Haunting Harold

by Jenna Bennett

  “No problem,” I said. He hadn’t seen me until now, since he’d hired Mitch to find the blonde and not me. I could keep following him, and he’d be none the wiser.

  Not just now, though. He wandered toward the door. I stayed where I was, both because Harold had warned me off and because Zachary was out there and would pick up the surveillance.

  Or at least I hoped he would, and wouldn’t stay in the lot to make sure I came out in one piece.

  The PI—Mitch—looked a little surprised that I wasn’t moving, but he didn’t say anything. I waited until the sound of the front door had reached us, and then I said, conversationally, “So you’re the PI who married Mendoza’s wife.”

  His jaw dropped.

  “Was that her,” I added, “in the lobby?”

  She’d been around the right age, and exotic-looking enough that her name might be Lola.

  But Mitch shook his head. “What do you know about my wife?”

  “Not a lot,” I admitted. I’d never met Mendoza’s ex-wife, or their son. “Only that she thought her husband was cheating, so she hired a PI to prove it, and ended up marrying him. The PI. You.”

  Mitch leaned back in his office chair. “How do you know Jaime?”

  At first glance, he was ordinary to the point of being almost invisible. Medium height, medium build, a little on the lanky side. Medium brown hair, fair complexion, ordinary features. It probably served him well in his—our—job.

  He had a nice smile, though, and pretty eyes. Even if he had nothing on the matinee idol looks of Mendoza.

  “He investigated my husband’s murder,” I said.

  He blinked. “Your husband was murdered?”

  I nodded.

  “And Jaime told you about his divorce?”

  Oh, no. “My divorce attorney did that.” Lola’s divorce attorney, too. Who had struck up a friendship with the cheating spouse in the middle of the proceedings.

  Mitch looked confused. “I thought you said your husband was murdered.”

  “While we were getting a divorce. It’s a long story.”

  Mitch nodded. And was smart enough not to ask any more questions. “So…”

  “I guess I should go. Harold’s probably left the parking lot by now.”

  “Probably,” Mitch agreed. “So you were following Harold because his wife asked you to?”

  I nodded. “And you were following Harold because he told you someone was following him.”

  He didn’t nod. But he didn’t deny it, either. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen anyone else around?”

  “A blonde with shoulder length hair?” I shrugged. “Nashville is full of them.”

  “Another of Mrs. Newsome’s friends, maybe?”

  Not according to Mrs. Newsome, when I’d sent her the picture I’d taken. However… “Why would Heidi ask another of her friends to follow Harold if she had already asked me?”

  “Maybe she asked someone else to do it first,” Mitch suggested, “and when that didn’t get her any results, she asked you second.”

  That was possible. Although Heidi hadn’t mentioned anything about it, if so. “I think you’d have to ask Heidi about that.”

  Mitch smirked. “I imagine Harold is on his way to do just that.”

  Quite so. “I’m sorry I can’t help you,” I said, and got to my feet. “Anything else I can do for you before I go?”

  He shook his head.

  “I’ll just see myself out.”

  I headed for the door. A part of me, a very small part, thought he might do something to stop me. I have no idea why I thought so, since he had no reason to. And he didn’t. Just sat behind his desk and let me leave his office. I gave the receptionist a polite nod on my way through the lobby, and pushed the door open. It wasn’t locked. But I’ll admit that I didn’t draw a deep breath again until I was outside in the parking lot with the door securely shut behind me.

  * * *

  Harold was nowhere to be seen. Nor, I was happy to see, was Zachary. Which, I was sure, meant he’d done the smart thing and followed Harold when the latter left. Hopefully Harold hadn’t noticed Zachary.

  I decided to make the short drive to the office, just in case Zachary would check in, or had checked in, there. He hadn’t contacted me, maybe because he didn’t want to interrupt whatever I was doing inside Mitch’s office.

