Orchids and Stone

by Lisa Preston

  Who had said that? A boyfriend? That boyfriend, the last one? Ross? Yes, Ross Bouchard said Suzanne was a once-in-a-lifetime girl.

  Oh, and her mother said the same when frustrated with Suzanne, having caught her about to take the car without permission.

  Their mother had perhaps never known how Suzanne snuck out so many times. Her mother talked about Suzanne’s sassing, funky clothes and hair, and that phrase on so many of the elder daughter’s report cards: not living up to potential. Daphne swallowed at the literal reality of those teachers’ comments. And her mother’s counterpoint, when shaking her head and half-complaining about once-in-a-lifetime Suzanne, came in the same breath as she proclaimed how different Daphne was.

  You’re my good girl, Daphne.

  “I have to call my mother again. I want her out of the house for now. Until I know if that guy having my wallet is going to be a major problem.” She tried to think, to plan the conversation. Her mother might argue that she couldn’t leave her cat for long. Daphne considered a counterargument, deciding she and Vic could keep the cat for a while. Maybe her mom would sleep at their house, too, but where?

  “You have to cancel your credit cards,” Vic said. “Should have already done it.”

  Daphne lurched from the bed, grabbed the phone off the nightstand, and pushed a useless button. “It’s dead. Why’s it dead?”

  He took the phone from her and racked it back on the charger. “I’d guess you left it off the charger earlier. I’ll go get the kitchen phone so we have one up here tonight.”

  Vic wanted a working phone beside the bed in case there was an emergency, in case his kids needed him, Daphne knew. She held out her hand. “Just give me your cell.”

  Vic slipped his phone off his belt clip, put it in her palm, then headed down the stairs for the house phone.

  Her mother’s voice held surprise with a one-word question. “Victor?” Although her mother still didn’t have a cordless phone in the kitchen, Daphne had bought her a set of cordless units for the bedroom and living room.

  “No, Mom, it’s me. Just using Vic’s phone. Um, how was bridge? Good?”

  “I didn’t have very good hands and I missed some things. Are you coming out tomorrow? I’ve been doing so much. Why don’t you spend the weekend with me? Victor can come, too. And his kids. We can all go—”

  “Oh, Mo-om.” Daphne felt herself weighed down with these requests she didn’t want to grant and realized her mother would not give up either.

  Daphne wondered about the validity of her concern that the man who’d taken her jacket would go to her mother’s house. She tried to weigh the best-case scenario against the worst, as Vic would measure it. People pursued victims in movies. With the salve of time, the whole afternoon at Minerva Watts’s house turned surreal. Unexplainable and incomprehensible and somehow not real.

  “Oh, Da-aphne,” her mother said. “I have such a surprise for you. Just come out. It won’t be a too-sad thing … like every year. We were saying at bridge, the other girls, they were saying you have to do things with kids. Kids don’t want to just sit around in an old lady’s house. You don’t. And especially this weekend—”

  “Mom, it’s just—”

  “No, listen to me, child. Blanche said there’s this place we could go. We could all go. She takes her son and his wife and their kids up to a little resort in the apple country and they poke around at all those German-looking buildings and they pick apples and peaches in the orchards, although I don’t think you can pick fruit right now. And they have Christmas stores, open all year. The hotel they stay at has a swimming pool and the grandkids love it. We could join them. We’re invited. Victor’s kids would like that, wouldn’t they?”

  “Um, Vic, Mom. Call him Vic.”

  “All right then. Vic. Vic’s kids would like the hotel with a swimming pool. Blanche is going up with her son and his family this weekend and they’ve invited us, and there’s no reason in the world you can’t go, no reason to say no. You don’t work weekends and neither does Victor. Vic. So we could all get away for the weekend and stay together. They’re leaving tonight. You and I and Vic and his kids could catch up to them in the morning. Wouldn’t that be good? It would. You know it would. Say yes.”

  “So, you could go away with them tonight? You’d be gone all weekend?”

  “They’ve invited all of us. It’s not peak season yet, so we’ll get a good rate and there are vacancies on short notice.”

