Chapter Nineteen
“STUART,” Eden said into the phone, her voice pleading, “please call Melissa. Please.” It was the third message she’d left on his machine in the last hour. She’d lost count of the total number of messages she’d left for him in the last two days.
The evening of the day McBride left—that was the way she seemed to mark time now—she’d started calling Stuart. By the time Melissa had awakened from her nap that day, the house was quiet. All the FBI agents, along with McBride, had roared off in the helicopter, and for a few minutes, the house had been quiet. When Melissa came downstairs, in an instant Eden was cast back into the role of “mom.” She tried to keep herself calm and not be resentful that she had gone from being a femme fatale, with two delicious men after her, to being plain ol’ Mom in a single day.
Twice, Eden had interrupted Melissa’s nonstop complaining about how rotten her life was to try to reason with her. But it was impossible. First of all, Eden soon saw that it was some modern taboo to not bring up the past. Bringing up the past was called “garbage bagging”—or something like that. “Mother,” Melissa said impatiently, “you have to deal with the here and now, not a hundred years ago.” According to Melissa’s modern-day philosophy, what this meant was that Eden wasn’t allowed to say “When I was your age…” or “When I was pregnant….” On the other hand, it seemed that Melissa was free to talk endlessly about her past. She said that Eden had “abandoned” her as a child in one day care after another. “I don’t want what was done to me to be done to my child,” Melissa said. “I want my child to have a father. Is that too much to ask? I remember too well my loneliness as a child. There were times when I thought I didn’t have a mother or a father.”
Eden had kept a sympathetic face, but it hadn’t been easy. Part of her wanted to defend herself and point out that she had done the best she could. And, of course, she’d very much wanted to tell Melissa that she had no idea what a “bad childhood” was really like. Eden also wanted credit for all the Saturdays that she’d arranged all-day playdates for her daughter. And what about all the nights she’d stayed up after midnight cooking meals for the week so her daughter could live on something besides those hideous “chicken nuggets” that other children ate? Melissa was three before she’d ever eaten a french fry. Et cetera. There were thousands of good things that Melissa seemed to have forgotten.
But Eden knew that to defend herself would only anger Melissa more, and what good would that do? Right now her daughter was scared out of her mind about having a baby, and she was afraid that her husband was never going to come after her. Maybe Melissa’s leaving of Stuart had been her daughter’s last shot at being a romantic heroine. Maybe she’d wanted to run away and have the hero come after her. But, so far, it hadn’t worked. No hero on a white horse—or in a silver Audi, for that matter—had shown up. Nor had he called.
With every minute that passed, Melissa grew more agitated and more determined to make herself believe that what she’d done was the right thing. She was fighting for her baby, wasn’t she? She was trying to give him the best there was, wasn’t she? She didn’t want her child to grow up feeling alone, as his mother had, did she?
It was close to impossible for Eden to listen to what her daughter was saying without defending herself, but she did it. Every time she felt the blood shooting up the back of her neck, she’d look at Melissa’s big belly and think how her daughter was going to learn. Melissa had all kinds of stories about bad mothers. She talked of seeing women in stores as they bawled out their children. “If those women would just take the time to reason with their children,” Melissa said. “If they’d just listen to them.” The hint was that Eden had never listened or reasoned with her daughter, but in spite of that, Melissa was going to give her child what he needed.
Eden turned away to hide her smile. She wanted to say, Wait until the kid says, “I’m not going to do that and you can’t make me!” and wait until every secret you have is blabbed to the world. Eden would never forget one Sunday at church when the pastor asked the congregation if there was anyone who needed their prayers. Melissa, only three, said loud and clear that her mother needed prayers because she’d been raped. The child had no idea what “raped” meant, but she’d listened to the people who had whispered when they thought she couldn’t hear them. All Melissa knew was that a bad thing had happened to her mother and she wanted God to help.
Just you wait, Eden thought. It was terrible to want to get back at her own daughter, but that’s how she felt with every complaint that Melissa made.
Late that evening, Eden put in her first call to Stuart. Maybe she could patch up the problems between them. She didn’t know how she was going to do it, and she greatly regretted every bad thought she’d ever had about her son-in-law, but she was going to try. If she had to grovel, she would. She’d apologize to Stuart, tell him she’d misjudged him, and say that she thought he was the finest son-in-law a woman could have.