  It isn’t a long drive, and it was less than ten minutes later that I parked in the lot beside the little building and let myself in through the front door. Zachary’s car was not in the lot, but Rachel’s was. She was behind the desk in the lobby when I walked in, and looked up at me. “Good. You’re safe.”

  So did Edwina, from her spot in the corner of the sofa. Her stubby tail wagged, and her jaws split in a delighted doggy grin.

  “Hello, sweetheart.” I sat down and scratched the top of her head. “Of course I’m safe. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Zachary called,” Rachel said. “He said some guy came out and talked to you, and you went inside the detective agency with him.”

  “The PI is the guy who married Mendoza’s wife.”

  Rachel’s eyebrows moved up her forehead.

  “I’d seen him before, actually. He’s been following Harold, too. The guy in the black truck. Harold hired him to figure out who was following him. Harold, I mean. Hired the PI to figure out who was following Harold. The PI thought it was me. But when I walked in, Harold had no idea I’d been there. He’d wanted Mitch to find the blonde.”

  “I tracked down the license plate,” Rachel said. “It belongs to a woman named Tara Cullinan. Address in Knoxville.”

  Knoxville? “That’s three hours from here.”

  “She’s probably not driving back and forth,” Rachel said. “Chances are she lives here, but hasn’t switched her plate.”

  Probably so. However— “That means we have no idea how to find her.”

  Rachel nodded. “I have her address in Knoxville, if you fancy a road trip this weekend. Someone there might know where to find her. But as for where she’s staying here in Nashville, you’re right. We have no idea.”

  “Next time I see her, I’m following her and not Harold,” I said.

  Rachel agreed that that would probably be a good idea. “She didn’t show up outside the PI office, I guess.”

  “Not that I saw,” I said. “There was no point. The only windows were on the front, and they were covered. There was no chance that Harold would see her there.”

  Rachel tilted her head. “What does she do, exactly?”

  “Walks around,” I said, frustrated. “So far, that’s all I’ve seen her do. The first morning, she walked into the gym and then back out. She walked past him at the golf course. She stood outside a property down on Hillsboro Road when he drove by, but by the time he turned around and went back, she was gone. And she walked around his office building and past his office window this morning.”

  “But she doesn’t talk to him?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed. She just walks around. I guess she’s making sure he sees her. But that seems to be all she’s doing.”

  “Weird,” Rachel said.

  I nodded. “I have this theory that maybe Harold had an affair with her at some point, and when he broke it off, she started stalking him. Either because she wants him back, or to remind him that she can rat him out to Heidi if she wants.”

  “That’s possible,” Rachel agreed. “Depends on how long ago she left Knoxville, I guess. I’m sure he wasn’t driving there to sleep with her.”

  “No. But if she lives here, they could have had sex here.”

  Rachel tapped on her keyboard. “This is her driver’s license. Is this the woman you saw?”

  I got to my feet, abandoning Edwina, who gave me a wounded look, and walked around Rachel’s desk to look at the driver’s license on the screen, many times life-sized. “No idea. I didn’t get a good enough look at her face to be able to tell. Here.”

  I pulled out my phone and found the pi
cture I had taken earlier. We both bent over it.

  “It might be,” I said eventually. “If she was wearing a wig.”

  The woman in the DMV picture was thirty, according to the license. Averagely pretty, with a slightly oversized nose, blue eyes, and brown hair scraped back from her face and into a tail or braid. It was nothing like the mane of glossy waves the woman in the parking lot had sported. She was wearing a pink shirt in the picture, not the gray dress she’d worn every time I’d seen her so far.

  “I guess the PI didn’t notice her?”

  “He might have,” I said, walking back to the sofa. Edwina thumped her stubby tail against the leather. “But he noticed me more. Harold set him straight, though. So now Mitch will be looking for Tara, too.” If it was Tara. And it probably was.

  “That just means we have to find her first,” Rachel said, just as the phone rang. She grabbed it. “Fidelity Investigations. Rachel speaking. How… Oh. Hi, Zachary.”