  “You should do it, Mom. You should go with Blanche this weekend. Tonight.”

  The pause killed. Her mother’s voice returned, stiffer. “But you’re not going to say yes and come along and spend the weekend, this weekend, with me?”

  Daphne sighed. “No, Mom. I’m not. We’ll have the kids and we’ll visit Vic’s dad Saturday morning and—”

  “I told you the kids could come. They’d have fun. You just don’t want to spend the weekend up in Leavenworth with me and Blanche and her lovely family. She’s so lucky to have a son and daughter-in-law and grandkids who like to spend time with her. You just don’t like—”

  “Come on, Mom. That’s not it.” Well, it was, but it was a truth that left Daphne cringing. Spend a whole weekend trapped with her sad mother? Beautiful Bavarian Leavenworth, Washington, loomed like a prison—like Leavenworth, Kansas—when she thought of spending an entire weekend with her mother there. Aurgh.

  “Mom? Make sure the doors and windows are locked if you don’t go away tonight, okay?”

  “Why?”

  “Just do. I was thinking of you is all.”

  Her mother said nothing and the pause went on and on until Daphne sighed and said, “The truth is, my wallet and jacket and cell phone were stolen and my ID still has your address on it and I wondered if the guy who stole it might come to your house. You know? I just wondered.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place? Did you leave your jacket in your car at work?”

  “It’s a truck. I don’t have a car—”

  “Will you stop correcting me for every little thing? I’m your mother. You don’t correct me.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mom. I am. I had a lousy day and—”

  “Well, I’d imagine so, what with your jacket being stolen. Poor girl. Are you sure you didn’t just lose it? Where did you see it last?”

  Batting the conversation back to her mother, Daphne stepped over Grazie and thundered down the stairs, rolling her eyes at Vic while fending off her mother. She tried to pour a glass of wine with one hand, watched Vic chuckle, then relinquished the corked bottle to him. He was unable to stifle a grin while he poured two glasses, and he clinked them together before gesturing that he’d carry the wine up to their bedroom.

  She heard the house phone ring as she ran up the stairs, screwing her eyes shut as she worked her mother’s conversation to an end.

  “I’ll tell her,” Vic said. Daphne peered over the landing and watched him finish writing a note, pick up the two wineglasses again, and climb the stairs with the note protruding from two fingers. She waited until she could stand his passivity no more, aggravated that he didn’t tell her right away what he knew.

  “Who were you talking to?”

  He met her stare, set the wineglasses on their nightstand, and reached to kiss her while holding the note behind his back. “Thea.”

  “Hmm. You two still hate each other?”

  “We don’t hate each other,” he protested. “We both love you.”

  “How long are you two going to not get along?”

  “I don’t know. How long were you eavesdropping on us this evening?” Vic brought his hand from the small of his back, glanced at a note in his palm, then folded the paper in quarters.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s an address and phone number. And I have a quote to read to you from her, but I don’t know what it means. Will you tell me what it means?”

  Daphne looked at the tiny note between his thumb and forefinger, wond
ering hard about what Thea might have told Vic. “If I can.”

  “Okay, it says: Retired Detective Arnold Seton. Do not tell him where you got this address.”

  Daphne perked up. “And there’s an address?” She snatched at the slip of paper.

  Vic kept the note between two fingertips, extending his arm toward the ceiling. “You said you’d tell me what it means. What is going on, please?”

  “I can go see him. I can talk to him. After all this time … what?” She raised her eyebrows as Vic scowled. She scowled back and hated being short.

  He tossed the note on the bed and folded his arms. “And what am I supposed to do? You’ve wrecked my car. Am I supposed to take a cab?”

  She bit her lip. “I’ll pay for it.”

  “I don’t want you to pay for it. I want my car.” His voice was raised and he didn’t raise it often.

  “If I were yelling about something that just can’t be, say if I were ranting about wanting my sister back, or my father, you’d tell me to be realistic. To not wish for things that just can’t be.”

  He looked too chagrined to be defensive and said, “Well, I’d say it very nicely.”

