Disguise for Death

by Sylvia Nickels

  “No one came around after his death, with a claim on his estate?”

  “Royce, I’m out of my mind. Where can she be?”

  “You’ve thoroughly searched the apartment and shop?”

  “Yes! But I’ll keep looking. God knows, I don’t know what else to do.”

  “I wish I could help. Have you talked to Marc?”

  “I called him earlier. Amanda said she’d fly here if I wanted, but I don’t know what more she could do. I’ll call you tomorrow. Bye.”

  Royce replaced her receiver with care. People disappeared every day, were even killed, like the woman at the motel right here in Fall Creek. But surely her foreboding suspicion was groundless. Lots of women had ankle tattoos. That woman couldn’t be Chrys’s mother.

  Thought of the dead woman reminded Royce that the woman had called her the day she died. She’d thought it must have been a wrong number. But the barely audible voice had said what sounded like Royce’s name. Suppose it hadn’t been a wrong number? Might she have called Royce because she couldn’t reach Chrys? The frigid lump deep inside her felt colder and she shivered.

  The day of her last miscarriage, that same deep coldness had enveloped her. Lying on a cold gurney, willing the bleeding to stop, denying to herself that it was happening again. That her poor damaged ovary had produced yet another defective ovum that could not grow into a healthy baby. Eddy’s baby. Dr. Gray had said the last time, there was a possibility she could produce a viable egg. God, please let it have been a good egg this time. She felt the sting in her arm as the technician gave her a shot.

  “There, honey, just relax. The doctor will do all he can.” The professional reassurance in the woman’s voice did nothing to calm Royce.

  Where was Eddy? She needed Eddy. Chief Granite said he’d get him to the emergency room by the time she got here. She couldn’t lose the baby, not again. Oh, please, doctor, God, somebody, help her keep this baby. Drowsy. No, if she slept, she couldn’t hold on, talk to him, encourage him to hang on.

  She’d fought the drowsiness, but it made no difference. By the time Eddy arrived, her traitorous body had expelled a tiny, ill-formed baby yet again.

  “Honey, we’re still young. We’ll get your health built up.” Eddy was holding her hand and smoothing her hair. “Then we’ll try again.”

  Royce had wanted to sink back into sleep now. If she was asleep, she wouldn’t have to know it had happened again. She shifted on the hard hospital bed, but the sharp pain still jabbed her heart. No baby. She twisted again, away from Eddy’s soothing touch. Nothing could take away this emptiness that was so deep it hurt. She batted at his hands. “No. No more. Don’t ask it.”

  “Sweetheart, it’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it now. Get some rest.” Eddy’s eyes dropped, and he sighed. His blue clad shoulders drooped.

  She saw Eddy’s hurt, but she couldn’t deal with it. She had to come to terms with her own pain first. “Eddy, go on back to work. It’ll take your mind off—I’m all right.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay? The chief said I could stay as long as you need me to. He says tell you he’s sorry.”

  “Yes. Go. Doctor Gray is going to keep me overnight. You can come and take me home in the morning.”

  Eddy kissed her on the forehead and walked out of the room with heavy steps. If she hadn’t made him leave that dark day, would their lives have been very different? Probably not. Palm already existed. How could she have known that the sturdy toddler next door was a ticking time bomb in her painfully created safe life? And that twenty years later, instead of burying the bomb deeper, Eddy’s death would unearth it.

  Eddy did bring her home the next morning. She again persuaded him to go to work. And the sight of Lily Woodstone’s shoes under her bed propelled Royce across their yards. After fleeing her fruitless confrontation with Lily, she crawled underneath the covers on the bed in the downstairs guest room.

  When Eddy came home in the evening, he made no comment on her choice of bedchamber. After making her some soup, which she refused, he sat with her in silence for a little while, then showered and went to bed himself.

  The continuous ringing of the doorbell woke her before seven the next morning. Eddy was apparently already up. He stuck his head in the door and pulled it closed as she sat up in bed, saying, “I’ll get rid of whoever it is. Go back to sleep.”

