Wicked Ghosts_A Harper Harlow and Ivy Morgan Mystery

by Lily Harper Hart

  “I think so.” Ivy returned to the business at hand, tilting her head to the side as she scanned the expansive area in front of them. “In fact, I think it’s right over here.”

  Ivy shuffled forward, her eyes keen. She moved slowly, deliberately, until she suddenly bolted forward with a cry of discovery and leaned over to stare at the base of a huge bush.

  “What is it?” Harper was instantly on alert as she moved closer.

  “Look.” Ivy was smart enough not to touch the pink boots poking out from beneath the foliage. “We found them.”

  “Holy crap.” Harper was beyond impressed. “I can’t believe you found them.”

  “I can’t believe it either.”

  Harper jolted at the sound of the new voice, glaring at the ghost who picked that moment to pop into existence on her left. “You scared the crap out of me.”

  “Yeah, Tabitha, you should be more careful when sneaking up on people,” Ivy supplied.

  Harper turned a considering look to Ivy. “You can hear her?”

  “Yeah, I … .” Realization washed over Ivy as she straightened. “I can see and hear her. We’re not having a séance. How is that possible?”

  “I knew you could always do it.” Harper was triumphant. “You were holding yourself back before. You weren’t really thinking about ways to hold yourself back this time so you succeeded without trying.”

  “Oh, well, that’s … neat.” Ivy said the words, but she wasn’t sure if she actually believed them. Her expression was hard to read when she turned her full attention to Tabitha. “What are you doing out here? Were you following us?”

  Tabitha shook her head. “I followed him.”

  “Who?”

  “Him.”

  Ivy furrowed her brow and repeated the obvious question. “Who?”

  Tabitha lifted her ghostly arm and pointed to a spot at the edge of the clearing. “Him.”

  Ivy followed her finger, her heart seizing when she caught sight of the dark figure standing with his arms crossed. Logan Butler, a smug look on his face, openly glared at Harper and Ivy from across the way.

  “Oh, my … .” Harper’s heart rate picked up a notch.

  “Stay calm,” Ivy whispered even as panic threatened to overwhelm her. Logan was close, but he wasn’t close enough to touch either one of them. They had that going for them. They could still run. They might even escape. Plus, well, they outnumbered him. He might be big and strong, but neither woman was a stranger to a physical fight. “What are you doing here, Logan?”

  “I was about to ask you the same thing,” Logan replied dryly. “Then I realized you were talking to thin air and I decided to watch for a bit. Are you guys crazy or something?”

  “Or something,” Ivy replied, squaring her shoulders. “You’re quite a ways away from your house.”

  “You are, too.”

  “Actually, I’m not all that far from my house,” Ivy countered. “You, on the other hand, shouldn’t be out here.”

  “And why is that?” Logan took a deliberate step away from the tree and stared down Ivy. “Why shouldn’t I be out here?”

  “I think Jared and Jack were right when they theorized he was the obvious suspect.” Harper meant to whisper the words, but they came out loud and clear, causing Logan to furrow his brow.

  “I’m a suspect, huh?” He didn’t look happy at the notion.

  Ivy bobbed her head. “You definitely are.”

  “Well, I guess it’s good I followed you out here then, huh?”

  “And why is that?”

  “I would hate to disappoint the cops.”

  Several things happened in the next moment. Logan took another step in their direction at the exact same instant Ivy’s inner danger alarm buzzed in earnest. Even though she had no idea why – she even internally acknowledged it could be a very bad idea – Ivy grabbed Harper’s arm and dragged her to the ground instead of breaking into a run.

  Harper fought the effort. “What are you doing?”

  “Get down!” Ivy ordered, putting her arm over Harper’s head as she tugged her toward the ground.

  “What are you doing?” Logan was confused and slowed his approach, as if they were playing a game and he was worried they’d figured out a way to win without telling him. “Why aren’t you running?”