  She reached out and put the phone on speaker, so I could hear, too.

  “Hi, Zachary,” I said.

  “Oh, good,” Zachary answered, his voice far away and echoey. “You’re back.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I’m still following Harold,” Zachary said. “That’s what you wanted me to do, right?”

  Right. “Where did he go?”

  “Home,” Zachary said, sounding disgusted. “Straight home, and through the gate. I couldn’t get in.”

  “No, don’t try to do that.” I hadn’t gone inside Somerset, either, in the time I’d been following Harold. “He’s probably gone home to yell at his wife for siccing me on him.”

  “I parked,” Zachary said, “and I’m walking up the hill. I think the wall ends up here. If it doesn’t, maybe I can get over it. But I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

  I didn’t know why he’d bothered. But he sounded like he was having fun, so I decided to let him run with it. Hopefully he wouldn’t get arrested for trespassing.

  “They live in an English Manor house,” I said. “Darcy’s home in some Merchant-Ivory movie or other.”

  Zachary made a non-committal sort of sound. He didn’t sound like he’d know Darcy’s house from Mad Ludwig’s or Louis the Fourteenth’s.

  “Look up Chatsworth on your phone. If you come across something that looks like it, take a look around the outside. Pretend that you’re with the lawn care company, or something. But don’t do anything to get yourself arrested.”

  “No problem,” Zachary said breezily.

  “Let me know what you find out.”

  He said he would, and we hung up. I turned back to Rachel, who said, “You know you’re paying him to goof off, right? If Harold’s at home with his wife, he’s not in bed with anyone else.”

  “Let’s just say that I’m contributing to the economy,” I said. “I have to pay Zachary anyway. Might as well let him have some fun. And who knows. Maybe he’ll get lucky and see the blonde lurking in the shrubbery.”

  Rachel made a noise, but didn’t outright tell me I was crazy.

  “Did you check whether there’s a phone number associated with the address in Knoxville?” I asked. I didn’t fancy making the drive out there—although I would if I had to. But if there was a phone number, we could just call, and save the trip.

  “There used to be,” Rachel said. “Not anymore. The line was closed seven months ago.”

  Bummer. “Whose number was it? Tara’s?”

  “Janice Cullinan,” Rachel said.

  A relative, obviously. Mother? Grandmother? Aunt?

  “Have you done a search for Janice Cullinan?”

  “She doesn’t have a phone number in Nashville,” Rachel said. “Tara doesn’t, either. And neither of them shows up in Knoxville anymore.”

  But that didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t there. Or here, for that matter. A lot of people don’t have landlines anymore. The younger generations are happy to do without it.

  Did that mean that Janice Cullinan was older?

  Maybe she had died. Or maybe she’d gone into assisted living somewhere.

  “Look for an obituary,” I said, as I pushed to my feet. Edwina looked up, hopefully. I scratched behind her ears. “Sorry, sweetheart, but it’s three hours each way. You wouldn’t like it. I know you enjoy car rides, but you wouldn’t enjoy this one.”

  She signaled to me that yes, she would.

  “You won’t get any food until late,” I warned her. “We probably won’t be back until eight or nine.”

  She stood up, stretched, and jumped down from the sofa.

  “Fine.” I turned to Rachel. “I’ll be back late. I’ll let you know if there’s anything I need.”

  Rachel nodded.

  “Zachary can stay on Harold for as long as he feels like it. If he happens to see Tara Cullinan, tell him to follow her. And he should keep an eye out for Mitch.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Rachel said. “Good luck.”

  I thanked her and waved Edwina through the door with me.

  Chapter 5

  I kept a sharp eye out for black pickup trucks on my way to the interstate and out of town, but saw no sign of Mitch. There were plenty of black trucks on the interstate, but none that followed me onto the exit in Knoxville. I was alone except for Edwina when I wound the Lexus through the sleepy neighborhood full of low-slung ranches and mid-century split level homes on the outskirts of town.

