Page 79 of The Damaged Hearts Bargain

She cleared her throat. “Can I tell you something?” she asked Deb. “I don’t want to keep you if you’ve got some place to be.”

“I was only about to do some shopping,” said Deb. “I can just as easily stay here for a half pint after lunch.”

“I’ll get that,” Lucy said, standing up. “And then, if you don’t mind, I’d like to run something past you. Just an idea. I need to know if what I’m thinking is even possible. But it has to be secret, is that alright?”

Deb shrugged and smiled. “I’m a nurse, you’ll not find many as good at keeping secrets. I’m happy to help, if I can.”

Lucy went over to the bar. It was all about boxes, she could seethat now. The jade box on Cal’s mum’s dressing table. And the cash box that had had only two keys.

“What are you two plotting at over there?” Rosalee said as she came to take Lucy’s order.

Lucy closed one eye in thought and looked at Rosalee. Then she nodded. “Give me half an hour to talk to Deb and then if I still think I’m onto something, I’ll come and talk to you about it, alright?”

“As long as you wait until the lunch rush is over,” Rosalee said, sliding a half pint over to Lucy. “I’ll be on tenterhooks.”

HOW COULD SHE be sure that she was right? There was no way really. But after what Deb had told her and what she’d pieced together herself, Lucy was pretty certain that she was at least on the right track. She perched herself on a bar stool and Rosalee put the kettle on.

“Go on then,” said Rosalee.

“First, you’ve got to promise me that this is between us, at least for now.”

“My lips are sealed,” Rosalee said, lifting one eyebrow. “Now what’s going on?”

“Let me ask you something first. You knew Cal’s mum, right?”

“All this again?” asked Rosalee. “I thought the two of you were on the outs. You wouldn’t find me digging into an ex’s past.”

“We’ve broken up,” Lucy said. “This isn’t about that though.”

“What is it about then?”

“Justice,” said Lucy, feeling the word big in her mouth like it was too large for what was happening.

Rosalee blew out a breath. “Yeah, I knew Pam. She was a lovely woman before, well, before.”

“Was she, well, was she on top of things? Efficient? That kind of person?”

Rosalee laughed. “Oh not Pam. At least not the Pan that I knew. She’d have forgotten her head if it wasn’t screwed on right.”

“And yet she was treasurer of the women’s club.”

“Huh,” said Rosalee. “You know what, she was a secretary for a long time too. Personal assistant I think we’d call her now.”

“So maybe she wasn’t always absent-minded.”

“I suppose not,” Rosalee said carefully. “Now what’s going on here, Lucy? I’m starting to think that you’re thinking something that I wouldn’t like you thinking, if you get my drift. Pam Roberts was a good woman.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Lucy said. “But I’ve been wracking my brain to think of a reason why Cal would be in that room with the money in her hand, and there’s only one reason that I can think of. Only one thing that makes sense.”

“Which is?” prompted Rosalee.

“She wasn’t taking the money, we already know that since the money had already gone missing, so she must have been putting it back.”

Rosalee sighed and leaned on the bar, eyes weary. “I think you’d better tell me the whole story now. What exactly are you proposing happened?”

Slowly, carefully, Lucy began to tell her what she suspected had happened that night. And when she was done, Rosalee was pale.

“I might not have it completely right,” Lucy said. “But you have to admit, it makes a lot more sense this way.”

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