Trouble Me: A Rosewood Novel (14 page)

D
RESSED IN
oversize dark glasses, a baseball hat worn with the brim pulled low, and a baggy windbreaker, Jade knew she wasn’t going to win any style awards, but the outfit wasn’t intended to flatter so much as to serve as a disguise. It would be pretty difficult for anyone from Warburg who might be eating lunch in the Upperville diner to recognize her.

She’d even driven to the Plains Drifter in Travis’s SUV, since her fire-engine-red Porsche was too eye-catching. Luckily, she’d had the perfect excuse when she’d asked Travis to loan her his wheels: She needed to go to the pet store to pick up an aquarium and all the necessary fish supplies for her classroom and then swing by Steadman’s to buy tack for the new ponies. No way could she fit all that stuff in a Porsche 911.

She hopped out of the SUV, the windbreaker ballooning like a garbage bag about her, and walked toward the diner’s entrance. By the time she was halfway across the parking lot, she was sweating beneath the nylon shell. As sweat trickled down her spine, she scanned the other parked cars, distracting herself from the heat by wondering whether the private investigator she was meeting was already inside the restaurant. If so, what kind of car would a PI named Greg Hammond drive? A Ford or an import? Dark green or flashy silver?

And what would Hammond look like? She hadn’t been able to form much of an impression from his voice.
All she knew was that he was male and that his office was located in Fairfax, Virginia.

Wrapping her hand around the hot metal handle of the diner’s glass door, she pulled it open and stepped inside to the frigid blast of the air-conditioning and the thick smell of grease. It wasn’t yet noon, but the place was nonetheless fairly crowded. Hammond had told her to sit wherever she wanted; he’d find her. She slid into a booth by the window and glanced around, half-expecting some guy in a fedora and a wide-lapeled suit to slide onto the blue vinyl bench opposite her. Or maybe he’d be wearing a badass black leather jacket, never mind that it was broiling outside.

Jeez, she was becoming ridiculous in her old age.

Determined to act normal, as if she met with detectives daily, she picked up the laminated menu and studied it, for once not even tempted by any of the calorie bombs being offered. She doubted, though, that Margot would be mollified to learn that she was too nervous to inhale her usual quantity of sugar and carbs. She’d be too busy having a conniption fit that her little sister was meeting a private eye. Was intending to hire one …

“Jade Radcliffe?”

Startled, she dropped the menu onto the retro Formica. “Um, yes, I’m Jade.”

“Greg Hammond.” He stuck out a hand, and she shook it, staring up at him dumbly. It surprised her that he looked so
normal
, not like someone who spent his life tracking down white-collar criminals, blackmailers, missing persons, and adulterers, poking and prying into everyone’s past. She placed him in his late forties, maybe even early fifties, because there was more salt than pepper in his short-cropped hair. His eyes were brown. Rather than sporting a fedora and trench coat, he was dressed in a white shirt beneath a slightly creased slate-blue linen jacket and light-beige trousers. He had a
healthy tan and looked like he might play golf on Sunday mornings. But his erect bearing hinted at more than just swinging an iron. She bet he had a military background. And from the solid body beneath his linen jacket, she figured he could probably bench-press twice her weight without breaking a sweat.

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 to 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.