Trouble Me: A Rosewood Novel (15 page)

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 thoughts. “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.

The waitress tallied the bill and ripped the check off her pad, then laid it on the table. Jade stretched out her hand, but Hammond got there first. “This one’s on me,” he said.

“That’s not necessary. I—”

“Relax. You’ll be paying my expenses from here on out.”

“Good point. Okay, then, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” He gave her an easy smile. “I’ll be in touch soon, Miss Radcliffe.”

A
FTER LEAVING
the diner, Jade had picked up the supplies for the aquarium at the pet store. All that was missing were the fish, but she’d decided to hold off buying them until the day before school opened, so she could bring them directly to their new home. Moving them twice, from the store to her cottage and then to the classroom, would stress them unnecessarily. She didn’t want to deal with the horror of dead fish floating on the surface of the tank during the first week of school.

Steadman’s Saddle Shop was her next stop. Known as the best tack shop in Loudoun County for the quality of its merchandise and the attention the Steadmans gave their customers in choosing the right saddle, martingale, or riding helmet, the store tended to be busiest in the morning or during the lunch hour. Thus Jade wasn’t surprised to find the parking lot nearly empty in the middle of the afternoon. While it would have been nice to see some of the local horse people and have a chance to spread the word about her riding program, she was just as happy to inspect the selection of tack without interruption. And she’d be able to catch up with Adam and Sara Steadman in the process.

Entering Steadman’s was like walking into a vault of memories. When Jade was a kid, her dad brought her with him when he needed to pick up a new bit or halter or protective boots for one of the horses. He and Adam had been good friends, and, while they were talking
horses and local competitions, Sara would slip Jade a lollipop, and a carrot treat to give to Doc when she got back to Rosewood.

She occasionally came here with her mom too. In hindsight, not all of those memories were pleasant. For instance, there was the day her mom brought her to buy a show coat; Jade was five years old and entering her very first walk-trot class at the local horse show. A beaming Sara Steadman had led them to the children’s section, where miniature hunt coats hung from a circular rack.

“From here to here, Jade, are the coats in your size,” she’d said, spreading her arms around a section of the rack. “Tell me which ones you like and we’ll try them on you.”

Jade hadn’t hesitated, marching up to the dark-gray pinstripe jacket. “I want this one, because it’s the same as Margot’s and I want to ride as good as she does.”

No sooner had she finished her sentence than her mom grabbed her by the elbow, pulling her back. “We’ll take a navy coat, Sara.”

Even at that age, Jade had felt the awkwardness of the moment. After a short silence, Sara said, “It might look nice to have your daughters in matching coats—”

Before Sara could finish, Jade’s mom cut her off. “I have only one daughter.”

Which Jade had realized was true. As Mom had said so many times, Jordan and Margot were her
stepdaughters
, so that must mean they didn’t really count.

But Jade also knew that interrupting people was rude, which was probably why Mrs. Steadman had that strange expression on her face.

Then Mom had turned to her, and even now Jade could hear the edge in her voice when she said, “You’ll wear a blue jacket to the Crestview show, Jade, and that’s final. The jacket will go well with all the blue ribbons
you’re going to win. And soon you’ll be winning more classes than either of them.” She’d made it sound like a promise.

No need to ask who “them” was. Jade didn’t understand why Mom disliked her not-real daughters and seemed to actually
hate
Margot, but it must be because Margot was always trying to get Dad to pay attention to her. It made him angry. And it made her mom’s eyes narrow until they were green slits.

But on that afternoon, Jade was her little darling, her adorable angel. And Jade was getting a blue riding coat and was going to win blue ribbons on the best pony in the whole world.

Never once did it cross Jade’s mind, then or even in the nine years that followed, that her mom would ever think of her as anything but her darling, her beautiful green-eyed princess.

But at fourteen she’d gone from beloved to reviled practically overnight. Despised almost as much as Margot—and, boy, that was saying something.

Her earlier meeting with Greg Hammond must be causing these long-buried memories to assail her. She needed to shake them off and remind herself that she was at Steadman’s because of the
future
, a future she was building with the sisters she loved despite her mother’s poisonous attitude, so that together they could keep alive their family’s tradition of raising and working with horses.

When the tack shop’s door shut with a tinkling chime of the brass bell, Adam Steadman looked up from behind the cash register, where he was ringing up a customer’s purchase. His face split into a wide smile of welcome. “Is that you, Jade Radcliffe? Sara! Look who’s here.”

“Jade! We were hoping you’d be dropping by soon!” Neat in her pleated beige trousers and floral-printed cotton
shirt, Sara hurried over to enfold Jade in a grandmotherly hug. Stepping back, she said, “Don’t you look wonderful!”

Jade grinned, thinking Sara wouldn’t have been able to say that if Jade were still wearing the getup she’d chosen for the Plains Drifter Diner. “You look great too. The summer’s been a good one?”

“Oh, yes. Busy as can be, but that’s a good thing. Adam would drive me nuts otherwise. We were so excited when Ned came in with your flyer. We’ve been telling everyone about your riding program.”

“I know, and thanks so much. I’ve been getting a lot of inquiries. One of my classes is almost filled. I’ve got the Reed boy, Jamie and Jane Donovan, and Mary Cardillo.” All were children of horse enthusiasts and loyal customers at the saddle shop.

Sara beamed. “I’m sure they’ll all be filled very soon. Gosh, it’s good to see you, Jade. I’d forgotten what lovely hair you have.”

She was referring to Jade’s penchant for outrageous dye jobs, which had lasted into college. “I’d almost forgotten what it looked like too,” Jade confessed in a conspiratorial whisper. “But don’t let Margot know I said that.”

Finished with his customer, Adam joined them. “So, Jade, did you buy those ponies Ned was telling us about? Ralph Whittaker has some fine stock.”

“Yeah, we really lucked out. Joe Bromley’s checked them out and given us the green light. Tito and I are picking them up this week.”