  Ivy didn’t answer, instead pressing her eyes shut when a gunshot filled the air. Ivy risked a glance at Logan to see if he’d somehow drawn a weapon she hadn’t seen at first glance, but the young man was already dropping to his knees, his eyes filled with stunned disbelief as a very noticeable stain spread across the front of his flannel shirt.

  “What the … ?” Harper was dumbfounded as she watched the man pitch forward. He bounced once before falling prone. He didn’t move again. “I don’t understand.”

  “He’s not alone,” Ivy said, raising her chin as she stared at the woods. “Someone else is with him … and he’s the one who killed Tabitha.”

  “Oh, well, great. That’s exactly what we need.”

  20

  Twenty

  “Did you hear that?”

  Jack and Jared stood next to Ivy’s car on the road between the highway and her house when the unmistakable sound of a gunshot rang out.

  Both men jerked in the direction of the forest when they heard the noise, twin doses of fear shooting through them.

  “Someone is out there.” Jack managed to hold it together … but just barely. “Ivy and Harper are out there and they’re not alone.”

  “Then we have to get out there, too.” Jared didn’t want to panic, but he was close to melting down. “We can’t afford to wait for Max any longer.”

  Jack nodded, resigned. “I know. I just hope this isn’t a mistake. He told me roughly where to go and I think I know the place he’s talking about but if I’m wrong … .”

  “Don’t be wrong.” Jared was succinct as his eyes locked with Jack’s. “Harper and Ivy are both out there and they need us. Don’t be wrong.”

  Jack pulled himself together and nodded. “Let’s go. Max will know enough to follow once he gets here.”

  “Then hopefully one of us will find them.”

  HARPER WASN’T USED TO people shooting at her. Even though she found trouble on a regular basis, it didn’t generally end with people shooting at her. When she risked a look at Ivy, she found the woman looked decidedly calm and she couldn’t understand it.

  “What are we supposed to do?” Harper exploded.

  “Survive,” Ivy said grimly as she rolled away from Harper and landed on her knees, keeping her body close to the ground as she scanned the area she believed the gunshot originated from.

  At first she didn’t see anything, the woods quiet and peaceful like it had been seconds before Logan Butler showed up and ruined their afternoon. Speaking of Logan … . Ivy flicked her eyes to the young man and watched him for a long beat. There was absolutely no movement and she was pretty sure he was dead.

  “Is he breathing?” Harper asked.

  Ivy shook her head. “He’s gone.”

  She was so matter-of-fact that Harper couldn’t stop herself from being flabbergasted. “What does that mean for us? We thought Logan was the hunter. He just turned into the hunted.”

  Ivy was unsure how to respond. “I have no idea. Maybe one of the other guys from the house followed him.”

  “Or maybe you’re looking in the wrong place,” Nelson Delgado announced as he smoothly stepped from the bushes on Ivy’s right and caused her to gasp.

  Ivy instinctively moved to insert herself in the spot between Harper and Nelson, but Harper had the same idea and they collided. Under different circumstances, the two women would’ve laughed at their antics. Since Nelson had a gun in his hand and a cold look on his face – and they had a dead man twenty feet away – there was nothing funny about the situation.

  “I don’t understand.” Ivy saw no reason to lie as she squared her shoulders and stared down Nelson. “It was you?”

&
nbsp; “What’s to understand, Ivy?” Nelson was calm as he rested the butt of the rifle on the ground, his hand wrapped around the barrel, and used it as an anchor as he swayed back and forth as he leaned on it. If Ivy didn’t know better, she would think he was drunk. Something else was going on with him and she wasn’t sure what.

  “Why would you kill Tabitha?”

  “Tabitha was a … necessary end,” Nelson replied, using his thumb to scratch at the corner of his mouth. “I had a very specific plan and to make it work, I needed someone to die. I didn’t specifically pick Tabitha, if that’s what you’re wondering. She happened to be the one present the night I put my plan into action so … bye, bye, Tabitha.”

  “I remember now,” Tabitha’s spirit said on a long exhale. “I remember everything.”

  Harper shot her a withering look. “It’s a bit late for that. If you’d remembered four hours ago, that would’ve been great.”