  Her shoulders and ire dropped together. “You would,” she agreed.

  Vic sat on the bed and eyed the bouquet of roses on the nightstand. “There’s something I want to say, to ask you, but it seems like there’s so much distraction lately.”

  “Yes!” she exploded, wondering when he’d moved the roses up to the bedroom. “There’s so much distraction these days. Why is that?”

  He held a finger to his lips, to hers, then cradled her onto the bed and set the note by the double bouquet. After stripping out of his shirt and socks, he took his time undressing her. He pulled two roses from one bouquet and swirled one over her left nipple, then her right, while tracing the curve of her shoulders with the other.

  She softened, succumbing to relaxation.

  Vic placed one rose between her breasts and pulled back the green sepals of the other, making all the bloom show. He’d taught her the names of the parts of the rose, the pistil and stamen and sepal, with the first rose massage.

  Back then, he’d crunched some of the magic for her when he’d admitted to learning the names from Cassandra, a master gardener.

  “Tomorrow,” Daphne breathed, closing her eyes. “I’ll get things sorted out tomorrow. Get your car out of impound. See this detective Thea found.”

  “Then I want to go with you,” Vic said, his voice hypnotic. “We can go see him together when I get off work.”

  She opened her eyes. “I don’t want to wait until tomorrow evening. I have the whole day off work. I don’t want to waste it.”

  “Daph, it’s just one day.”

  “I don’t want to wait. I’d go see him right now if I could.” She looked at the clock and felt a niggling sensation that something was wrong, something else. What had she let lie? But the temptation to relax into Vic’s seduction and be allowed to feel good pulled at her core.

  Vic whispered, “I’ll be off work at four. We can go together before I get the kids at six.”

  “I’ll just go by myself. I’ll take you to work, drop you off, and then I’ll go. I’ve got the whole day off.”

  “Daph, you don’t have to go at all.”

  “What?”

  Vic stroked both hands across her hair, caressing as he murmured, “If I asked you to stop all this, would you?”

  “All this … what?”

  “All this tilting at windmills.”

  “I’m tilting at windmills?”

  He nodded and nuzzled her neck. “And it could be dangerous.” He held her face and smiled. “Didn’t your parents ever tell you not to go talking to men you don’t know?”

  Her body went taut. “Every day since I was eleven.”

  His smile fell and he nodded. “Of course. Well. Well, they were right. It’s someone you don’t know. Some guy you don’t know at some address you’re unfamiliar with. At least wait so I can go with you.”

  “I’m going to talk to an ex-cop. They’re not dangerous.”

  He tore several roses from the bouquet, and sprinkled a fistful of petals over her. Once she was littered from neck to thighs, he rearranged loose petals with two roses, tracing her breasts, her muscles, her belly button. Then he pulled a small silver ring from the change pocket of his jeans, and fed it onto one rose stem. Dangling the rose upside down toward her face, he twirled it back and forth. The cuts in the ring’s metal flashed in the low light.

  “I never gave this to Cassandra. I never even considered it. With her it was …” He stopped himself even before he saw her glare.

  Daphne clapped her hands over her eyes, refusing to engage and see the metal band blurring above the rose bloom. “Why … are you talking about her now? Or at all?”

  He pulled her hands from her eyes and shook his head. “I let my mouth run when it shouldn’t have. She’s not a thought I want in my head or yours right now. You mentioned some grandmother’s brooch earlier, and it made me think of my grandmother’s ring and the whole thing in my head about who I never gave it to and why, and who I want to give it to and why, and how I’ve been wanting to say something to you for quite a while … Wait. I’m fouling this up.”

  Clearing his throat, he rose from the bed and pirouetted three hundred and sixty degrees, then knelt at the bedside. “Starting over. This was my grandmother’s ring. My mother set it aside and so did I. Will you marry me, Daphne?” He ended with both hands on his heart.

