“Is there a record of how he paid? Credit card? Check?”
“Cash. Same with the woman. Paid cash.”
“Both of them?”
“Uh huh.”
Royce paused a moment. Vicki was near Palm’s age. Why would she enjoy his trouble? “Do you know Palm?”
“Not really. He was a year ahead of me, Student Council, Explorers, and all. But I knew who he was; his old man owns that big greenhouse.”
“It almost sounds like you didn’t like him.”
“I don’t like snobs. I could have told him some things about his old man, knocked him off his high horse.”
“What could you have told him, Vicki?” Royce asked softly, afraid the fountain was going to dry up.
Sure enough, the girl hesitated, lowering her lush natural-looking lashes, then opened her eyes wider. “Wait a minute. Don’t you live close to them?”
“Next door. What did you mean, you could tell Palm things about his father?”
“Nothing. Just gossip. Girl talk.” She pressed full lips together, finished with girl talk or any other kind for now.
Royce stood for a few more seconds, hand on the handle of the glass door, then said, “Thanks again, Vicki. I’ll look for Greg Rogers.” She left the office, feeling Vicki’s stare. As she started toward the east wing, through the glass she saw the girl swing her hair and pick up the phone, without taking her eyes off Royce.
Officer Greg Rogers came around the end of the building as she approached the door of the room Fern Rock had occupied so briefly while alive. “Royce. What brings you out here?”
“Hope, Greg. Just hoping there’s something new here that might shed some light on what happened.”
“Did you know the woman? Somebody said she called you from the hospital.”
“No. I didn’t recognize her. And don’t know anyone by that name. Has any new information turned up?”
“Nothing more than what the detectives originally found, as I understand it. The lab is checking some stuff they took this morning from the room Palm Woodstone was in.”
“Looking for what?”
Greg looked at her, not answering.
“I’m sorry, Greg. I shouldn’t put you in an awkward position.”
The sound of a car bearing down on them prevented him from having to agree with her. They both turned, and Royce recognized Chief Granite’s black Ford Explorer. The chief got out and came toward them. He looked at Greg and nodded toward the building. Greg touched his cap and walked away.
The chief sighed, then hardened his jaw. “Royce, the lamp in Palm’s room was used to hit the woman before she was beaten and kicked. He’s now charged with this murder.”
Royce closed her eyes and imagined for a moment that heavy clouds had come over the sun and her world seemed the darkest it had been since Eddy died. But when she opened her eyes and looked up, the sky was still a smiling blue, the sun overhead in the brilliant spring afternoon. Her thoughts snapped back to the chief. Time for shock later.
“Murder? You can’t be serious. What possible motive could Palm have to murder that woman?”
“We don’t know yet. We’ll find out.”
“He didn’t even know her.”
“If that’s a fact, he hasn’t told us.”
“He will talk to me,” she said grimly. “But how could he have done it anyway? Did somebody see him go into her room?”
The chief grunted.
“Somebody saw him actually go into her room?”
“They did. She was seen alive afterward. So we figure he must have gone back again later.”
“Palmer Woodstone could not murder anyone. I know that. Jared, you know that.”
“We have to go by the evidence, Royce. Right now, the most damning evidence points to Palm.”
“Have the results of his blood tests come in yet? I am positive somebody drugged and placed him in that room. The real murderer.”
“Lab says they’ll have it ready in a couple of hours. But don’t pin your hopes on it, Royce. If, and that’s a big if, Palm was drugged, it could have metabolized out of his system by the time we found him.”
“Vicki says on Saturday the room beside Fern Rock’s room, connecting to it, was empty. Why couldn’t someone have gotten into it and then into her room from that direction?”
“What about the lamp? The lamp from his room? How else could it have been the weapon used on her? Stop grasping at straws, Royce.”
That’s what she was doing, Royce realized. She had to get a grip. She wanted to go home, think, come up with some idea, some action, that might clear Palm. If he was brought to trial, the knowledge of his paternity could very well be brought to light. God, what was she worried about more, Palm’s innocence or the revelation of Eddy’s betrayal?
The position of the sun alerted her to the passage of time. She checked her watch. The TV interview was in just half an hour. No time to go home and change. She took a deep breath. Suppressed the impulse to remind Jared Granite she could remember a few cases he and Eddy had worked where things were not as they first appeared.
“I have to go,” she said. “You can reach me at home later today.”
As she walked back toward the office and her car, she heard the chief’s car engine start up and continue around the end of the building. Presumably, he was going to the room Palm had occupied Saturday night.
She reached her car and unlocked the door. Just then Vicki came through the motel doors and called her name. “Mrs. Thorne?”
Royce turned to the girl. “Yes, what is it, Vicki?”
“I’m sorry if I sounded bad about Palm.” Her tone and the calculating look in her eyes belied her words.
What was she up to? Had she known all along something that might help Palm? So accept the apology at face value and see.
“All right. Is there anything about Saturday that you haven’t told anyone?”
“Oh, no, I’ve told all I know about Saturday. But can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.” Royce glanced at her watch again.
“It’s about my boyfriend, Tim,” Vicki said hurriedly, as though maybe she was having second thoughts and wanted to get it over with.