But Stuart didn’t call her back. Nor did he answer the next four calls that Eden made. She called him again at six the next morning, but there was no answer. It wasn’t until later in the day that she thought of calling the superintendent of her building. By then Melissa’s tears and complaints had so worn Eden down that she would have paid Stuart to come and get his wife. How about if I give you a fake sapphire necklace? she thought of saying to him. How about if I sign the apartment lease over to you? What if I pay the rent?
But Stuart didn’t answer her calls, and when the super called back, he said that the doorman had helped Stuart into a taxi two days before and he’d had two big suitcases with him. Eden put down the phone and went to her daughter. Melissa was in McBride’s bed—no, she was in Eden’s guest room—and she was eating chocolate-covered marshmallows. Little brown papers littered the floor like dirty snowflakes.
“Was Stuart home when you left?”
Melissa looked up, surprised. “No. He’d just left for a trip to L.A.”
“How long was he supposed to be gone?” Eden asked, keeping her anger under firm control.
“A week.”
Eden blinked at her daughter. “Are you telling me that Stuart may not even know that you’ve left him?”
Melissa tried to roll over on her side, but her big belly kept her on her back. “Mother, haven’t you been listening to me? I didn’t leave Stuart, per se. I left an impossible situation. But of course he knows I’m not there. He always calls me from whatever hotel he’s in, so when I don’t answer the phone he’ll know that I’ve left him. Or left that place, that is. You know something, Mother? I really like it here in Arundel. The fresh air. The land. The water. I like this big old house. I think Stuart and I should move in here with you. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? You’d be around your grandchild every day. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Eden didn’t say a word—she might start screaming and never stop. Silently, she closed the door, then called Stuart yet again. Didn’t he pick up his messages? No, of course not. He thought he had a wife at home who would be answering the phone. But wait! What if Melissa had gone into labor? Surely Stuart had left a number where he could be reached.
Eden started to go back to Melissa’s room to ask, but stopped. She very well knew that her daughter would never give her the phone number. Eden was so desperate that she felt no guilt when she made a thorough search of Melissa’s handbag, but she found nothing.
Eden went to the kitchen, poured herself a big glass of wine, then took it and the bottle outside. It was still cool, and she shivered. How things in life could change in an instant, she thought. A few weeks ago she was living with her daughter and loving where she was. If it hadn’t been for her son-in-law, she would have been quite happy. She was now ashamed of the thought, but if she’d been told that Stuart had been run over by a train, she would have been secretly glad. She would have had her daughter and her grandchild to herself.
But for the last few weeks she’d led a very different life, one that consisted of grown-up things, like…Well, like rolling in the mud with a man. Working on an interesting project with two men. She thought of the night she and Brad and McBride—Jared—had found the necklace. It had been exciting and scary at the same time. And she’d done it with two men. Two of them! Handsome men looking at her as though she was what they wanted most in life. Ah, yes. Exciting and scary at the same time.
But here she was now alone. Sitting in the garden alone, sipping wine alone. In the moonlight she could see her cute little red truck. The back of it had half a dozen brand-new tools in it. Was it true that it was easier to dig with a stainless steel shovel than one that was rusty and pitted? She’d sure like to find out. Near the truck, on the little bricked area by the potting shed, were nearly three hundred plants waiting, crying out, to be put into the soil. The perennials and annuals were in four-inch pots, the bulbs in bags, and she and Jared had put the bareroot trees in buckets of water to hold them until they could be planted. That should have been today, Eden thought, but she hadn’t been able to get outside to do it.
She drank the rest of the wine and poured another glassful. Was she now going to get drunk alone? “Pathetic Palmer,” she muttered.
She knew she had to make a plan. What if Stuart was hearing her messages and not responding because he didn’t want to get back together with Melissa? If that was so, then Eden knew that she’d soon become grandmother-in-residence. When she thought of diapers and toilet-training and baby food, she took another deep drink of wine and wished she’d brought her cell phone outside with her so she could call Stuart again. Would it be too, too difficult to call every hotel in Los Angeles and ask if he was there?
Plan, she thought. She had to make a plan. Now that the fiasco about the necklace and that spy swallowing her name was over, she needed to think about her future. Had she ruined it with Brad? When Melissa had been hosing her down, Eden had looked at Brad’s sad eyes and had wanted to go to him, but her duties of motherhood had kept her where she was.