  “No joke,” Ivy groused.

  Nelson furrowed his brow as he glanced between the two women. He obviously couldn’t see Tabitha and thought Ivy and Harper were behaving out of sorts. “Excuse me?”

  Ivy waved him off. “Never mind. Go back to Tabitha and the night of the party. Did you lure her away?”

  “Lure?” Nelson knit his eyebrows as he debated the question. “She was so drunk I didn’t have to lure her anywhere. She was slurring her words and she kept tipping over and falling. I didn’t even have to ask her to come with me. I simply put a hand on her arm and led her away.”

  “But why?” Ivy remained confused. “How did you benefit from killing Tabitha?” Something terrible occurred to her. “Were you always this way? I have to say, if you were, you hid it well. I remember hanging out with you at the park for big picnics and stuff when I was a kid and I was never afraid of you. If you were always like this, you did a masterful job of hiding it.”

  “I don’t know what ‘it’ is you’re referring to, but I have no interest in hurting people if I don’t have to.” Nelson’s tone was unnaturally reasonable. “What sprang up Friday – and I guess today, too – was necessary.”

  Ivy was baffled. “How?”

  “I need quiet, Ivy,” Nelson explained. “I have a brain tumor. No joke. I need quiet because I don’t have a lot of time left. The doctor said the calmer I was, the quieter my environment, the easier it was for me to relax, the better. Stress is my enemy in this situation.”

  “That’s why you picked the house on the highway,” Ivy mused. “It should’ve been quiet for you there.”

  Nelson bobbed his head. “Exactly. It wasn’t quiet, though. The house next door was empty when I bought mine. It was empty for a full year and a half … and I did very well. My doctor marveled at how well I was doing.

  “You see, my tumor isn’t operable so we can only treat with chemotherapy and rest,” he continued. “I need the rest. I need the quiet. I need a little … peace. Because even if the treatment prolongs my life, the tumor will eventually kill me. I deserve peace before that happens.”

  That explained the swaying, Ivy internally mused. He was having trouble with his balance. The tumor probably caused that. She figured she might be able to use that to her advantage.

  “So you only changed after the house next door was rented,” Ivy surmised. “They were loud and partying all the time and that upset you.”

  “And rightly so.”

  “Did you consider telling them what you were dealing with?” Harper interjected, finding her voice. “Maybe if you told those guys you were sick … .”

  “I told them I was sick and my doctor recommended quiet,” Nelson said, cutting her off. “They didn’t care. They told me to suck it up. They told me to shut up and leave them alone. I called the cops numerous times and complained, but nothing ever came of it.

  “Those men – those boys in men’s clothing, rather – did whatever they wanted and I couldn’t rest properly,” he continued. “When I went to the doctor a month ago, do you know what he told me?”

  “I have no idea,” Ivy replied. “I’m sure you’ll tell us, though.”

  Nelson ignored Ivy’s snarky tone. “He told me I was getting worse. After two years of living with my tumor and having no growth because I was doing exactly what I wanted, those boys moved in and screwed up my routine and suddenly I had growth.”

  Things, however weird, crashed into place for Ivy. “And you blamed those boys.”

  “Who else should I blame?”

  “You have a brain tumor,” Harper pointed out. “It wasn’t going to remain the same size forever.”

  “Maybe not,” Nelson conceded. “It shouldn’t have grown as much as it did in such a short amount of time, though. The doctor marveled at it. Marveled!” His eyes fired with hatred. “Then everything changed. That can’t be a coincidence. The boys did that.”

  “But … .” Harper broke off, chewing on her lip as she cast her eyes in Ivy’s direction.

  “What was the plan?” Ivy asked, taking over. “How did killing Tabitha help you?”

  “I needed those boys out of the house so I could go back to my routine,” Nelson replied, matter-of-fact.

  “Why not just move?” Harper asked.

  “Do you know how expensive it is to fight a brain tumor?” Nelson challenged. “I couldn’t move. I didn’t have the money. They needed to leave. It was my only choice.”