  She heard Hal Woodstone’s demanding voice as soon as Eddy opened the front door. “Is Lily over here? Have either of you seen her?”

  “Lily here? Of course not. What the hell are you talking about, Hal?” Eddy sounded angry and bewildered, but because she knew him so well, she heard a note in his voice that pierced her heart.

  “I want to ask Royce if she’s seen her. Where is she?” Hal sounded like he was in the house now. Royce slid down in the bed and turned her back to the door.

  “For God’s sake. She’s in bed. I just brought her home from the hospital yesterday. I’m not going to wake her.”

  “Did Lily come to see her yesterday? Ask her.”

  “No. Wasn’t she home when you got back from Asheville last night?”

  “She was locked in the bedroom. This morning she’s gone. Left Palmer in his bed, her own son, by God.”

  “Did she leave a note? Maybe she’s just gone to the store.” Eddy seemed to be trying to calm the man down. But Hal was having none of it.

  “She didn’t go to the store; I’ve got her car keys. She won’t get away with this, damn her. She knows better.”

  “Take it easy, Hal. Go home, call her friends—”

  “She doesn’t have any other friends. What kind of bitch would walk out on her husband and son?” Royce heard a sound like a fist hitting a wall.

  “That’s it, Woodstone. I know you’re upset. But calm down. Palm may wake up and need you.”

  Finally, Hal left. She heard the front door close. Eddy remained up and soon the smell of coffee drifted through the house. He brought her a cup on a tray with toast, but she told him she would drink it in a minute.

  When Royce heard him leave for work, she got up. She walked out to the then-narrow back stoop and stared at the greenhouse next door. Had Lily’s scorn been an act? After Royce left the Woodstone house, was Lily overcome with guilt because of what she had done? How could she leave her own child? Given the strength, what would she have done to the woman who tempted Eddy to betray his marriage vows?

  In the morgue this morning, looking at the slight, ruined body of the woman on the metal table, that question had come back to Royce with a bone-deep coldness. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer, even now.

  On that fateful day after her abortive confrontation with Lily, she had made a decision she’d thought was necessary to preserve her sanity and marriage. When Eddy was killed, she’d made another decision of which she was not proud. But even now she could not bear to think of undoing it.

  A bell rang. For a second, she thought it must be Chrys calling back and almost picked up the phone, then realized it was the doorbell. When she opened the front door, Jared Granite stood on her step.

  At sight of Granite, anxiety again flipped her mind into the past. Instead of a late afternoon in early spring, she was back in that golden September afternoon six months ago. She had opened her door then to see Jared and the department chaplain on the step. She knew immediately the thing all police wives dread had come to her.

  She’d had the irrational impulse to slam the door in their faces. If they never told her, it wouldn’t have happened. Eddy would swing into the driveway when his shift was over and toot the horn as he always did.

  She hadn’t slammed the door, of course. They did come in and did tell her, although it didn’t actually sink in immediately.

  “Royce, we have to tell you,” Jared had said. In his effort to keep his own composure, the line of his jaw was white, clenched harder than she’d ever seen it, as he broke the news to his friend’s widow. “Eddy is dead.”

  �
�How?” she whispered, barely able to push the word through a throat suddenly shut up tight.

  Jared swallowed. “The driver of a car he’d stopped hit him, knocked him against his cruiser.”

  Tim Conroy, the young man that Eddy had stopped for erratic driving, was high on crack. When Eddie got out of his black-and-white, the driver gunned his engine, made a squealing U-turn and slammed Eddy against and over the car. With a crushed chest and broken neck, the paramedics could do nothing for him when they arrived a few minutes later. Conroy took off, but was spotted on a nearby highway by an alert state patrolman. He was arrested, arraigned, and trial date set.

  “On purpose? He did it on purpose? Why?” Royce looked from the Chief to Chaplain Foster. “Why did he want to kill Eddy?”

  “We don’t know.” Granite looked at the floor, then back up at her. “But we’ll find out. He’s been in trouble before, never violent. He’s come down some from his high, but he’s not talking.”