  She stared as her mind whirled and then words boiled out of the mix of emotions and thoughts. “I can’t believe you proposed. I mean, it’s unexpected. Thanks. I mean, I love you, too. I just …”

  The reserve in Vic’s face ill-concealed his hurt and bewilderment. She turned away, knowing she’d caused so much distress today to so many, knowing she too was on the list of victims, of people who’d been put out by her actions. “Let me just manage one thing right now,” she whispered as she reached for the light and clicked it off. “Let me tell you I love you and thank you, and let’s go to bed. It can still be special. I’m … I feel so scattered right now.”

  In the dark, he said, “In the history of the world, no man ever picked a worse moment to propose.”

  “And no woman has ever been less … I don’t know.”

  He fell asleep with her hands encased in his. Soon a disturbed slumber led him to pull a few inches away, half-rolling to his stomach, then pulling the covers above his shoulder. Daphne shoved the sheet and comforter down, ready to sweat, thinking about her reaction to his proposal. Part of her smiled, swooned a bit, and reveled in his desire. Part of her stayed stuck in questions past and present that had nothing to do with the man beside her. Vic’s fitful sleeping, uneasy with the unnatural switch to his circadian rhythm, might have kept her awake, but she might have lain awake all those hours anyway, her mind rehashing and second-guessing in anticipation of the confrontation she’d earned for the morning.

  A man she didn’t remember, the man with the best chance of knowing, was going to explain to her what was missed.

  CHAPTER 14

  Daphne parked on a gravel driveway and checked the note again as she stepped out of her truck.

  Retired Detective Arnold Seton. 216582 Amelanchier Street NE. Do not tell him where you got this address.

  The house was small, older. She saw a man deep in the carport and called to him. “Mr. Seton? Are you Arnold Seton? You were with the Seattle Police Department?”

  He dropped his metal tackle box with a clunk and angled his body like a boxer’s, his right leg stepping back, one hand darting under his jacket to his waistband. “Show me your hands.”

  “Shit,” she said, dropping the note and throwing her spread palms into the air by her ears. “Don’t shoot me.”

  “Who are you and what do you want?” The man didn’t step out of the carport and Daphne stood rooted in the open, glancing down at the note, wondering if Vic’s
transcription of Thea’s warning was face up.

  “I’m Daphne Mayfield. I’m, I was … Suzanne Mayfield was my big sister. She was murdered twenty years ago. You were on her case. I was a kid then. I never got to talk to you or anyone who knew anything about it.”

  A half hour ago, she’d thought nothing could be more tense than driving one’s new fiancé to work—driving him because she’d wrecked his car—while they were not speaking. He’d said she was being ridiculous to badger her mother into going away for the weekend with her bridge partner, said she’d managed to pick a fight with her mother on a terrible weekend. Daph, you’re creating friction with everybody.

  She tried to shake such distractions off as she peered at the man half-hidden in the carport. “Can I put my hands down?” With her arms overhead, her black T-shirt rode up. The low-rider jeans she’d worn in an effort to not stand out today the way Carhartts made her unique amongst all the jeans-clad people now left her belly exposed.

  He stepped out of the carport, ignoring the tackle box he’d dropped. Crowned with thick gray hair, wearing loose blue jeans, a baggy flannel shirt, and a thin cotton coat, he looked about sixty, but the spring in his step made him appear younger. “Never told you to put ’em up. How’d you get my address?”

  Daphne lowered her hands, put one toe on the note, and gave a weak smile. “A friend got it for me.”

  “Can you do better than that?”

  “She works at a newspaper.” Nice fortitude, she told herself. While not yet diming Thea out, she’d cave if the man questioned her harder.

  He nodded, then shook his head and hooked his thumbs in his belt. “I know who you are. I remember the Suzanne Mayfield case. One of my few suspended cases. And she was my first.”

  “Suspended,” Daphne said, mouthing the word, assessing its flavor as she bent to retrieve the note and pushed it deep into her right front pocket. Suspended described her family while they waited for news when Suzanne went missing, a state from which they’d never recovered, even with the discovery of the body.

  Daphne recognized this permanent state of waiting as the demon that cloaked her and her parents throughout her remaining childhood and knew it had killed her father as much as the rope he’d brought to the hotel room.