Bonnie seemed to be expecting this reaction. Holding Harper’s gaze, she said, “You start by calling your dad.”
Her words hung in the air between them.
“I never want to talk to him again.” Harper leaned away from her. “He lied to me for years.”
“I know,” Bonnie said. “But he’s the one person who knows everything. He knows this mafia guy personally. He knows his weaknesses. He can help you bring him down.”
There was logic to this but Harper still wasn’t convinced. “My father hates me. Why would he tell me what I need to know?”
“Because you’ll give him no choice.” An uncharacteristic steely edge entered Bonnie’s voice. “I don’t know a lot about lawyers, but I know they have rules for corruption. And I have a feeling he’s broken all of them. Tell him to talk to you or you’ll write every word of this up and put it in the newspaper. He could lose his license.” She gave her a fierce look. “I think your dad knows what a good reporter you are. I think you scare him to death. Use that. Get what you need. And then decide how to weaponize that information to bring your mother’s murderer to justice.”
For a second, Harper was speechless.
“Damn, Bonnie,” she said, when she’d found her voice. “I didn’t know you could be this ruthless.”
She was trying to lighten the mood, but Bonnie didn’t smile. Her face was tight with worry. “Whatever happens, don’t you dare go after him on your own, Harper McClain. Do you hear me? I will never forgive you if you die.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Harper promised, pulling her into a hug.
Even as she said it, though, she wondered if it was true.
Because it suddenly occurred to her that her father might know where she could find Martin Dowell.
17
Just after eight o’clock the next morning, Harper’s phone buzzed on the bedside table. She sat up, pushing her hair out of her eyes groggily. Watery light spilled through the slats of her blinds onto Bonnie, asleep on a pallet on the floor, with Zuzu curled up by her feet in a silver-gray circle.
Grabbing the phone before it could wake her, Harper slipped out of bed and padded barefoot down the hall before answering. “McClain.”
“You fucking bitch.” The voice was furious and had a New York accent.
“Good morning to you, too, whoever you are,” she said, yawning.
“Don’t you good-morning me, you piece of garbage. I’m going to sue you and that rag you work for until you can’t afford to eat. Do you hear me? You are done. Your career is ova.”
The accent, the spitting rage. Suddenly Harper knew who she was talking to.
“Stuart,” she said, pleasantly. “I guess you’ve seen the paper.”
“Seen it? I’ve already sent it to our lawyers. How dare you imply that Cara or any of them had anything to do with Xavier’s death?” he demanded. “That’s unfounded slander. I’m going to sue you for libel so fast your head’ll spin.”
“You’ll be wasting your money. Nothing in that article is untrue.” Her lack of panic seemed to make him angrier.
“Bullshit. You know what you implied,” he snarled. “You’re all the same. Bunch of vipers. I told them not to talk to you. But they trusted you. And you threw it back in their faces.”
There was truth in that, and it stung, but she kept her voice even. “I simply wrote what I was told by the police and the coroner. You have no case.”
“Well, your boss will be hearing from my lawyer today.” He hung up.
With a sigh, Harper headed to the kitchen. There was no way she was getting back to sleep now.
Morning light poured softly through the window above the sink, making all the surfaces gleam. Bonnie had insisted on scrubbing everything before going to bed. Even the mark on the ceiling where the spoon hit it was barely visible.
Before she made a pot of coffee, Harper texted a warning to Baxter.
Screaming call from Xavier’s manager. Says he’s going to sue us.
She was pouring her first cup when the editor’s reply came through.
Tell him I said bring it.
Yawning, Harper carried her mug out onto the small porch, brushing the leaves off the seat of the whitewashed chair. It was cool but not cold. The breeze helped clear her head.
She and Bonnie had stayed up until after three, talking. By the time she’d gone to bed, Harper knew just what she was going to say to her father when she called him.
As she took a sip of coffee, it occurred to her that she might as well do it now, and get it over with.
Taking her phone from the arm of the chair, she scrolled slowly to his number. Her thumb hovered over his name for a long time.
Gritting her teeth, she pressed the call button.
His phone rang four times before voice mail kicked in. When she heard his familiar voice say, “Hello, this is Peter McClain…” her heart twisted.
She cleared her throat, waiting for the beep. When the time came, the words came out too fast and too nervous. “Hey … Dad. It’s Harper. I need to talk to you about something important. Could you give me a call back as soon as possible? Thanks.”
Hanging up with a palpable sense of relief, she dropped the phone on the arm of the chair.
There’d never really been a time when she and her father were close. He had been away working a lot when she was young. His absence had made her relationship with her mother more important. And her death even more wrenching.
In the immediate aftermath of the murder, he’d tried to be a parent to her. He’d rented a house in the suburbs and moved her into it from her grandmother’s house outside the city. But it had backfired. The house was miles from Bonnie. Far from her grandmother. At twelve, bereaved and lonely, she’d found herself isolated.
When he tried to introduce her to the paralegal he’d been having an affair with before her mother died, Harper withdrew further. One night when he was working late, she’d called a taxi. She used the money he’d left for a pizza to pay the fare to her grandmother’s house.
