Harper Harlow Mystery 19 - Ghostly Endeavor

by Lily Harper Hart

  “His poor wife is a murderer,” Zander pointed out.

  “Still, it’s sad.”

  “It’s definitely sad,” Harper agreed. “Zander and I were the ones who found Cassie’s body right after we closed on the property.”

  “No way.” Shelly’s mouth went slack. “Are you kidding?”

  Harper shook her head. “We were out traveling the grounds, planning out some landscaping changes, and she was over by the storage shed.” Harper didn’t feel bad spreading the information. It was hardly something that could be kept quiet and half the town was already aware of the circumstances regarding the body discovery.

  “People are saying she was raped, but they’re keeping it quiet.” Shelly’s voice was low. “They’re afraid.”

  Harper immediately shook her head. “That’s not true. She was fully clothed and the medical examiner says there were no signs of sexual assault.”

  Shelly’s shoulders drooped. “Oh.” She almost looked disappointed. She flicked her eyes to an approaching Susie. “Harper and Zander found Cassie’s body.”

  “Is that so?” Susie’s tone was cold despite her smile. “How terrible for you.”

  Harper shrugged. “We own a cemetery now. I think bodies go with the territory ... although likely not in this manner.”

  “Definitely not,” Susie agreed. “Do you know anything? I mean ... should we be afraid? Everybody is worried we have a predator on the loose.”

  This was the part Harper had to be careful about. She couldn’t share the information that they were likely looking for a female killer. It would spread like wildfire and complicate Jared’s investigation. She couldn’t be part of that. Still, she wanted to open the conversation to input from them. “Jared thinks it was a personal attack. He thinks Cassie knew her attacker and it wasn’t a random thing. Like ... we’re definitely not dealing with a serial killer or anything.”

  “No?” Susie cocked her head. “I guess that’s good.”

  “It’s definitely good,” Shelly agreed. “We don’t want a serial killer hunting in Whisper Cove. This is supposed to be a safe town.”

  Given the number of bodies she’d stumbled over in the past two years alone, Harper might’ve taken issue with the statement under different circumstances. “I think, for the most part, it is a safe town.”

  “What about Jason Thurman?” Susie asked. “Is he a suspect? I mean ... I know you’re friendly with him. People say, when he came back to town, he wanted to date you. Apparently, he’s admitted that. Your cop put a stop to that, though. Somehow he ended up dating Cassie instead.”

  Harper recognized exactly what Susie was doing. The other woman was trying to share information ... but not act like she was tattling at the same time. Her goal was to see Harper’s reaction.

  “Jason and Cassie were only dating for a few weeks,” Harper replied casually. “He’s been questioned, told Jared and Mel everything he knows, but he’s not a likely suspect because they’d only been dating for a few weeks.”

  “Everybody was so relieved when Jason and Cassie started seeing each other,” Shelly volunteered. “It made being around her less ... uncomfortable.”

  Harper frowned. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  Shelly was clearly taken aback. “Oh, just that Cassie had a certain reputation.”

  “And what reputation was that?”

  Shelly looked to Susie for guidance. There was clearly a pecking order between the women.

  “Just that Cassie liked to go after married men,” Susie replied dryly, her distaste in the topic evident. “She didn’t care if the men were taken. She only cared that there might be some money there. She made a habit of flirting with everybody’s husbands ... and right in front of them.”

  “She flirted with Susie’s ex,” Shelly said. “Everybody thinks they had an affair, although Cassie denied it.”

  “Is that so?” Harper planted her gaze on Susie, suspicion niggling at the back of her brain. “I didn’t realize Howie cheated on you.”

  “Howard,” Susie corrected in a harsh tone. “Nobody called him Howie after middle school.”

  That wasn’t how Harper remembered it, but she offered up a polite smile and nod all the same.

  “Howard and I grew apart. There was no infidelity.” Susie straightened her shoulders and made a sniffing sound. “Cassie couldn’t have lured Howard away even if she tried.”

