and have the hero come after her. But, so far, it hadn’t worked. No hero on a white horse—or in a silver Audi, for that matter—had shown up. Nor had he called.
With every minute that passed, Melissa grew more agitated and more determined to make herself believe that what she’d done was the right thing. She was fighting for her baby, wasn’t she? She was trying to give him the best there was, wasn’t she? She didn’t want her child to grow up feeling alone, as his mother had, did she?
It was close to impossible for Eden to listen to what her daughter was saying without defending herself, but she did it. Every time she felt the blood shooting up the back of her neck, she’d look at Melissa’s big belly and think how her daughter was going to learn. Melissa had all kinds of stories about bad mothers. She talked of seeing women in stores as they bawled out their children. “If those women would just take the time to reason with their children,” Melissa said. “If they’d just listen to them.” The hint was that Eden had never listened or reasoned with her daughter, but in spite of that, Melissa was going to give her child what he needed.
Eden turned away to hide her smile. She wanted to say, Wait until the kid says, “I’m not going to do that and you can’t make me!” and wait until every secret you have is blabbed to the world. Eden would never forget one Sunday at church when the pastor asked the congregation if there was anyone who needed their prayers. Melissa, only three, said loud and clear that her mother needed prayers because she’d been raped. The child had no idea what “raped” meant, but she’d listened to the people who had whispered when they thought she couldn’t hear them. All Melissa knew was that a bad thing had happened to her mother and she wanted God to help.
Just you wait, Eden thought. It was terrible to want to get back at her own daughter, but that’s how she felt with every complaint that Melissa made.
Late that evening, Eden put in her first call to Stuart. Maybe she could patch up the problems between them. She didn’t know how she was going to do it, and she greatly regretted every bad thought she’d ever had about her son-in-law, but she was going to try. If she had to grovel, she would. She’d apologize to Stuart, tell him she’d misjudged him, and say that she thought he was the finest son-in-law a woman could have.
But Stuart didn’t call her back. Nor did he answer the next four calls that Eden made. She called him again at six the next morning, but there was no answer. It wasn’t until later in the day that she thought of calling the superintendent of her building. By then Melissa’s tears and complaints had so worn Eden down that she would have paid Stuart to come and get his wife. How about if I give you a fake sapphire necklace? she thought of saying to him. How about if I sign the apartment lease over to you? What if I pay the rent?
But Stuart didn’t answer her calls, and when the super called back, he said that the doorman had helped Stuart into a taxi two days before and he’d had two big suitcases with him. Eden put down the phone and went to her daughter. Melissa was in McBride’s bed—no, she was in Eden’s guest room—and she was eating chocolate-covered marshmallows. Little brown papers littered the floor like dirty snowflakes.
“Was Stuart home when you left?”
Melissa looked up, surprised. “No. He’d just left for a trip to L.A.”
“How long was he supposed to be gone?” Eden asked, keeping her anger under firm control.
“A week.”
Eden blinked at her daughter. “Are you telling me that Stuart may not even know that you’ve left him?”
Melissa tried to roll over on her side, but her big belly kept her on her back. “Mother, haven’t you been listening to me? I didn’t leave Stuart, per se. I left an impossible situation. But of course he knows I’m not there. He always calls me from whatever hotel he’s in, so when I don’t answer the phone he’ll know that I’ve left him. Or left that place, that is. You know something, Mother? I really like it here in Arundel. The fresh air. The land. The water. I like this big old house. I think Stuart and I should move in here with you. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? You’d be around your grandchild every day. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Eden didn’t say a word—she might start screaming and never stop. Silently, she closed the door, then called Stuart yet again. Didn’t he pick up his messages? No, of course not. He thought he had a wife at home who would be answering the phone. But wait! What if Melissa had gone into labor? Surely Stuart had left a number where he could be reached.
Eden started to go back to Melissa’s room to ask, but stopped. She very well knew that her daughter would never give her the phone number. Eden was so desperate that she felt no guilt when she made a thorough search of Melissa’s handbag, but she found nothing.
Eden went to the kitchen, poured herself a big glass of wine, then took it and the bottle outside. It was still cool, and she shivered. How things in life could change in an instant, she thought. A few weeks ago she was living with her daughter and loving where she was. If it hadn’t been for her son-in-law, she would have been quite happy. She was now ashamed of the thought, but if she’d been told that Stuart had been run over by a train, she would have been secretly glad. She would have had her daughter and her grandchild to herself.
But for the last few weeks she’d led a very different life, one that consisted of grown-up things, like…Well, like rolling in the mud with a man. Working on an interesting project with two men. She thought of the night she and Brad and McBride—Jared—had found the necklace. It had been exciting and scary at the same time. And she’d done it with two men. Two of them! Handsome men looking at her as though she was what they wanted most in life. Ah, yes. Exciting and scary at the same time.