“Tim?” Royce frowned. What was the girl getting at?
“Tim Conroy. He’s the one who accidentally hit your husband with his car. And I’m sorry about that, too.”
Royce stared at the girl’s pretty face. “You’re calling it an accident?”
“He didn’t mean to do it. He didn’t.”
“He was driving a stolen car!”
“He was test-driving the car, wasn’t used to it. They’re going to charge him with murder. But if you say it must have been an accident…” Her voice trailed off in the face of Royce’s disbelief.
“I won’t do that, Vicki. And you’d better find yourself another boyfriend.”
She got in her car and drove out of the parking lot, taking the bypass back to midtown and the WJFC studio.
Arriving at the studio, Royce parked in a visitor slot and entered the building. Per the show producer’s instructions, she asked the young woman with dark blonde hair seated at a desk where Studio B was located. She was directed to a large room a few doors down the hall. At one end of the room was a set furnished with two dark blue easy chairs facing each other, a small table between them. A color mock-up of the cover of Two on the Run lay on the table.
Royce sat in one of the chairs and shortly Suze Mackie came and took the other. A woman in a pink cotton smock dusted the show host’s face with powder but ignored Royce. Suze waved her away and faced a camera. A red light on the front of the camera came on.
“We’re back and visiting with Royal Thorne, whose book, Two on the Run, is due in book stores late this summer.” Suze began her smooth intro. Royce didn’t bother to correct her name. She could see on the monitor that the camera had zoomed in on the cover.
After several innocuous questions about how it felt to have a first book published,
Suze attacked. There was no other word to describe it, Royce decided later. “Your premise does seem far-fetched, don’t you think?” She looked into the camera and winked, laughing.
Shocked, Royce stumbled a little in her answer. “Well, no, I don’t believe it’s more far-fetched than many books already published.”
“Two fugitives, choosing to come to a small town. I’d think they would be wiser to choose a large city, where they could get lost in the crowds.” The woman raised expressive brows and widened her eyes. Get real, she seemed to be saying.
“Maybe. But my characters thought authorities would not be looking for them in a small town, and it would be a better hiding—”
“Oh, yes. Your characters, Teddi and Laurel, are also just a wee bit unbelievable.”
“You’ve read the book? I didn’t realize my agent sent out advance reader copies with the press release.”
“The synopsis was sufficient.”
Royce managed to keep a smile pasted on her face for five more minutes of the same inexplicable assaults on her writing abilities and her book. Afterward, she wondered why she had. Suze Mackie even dragged Eddy into the discussion. “What did your late policeman husband think about the book? After all, you wrote about two fugitives eluding the law for years.”
“Eddy was a big support to me. We planned to celebrate the book’s release by going to France.”
An expression Royce couldn’t read crossed Suze Mackie’s face before she replied. “Oh? I don’t suppose you’ll go now, will you?”
“Yes, I do still plan to go.”
Several seconds of silence went by as Mackie stared at Royce. Then the show’s musical sign off cue sounded, and Suze finally turned toward the camera to do her ending patter.
Royce rose from her chair without speaking to Mackie again. She left the studio, head high, blinking back tears. If this sort of thing was what authors had to endure, she wanted none of it. She’d shove the second manuscript she was working on in a drawer and forget about it.
In her distraction, she turned the wrong way down the long hall and was almost to the end before realizing she was parked on the other side of the building. She turned and retraced her steps, loafers making only a faint scuffing sound on the tile floor.
Through a door left ajar, a low voice filled with repressed fury came from the office next to the studio. “Why in the hell did you do that asinine interview?”
Surprise halted Royce in midstep. There was something familiar about the voice.
“Some thanks for a little family help.” Suze Mackie sounded aggrieved.
“Why didn’t you stay in California where you belong, little sister?” The scathing tone left no doubt the term was not an endearment. “I understand there are a few television studios there.”
“I’d think you’d be grateful for that last tidbit of information I got out of her.”
There was a pause before the second speaker replied. “You mean about her trip to France?”
“Yes. How will you handle that?”
The second voice snapped, “I’ll handle it. Like I’ve handled everything else all these years, without your help.”
“Well, you certainly needed my help Saturday night, didn’t you?”
“Shut up. My money has kept your causes go—”
“They used to be your causes—”
“And I wised up. That Dirty Harriet wannabe that Jared Granite married is nosing around. If she sees that interview, she might start to wonder…” The voice broke off as Royce, recognizing the speaker, drew a quick audible breath and scurried past the door.
Chapter Fifteen
Just as she reached for the handle of the plate glass door leading outside, heels tapped down the corridor behind her. An imperious female voice called, “Royce. Royce. Just a moment.”
Royce paused, and the woman caught up with her. She was dressed in a dark green silk suit, tailored to a perfect fit, expensive green and white designer scarf at the neck in a complicated fold. Thelma Morrell. The woman who was talking, arguing, with Suze Mackie. The woman who had called Suze “little sister.”
“Hello, Royce. I just heard Suze Mackie’s interview with you. Congratulations on the book.”
“Thank you. I’m flattered you were there.”