  To Harper, it felt as if Susie was protesting just a little too much. She knew better than to push the woman, though. Then all the other women would clam up. Instead, she had to play the game. “I can’t imagine Howard even looking at Cassie when he was married to you.” She feigned confusion. “I mean ... that makes zero sense.”

  “Zero,” Susie agreed. “Sometimes, when you get into a marriage, things change as people mature. Things don’t always stay the same. You haven’t been in it long enough to recognize the phenomenon.”

  “Probably not,” Harper acknowledged, doing her best to tamp down her rampant irritation.

  “One day you will realize it, though,” Susie added. “Just because you think you’re going to be married forever, that doesn’t mean you will be. You’ll see with Jared. Mark my words.”

  Harper sipped her wine, anger growing. There was only one thing she could say. “Probably not, but thanks for the tip.”

  “IT’S GETTING LATE.” JARED PAUSED BY the front window long enough to move the curtains and peer out. “They’re not back yet.”

  From his spot on the couch, Shawn eyed the pacing detective with a mixture of amusement and bafflement. “They’ve only been gone an hour and a half.”

  “I know.” Jared let the curtain drop and straightened. “I’m just checking.”

  Shawn ran his tongue over his teeth before reaching for his beer, taking a long pull before responding. “I don’t want to tell you your business,” he started.

  “But you will.”

  “It’s more that I’m going to give you a bit of unsolicited advice. You can’t turn into one of those crazy husbands who demands to know where his wife is at all times.”

  Jared balked. “That’s not what I’m doing.” He crossed to the couch and flopped into the spot next to Shawn. “I’m just ... worried.”

  “Because Harper is out with Zander?”

  “Oh, please. If I worried about that I wouldn’t get a lick of sleep. That’s not why I’m antsy.”

  “So, what’s the reason?”

  “There’s a killer on the loose.”

  “A killer who specifically targeted one woman, right? Why would Harper be in danger under those circumstances?”

  “Because she’s Harper. She always finds trouble.”

  “Why else?”

  Jared shrugged. “Because she’s been poking her nose into this case, and in obvious fashion.” He angled himself to meet Shawn’s gaze. “Did you hear what they did today?”

  “I heard Zander’s version of it. I’m sure it wasn’t quite as harmless as he made it out. That still doesn’t explain why you’re worked up.”

  “The truth?”

  Shawn bobbed his head. “Always.”

  “The truth is, I’m as bothered by this case as Harper. That father, that John guy, is horrible. I don’t understand how people just looked the other way when he was verbally abusing his wife and daughter on a regular basis. It’s not like it was a one-time thing either. This went on for years, decades really, and nobody did a thing.”

  “Zander and I talked about that a bit.” Shawn chose his words carefully. “It’s hard to look at a situation like this from the perspective of an adult when Harper and Zander normalized it as kids.”

  “Oh, I’m not angry at them.” Jared made a dismissive motion with his hand. “I get why they didn’t do anything. It started happening when they were kids, and it sounds like John terrorized the neighborhood kids on top of everything else. I want to know why the adults didn’t do anything.”

  “You could ask Mel.”

&nbs
p; “Yeah, well, I’m afraid to ask Mel in case I don’t like the answer.” Jared slouched lower on the couch. “I respect my partner. I love him in fact. I just ... really wish he would’ve done something about this before it got to this stage.”

  “It sounds to me as if there was nothing Mel could do.”

  “There’s always something you can do.”

  “Not always.” Shawn took another sip of beer. “Before I owned my own business, I worked at a gym down in the city. I was interested in learning how to operate my own gym eventually, but I obviously had to save up money for that.

  “At this other gym, there was a woman who came in to work out,” he continued. “She had a regular routine. She would do forty-five minutes on the elliptical and then ten minutes punching the heavy bag in the weights area. This went on, seven days a week, for a year.