But here she was now alone. Sitting in the garden alone, sipping wine alone. In the moonlight she could see her cute little red truck. The back of it had half a dozen brand-new tools in it. Was it true that it was easier to dig with a stainless steel shovel than one that was rusty and pitted? She’d sure like to find out. Near the truck, on the little bricked area by the potting shed, were nearly three hundred plants waiting, crying out, to be put into the soil. The perennials and annuals were in four-inch pots, the bulbs in bags, and she and Jared had put the bareroot trees in buckets of water to hold them until they could be planted. That should have been today, Eden thought, but she hadn’t been able to get outside to do it.
She drank the rest of the wine and poured another glassful. Was she now going to get drunk alone? “Pathetic Palmer,” she muttered.
She knew she had to make a plan. What if Stuart was hearing her messages and not responding because he didn’t want to get back together with Melissa? If that was so, then Eden knew that she’d soon become grandmother-in-residence. When she thought of diapers and toilet-training and baby food, she took another deep drink of wine and wished she’d brought her cell phone outside with her so she could call Stuart again. Would it be too, too difficult to call every hotel in Los Angeles and ask if he was there?
Plan, she thought. She had to make a pl
an. Now that the fiasco about the necklace and that spy swallowing her name was over, she needed to think about her future. Had she ruined it with Brad? When Melissa had been hosing her down, Eden had looked at Brad’s sad eyes and had wanted to go to him, but her duties of motherhood had kept her where she was.
Eden emptied the second glass of wine, then made herself stop. It would be nice to drink so much that she couldn’t remember the last few days, but she wasn’t going to do that. Brad and Jared. She missed them both already. Jared had been a temporary…What? Friend, she thought. Jared McBride had become her friend.
As for Brad…She wanted him to become more. When she stood up, she was dizzy, but she took a few deep breaths of cool night air and managed to get up the steps and inside the house. Tomorrow she was going to go to Brad and beg him to forgive her. In spite of what she’d told Jared, she knew she couldn’t tell Brad the truth. “Well, you see,” she’d say, “I told McBride to pretend that I was a drug dealer who was trying to get away, so he did what he could to stop me, which meant that he leaped on top of me and pinned me down. And when I said ‘Push’ he pushed me, not the truck. It was actually quite humorous. And I hit him with a fistful of mud because…” Even after two big glasses of wine none of that sounded like it would make him forgive her.
As she climbed the stairs, she resolved to find Brad and talk to him. Lie to him if she had to. Do whatever was necessary to get him to forgive her. When she reached her bed, she fell on it, facedown, fully clothed, and was asleep in seconds.
Outside, in a voice so quiet it could barely be heard, a man said into a radio, “Subject has turned in for the night. Soused.” Chuckling, he put the radio in his pocket and leaned back against the post of the rose arbor. It was the last thing he ever did. A knotted rope was pulled across his throat.
“No,” Bill said calmly, “you’re not going to be allowed back on the case. That you’re taking the death of an operative this hard shows me that you’re too involved. You can’t make unbiased decisions.”
“If by that you mean that I will kill anyone who tries to hurt an innocent person, you’re right.”
Bill put his hands on his flat belly and looked at Jared pacing the room. “You want to sit down and quit this tantrum of yours? Your girlfriend is being well looked after.”
Jared sat down but only to glare at Bill. “Last night a man was killed just outside her front door. Do you call that ‘looking after’?”
“I call that verification of what we suspected. The woman is connected to a spy ring. She knows something, but you didn’t find out what it was. I’m sure you found out that she likes to walk on the beach and loves those—What were they?” He looked at the stack of papers in front of him. “Jelly beanies. Drinks of seduction, I think you called them, but you didn’t find out what she knows.” Leaning across his desk, Bill returned Jared’s glare. “But you’ve found out some things about her since you moved out, haven’t you?
“Snooping into my private e-mails and phone calls?” Jared asked, one eyebrow raised.
“Of course. So what did you find out?”
Jared got up again, trying not to pace but unable to sit still. When he’d heard that a man had been killed so close to Eden and her daughter, he thought he was going to go on a killing rampage himself. He’d wanted to gather guns and men and planes and take them to Arundel, North Carolina, and kill…That was the problem. They still had no idea who was behind whatever was going on. Two agents dead and no idea why. All they knew was that things centered around Ms. Eden Palmer and maybe around her old house. It had been with great reluctance that he’d agreed to physically remove himself from the case and give the impression that Eden was no longer being watched. But she was being watched. The cameras were still in place inside her house and out, and men were still stationed outside her house. Everything she did or said had been reported on. Jared had watched some of the hours of tapes, and had read some of the reports. The only thing he’d come up with is that if he were there he’d have let Eden’s whining daughter have a piece of his mind.
Bill was still looking at him, waiting to hear what Jared had found out. That Bill didn’t know the exact contents of what Jared was doing on his own time was reassuring. That meant that the blocks he’d put on his phone and computer were working.
