311 Pelican Court - Debbie Macomber [64]
“What time’s your appointment?” Peggy asked.
“Ten.”
“I’ll be ready,” she promised him.
A few hours later, Bob and Peggy arrived at Roy McAfee’s office not far from the Harbor Street Art Gallery. Corrie, Roy’s wife, acted as his secretary. Peggy liked Corrie, although she didn’t know her well. Roy was a no-nonsense man, a stolid, Detective Friday kind of investigator who tracked down the facts. The similarity between Roy and Joe Friday from the old Dragnet TV show reassured Peggy. He was a bit distant, an observer, a man who didn’t allow emotion to cloud an investigation. Corrie was just the opposite, warm and outgoing. Even though she now worked for her husband, she appeared to be the stay-at-home-and-bakecookies type of wife and mother. Peggy suspected that was the reason she’d been drawn to Corrie. They were a lot alike.
As they sat in the reception room, Peggy picked up an old issue of Readers’ Digest and Bob jiggled his foot incessantly. It was all she could do not to reach over and stop him.
“Roy can see you now,” Corrie announced, holding open the door.
Peggy looked at her husband, silently wondering if he wanted her to go in with him.
“Not right now.” Bob shook his head. “I think I’d like to talk to Roy alone, if you don’t mind.”
He’d gone pale, she noted. “Of course. Whatever you want.”
Bob walked into the room and closed the door. Peggy gazed anxiously after him. She didn’t know what he was going to ask Roy, or if he had anything he needed to hide.
Now it was Peggy who did the pacing.
“I’ve always meant to ask you about your herb garden,” Corrie said from behind her desk. “How did you get started?”
Peggy folded her arms and looked out the office window, onto Harbor Street. “By accident, actually. Years ago we bought a house that had a rosemary bush and I loved the scent of it. I clipped branches from it so often that I soon bought a second plant and then a third. Before I knew it, I was buying bay and sage and basil. I found out that I have a knack for growing herbs. When we decided to move back to Cedar Cove—”
“Oh, you lived here earlier?”
Peggy nodded. “Bob and I both graduated from Cedar Cove High School. Bob was in the class of 1966 and I graduated two years later in ’68.”
“We’re close to the same age,” Corrie said. “I’m forty-seven and Roy is fifty-one.”
“Do you have a herb garden?” Peggy asked.
Corrie shook her head. “No, but I’d like one. Any suggestions?”
Peggy recognized that Corrie was distracting her, but she didn’t mind. The other woman seemed genuinely interested in learning about herbs. “Come visit anytime,” Peggy invited. “I’ll give you a few plants to start off with in the spring.”
“I’d love that,” Corrie told her.
“Bob planted the blueberries.” Now that she was talking, Peggy couldn’t seem to stop. “We have our own small patch at the side of the house. They need lots of water and it’s a struggle to keep the deer out of them.”
They must have talked for twenty minutes about recipes, especially ones with blueberries. Peggy stopped abruptly when the door opened and Roy stuck his head out.
“Peggy, would you join us?”
She nodded and walked into the room on shaky legs. Claiming the empty chair next to her husband, she reached for Bob’s hand. His fingers tightened around hers.
“I told Roy what happened in Nam,” Bob said, his voice low and emotional. “I told him there were four of us, all under twenty-five. We made a pact never to talk about it. I don’t know if our John Doe has anything to do with this, but I’ve asked Roy to find out what he can.”
On the night twenty years earlier, when Bob had described that day in the jungle, he’d vowed never to speak of it again. Telling her had been a one-time thing, an act of self-preservation. The burden of carrying his secret had nearly destroyed him and their marriage.
“Dan Sherman was with me.”
“Dan?” Peggy gasped. He’d never told her his high-school friend had been in that hellish fight until now.