Eden emptied the second glass of wine, then made herself stop. It would be nice to drink so much that she couldn’t remember the last few days, but she wasn’t going to do that. Brad and Jared. She missed them both already. Jared had been a temporary…What? Friend, she thought. Jared McBride had become her friend.
As for Brad…She wanted him to become more. When she stood up, she was dizzy, but she took a few deep breaths of cool night air and managed to get up the steps and inside the house. Tomorrow she was going to go to Brad and beg him to forgive her. In spite of what she’d told Jared, she knew she couldn’t tell Brad the truth. “Well, you see,” she’d say, “I told McBride to pretend that I was a drug dealer who was trying to get away, so he did what he could to stop me, which meant that he leaped on top of me and pinned me down. And when I said ‘Push’ he pushed me, not the truck. It was actually quite humorous. And I hit him with a fistful of mud because…” Even after two big glasses of wine none of that sounded like it would make him forgive her.
As she climbed the stairs, she resolved to find Brad and talk to him. Lie to him if she had to. Do whatever was necessary to get him to forgive her. When she reached her bed, she fell on it, facedown, fully clothed, and was asleep in seconds.
Outside, in a voice so quiet it could barely be heard, a man said into a radio, “Subject has turned in for the night. Soused.” Chuckling, he put the radio in his pocket and leaned back against the post of the rose arbor. It was the last thing he ever did. A knotted rope was pulled across his throat.
“No,” Bill said calmly, “you’re not going to be allowed back on the case. That you’re taking the death of an operative this hard shows me that you’re too involved. You can’t make unbiased decisions.”
“If by that you mean that I will kill anyone who tries to hurt an innocent person, you’re right.”
Bill put his hands on his flat belly and looked at Jared pacing the room. “You want to sit down and quit this tantrum of yours? Your girlfriend is being well looked after.”
Jared sat down but only to glare at Bill. “Last night a man was killed just outside her front door. Do you call that ‘looking after’?”
“I call that verification of what we suspected. The woman is connected to a spy ring. She knows something, but you didn’t find out what it was. I’m sure you found out that she likes to walk on the beach and loves those—What were they?” He looked at the stack of papers in front of him. “Jelly beanies. Drinks of seduction, I think you called them, but you didn’t find out what she knows.” Leaning across his desk, Bill returned Jared’s glare. “But you’ve found out some things about her since you moved out, haven’t you?
“Snooping into my private e-mails and phone calls?” Jared asked, one eyebrow raised.
“Of course. So what did you find out?”
Jared got up again, trying not to pace but unable to sit still. When he’d heard that a man had been killed so close to Eden and her daughter, he thought he was going to go on a killing rampage himself. He’d wanted to gather guns and men and planes and take them to Arundel, North Carolina, and kill…That was the problem. They still had no idea who was behind whatever was going on. Two agents dead and no idea why. All they knew was that things centered around Ms. Eden Palmer and maybe around her old house. It had been with great reluctance that he’d agreed to physically remove himself from the case and give the impression that Eden was no longer being watched. But she was being watched. The cameras were still in place inside her house and out, and men were still stationed outside her house. Everything she did or said had been reported on. Jared had watched some of the hours of tapes, and had read some of the reports. The only thing he’d come up with is that if he were there he’d have let Eden’s whining daughter have a piece of his mind.
Bill was still looking at him, waiting to hear what Jared had found out. That Bill didn’t know the exact contents of what Jared was doing on his own time was reassuring. That meant that the blocks he’d put on his phone and computer were working.
“Something about Ohio,” Bill said by way of encouragement.
“Yeah, one Walter K. Runkel.”
“Let me guess. The whining brat’s father.”
Jared’s mouth turned into a smirk. It seemed that Bill had also seen some of the tapes. “Exactly. Eden said he’d been the head deacon at her church, so I did a little digging, made a few calls, and found out who he was.”
“And?”
“There was a big scandal at that church about four years after Eden was tossed out by her parents. The man who raped Eden got caught with another young girl.”
“Another rape?”
“No. Seems that it was mutual. There was a lot of commotion and accusations, but there were no charges and no arrests were made. Runkel and the girl were separated, then he went back to his wife and kids. As soon as the girl was of age, they were at it again. The wife packed up the kids and moved to California. As soon as the divorce was final, Runkel married the kid. Good thing, because by then she was seven months pregnant.”