“Something about Ohio,” Bill said by way of encouragement.
“Yeah, one Walter K. Runkel.”
“Let me guess. The whining brat’s father.”
Jared’s mouth turned into a smirk. It seemed that Bill had also seen some of the tapes. “Exactly. Eden said he’d been the head deacon at her church, so I did a little digging, made a few calls, and found out who he was.”
“And?”
“There was a big scandal at that church about four years after Eden was tossed out by her parents. The man who raped Eden got caught with another young girl.”
“Another rape?”
“No. Seems that it was mutual. There was a lot of commotion and accusations, but there were no charges and no arrests were made. Runkel and the girl were separated, then he went back to his wife and kids. As soon as the girl was of age, they were at it again. The wife packed up the kids and moved to California. As soon as the divorce was final, Runkel married the kid. Good thing, because by then she was seven months pregnant.”
“You think Eden knows any of this?”
“Not a word of it. I think she’s gone out of her way to not know any of it. When she left that town, she left it forever.”
“So now Runkel is living with the kid? She’s how old now?”
“He left her when she turned twenty. She took the kid and went back to her parents.”
Bill gave a low whistle. “Where is he now?”
“Works in a carpet store. He’s in the same town and everybody knows to keep their young girls away from him. He’s no longer an active member of the church.”
“What about Ms. Palmer’s parents?”
“Both dead.”
Bill looked at the files on his desk. “You don’t think this Runkel had anything to do with what’s going on here, do you? Maybe he plans to blackmail Ms. Palmer. I’m sure she’d pay him to make him stay away from her daughter and the grandbaby.”
“I thought of that, but he hasn’t left town in years, and I checked his phone records. No calls to North Carolina. I don’t think he knows about Eden or her daughter.”
Bill looked at Jared for a moment. “So what do you plan to do about him?”
“Except for Eden, he doesn’t seem to have done anything that he can be prosecuted for. Or anything anyone knows about, that is.”
“Any unsolved rapes on the books?” Bill asked, eyebrows raised.
“Three,” Jared said with a half smile. “I checked into it, and I think he probably did it.”
“Did they save DNA?”
“Yes.” For a moment Bill and Jared looked at each other and nodded. Maybe Eden wasn’t willing to go through the horror of a trial, but maybe the other victims were.
“Get on it,” Bill said.
“I’ve already started.”
“So what else?” Bill asked.
“Why didn’t you tell me that Tess Brewster had never had a paintbrush in her hands in her life?”
“I knew you’d find it out. Besides, when you’re around Ms. Palmer, you don’t think about or see anything else. Just her.”
Jared gave him a look that told him not to go there. “What do you know?” Jared asked.
“Only that Tess didn’t paint those pictures. But she did take them to the frame shop.”
Jared sat down. “Where did she get the pictures? You don’t think she bought them, do you? Maybe this is a red herring and she bought them at a garage sale and had them framed. Maybe she was going to hang them in her apartment.”
“Did she have an apartment? I thought she lived here at the agency. With you.”
Jared smiled, and for the first time in days, he relaxed. “Like all of us. So what’s th
e theory on the paintings?”
“I think Tess wanted to hide them. She got them somewhere and wanted to hide them where no one would look.”
“Ah, yes, hide them in plain sight. So she took them to the frame shop and left them there, meaning to return and get them later.”
“No, she sent us the claim ticket.” Bill handed the piece of paper across the desk to Jared.
“You had this, but you didn’t show it to me?”
“I didn’t know we had it. It was mixed in with her reports, and—”
Jared looked at Bill in speculation. Was he telling the truth that they had overlooked something like this? Either Bill wasn’t telling everything or he was flat out lying.
Bill wouldn’t meet Jared’s eyes. “I want you off the case,” he said quietly. “Two agents are dead, and we still don’t know anything.”
Jared gave his boss, his friend, a half smile. “Afraid I’ll bite the dust on this one?”
“Hoping for it,” Bill said, but his face was serious.
“What are you doing to protect her?” Jared asked.
“We’re just trying to watch her, that’s all. She has no idea a man was killed outside her house last night. All she’s concerned about is finding her son-in-law and getting him to take his wife home.”
“So where is the son-in-law?”
“Busy,” Bill said.
“I see. You’re keeping him too busy to take his wife away. You don’t want anything to mess up the bait, do you? You’re dangling this innocent woman in front of the killer, so you might as well dangle the daughter too, is that it?”
“Maybe if you had found out what she knows this wouldn’t be happening,” Bill snapped.
“She doesn’t know anything,” Jared shot back. “At least not anything that would cause some spy to swallow her name.”
“Yeah, well, maybe. I’m not convinced.” He started to move the papers on his desk about, letting Jared know that his time was up. “You find out anything new, let me know.”
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