“I’m never going back,” she’d announced, when her grandmother opened the door to find her standing on the porch with a suitcase.
She never lived with her father again. Within months, he’d taken a job in Connecticut, married the paralegal, and moved away. Leaving her an orphan of sorts at thirteen.
After that she was raised by her grandmother, Bonnie’s mother, and about half the Savannah police force.
At the time she’d felt sorry for herself that she hadn’t had a “normal” family. But, then, other kids didn’t get picked up from camp in a patrol car, blue lights flashing. They didn’t get to ride on the traffic cops’ motorcycles on the way home from school.
The thought made her smile, and she pulled her feet up onto the chair. Her eyes drifted shut. She must have drifted off, because when she opened her eyes, Bonnie was walking out on the porch barefoot with a cup of coffee.
“Christ,” Bonnie said, hoarsely, “how late did we stay up?”
Neither of them felt much like cooking, so they walked twenty minutes down the beach to a local joint called The Breakfast Club.
For some reason, the churning ocean didn’t feel like Harper’s enemy today. She didn’t mind the hiss of the waves, or the mournful cries of the seabirds overhead. In fact, looking out at the container ships plowing determinedly through the rough seas was oddly comforting.
The restaurant was packed and they had to wait twenty minutes for a table. They didn’t talk much until they were ensconced in a booth and had placed their orders. Even then they avoided serious subjects, focusing instead on Bonnie’s work—she had been painting a new collection, and she was excited about it.
“It’s mostly little kids dressed as royalty, holding stuffed birds and wearing crowns I make myself,” she explained. Seeing Harper’s blank face, she pulled out her phone to show her. In the painting, a rosy-cheeked girl stared into the distance, her face expressionless. On her head was a crown of willow branches painted gold. O
n her arm, she held a small, hooded hawk.
“Where did you find the kids?” Harper asked, scrolling through several photos of similar paintings.
“Friends.” Bonnie leaned over to see which one she was looking at. “I just take their pictures holding a stuffed animal and make up the rest.”
“These are so striking,” Harper marveled. “I like these even more than the angels you did last year.”
“They’re sure selling better. I’ve only finished four and I’ve already sold them. I’m raising my prices. I should have painted kids before. People are throwing money at me. If this keeps up I can stop bartending.” Bonnie’s eyes were bright with excitement.
Some part of Harper didn’t want her to leave the Library. She loved going there after work for a drink and decompression. But it was Bonnie’s dream to live off her art and the classes she taught at the art college. And yet, ever since Bonnie had left Savannah when they were teenagers to go to Boston to study, Harper had been secretly afraid that her work would take her away someday.
The thought was melancholy, and she was relieved when a waitress appeared at the table, bearing plates of food, and providing a natural end to that conversation.
An hour later they were walking back down the beach, full of food and talking about where Harper could live if she moved back to the city.
“Is your old place rented out right now?” Bonnie asked, bending over to pick up a pale clamshell.
“Must be.” Even as she said it, though, Harper hoped she was wrong. Ever since Myra had reminded her she’d have to move out soon, she’d let herself dream that she could go back to East Jones Street.
She knew it was a fantasy. The place had to be rented out. The comfort she’d taken from the walk faded, replaced by a churning anxiety that made her regret that last cup of coffee.
The two of them were largely alone on the vast expanse of windswept beach. The gloomy day hadn’t enticed many people out. The only other person she could see was a man on a wooden footbridge over the dunes. There was something familiar about him, but she couldn’t place it. He was tall, his spine as straight and true as a gun barrel. He had short, graying hair.
She squinted at him, trying to make out his features. It bugged her that she couldn’t remember how she knew him. She’d seen him before …
Her breath caught in her throat.
Forgetting about Bonnie, she began to run toward him.
“Harper, what the hell?” Bonnie shouted, but she didn’t look back.
For a brief moment—fleeting but real—the man caught her eye, and then he turned and walked away, his long stride carrying him quickly across the bridge.
Harper tried to speed up, but her feet sank into the soft sand. It was like running in a dream. “Wait!” she called, but the man kept moving.
Behind her, she could hear Bonnie’s labored breathing and occasional curses as she struggled to follow her. The sand grew deeper as they neared the dunes. With every step they sank to the ankle. By the time Harper reached the footbridge she was sweating and breathless.
The man was nowhere to be seen. On the other side, a row of grand houses with tall corner columns and wide, wraparound balconies stood imperiously. It was Admiral’s Row.
They must have walked right by it earlier but she hadn’t looked up.
A sandy footpath angled past the tall hedges. It was empty as far as Harper could see.
“Harper, what is going on?” Bonnie had reached the steps, red-faced and panting.
“It’s nothing. I saw someone I have to talk to.” Harper was already in motion, hurrying down the ramp on the other side. “I have to find him. Stay here.”
The path from the beach to Admiral’s Row sloped gently upward. At first it was packed sand, but as it neared the street, it was roughly paved. She passed the curved gate into number 6 without slowing.
Her lungs were burning. Her hair clung to the sweat on her cheeks as she followed the narrow sidewalk between the houses until she emerged into the lane.