  Ivy’s stomach twisted. “And you thought murder was the way to get them to move?”

  “Oh, don’t look at me that way, Ivy.” Nelson made a tsking sound with his tongue. “I’ve always been fond of you. Even when you were small, I had a special place in my heart for you. Do you want to know why?”

  Ivy’s expression was bland. “Not really.”

  “You were a quiet child,” Nelson continued. “You were quiet and kept to yourself. You never made a ruckus or demanded attention. Your brother Max, for example, was the exact opposite. I always hated him. He was a loud little thing. You, however, were quiet and refined.”

  “That’s not exactly how I remember it,” Ivy said dryly. “I remember being lonely.”

  “That’s not a bad thing.”

  “It felt that way to me.” Ivy ran her tongue over her teeth as she considered how to continue. “I still don’t understand how killing Tabitha benefitted you.”

  “I needed to get those boys out of the house,” Nelson said. “I needed my routine back.”

  “You’ve said that a few times now and it’s still weird,” Harper noted. “How was killing Tabitha going to make that happen?”

  “It was fairly simple. I knew that Tabitha was a recognizable figure in the community. She was the one who wandered away from the party that night … the night I knew I needed to act. It could’ve been anyone. I wasn’t targeting Tabitha.”

  “Oh, well, I’m sure that makes things better,” Ivy drawled.

  “I knew that the police would put it together and realize Tabitha was at the party,” Nelson explained. “I knew once the cops met those boys they would realize they were evil.”

  Ivy flicked her eyes to Logan. “You wanted to frame them for Tabitha’s murder so they would be forced out of the house.”

  “I figured it would only take the loss of one for the entire house to fall,” Nelson said. “I knew Tabitha would be tracked to the house. I knew the kind of shenanigans going on there … the drugs and alcohol … there was a lot of sexual misconduct, too.”

  Given Nelson’s judgmental attitude Ivy knew he probably found all sex abhorrent so she let that one slide. “So you waited until one of the women separated from the pack and then you drew her away. You drove Tabitha’s car and parked it at the edge of the woods.”

  Nelson nodded. “I gave her water to sober her up.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it wasn’t fair if she couldn’t participate in the game.”

  “Game?” Harper hiked up an eyebrow. “What game are you talking about? You chased her through the woods and shot her in the chest.�
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  “She had a chance to escape,” Nelson argued. “It wasn’t murder. I gave her a chance to escape.”

  “It was definitely murder,” Ivy countered, bile rising in her throat. “You hunted her like an animal.”

  “He called out to me a few times,” Tabitha offered, a far-off look on her face. “He kept laughing like a loon, telling me to ‘run, run, run for your life.’ It made it worse. I was so afraid and yet I was also detached from what was happening because I was drunk. It was as if I was an alien in my own body.”

  Harper nodded sympathetically. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Nelson furrowed his brow as he focused on Harper. “I don’t recognize you. You’re not from around here.”

  Ivy wasn’t comfortable with Nelson’s interest in Harper so she cleared her throat to get his attention. “She’s from down south. She’s visiting with her friends. You don’t have to worry about her. She doesn’t even know who you are. Focus on me.”

  Harper recognized right away what Ivy was doing. “Don’t even think about it,” she growled. “We’re in this together.”

  Ivy wasn’t willing to accept that. “Let her go, Nelson.”

  “I can’t let either of you go,” Nelson said, his expression sad. “It’s not my choice. I’m sure you understand that. I knew today when you told me they had fingerprints from the car that I would have to do something.”

  “And you thought following us into the woods would fix things?” Harper challenged.

  Nelson shook his head. “I wasn’t following you. I was following the boy.”

  “Oh.” Ivy pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead and groaned. “Oh.”

  “What?” Harper widened her eyes. “Do you get it? I’m not quite there yet.”

  “Logan followed us,” Ivy supplied. “It doesn’t matter that we were wrong about him killing Tabitha. He’s still a total jackhole and he wanted to hurt us because we were at his house casting aspersions on him. He’s the one who almost killed his sister with a baseball bat. He has issues.