Della stared at Terri for a full ten seconds before responding. “I gave him a package from his mother. It was a book.”
“Other than that,” Terri said. How did she pull this off without upsetting anyone? Should she say, I think Nate is missing? I think he found something and went after it? Would gossipy Della tell the press? The headlines would be Chain Saw Killer on the Loose. “What else?”
Della wasn’t one to let go of the topic. “He was really, really interested in the book. He went outside to make a call. He didn’t tell me who it was or what it was about but I saw that it was a Connecticut area code. Then he called you and asked who all the people were who went to your house.”
Terri’s fists clenched so hard her nails bit into the palms. Della the snoop. Della the spy. “Where’s the book?”
Della had it on her desk. It was a thick volume about Chinese antiques.
Terri tried to keep her eyes from widening. “This is probably what he wants. Thanks.” She started out the door but turned back. Della was staring at her, calculating. “You’d better not say anything about—”
Della cut her off. “I’m a deputy now. The days of this town getting free information out of me are over!”
That’s one way to look at it, Terri thought but didn’t say. She just nodded in agreement and hurried out of the office, the big book tucked under her arm. She drove down the road, then pulled to the side before she opened the book.
It took only minutes to find what Nate had seen. There was a full-page photo of her Chinese bowl. Not one like it bu
t hers. The dent in the base was clearly visible.
Under the photo, the caption explained that the bowl was old, rare and valuable.
What interested Terri was that in the margin was a handwritten name—Monroe—and a phone number. She guessed that the area code was for Connecticut. Della must have been so busy bossing the poor deputies around that she’d missed seeing the notation.
Terri called and asked for a person by that name. Monroe turned out to be the curator of a small museum.
He told her she was the second person to call him that day to ask about the bowl. Yes, it was a man who’d called, said he was the sheriff of a town in Virginia. The bowl had been stolen and Mr. Monroe gave her the date. Terri thanked him and hung up.
She sat there looking out the windshield. The bowl had been stolen two years before her mother arrived at Lake Kissel. Is that theft what caused her mother’s death? She was killed over a piece of silver? Was she the one who stole it? Did she run away to escape being caught? Or did someone else steal it and give it to her mother? Whatever happened, the silver bowl had ended up in her mother’s possession—and had passed to her father.
After his wife ran off—or so Brody thought—he couldn’t bear to look at anything that had belonged to her. He’d taken everything she’d owned to a Goodwill store. It wasn’t until years later, when his sister moved out, that they discovered that she had saved the bowl. They found it shoved to the back of a top shelf of a closet. Brody had wanted to set fire to it and melt it, but Terri wouldn’t let him. She put it back where they’d found it and didn’t bring it out until her guilt about Stacy was eating at her. After all, she’d been living with Stacy’s fiancé. The least she could do was help her with her booth.
Terri looked down at the picture. Based on Nate’s calls to her and the museum curator, Terri was sure that wherever Nate was now had something to do with the silver bowl. And it looked like someone else had found it and taken it.
“I need help,” Terri whispered—and she knew who she had to ask. Billy. He owed her.
She didn’t know for sure where he was staying but it was probably at the house his family still owned. The house where Stacy had so lovingly made an office for Nate. She’d heard that Stacy had “sold” the furniture she’d chosen for Nate and that he had paid for. She sold each item for pennies. Not even nickels were allowed. The big, expensive desk went for six cents. Stacy had dropped all the copper coins into a little velvet bag and left it on the floor of what would have been Nate’s office.
But maybe that was just gossip, Terri thought.
As Terri drove through Summer Hill to Thorndyke House she knew she was postponing dealing with the horror of her mother’s death. She wasn’t allowing herself to think about what her mother had been through. Didn’t want to visualize how she must have been pulled away from her sleeping two-year-old daughter. Was she forced to write a farewell note? Had she begged, pleaded? Had she...?
Terri pulled into the driveway of the house and put her head on the steering wheel. She couldn’t allow herself to think about any of that now. If she did, she’d be like her father and collapse.
Right now she needed to find Nate. Or Rowan. Needed to... To DO something. Anything. Just keep going. Don’t stop.
When she heard a lawn mower, she looked up to see Billy pushing it. His T-shirt was so sweaty he may as well have been shirtless. Stayed in shape, she thought as she put her hand out the window to wave to him.
But he didn’t see her because three young women came around the side. One of them was carrying a tray of glasses of lemonade. Another had a basket full of cookies. All of them wore short shorts and tank tops.
Billy was ignoring them but then one of the girls stepped in front of the lawn mower and he had to swerve sideways. He turned the machine off. “Melissa!” he said. “I could have hit you. Go sit on the porch. I—”
When he saw Terri, he looked relieved. She motioned for him to get in the car with her.
As Billy began running, he grabbed two glasses of lemonade, half a dozen cookies, and stuck out his elbow to hook his shirt off a fence post.
Terri flung the car door open. He slid in, handed her a big glass and closed the door.
As Terri backed out of the drive, the girls were glaring at her. “More people who hate me,” she muttered.