His Love Was My Poison novel · Chapter 7 of 48
Chapter 7: The Cedar Box
The officers around the map table found sudden deep interest in the map.
Royce didn't look away from me.
"Yes," he said.
Just that.
Seven years, and he still had it.
"Where?"
"In my mother's cedar box. In the house in Lexington."
"Who lives in the house?"
He closed his eyes.
"Eleanor. And Kit."
Of course they did.
He waved the officers out of the tent, and they went in a hurry.
When we were alone, he put both hands flat on the map table, the way he used to brace on the kitchen counter when bad news came.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I called her because I couldn't believe it. I needed to hear her laugh at me."
"Did she laugh?"
"She cried. Then she hung up. Then she drove straight to the CID office."
He looked at his hands, at the white lines.
"I think I knew, right when she hung up. I just didn't want to."
"I need that braid before she thinks of it."
"She won't think of it. She doesn't know it exists."
"Royce, she knew about my headaches. She knows what you keep."
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he pulled his keys out of his pocket and worked one off the ring.
He wrote four numbers on a scrap of map paper.
"The alarm," he said. "The box is on the top shelf of my mother's closet. Upstairs, end of the hall."
"Eleanor will be back there before me."
"No, she won't."
He straightened up.
"Her tour has two more shows on this post. Thursday and Saturday. If she leaves, the troops will notice, and so will the press. And I'll keep her here."
"How?"
"I'll ask her to stay with me. I'll tell her I'm sorry I doubted her."
I looked at him.
"You'd sit beside her and pretend."
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