Savage Beauty - Peggy Webb Page 0,32
what else had she told?
Stephen tamped down his growing unease. After years of running Allistair Roses without a hitch, suddenly everything seemed to be coming apart at the seams. And all because of that girl. Cee Cee.
“If you’ll call ahead I can make those conversations easier for you, Detective.” He turned to his assistant. “Glenda Jane, please see the detective out then come directly to the office.”
That ought to do it. Stephen went back down the hall and watched out the window until the detective’s car got past the fork in the driveway. There was no sign of Lily’s red Jeep, even when the detective turned onto the street and drove off.
“Mr. Allistair?” Glenda Jane was back, standing in his doorway panting as if she’d run the Boston Marathon.
“You need to get more exercise, Glenda Jane. But not in the kitchen garden.”
Her upper lip trembled. “You needed me, sir?”
“Yes. I’m going to be in the exercise room, and if you let anybody come back here to disturb my workout, you’re fired, no matter what Clive says. Is that clear?”
“Even your fiancée?”
“Yes.” Especially his fiancée. Until Lily could learn to obey the rules, why should he grant her special privileges?
Glenda Jane huffed off, and Stephen fought the urge to slam the door. He counted to five then closed it softly, went into the bathroom and washed the detective’s germs off his hands. He hated shaking hands. His mirror image showed an unruffled man in complete control.
Excellent. That’s the way it should be.
His confidence completely restored, Stephen congratulated himself all the way to the exercise room he’d been clever enough to build adjoining his office. He made quick work of getting into exercise gear, and then he went straight to the barbells.
Just because other people like Humpty Dumpty and Toni--and yes, Lily--were falling apart that didn’t mean he was going to do the same. His body was a well-tuned machine, and he intended to keep it that way.
Lily found her daughter in the shed amidst the rose chemicals. Annabelle seemed less anxious than she had since Cee Cee’s disappearance. She’d always thrived on activity. Stephen’s idea of letting her work in the greenhouse seemed to be a godsend.
Still, considering Lily’s uncertainty about her own future, she wrestled with whether she should continue to encourage her daughter’s relationship with Stephen or pull back on it.
“Do you like working with Stephen?’
“I like my roses. Come on, Mom, I want to show them to you.”
As she followed her daughter into the glass house, the answer seemed obvious. When Annabelle picked up a bucket of rose fertilizer and started talking about her roses, her pleasure far outweighed any notion of depriving her because of Lily’s warring emotions.
Let her be a child. Don’t add the weight of your messy adult relationships.
“See. I’m feeding this to my three roses.” Annabelle used a trowel to work the fertilizer around the soil of a spindly stem that looked nothing like a rose. “This one seems to be the strongest of my three. If she survives I’m going to name her St. Cecilia. For Cee Cee.”
“That’s a beautiful idea.” Lily decided on the spot not to share any of the depressing news she’d heard from Jack and Detective Yancy. There was no need to further burden a fifteen-year-old with every detail that pointed to a kidnapping with rapidly vanishing hope of finding Cee Cee alive.
Lily’s cell phone rang, and she glanced at the screen. It was the painter who was scheduled to redo the master bedroom. All the details were in the folder labeled LILY AND STEPHEN. Just the thought of it made her queasy.
“Do you need to get that, Mom?”
“It can wait. Tell me more about your rose.”
“I found a poem online by Alexander Pope, ‘Ode for Music on St. Cecilia’s Day.’ You know all the Allistair roses are named for literary figures and their works, right?” Lily nodded, smiling. “Well, one of the lines says something about ‘music the fiercest grief can charm’. Cee Cee can charm anybody.”
Annabelle’s voice broke, and Lily put her arm around her daughter.
“Yes, she can.” She was glad to see her daughter still holding out hope that Cee Cee was somewhere out there waiting to be found.
“Mom, I saw Detective Yancy’s car here a while ago.”
“Where?”
“Outside this greenhouse. He and Stephen were driving back toward the office. Do you think he has news?”
“He probably just wanted statements from the people who saw her last. I’ll see you back at the house this evening.”
“Okay. But