  The address on Tara Cullinan’s driver’s license belonged to a ranch. It was medium-sized, with a fresh coat of white paint, and a big picture window in the front. The lawn was dotted with colorful leaves and a couple of kid toys.

  I pulled into the driveway and looked at Edwina. She looked back at me and gave a tentative wag.

  “You probably have to pee, don’t you?”

  The tail moved faster. By the time I had circled the car and pulled the spare leash from the glove box, she was wagging the entire hind part of her body.

  “Just a second.”

  I hooked her up and lifted her down. She squatted in the grass next to the driveway while I looked around.

  The neighborhood was quiet. Neat and maintained, but not affluent. Solid middle class. Most people here probably worked, and at—I glanced at my watch—just before three-thirty in the afternoon, the kids might not have come home from school yet, either.

  There was no sign of life in the house I was interested in. I took Edwina up on the stoop anyway, and rang the bell. It echoed through the house, but no one answered.

  I rang it a few more times just to say I had, and turned to survey the rest of the street. There were toys in the yard across the street: probably a family with children who had enough with their own concerns, and no time left to worry about the neighbors.

  A for-sale sign in the yard next to that, and the house looked empty. The porch light was on in the middle of the afternoon, so chances were, no one lived there.

  The house on the other side of the young family looked a bit more promising. It was neat and tidy, with old-fashioned curtains in the windows and lots of leaves on the lawn. The car that was parked in the carport at the end of the driveway was close to twenty years old, but immaculate. And where several of the houses on the street had been renovated, with new stained-wood columns and porches, this house still had the old wrought-iron posts from several decades ago. All of it put together indicated that the occupant was an older person without the money for a new car—or someone who didn’t see the need for one, since this one drove just fine—and without the energy to rake leaves.

  I nudged Edwina off the steps and into the grass. We walked down the driveway, past the Lexus, and across the street.

  At first I didn’t think anyone was going to answer here either. I was just contemplating ringing the bell again when I heard slow steps inside. A few seconds later the door opened. Just enough for a thin nose to stick out below the security chain that was still stretched from the door to the jamb. “Yes?”

  �
�Hi,” I said brightly, “I’m Gina and this is Edwina…”

  “We don’t want any.”

  The door started closing. I stuck my foot in the gap. Luckily the person inside wasn’t strong enough to keep pushing, so the door remained open and my foot didn’t hurt. Much. “I’m not selling anything. I just wanted to ask a question. About your neighbors across the street.”

  “The Thompsons,” the voice said. I thought it was female, but it was hard to be sure, and it was dark inside the house, so I couldn’t see much. “Two children. The mother’s a teacher, the father works downtown. They have a dog named Buddy.”

  “The family that moved,” I said.

  I got the impression that she—she?—squinted at me through the gap. “The Cullinans?”

  I nodded. “Janice and Tara.”

  “Janice died. Going on a year ago now. Or maybe not. It was in the winter. There was snow.”

  Probably more like January or February, then. “I’m sorry.”

  “Tara sold the house last summer. And took Cressie and left.”

  Cressie must be another dog. At least it sounded like one. “I don’t suppose you have any idea how I could get in touch with her? Would the Thompsons have a forwarding address?”

  “Don’t imagine so,” the voice said. “She probably just told the post office where to send her mail.”

  Probably. And they weren’t likely to share that information with me. Although I could contact her that way if I had to. Send a letter to Knoxville, and have the post office forward it to wherever Tara was now. It would take a while, though. “Can I leave you my card? And if you happen to talk to the Thompsons, and they happen to have an address or a phone number for her, could you give me a call?”

  I stuck it into the small gap between the door and the jamb. A small, clawed hand snatched it from between my fingers. “Hold on.”

  The door shut and I heard the lock catch. Guess she wasn’t taking any chances.

  I stayed where I was, and a minute later the door opened again. The same two inches as before. The card reappeared. “Number’s on the back.”