“You think Eden knows any of this?”
“Not a word of it. I think she’s gone out of her way to not know any of it. When she left that town, she left it forever.”
“So now Runkel is living with the kid? She’s how old now?”
“He left her when she turned twenty. She took the kid and went back to her parents.”
Bill gave a low whistle. “Where is he now?”
“Works in a carpet store. He’s in the same town and everybody knows to keep their young girls away from him. He’s no longer an active member of the church.”
“What about Ms. Palmer’s parents?”
“Both dead.”
Bill looked at the files on his desk. “You don’t think this Runkel had anything to do with what’s going on here, do you? Maybe he plans to blackmail Ms. Palmer. I’m sure she’d pay him to make him stay away from her daughter and the grandbaby.”
“I thought of that, but he hasn’t left town in years, and I checked his phone records. No calls to North Carolina. I don’t think he knows about Eden or her daughter.”
Bill looked at Jared for a moment. “So what do you plan to do about him?”
“Except for Eden, he doesn’t seem to have done anything that he can be prosecuted for. Or anything anyone knows about, that is.”
“Any unsolved rapes on the books?” Bill asked, eyebrows raised.
“Three,” Jared said with a half smile. “I checked into it, and I think he probably did it.”
“Did they save DNA?”
“Yes.” For a moment Bill and Jared looked at each other and nodded. Maybe Eden wasn’t willing to go through the horror of a trial, but maybe the other victims were.
“Get on it,” Bill said.
“I’ve already started.”
“So what else?” Bill asked.
“Why didn’t you tell me that Tess Brewster had never had a paintbrush in her hands in her life?”
“I knew you’d find it out. Besides, when you’re around Ms. Palmer, you don’t think about or see anything else. Just her.”
Jared gave him a look that told him not to go there. “What do you know?” Jared asked.
“Only that Tess didn’t paint those pictures. But she did take them to the frame shop.”
Jared sat down. “Where did she get the pictures? You don’t think she bought them, do you? Maybe this is a red herring and she bought them at a garage sale and had them framed. Maybe she was going to hang them in her apartment.”
“Did she have an apartment? I thought she lived here at the agency. With you.”
Jared smiled, and for the first time in days, he relaxed. “Like all of us. So what’s the theory on the paintings?”
“I think Tess wanted to hide them. She got them somewhere and wanted to hide them where no one would look.”
“Ah, yes, hide them in plain sight. So she took them to the frame shop and left them there, meaning to return and get them later.”
“No, she sent us the claim ticket.” Bill handed the piece of paper across the desk to Jared.
“You had this, but you didn’t show it to me?”
“I didn’t know we had it. It was mixed in with her reports, and—”
Jared looked at Bill in speculation. Was he telling the truth that they had overlooked something like this? Either Bill wasn’t telling everything or he was flat out lying.
Bill wouldn’t meet Jared’s eyes. “I want you off the case,” he said quietly. “Two agents are dead, and we still don’t know anything.”
Jared gave his boss, his friend, a half smile. “Afraid I’ll bite the dust on this one?”
“Hoping for it,” Bill said, but his face was serious.
“What are you doing to protect her?” Jared asked.
“We’re just trying to watch her, that’s all. She has no idea a man was killed outside her house last night. All she’s concerned about is finding her son-in-law and getting him to take his wife home.”
“So where is the son-in-law?”
“Busy,” Bill said.
“I see. You’re keeping him too busy to take his wife away. You don’t want anything to mess up the bait, do you? You’re dangling this innocent woman in front of the killer, so you might as well dangle the daughter too, is that it?”
“Maybe if you had found out what she knows this wouldn’t be happening,” Bill snapped.
“She doesn’t know anything,” Jared shot back. “At least not anything that would cause some spy to swallow her name.”
“Yeah, well, maybe. I’m not convinced.” He started to move the papers on his desk about, letting Jared know that his time was up. “You find out anything new, let me know.”
“Yeah, sure,” Jared said as he left the office. Outside the door, he leaned against the wall and thought for a moment. He needed to find out who painted those watercolors of Eden’s old house. He needed to—Hell, there were a thousand things that needed to be done, and he was going to do them. He went back to his office and told his secretary that he wasn’t feeling well. In fact, he felt a bout of stomach flu combined with bubonic plague coming on, and he thought he was going to be out of the office for at least a week, maybe two.
