Page 16 of The Lost Heiress
“I started as a deputy straight out of the academy,” Church went on. “Then moved up to detective in the Major Crimes Unit a few years later.”
“And what year was that?” Florence asked.
Church smiled. “If there’s something you want to ask me, Mrs. Talbot, you can.”
“I hope I’m not being impertinent, Detective,” Florence said. “But how old are you?”
“I’m thirty-eight,” he said.
“Thirty-eight,” Florence repeated. Not a child, then. Older, in fact, by nearly a decade than Detective Vance had been when he’d first taken on the case. Florence noticed, now that Church had stepped out of the shadows into the more brightly lit parts of the room, the specks of gray peeking out of his well-manicured beard.
“My apologies,” Florence said. “I hope I didn’t cause you any offense. That’s the thing about growing old, I suppose. Everyone looks like a child to me now, even grown men.”
“At my age, I’ll take it as a compliment,” Church said. “In truth, I’m probably closer to a hip replacement than I am to puberty.”
Florence laughed, and the gesture caused her to sneeze, roughly. She felt around in her pocket for her handkerchief, but her pocket was uncharacteristically empty.
“My, I’m never without my hankie,” she said.
“Here, take mine,” Detective Church said, retrieving a handkerchief, neatly folded, from his inside jacket pocket.
“Thank you,” Florence said, taking it. It was cotton and embroidered with his initials on the edge. “Are you sure you’re only thirty-eight, Detective?” Florence asked. “I haven’t had a man offer me a handkerchief for at least three decades.”
Church laughed. “I’m a bit old fashioned in some ways, I suppose,” he said. “I got my manners from my granny. She’s the one who raised me, mostly.”
“I see,” Florence said. “You must be very fond of her.”
“Granny’s my favorite person in the whole world,” Church said without hesitation. “I just spent this last Saturday with her at the nursing home, actually. Jell-O molds, canasta, and episodes ofGunsmoke. Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
He smiled, and Florence smiled back at him. He was a good seed, this one. Florence liked him immediately.
“If you wouldn’t mind,” Church said, “I’d love to get a sense of how the room was set up that night. I know it’s been ages, but anything you can remember would be helpful.”
“Not at all,” Florence said, for she had spent months planning that party, and then for years, and then decades after, she had replayed the moments of that night, again and again, in her head. She took him through how the room was set up in great detail, as if they had only just taken down the tables and dismantled the dance floor. She showed him where the dinner tables had been—twenty-one tables in all, with some seating ten and others a dozen. There had been a bar on either side of the room and one outside on the terrace. The dance floor had been set up next to the stage where the band had played.
“And how many guests were there?” Church asked.
“Two hundred and thirty-four,” Florence said, the number still sharp as a tack in her mind. Two hundred and thirty-four RSVP cards with the box next to “Accepts with Pleasure” checked. Two hundred and thirty-four place settings. Two hundred and thirty-four party favors in the form of gossamer bags stuffed with candied almonds—she had stayed up until nearly two in the morning the night before, tying the bags with ribbons.
“There are diagrams and seating charts,” Florence went on. “I still have them, in case they would be of any use.”
“Really?” Church said, as if he couldn’t believe his luck. “Yes, that would be very helpful, thank you.”
“I keep everything,” Florence said. “I’m a creature of habit, I suppose.”
“This must have been quite the event to plan,” he said, looking around at the vast, empty room, as if he couldn’t imagine all the work it took to fill it.
“Yes,” Florence said with a deep, satisfied sigh. “Three months of planning.”
“And what do you remember from that night, Mrs. Talbot?” Church asked. “I suppose you must have been very busy. Everywhere all at once.”
“Yes,” Florence said. “I was back and forth between the kitchen and the ballroom, mostly. The staff will say I was everywhere at all times. Omnipresent. The guests won’t have seen me at all.”
She smiled pleasantly to herself. Despite everything that had happened, everything that had gone wrong, at least that was a mark of a job well done.
“And what about Saoirse?” Church asked. “Did you see much of her that evening?”
“Sporadically,” Florence said. “From a distance, mostly.”
