by Laura Moore
Okay, maybe he didn’t look quite so normal after all, Jade thought. What Greg Hammond looked like was tough, capable, and as if he had zero tolerance for BS.
“Mind if I sit down?” he asked, waiting for her to say, “Please,” before sliding into the space opposite her.
She glanced around so he wouldn’t catch her staring and realized the restaurant was now crowded. “How’d you know who I was?”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Not too difficult. You’re the only person here who’s trying to look inconspicuous. By the way, it’s okay to take off the cap and shades—the jacket too. The people who come to the Plains Drifter are typically on their lunch hour. They’re focused on getting their order and eating and then, if they have enough time before their break ends, dashing in to one of the stores on Route 50 to do some shopping or run an errand. Even if someone was inclined to eavesdrop, it’s too noisy at this hour to hear much.”
Jade decided she was just as happy to shrug out of the windbreaker, because even with the air-conditioning cranked high she was roasting. She removed her dark glasses too. The cap remained, however. She didn’t want Hammond to think she was a pushover.
A waitress came over to the booth. “Can I get you started with something while you look over the menu? Or are you ready to order?”
“I know what I’d like,” Hammond replied.
Did he have the diner’s menu memorized, or was he trying to make it so that the waitress wouldn’t have to come back and interrupt them? The latter, Jade decided.
“I do too,” she said. “I’ll have the Caesar salad and an iced tea, please.”
Nodding, the waitress scribbled the order on her pad, then plucked the menu from Jade’s hand. “And for you?” she asked Hammond.
“The Cobb salad and an iced coffee.”
“Cream? Sugar?”
“Black, unsweetened.”
“One Caesar, one Cobb, coming right up. Ya’ll want water?”
“Please.”
When the waitress left, Hammond placed a slim black briefcase on the tabletop, unzipped it, and pulled out a legal pad, a pen, and a business card. “Here you go,” he said, passing it to her. “This has all my contact information.”
While she looked at the card, running her thumb over the heavy stock’s edge and trying to imagine what other cases Gregory J. Hammond, licensed private investigator in the Commonwealth of Virginia, who also happened to be bonded and insured, had worked on, Hammond clicked his silver pen and wrote something in the upper right-hand margin. He was a lefty. She didn’t know why, but the sight of the thick gold band on his wedding-ring finger made her feel better. She wondered whether he had kids.
He glanced up and met her gaze. “With your permission, I’ll be taking notes of our conversation.”
“Sure—I guess that’s okay.” Oh, God, she was actually going to have to talk about her mother’s infidelity, a topic she avoided at all costs.
“Over the phone you mentioned that you wanted me to investigate a case of infidelity.”
She cast a grateful smile at the waitress, who appeared just then with two glasses of water. Taking hers, she gulped down a mouthful. “That’s right. I saw on your website that’s one of the things you handle.” She’d also liked the fact that Hammond Investigations had been in business for twenty years. If his had been a fly-by-night operation, it would have folded by now. And, unlike some of the investigative-agency sites, Hammond’s hadn’t given her a weird feeling, and when she’d screwed up the nerve to dial the office’s number, an intelligent-sounding receptionist had answered the phone before connecting her to him.
“It is,” he replied. “Divorce and infidelity investigations are the most common requests we receive, though recently there’s been a rise in dating and premarital background checks too.”
So much for true love. Then she thought of Margot and Travis and Jordan and Owen and Miriam and Andy. They were the lucky ones. She, however, was too like her mother to hope for the same.
Hammond continued speaking. “Over the phone you mentioned that the person you’d like to have investigated is your mother.” His lack of surprise that she wanted to investigate her own mother meant either that he’d had people request far weirder stuff, which if one went by today’s reality TV shows with dysfunctional families on parade seemed more than plausible, or it meant that Hammond was an expert at hiding his thoughts. “Could I have her full name?” he asked.
She took another gulp of water. “Nicole Warren Radcliffe.”
“And do you suspect she’s still cheating on your father?”
“Not anymore. She’s dead.”
At this Hammond looked up, his brown gaze assessing. She was glad she’d opted to keep the baseball cap on her head, knowing it shadowed her eyes. The noise in the diner rose around them, as if someone had cranked the volume knob. Hammond didn’t seem to notice as he studied her silently and she tried not to squirm. Finally he asked, “And your father’s name?”
“Robert James Radcliffe—the fifth.”
She watched as he wrote a V after her father’s name.
“And when do you believe your mother was unfaithful to your father?”
“It would have been about six and a half years ago.”
“Is your father aware that you’re investigating the possibility your mother was unfaithful?”
“No, because he’s dead too. He and Mom died when their plane crashed into the Chesapeake. It’ll be seven years this October.”