She smiled at him conspiratorially. “Call your mom and she’ll get in touch with you if there’s an emergency?”
“Yeah,” Jared said with a grin, then he grabbed a couple of firearms and was gone.
It took all of Eden’s courage to get dressed and drive to the Queen Anne office the next morning. She wavered between fear and courage, then back again. What if Brad wouldn’t see her? What if he ordered her out of his office and told her he never wanted to see her again? The next second she told herself that she was being absurd. They were adults. She and Brad hardly knew each other, so he had no claim on her and therefore no right to expect anything from her. In the next moment she was down again as she thought about what Minnie had told her about Brad’s ex-wife and how she’d been unfaithful. “I am not his wife!” she said aloud as she pulled into the wide road that led to the clubhouse. “And I wasn’t being unfaithful.”
This morning with Melissa had been very bad. During the night her daughter seemed to have lost all her bravado. She’d stopped complaining and telling Eden that she was in the right and that she should be standing up to Stuart. Instead, Melissa had poked at her cereal and said that Stuart was working very hard to make a home for her and the baby.
Part of Eden thought she should stay at home and hold Melissa’s hand. It was “mother’s instinct.” When Melissa had been a child Eden had stayed home from work whenever her daughter had even the slightest thing wrong with her—which is why Eden had lost job after job. “You do great work,” her employers had told her. “It’s just that you’re absent too many days, so we’re going to have to let you go.”
As Melissa pushed her cereal around in her bowl, she looked up at Eden with sad eyes, the same eyes she’d turned on her mother when she was a child. But Eden looked at her hugely pregnant daughter and said, “I’m going. Melissa, dear, you have my cell number, the number of the doctor, and the hospital. If anything happens, let me know.”
“But what if I go into labor?” Melissa said as she jumped down from the bar stool—and the dishes in the plate rack rattled.
“You haven’t even dropped yet,” Eden said, pulling on her cardigan. “I think you have at least six weeks before you deliver. Why don’t you take a long, hot bath and watch a few movies on TV? I’ll be back this afternoon, and I’ll bring some fish. We’ll wrap it in paper bags and bake it, like we did when you were a child.”
“But, Mother—” Melissa began.
“You’ll be fine,” Eden said, then quickly kissed her daughter’s cheek and hurried out the door.
Now, as she pulled into the parking lot of Queen Anne, her heart was pounding. How angry was Brad? And how did he express anger? Yelling? No, that didn’t seem like him. Coldness? Did he just shut out a person and say nothing to them? Is that how it would be from now on?
Eden was sure her heart was in her throat as she walked into the office of Queen Anne. She’d already driven past his law office downtown and seen that his car wasn’t there. She decided to go to Queen Anne, and if he wasn’t there she was going to try his house.
When she knocked on his office door, no one answered, and when she tried the door, it was locked.
She felt as though someone was watching her. Turning, she looked into Minnie’s office and saw the young woman staring at her. But the moment Eden looked, Minnie turned her head away. Eden didn’t let that deter her. “Minnie!” she said brightly. “How are you?”
Standing behind her desk, Minnie gave Eden a look so cold that she wanted to run out the door.
“Is something wrong?” Eden asked, her voice close to breaking. Is this what she was going to get when she saw Brad?
“Wrong?” Minnie asked quietly, but in a deadly voice. “You were rolling around naked in the mud with my boyfriend, and you ask me if anything is wrong?”
“Your boyfriend?” Eden asked, eyes wide.
“Do you think he belonged to you. Do you think everything belongs to you?”
Eden thought her brain must be spinning around inside her head. She took a deep breath. “I think that Jared McBride belongs to himself. Minnie, I wasn’t naked. No one was naked. The little truck got stuck in the mud, we were trying to push it out, and we fell. That’s all.”
“That’s not what I heard,” Minnie said as she opened a file drawer and jammed in a folder.
“I can assure you that—”
“Save it,” Minnie said, turning to glare at Eden. “And here I thought you were different. You know what Brad went through with his wife. I told you the whole story as a warning. He can’t handle another adulterous woman in his life.”
“Now wait a minute!” Eden said. Maybe she couldn’t stand up to her pregnant daughter, but this young woman was a whole other matter. “First of all, I am no one’s wife, so adultery is impossible. And second, what’s between Braddon and me, and even between Jared and me, is no concern of yours.”