There, she stopped so abruptly Bonnie nearly ran into her.
More TV vans had parked at the grassy edge of the short lane. Several had their engines running. One satellite dish was raised, and Harper saw an unfamiliar reporter talking to the camera, holding a microphone to his mouth as he gestured at the white house behind him. Other reporters were standing in a cluster between the vans, talking and looking at their phones.
There was no sign at all of the gray-haired man.
“Who are we looking for?” Bonnie asked, breathlessly.
Harper gave the gathered faces one last, searching look and gave up, turning to her.
“It was him,” she said. “The man who called me.”
Bonnie’s eyebrows drew together. “Which man?”
“The man.” Harper’s voice sharpened with frustration. “The one who told me about Martin Dowell.”
Bonnie looked baffled. “How do you even know what he looks like? You’ve only talked on the phone.”
She’d never told Bonnie about that moment outside her apartment last year. She’d never told anyone except Luke.
“I saw him once,” she said. “Just for a second. Standing outside my place on Jones Street the day he called me.”
Bonnie stared. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I was never certain it was really him. But I just saw the same man again and it can’t be a coincidence. He’s looking for me.” Again she scoured the lane for any sign of him. “He was standing on the footbridge, watching us walk down the beach. We have to find him.”
“Okay.…” Bonnie still didn’t sound entirely convinced, but she was going with it. “What does he look like?”
“He’s tall, over six feet. Maybe fifty-five years old. Gray hair. He was wearing a leather jacket.” Harper gestured at her shoulders. “He had a mustache…” Her voice faded as she tried to recall whether the man she’d just seen really had any facial hair. He’d been too far away, and her view of him too fleeting. Her mind might already be filling in the gaps.
There was no time for this. “Come on,” she said, motioning impatiently for Bonnie to follow.
The two of them half ran down the narrow lane. It was nearly midday, but thick clouds held back the February sun, casting the street in gloom.
There was no sign of him as they ran by the nursing home and followed the street around a bend. Here the houses were smaller, with neat gravel driveways beneath huge trees with branches that touched across the road.
Finally, the road ended, intersecting with another winding street lined with bungalows.
Harper turned left and right, uncertain which way to go now. Everything looked perfectly normal. A woman in a long cardigan was walking a Boston terrier. A guy in his twenties jogged past in skintight shorts, eyes hidden behind wraparound sunglasses.
There was no point in going farther. They’d just be randomly searching the island for a man who didn’t want to be found.
She’d lost him.
18
Harper stared down the road. “I can’t believe I let him get away.”
The two of them stood on the sidewalk, as the woman with the dog walked by without giving them a glance.
“Maybe it wasn’t him,” Bonnie suggested.
Harper thought about what she’d seen—the way the man paused to look at her, the recognition on his face. His smooth, controlled retreat.
“It was him.” Swearing under her breath, she kicked the root of an oak tree hard enough to make her foot ache. “I’m sorry to drag you here for nothing.”
The two of them turned and trudged back the way they’d come.
“What happened the first time you saw him?” Bonnie gave her a puzzled look.
Slowly at first, and then faster, Harper told her about that day. A killer had come to her door and she’d knocked him unconscious with a baseball bat. Only the police arriving and taking the bat from her had kept him alive.
She’d been standing on the p
orch, still in shock when she saw the man across the street, eyes as steady as the horizon. Unfazed by what he’d just seen her do.
A tour bus rattled by, blocking him from her sight. When it passed, he’d disappeared. Just like today.
“So much was going on back then, I was never completely certain I hadn’t imagined him,” she confessed. “Besides, there was no way to make sure it was him—I just felt it. Like I did today.”
Bonnie nodded, as if that made perfect sense. “Who do you think he is?”
Harper answered without hesitation. “Someone involved in the case. State police, maybe. Or FBI.”
They were passing the nursing home now. She could see the TV vans ahead.
“You’ll find him.” Bonnie looked thoughtful. “Maybe he didn’t want to talk to you today because you weren’t alone.”
It was a good point. He wasn’t exactly an extrovert.
At least now Harper knew he was still alive. Still out there. And closer than she’d realized.
For the first time, Bonnie noticed the TV vans. As she took in the satellite dishes, and the station emblems, she took in a breath. “Oh my God, is this where Xavier Rayne lived?”
Harper tilted her head at number 6. “The one at the end.” As she did, she noticed there were three cars parked outside: The old-model Jeep and the convertible sports car had been there every time she’d visited. The third car was a black Toyota Prius. That one she hadn’t seen before. Thinking she’d make note of its license number, she felt in her pockets for her notepad, but she’d forgotten to pick one up when she left the house. The absence made her feel naked.
“I need paper,” she muttered, mostly to herself.
“You can borrow some of mine.” The voice came from behind them.
Jon Graff walked up and held out a battered notebook. She stepped back, instinctively.
“Loved your story this morning,” he said. “Couldn’t have written it better myself.”
Harper fixed him with a look. “Did you steal it line for line again?”
“Only the best parts. You’re a little wordy.” His smile widened, revealing nicotine-stained teeth. “So, you finally saw through Cara’s act.”
Revolver Road Page 14
