BORN NOVEMBER 6, 1919
DIED MARCH 12, 1993
Puzzled, I climbed back into the car.
“What’s wrong?” Bree asked.
“My father’s not there. Nana Mama’s ex-husband, my grandfather, is, and his parents. I must have been named for my great-grandfather Alexander, who was a blacksmith.”
“You never knew that?”
I shook my head.
“Maybe there’s another Cross plot up here,” Bree said.
“Maybe,” I said, and I put the car in gear.
Nine rows up I spotted the pale white monument that said PARKS below a carved American flag. It was closer to the cemetery lane, four graves in, and well tended, with fresh flowers in a vase. Like the Cross plot lower on the hill, there were smaller stones, two of them, separated by a gap of several feet. They were inscribed B.W.P. and C.P.C.
Brock William Parks and Christina Parks Cross.
The grief swept over me like a chill fog thick with regret and loss. Tears began to dribble down my cheeks as I whispered, “I’m sorry I’ve never been here before, Mom. I’m sorry about…everything.”
I stood there trying to remember the last time I’d seen my mother, and I couldn’t. She’d been dying in the house. I was sure of that because my aunts were there a lot, caring for her. But I couldn’t conjure her up.
Disturbed by that, I wiped at my tears, walked around the back, and looked at the inscriptions.
BROCK WILLIAM PARKS
GREEN BERET
HERO TO HIS NATION
CHRISTINA PARKS CROSS
LOVING MOTHER
I was flooded with emotions and images of my mother on her best days, when she was loving, caring, and so much fun to be around. I could have sworn I heard her singing then, and it took everything I had to make it back to the car.
Bree watched me with tear-filled eyes. “She’s there?”
I nodded, and then broke down sobbing. “She’s been there for all these years, Bree. And I’ve…never…been here. Not once. In all this time, I never even wondered where she was buried. I mean, my God, who does that? What kind of son am I?”
Chapter
26
Palm Beach, Florida
At noon that same Saturday, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Detectives Peter Drummond and Richard S. Johnson were dispatched to a mansion on North Ocean Boulevard.
Detective Johnson was in his early thirties, a big athletic guy, ex-Marine, and a recent hire from Dade County. Detective Sergeant Drummond was in his sixties, a big, robust black man with a face almost devoid of expression due to nerve damage associated with a large burn scar that began beneath his right eye and spread over much of his cheek to his jaw.
Johnson knew he was lucky to have Drummond as his partner. The sergeant was a legend in the department, one of those men who had a knack for figuring out how criminals, especially murderers, thought.
Sergeant Drummond took a left off North Ocean Boulevard and pulled through open gates into an Italianate manor’s courtyard where two cruisers, a medical examiner’s van, and a midnight-blue Rolls-Royce were parked.
“Who the hell can afford to live like this?” Johnson asked.