Not even someone as clearly practiced in guarding his responses as Greg Hammond could mask his surprise and confusion. “I’m not sure I understand. Why are you—”
“Why am I contacting you if both my parents have been dead and buried for all these years? You’re going to tell me that it’s better to let them rest in peace, right?” When his lips flattened in a stiff line, she gave a tight smile. “Yes, I’ve heard that line a couple of times before. Well, the whole resting-in-peace thing isn’t giving me much peace. I need to know what kind of woman my mother was. I’ve come back to live in Warburg and make it my home. I can’t handle having to wonder each time I cross paths with a man who has the initials TM if he could have been Mom’s lover. I have to learn once and for all who he was, and when I do, I want to …” Her voice stalled and died.
Hammond laid his pen down on the legal pad and placed his hands flat on the table. “You’d like to do what precisely, Miss Radcliffe?” he prompted evenly.
Although she’d only just met Hammond, she recognized instinctively that the wrong answer would have him returning his notepad to his briefcase and walking out of the diner without a backward glance.
She gave a shrug. “Spit in his face, probably.” It was true; she wasn’t about to commit murder or anything. But that didn’t lessen her need to know the guy’s identity one bit.
“Nothing more?”
“Nothing that would run afoul of the law. I have a healthy respect for the Warburg police.” Actually, fear was the better word.
He looked at her for a moment. “Just remember, I track down information and sometimes criminals. I don’t work for them. And I don’t commit crimes.”
His statement only made her trust him more. “I’ll remember.”
He gave her another long look. “Okay,” he said with a nod. “Now, you mentioned that you believe the man your mother was seeing had the initials TM. How do you know this?”
God, here came the awful part, she thought, shifting restlessly on the vinyl seat. “Mom kept a diary.”
“I see. Does the diary still exist?”
“Yes.”
“And am I right to assume the diary is in your possession?”
She gave a short nod.
“I’ll need to look at it to glean whatever clues your mother left about this person TM.”
Yeah, like what a transcendent experience her mom’s being with TM had been, Jade thought, recalling those passages in the diary. He must have been some kind of lover for Mom t
o be so blissed out whenever she wrote about him. She certainly hadn’t been feeling the love when she described her own daughter.
It had been bad enough knowing that Jordan and Margot had read her mom’s diary. Now a stranger was going to be studying every single entry with the equivalent of a magnifying glass. By the time Hammond closed the cover, he’d realize just how little Jade’s mother had cared for her.
Hammond must have noticed something in her expression—not a terribly difficult feat when her jaw was clenched so tightly it ached. “Are you all right with my reading your mother’s diary?”
Damn it, she thought. It was time she fished or cut bait. She either wanted to find out who the bastard TM was or she didn’t. Silently, she pulled her leather bag closer to her lap, opened it, and withdrew the hideously ugly pink leather journal. As she handed it to him, she had to fight the temptation to say something along the lines of, Mom wasn’t always like this. She loved Dad. And she didn’t hate my guts. What was the point? Anything she said would only make her look pathetic.
Hammond didn’t open the journal to glance at its creased pages, which were testimony to the countless times she’d pored over it, trying to understand the words and thoughts within it, only to be racked by hurt and confusion with every attempt.
He stowed the journal out of sight in his briefcase as the waitress arrived with the two salads, then sat back against the vinyl bench while she fetched their drinks. Depositing them on the table, she asked, “Can I get you anything else?”
“No, thanks. This looks great,” Hammond answered.
Jade just shook her head. The waitress gone, she stared at her salad. How could she possibly eat this thing? Her appetite had vanished.
Hammond didn’t seem interested in eating either. He took a long sip of his iced coffee, pushed his own plate to the side, and picked up his pen. “Did your mother have an address book?”
“Sure, but we didn’t keep it. Besides, she’d never have put him in it anyway.”
“Did she use a cellphone?”
“It went down with the plane.” Somehow this was even harder for her to say than her bald statement that her parents had died. Maybe it was because she couldn’t shake the image of her mom trapped in that small plane as it careened downward and then crashed into the choppy waters of the bay.
The ER doctor had assured Jade that her mother had died on impact. What were her last thoughts?
As terrible as it had been to see her dad lying critically injured in the ICU, at least Jade had been able to touch him and look into his face one last time before his body gave out. She had nothing like that with her mom. No last wrenching goodbye. No closure. No peace. She grabbed a napkin and twisted it in her hands.
He reached across the table and briefly laid his hand over hers, a simple gesture of comfort. “Sorry. I should have guessed that. I doubt the cellphone would have done any good. As your mother’s been deceased for some years, the phone company would have deleted her records by now.”
The sympathy in his voice made it worse. She nodded tightly. Picking up her iced tea, she kept drinking until she’d drained the glass. And still she couldn’t speak.
“Are there people I can talk to who might have any ideas about the identity of your mother’s lover? Family members?”
“No!” The objection came out far too loud. Lowering her voice, she repeated no less emphatically, “No. I don’t want you to talk to my sisters or anyone at Rosewood about Mom and her lover. They don’t know I’ve contacted you, and I don’t want them to find out either. They’d just worry.”
“Anyone else?”
“Nope.”