  “She wasn’t friendly. She didn’t smile. She didn’t make an effort to talk to the other people. Finally, I asked the owner what her deal was and he told me. Her husband was abusive — like John — and he insisted this woman keep in shape. That’s why she did the elliptical. The heavy bag was for when he inevitably snapped, which they all believed was likely.”

  Jared frowned. “Shouldn’t somebody have stepped in?”

  “That was my response. I was bothered by it, to the point where I finally talked to her. I offered help, a way for her to get out. She told me to mind my own business. I tried a few more times and then gave up.”

  “Is the moral of this story that you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped?” Jared asked ruefully. “If so, I’ve heard plenty of that from Mel. He almost sounds as if he’s rationalizing his own inaction.”

  “And that frustrates you.”

  “Yup. He shouldn’t have to explain himself to me. I feel judgmental all the same.”

  “I think that’s human nature.”

  “I guess.” Jared rubbed his forehead. “This whole thing has my stomach spewing acid. I can’t put my finger on why, though. I just ... don’t like it.”

  “And yet you have to swallow it,” Shawn mused. “That’s how it was for me at that gym ... right up until the point when the woman didn’t come in for two days in a row. That’s when I found out there’d been an incident.”

  Jared sighed. “Her husband killed her, didn’t he?”

  “Nope. She killed the husband when he finally decided to move on her. She was questioned for two days and not charged. When she started coming back to the gym, she smiled at everybody and became friendly with all. She even started dating my boss.”

  Jared worked his jaw. “That story didn’t end where I thought it would. It wasn’t some tragic tale of not being able to help a woman.”

  “Nope. It was a triumphant tale about a woman who managed to take care of herself despite all the odds. She always could. She knew exactly what she was doing.”

  Understanding dawned on Jared. “I get the point of the story. You want me to stop worrying about Harper.”

  Shawn laughed. “I don’t expect you to stop worrying. I expect you to remember she can take care of herself.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Jared leaned forward to snag his beer, his heart skipping a beat when the power went out. “What the ... ?”

  Next to him on the couch, Shawn shifted so he could look at the window. “Is it storming?”

  “No. It’s not even windy.”

  “Maybe it’s a maintenance thing.”

  “Maybe.” Jared cursed when he stood and slammed his shin into the coffee table. “Well, this is a bummer.”

  “Do you have a generator?”

  “It’s on order. It should be installed in about four weeks. There’s a backlog.”

  “Well, that doesn’t help us tonight.”

  “Definitely not.” Jared returned to the window and moved the curtain, his heart threatening to leap out of his throat and run screaming through the night when a ghostly face appeared on the other side of the glass. “Holy—”

  Before he could finish responding, the ghost opened her mouth — because it was a woman — and started screaming.

  Shawn clamped his hands over his ears, horrified. “What is that?”

  Jared scampered away from the glass. “Nothing good.”

  14

  FOURTEEN

  “Well, that was a big waste of time,” Harper complained as she walked out to her car with Zander shortly before ten.

  “I thought it was fun.” Zander didn’t open the passenger side door. Instead, he fixed his best friend with an imperceptible look. “Are you okay?”

  Harper blinked several times and shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Because all those people in there are the same people we hated in high school.”

  “I didn’t hate all of them,” Harper hedged, suddenly uncomfortable. “I just ... didn’t like them.”

  “Okay.” It was rare for Zander to be the serious one, but better than anybody else he knew what Harper went through in high school. That was one of the reasons they’d bonded so completely growing up. “It’s okay to hold a grudge.”

  Harper stilled. “I don’t hold grudges.”

  “I do. It’s fun. It keeps my skin looking fresh and pretty.”

  That nudged a smile out of Harper. She folded her arms across her chest and studied her friend’s face. “Doesn’t it bother you that they treated you like crap in high school and suddenly can’t get enough of you?”

  Zander shook his head. “No. Do you want to know why?”