  “Had Eddy arrested him before?” She was asking questions to keep hysteria at bay. She wanted to get up and smash something. Or put her hand over Jared’s mouth so she wouldn’t have to hear that her husband wouldn’t be coming home to her, today or any other day.

  Granite shook his head. “Eddy was backup once, on one of Conroy’s arrests. But no, no direct contact with him.”

  As far as she knew, until now, no judge had allowed Conroy bail. If he’d ever opened up about his motive for killing Eddy, she wasn’t aware of it. She hadn’t known then that Vicki Trask was Tim’s girlfriend. This afternoon Vicki had claimed Eddy’s death was an accident.

  Instead of convincing Royce of that fact, the girl’s claim made her wonder. Was there more to Eddy’s death than anyone knew?

  On this now overcast May evening, by the look on his face in the front door light, Granite was not the bearer of good news today either.

  “Jared? What is it?”

  “I’d like to come in, Royce.”

  She stepped back. “Is Palm all right? Will he see me after all?”

  “We now know who the dead woman was.”

  “Were her fingerprints on file?”

  “We thought the daisy tattoo on her ankle would help. No luck. But yes, her prints were on file with the FBI.”

  “Who was she, then?”

  “Heather Forrest.”

  “Heather Forrest? From where?”

  “Right here. You knew her as Lily Woodstone, Royce.”

  He had no way of knowing that the shock which caused her quick indrawn breath was due to the possible extension of his words. That in addition to being Lily Woodstone, mother of Palm, the woman might be, probably was, Chrys Wynter’s mother. But right now, she couldn’t think about the implications of that knowledge.

  “Lily? She came back to Fall Creek?”

  “Seems so.”

  “Why?”

  “You tell me, Royce. What she told you when she called.”

  So she went over it again. He still had trouble believing her and didn’t hide the fact. She didn’t tell him about her suspicion that Chrys was linked to the dead woman. When he found out, he would be even angrier and surer that she was withholding additional information. She would face his wrath when the time came.

  After going over the same ground several times, the chief rose to leave. His hesitation was barely perceptible, but he repeated his warning about not leaving town.

  Royce remembered her call to the court clerk’s office. Her indecision as to whether to mention it must have shown.

  He took a step toward her. “What haven’t you told me?”

  “I called the court clerk’s office to ask about requirements for getting a passport. They told me I got one six months ago, which is ridiculous.”

  “Why do you need a passport?”

  “I’m going to France after Palm is cleared of these charges.”

  “France?”

  “To visit Eddy’s grandfather’s grave. Don’t look so thunderous. I have no passport, so I won’t be leaving the country soon. It’s some kind of mixup.”

  “I’ll check into it. Meanwhile, don’t leave the county or state either, Royce. I’m serious.” Finally, he left, and she closed the front door, shutting out the sight of his ramrod-straight back.

  If he ever had some kind of feeling for her, the last couple of days had taken care of that. Why did the thought pierce her heart? The idea of a romance with Jared Granite had never entered her mind. Even since Eddy died. Had it? Lucianne’s malicious words came back to her. She pushed them aside.

  The phone rang on her desk in the kitchen. When she answered it, the same female voice which had shocked her so on Saturday and Sunday was on the line.

  The woman demanded, “Have you told Palm about his money yet?”

  “What money are you talking about?” Royce almost screamed into the telephone.

  “You know what money. The money that rightfully goes to Palm.”

  “Even if I knew what you’re talking about, I wouldn’t discuss it on the phone with a stranger.”

  “It’s too bad most of it will probably go to his defense lawyers though.”

  The voice did have a note of regret. Sounded aggrieved even. Who could this woman be, who seemed to know about Eddy’s secret account and Palm’s trouble. And seemed to feel she had a stake in it all.

  An idea occurred to her. “You must have forgotten to block your number this time. I see it on my caller ID. The police will hear about this.”