“You’re not giving me a whole lot to work with, Miss Radcliffe.”
Hammond couldn’t refuse to take the case, she thought. Although she hardly knew him, she already sensed she could trust him. And Lord knew she didn’t want to go through the hell of explaining to another private eye what her mom had done. “I’ll tell you what I know and what I’ve figured out from reading her diary. Whoever TM was, he must have lived close to Warburg, because Mom was able to see him fairly often without raising Dad’s suspicion. If this guy had lived farther away and she was gone for hours at a time, Dad would have definitely begun asking questions. And she was terrified of him finding out that she was seeing someone.”
“This TM didn’t have to live near Warburg. He could have met your mother at a rendezvous point.”
Again Jade shook her head. “I don’t think so. Mom wouldn’t have risked being spotted entering a hotel unaccompanied by Dad. It would have caused too many tongues to wag. And cheesy motels were definitely not her style.”
Hammond picked up his pen again and jotted something on the pad of paper. Jade breathed a silent sigh of relief. If he was writing information down, it must mean he was going to take the case.
“Did your father ever find out about your mother’s affair?”
“Yeah. He must have found her diary somewhere in the house. He went and fired Travis—his last name’s Maher,” she added for clarification. “Travis was Rosewood Farm’s trainer and barn manager and Dad’s right-hand man. And friend. The only reason Dad would have done something so freakin’ nutty was because—”
“Of Travis Maher’s initials,” he finished for her. “What makes you think your father wasn’t right, that he isn’t your man? If Maher worked on the premises, he’d have been nearby. Easy to make assignations.”
“Travis wouldn’t have done that to Dad. Never in a million years. He has principles. And Mom was pretty awful to Travis, constantly bringing up the number of times his dad had been arrested for public intoxication. Let’s just say Travis didn’t find it nearly as amusing a topic of conversation as she did. Then there’s the fact that Travis was totally in love with my older half sister Margot. They’re married now, with two kids.”
Her explanation seemed to convince him. “Okay, we’ll keep Travis Maher off the list of possible candidates. What else can you tell me about TM and your mother?”
“Other than that TM must have lived somewhere near Warburg?” Her brow furrowed. “The field’s fairly wide open. You’re going to need to look for wealthy men between the ages of twenty-five and sixty-five.”
“Why wealthy?”
“Because Mom was an ultra-snob. Like I said, no cheesy motels, no guys from the wrong side of the tracks—even if, like Travis, they were really good-looking.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Okay, then, after I go through the diary, I’ll start checking for names in the social register.”
Her lips curved in a smile. Greg Hammond was all right.
“Well, it’s not much, but you’ve provided enough background to get me started.” Laying down his pen, he continued. “Let’s go over the nuts and bolts of how I work: I charge a hundred dollars an hour, plus expenses like gas. I’ll draft a proposal detailing the parameters of the investigation along with an estimate of the hours involved, so you’ll have an idea of how much this is going to cost and whether finding out TM’s identity is worth it to you. Once you’ve agreed to the terms, I’ll provide you with status reports as well as detailed invoices. Is that acceptable to you, Miss Radcliffe?”
“Yes it is, Mr. Hammond.” The inheritance she’d received was enough to afford those rates for a while, not that she believed the investigation would take too long; Hammond struck her as an efficient type of person.
And, thanks to Margot and Travis’s expert bargaining advice, not even buying four ponies had depleted her resources too much. She’d negotiated a great deal for the four schooling ponies she’d picked at Ralph Whittaker’s barn. With the economy in the tank right now, people were eager to sell—even Sweet Virginia’s owners had come down in their asking price. So if Hammond’s investigation took longer than expected, the rest of her inheritance should cover the cost. She couldn’t think of a better way to spend every last penny of it than in discovering the identity of her mother’s lover.
Hammond’s voice interrupted her thou
ghts. “One last question for today.”
“Sure. Go ahead.” She straightened on her seat, bringing her gaze level with his.
“How old were you when your parents died?”
“Fifteen.” The word came out sounding flat, and she wished she hadn’t straightened her spine, but slumping would reveal too much, as would ducking her head.
“That’s a tough thing to go through that young.”
“Losing your parents is tough at any age.”
For a second he studied her face, what he could see of it beneath the curved brim of her cap—making her grateful she’d had the sense to keep it on—before giving her a short nod, as if to signal that he’d gotten the message: She didn’t want pity or sympathy.
Putting his legal pad and pen back in his briefcase, he glanced at her untouched Caesar salad. “So, you feel up to eating that?”
She checked her watch. She still had to go to the pet store and swing by Steadman’s. “Hate to spill the family secrets and run, but I think this lunch is going to have to wait for dinner. I’ve got a long list of errands to run—”
“I understand.” He raised his hand and signaled the waitress.
“I’m afraid we lost track of time,” he offered with an apologetic smile when she approached their table. “Can we get these salads to go?”
“Sure thing. You want the check too?”
“Please,” Jade said.