“Does that mean that you think you can walk into this town and suddenly you know what’s best for everyone? Are those of us who love Brad to stand by in silence and see him get hurt again? Is that what you think?”
“Minnie,” Eden said softly. “I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of. If anyone thinks I have, then they are the ones who have the dirty minds.”
“Then I guess that includes Brad.”
“Brad thinks I—?”
“Brad thinks you’re little better than his wife, that’s what. You hurt him, Eden. You hurt him deeply. He got on a plane just hours after he saw you in the arms of another man, and no one has heard from him since. You know what he did? He called my mother.”
At that Eden drew in her breath. Minnie’s mother. The woman Brad had had an affair with.
“At least I’m glad to see you remember who she is. Brad will never marry her, but she won’t believe that. You should see her now. She’s giddy with happiness because she thinks Brad’s going to ask her out again. I tried to talk to her, but she won’t listen. I told her that Brad will probably forgive you and that he’ll drop her again. But she won’t listen. And I’m caught in the middle. My mother wants me to spy on Brad, and he needs me to clean up after him. If it weren’t for my daughter needing her relatives, I’d leave this town forever.”
“Minnie, I’m sorry,” Eden said. “I never meant—”
“Right. You never meant to hurt anyone. You just loved having two men drooling over you, didn’t you?”
“I think that’s quite enough.” Turning, Eden took a step to leave.
“You were a slut as a teenager and you haven’t changed since, have you?”
Eden drew in her breath, then she turned to look back at Minnie. The young woman’s face was so distorted with anger that Eden could hardly recognize her. There was nothing she could say to combat anger like that. She left the office.
Minnie sat down hard on her chair, and for a moment she wanted to burst into tears. With Eden Palmer’s betrayal, all her plans for her future had been ruined. Brad would never marry Eden now. He’d had enough gossip about his first wife; he’d never set himself up for something like that again. And then there was Jared. Minnie felt betrayed by him too. She’d really felt as though they’d started something good, but it had all been an act. He’d only been in town because of Eden. Minnie wasn’t sure why Jared McBride had been there, but she knew it had something to do with Eden’s disgusting past. And as soon as he’d found out whatever he wanted to know, he’d left. So Minnie was right back where she’d started. She wasn’t going to get a house of her own, and she wasn’t going to get a gorgeous hunk of a man for herself. Instead, she was going to continue to be Braddon Granville’s cleaning woman and gofer.
She put her head in her hands and thought how she’d like to make them all feel as bad as she was feeling right now. How could some girl who came to town pregnant and destitute have two men after her? And at her age!
Minnie’s head came up. What was it Eden had said at that dinner about the man who raped her? He was head deacon at her church. Yes, that was it.
She jumped up from her chair, jerked open the second file drawer, and pulled out Eden’s folder. She’d had to fill out an employment card, and on it was the name of her birth town in Ohio. It took only one phone call to the local library in Eden’s hometown to find the name of a “little stone church,” then she called the pastor and asked him if he could possibly find out who had been the head deacon in 1976.
“I don’t have to look up the answer,” the man said, “because you’re not the only person to ask me that question. It was Walter K. Runkel.”
Minnie didn’t ask who else had called; she didn’t care. “Mr. Runkel isn’t by any chance still living, is he?”
“Yes, he is. He works at the local carpet store. Would you like to have the number?”
“Yes, I would,” she said, smiling at the phone. “I’d like that very much.” Minutes later, Minnie hung up, then she called Eden’s house. Minnie and the rest of Arundel knew that Eden’s pregnant daughter was staying with her.
“Is Eden Palmer there?” Minnie said in her most businesslike voice. “I have the information she requested.”
“Information?” asked a sleepy Melissa. “She’s not—”
Minnie cut her off. “I have the information she requested about her daughter’s father.”
“Her…?” Melissa asked slowly, coming awake. “Father? I don’t understand. She doesn’t know who the father is.”
“I can only give the information about the father of her child to Ms. Eden Palmer herself. Are you Ms. Palmer?”
There was a hesitation on the phone, then the voice changed. “Yes, I’m Ms. Palmer. You can give the information to me.”
“Do you have a pen and paper to write down the address and phone number?” Minnie heard a drawer being opened.
“Yes,” Melissa said. “Go ahead.”