  She heard a quick gasp, and then the dial tone came on the line. With a twisted smile that her bluff had worked, she laid the phone down on the desk, in no mood for further calls.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Devon was whining to go out again. Dr. Loper must have given him a diuretic, though he hadn’t mentioned it. She clipped the extra-long lead on his collar and opened the door. “Sorry, pal. Can’t risk a repeat of yesterday.”

  Holding the housing of the retractable lead, she stood on the deck under the roof overhang. Since they’d last been outside, a gentle spring rain had begun to fall. White blossoms on the mounds of Shasta daisies seemed to cast a radiant illumination all around. Her hand tightened on the plastic so hard, the name of it probably imprinted on her palm. Against her will, the image of a tattooed circle of daisies on a slender ankle rose before her eyes again. She shivered, though the evening was warm.

  She called Devon, and he returned willingly to the kitchen. But he stopped just inside the door, instead of going to his food bowl.

  “Not hungry? Oh, of course, you’re wet.” Drops of water on Devon’s sleek back reflected the kitchen light.

  She went to the rack near his bowl and took a black terry-cloth towel with the name Devon embroidered across one corner and blotted the smooth black coat.

  Palm had laughed when she opened the box and showed the towel to Devon last Christmas. “He’s your baby, Royce. Lucky dog.”

  He grabbed the towel and hunkered down to wrap it around the dog’s body. Devon’s wagging black tail swished across Palm’s face, and the two rolled on the floor. Devon’s yelps and Palm’s laughter kept Palm from seeing her flinch and her smile falter.

  She quickly plastered what she hoped was a happy look back on her face. When she thought she could trust her voice, striving for a light note, she replied, “But of course. What did you expect when you gave him to me?”

  Palm did look at her then, with a sadness she had seen on his face all too often since his teen years. “Dad’s angry about it. Did you tell him?”

  “No. I don’t think I’ve talked to Hal since you brought Devon over. He must have seen us in the back yard.”

  “I guess you know one reason I brought him to you was so I could see and play with him.”

  “He’s been a pleasure to both of us, that’s for sure.” She rubbed behind the spiked ears and tried to move the conversation to safer ground. “Smart, too. He’s very quiet when I’m writing.”

  “So how’s the book coming alo
ng? About finished?”

  “Pretty much. I’ll ship it to my agent in a few days.”

  “My next-door mom will be traveling to book signings all over the place pretty soon!”

  She grabbed the discarded wrapping paper and balled it up to cover her wince at hearing his childhood name for her. Devon jumped up and licked Palm’s face.

  “Dad knew how much I wanted a dog when I was growing up. He never let me have the things I wanted most.”

  “Pets can be a big responsibility when kids are young.” Defending Hal Woodstone was hardly her favorite activity. But she couldn’t bear to remember Palm as a baby, a growing little boy. It brought back the murky issue of his parentage too clearly, too soon after she’d read Eddy’s confession and the request he’d made of her to give the money to Palm.

  Palm sat on the floor and leaned back against the sofa. Devon took his towel in his teeth and dragged it across Palm’s crossed ankles. When he received no response as Palm stared into space, he brought it to Royce, wanting more play.

  “I was going to take Vicki to the senior prom. I saved my paper-route money to pay for dinner and gas for the truck. Then he told me at the last minute he had to have the truck. She was furious when I told her I couldn’t take her to the prom after all.”

  Devon’s nails clicked on the kitchen tiles, and Royce realized how hard she was pressing the towel against his now dry back. He’d had to brace his muscular legs to stay upright. She threw the towel toward a chair, put her arms around his neck, and laid her cheek against the thick black hair on top of his head. He nuzzled her shoulder and moved closer to her.

  “Okay. You must be starved. Good dog.” She rose and lifted the lever on the dog food can above his large dish. More food chunks rattled into the already almost full bowl, and when they stopped falling, Devon put his snout down, wolfing his meal.

  She wondered if the prom-night disappointment Palm had recounted in that Christmas conversation was the reason for Vicki Trask’s animosity toward Palm. Did she want to punish him, not knowing it was his dad’s cruel decision? And why the hell did Hal deny Palm use of the truck that night?