“Oh, I was in the studio to make a PR spot for the hospital auxiliary.”
“Well.” Ross had impressed on her the importance of a gracious response to any acknowledgement of her book, but damned if she’d fawn for Thelma Morrell. The disastrous interview she’d just been through with her sister was enough.
“Bert always said I should do some commercials for the dealership. That I’d be as good as the professional models.” Thelma touched a pale green lace-edged handkerchief to a corner of her left eye in a patently false gesture of grief and paused as though considering something. “I’m glad I caught you on a monitor and watched. It’s almost one. Will you join me for a light lunch?”
Ghost fingers tickled Royce’s spine. Thelma Morrell did not fit the part of author groupie. Royce certainly didn’t feel like an author who would attract a groupie, wealthy or not. And this one was supposedly grieving for a murdered husband.
“Thanks, but I have some things I need to do.”
“We’ll just grab a sandwich at Frankie’s Place.”
“Frankie’s?” So Thelma would patronize Mitch Ringer’s cafe, just not his PI services.
“Shall we walk?”
Just outside the door of the coffee shop, two mangy dogs snapped over a scrap of food. Their growls and whines escalated as Royce and Thelma approached.
Thelma screamed. She stopped and started to turn back, her face pale, makeup standing out starkly on high cheekbones. Royce stared at her for a moment, then faced the dogs and stamped her foot. “Go! Take your food, and get away from here.”
The dogs tucked their tails and slunk away. Royce opened the door and waited for Thelma to enter. They took a table for two next to a low rock wall topped with a decorative planter full of trailing vines.
Thelma took a deep breath and appeared to collect herself. “Silly, I suppose. I’ve been terrified of dogs, even little ones, since a pit bull attacked me when I was ten. The owner wasn’t even arrested, and the court only fined him a pittance.” Her fingers touched her scarf, loosening it a little. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her smoky eyes.
The server, a skinny blonde, arrived and they ordered chicken salad on toasted bagels, without butter, and coffee.
What was the protocol for lunch between two recent widows of murder victims? Despite having been in that position for several months, Royce hardly knew what to say.
Thelma looked at her and spoke first. “So Fall Creek has a famous writer in residence.”
“Writer, yes. Famous, no. At least—”
“Not yet? But who knows.”
“I’m still getting used to the idea of being published.”
“Catchy title, Two on the Run.”
“My agent liked it. I wasn’t sure.”
“How did you come up with it?”
“The title? Oh, you mean the subject of the book.”
“Title, subject. How did you imagine a couple of fugitives hiding out in a small town? One would think they’d stand out.” She gave a little laugh, but it seemed to catch in her throat. She’d practically repeated Suze Mackie’s observation.
“Yes, at first. But if they kept a low profile for a while, they could work at fitting in. Jobs, community work, etc. That’s what my characters do.”
“I’ll have to read it when it comes out.”
The blonde server brought their coffee and poured two cups, set the carafe in the center of the table. “Your food will be out in a couple minutes,” she said.
“Is the small town in your book anything like Fall Creek?” Thelma asked, lifting her cup and taking a sip.
“Maybe, a little. I tried to imagine what might happen if that situation occurred here. Would the fugitives slip up, would
neighbors, shop people suspect anything? If so, would they question the people? Report their suspicions to the police?”
“What does happen in your book? Or will I have to wait and read it?”
“I’m afraid so.” If she was supposed to be flattered at this attention from Thelma Morrell, Royce definitely was not. She was still angry and disturbed by the conversation she’d overheard between the woman and Clupper on Sunday. Not to mention this last conversation with Suze Mackie she’d unintentionally caught as she walked down the television station corridor.
Was the TV show host actually Thelma’s sister? And the implications for Palm. Did she dare turn the tables and quiz Thelma?
After a meal she hardly tasted, Royce reached for the ticket the server had placed on their table, but Thelma laid her hand on it. “I invited you, Royce.”
Though loathe to allow the woman to pay for her lunch, Royce said, “Thank you. Now I have to go and pick up my dog at the vet.”
Seeming to be in a hurry now, Thelma threw a bill on the table with the ticket and left without another word to Royce. As Royce followed her at a slower pace, relieved to be out of the woman’s company, Lucianne entered the coffee shop.
“Third time’s the charm, as they say. Shall we have that coffee now?” Lucianne sang out gaily.
With a mental kick for allowing the two women to manipulate her, Royce followed Lucianne to the same table she and Thelma Morrell had just vacated. Even so, she wondered if Lucianne should be out and about this much. She had been shot.
“I only have a minute. The vet is waiting for me to pick up my dog.”
“Black coffee, please.” Lucianne spoke to the skinny blonde. “What for you, Royce?”
“Hadn’t you better be resting? A gunshot is pretty serious.”
“How sweet. Not.” She paused and scrutinized Royce’s face. “I do believe you mean it.”
“Actually, I’m wondering why you were shot. And what you were doing in the woods near the Morrell estate?”
Lucianne indicated the server. “She’s waiting for your order.”
“Just a glass of water, please,” Royce said, and the server walked away. “You haven’t answered my question.”
Disguise for Death Page 13