  “Actually, I do.”

  “Part of the reason they didn’t like us is because we were different. I was gay in a small town that didn’t have a lot of experience with gay people. You saved people’s lives and there were whispers about ghosts. Teenagers don’t like different. They like the same.

  “Do you know what happens when you become an adult, though?” he continued. “You learn that different is better. You have new experiences and realize everything being the same is boring and if you don’t embrace those new experiences then you’ll lose out on the chance at something fabulous.

  “You would’ve lost out on Jared, for example, if you wouldn’t have opened yourself up to a change. I would’ve lost out on Shawn if I hadn’t grown a little and let go of the fear. Those people in there haven’t grown to be good individuals. They have let go of the fear, though.”

  Harper scuffed her shoe against the pavement. “I was kind of jealous,” she admitted after a beat. “They were all over you.”

  “That’s because it’s vogue to have a gay best friend now. Television tells us that.”

  Harper’s lips quirked. “You were my best friend first. I don’t like them trying to steal you.”

  “You can’t steal a person. I believe you’re the one who told me that when I was melting down because you were spending so much time with Jared and I felt neglected. I didn’t realize what you really meant when you told me that until I fell in love with Shawn.”

  “And what did I really mean?” Harper was honestly curious about his answer.

  “That you and I are joined for life. Here.” He touched the space above his heart. “Nothing can ever break the bond we have. Loving Jared and Shawn only means we have more people to love. In loving them, we don’t love each other any less.”

  Harper felt tears pricking the back of her eyes. “You’re right about me not liking those women,” she admitted. “They all thought we would be able to give them the gruesome details regarding Cassie’s death. They didn’t care about her — and it wasn’t just the husband-flirting — they look at Cassie as a thing instead of a person.”

  “And how do you look at her?”

  Harper shrugged. “As someone who needed help.”

  “And you’re angry at yourself for never giving her that help.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “You can’t let this break you.” He moved around the car so he was standing directly in front of her. “How many times have I told you that guilt is
a useless emotion?”

  “Quite a few times.”

  “Well, it’s still true. We can’t change what has happened. We can only move forward.”

  “Yeah.” Harper leaned into him and briefly rested her head against Zander’s chest. Their bond truly was unbreakable. She’d never doubted that. When she pulled back there was an impish smile on her face. “You realize you said you love Jared a few minutes ago, right?”

  “I believe I said you love him.”

  “No, the way you phrased it insinuated you love him.”

  Zander was quiet for a beat and then sighed. “Is that what you need to hear?”

  “I don’t need to hear it. I want to hear it.”

  “But you’ve been antsy about the fights Jared and I have been engaging in since the honeymoon. It’s as if you’re afraid the bottom is going to drop out or something.”

  Harper hated being put on the spot. She couldn’t drag her eyes from Zander’s somber orbs, though. “I don’t know. I’ve just never been this happy. Sometimes I wonder if I’m going to lose this happiness somehow. Like ... life can’t be this good forever.”

  Zander smirked. “You’ve had me your whole life and it doesn’t get any better than that. How can you doubt it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t always doubt it. Sometimes, though, when Jared and I are laughing I have this flash. I wonder what would happen if I lost him.”

  “You won’t lose him.”

  “I know but ... .”

  “You seemingly lost Quinn,” Zander surmised. “I get it. The Quinn situation was different. He turned out to be a world-class jerk and you never truly loved him. The scar of what happened with him remains, though. You don’t have to be afraid. Jared is not Quinn. He will never leave you. He’s far too loyal ... and in love.”

  “Oh, you really do love Jared.”

  Zander flicked her ear. “If you need to hear it, I’ll say it … again. Just one more time, though.” He took a bracing breath. “I love Jared. It’s not just that I love what he’s done for you, or how safe he’s made you feel, but I also love him. He’s brave ... and handsome ... and one of the best people I’ve ever met.”