From the kitchen, a small shadow darted toward her.
A sleek, gray tabby rubbed itself against her ankle.
“Hey, Zuzu,” Harper said, bending down to stroke her soft fur. “Did you chase away any burglars today?”
Purring, the cat led her to the kitchen.
She pulled a can from the half-empty cupboard, found the spoon in the dish drainer from that morning and put some tuna in her dish.
As the cat ate, she pulled a bottle of Jameson whiskey from the cupboard and poured a double shot into a water glass.
It had been a long time since she let herself think about Luke.
She’d underestimated how much it would hurt to see him, and not be anything special to him. Just a woman he used to know.
Their conversation had been so normal. They used to have conversations like that all the time. Until they ruined it.
She swallowed the whiskey neat and poured herself another.
One drink wouldn’t be enough. Not if she was going to think about this stuff. There wasn’t enough whiskey in the world.
The night Lieutenant Smith was arrested, Luke had been the one to come to her aid. After Smith shot her, it had been Luke who’d knelt over her body, trying to stop the bleeding.
She could remember every detail of that night. The fear in his voice. His hands trying to hold back the fountain of blood.
After that, though, he’d avoided her for weeks.
Finally, one day, he’d called her.
“I’m sorry for disappearing on you,” he’d said, far too casually. “We need to talk.”
He’d chosen a neutral spot—a bar neither of them frequented regularly. When she walked in and saw him sitting there, a bottle of beer untouched on the table in front of him, she’d felt helpless with longing.
She could tell from the moment she sat down next to him that it was over. But there were things she had to say.
“I wanted to thank you,” she’d said, “for saving my life.”
He’d looked uncomfortable. “You don’t need to thank me. I was doing my job.”
“Like hell you were,” she’d said. “You risked your life for me. At least let me say thank you.”
Their eyes met and she felt the connection between them like a blast of furnace heat.
A muscle in his jaw fluttered—the only sign that he felt it, too.
“I would have been there sooner, but I couldn’t get to my phone,” he’d said, after a long silence. “I got your message too late.”
She wouldn’t let him downplay his role. “You were there when it mattered. I’m only sorry I had to drag you into it. I know it was the last thing you wanted.”
At that, his face hardened. “You getting hurt was the last thing I wanted. It didn’t have to happen. You’re just so damned stubborn…”
Stopping himself, he’d reached for his beer, taking a quick swig.
“Luke, I hope you can understand why I did what I did,” Harper pleaded, lowering her voice to a whisper. “I truly believed I could solve my mother’s murder if I solved that case. I only wish there was some way I could make it up to you for everything I did that hurt you.”
She leaned forward, begging him to understand. Surely anyone who knew her history would see why it meant so much to her. Who wouldn’t push the limits to solve their own mother’s murder?
He’d looked up from his beer then, studying her with those enigmatic eyes—dark blue, like a midnight sky.
“I know you do.” His flat tone shattered her hopes. “But that’s not how things work. Trust doesn’t come back because you want it to. Some things you break can’t be fixed.”
They’d talked for a while after that, and then parted, knowing it was over.
They’d barely spoken again. Until tonight.
Raising the glass to her lips in a swift, economical movement, she downed the second whiskey, waiting as it traced a line of fire down her throat to her heart.
Some of the tension in her body released. She let out a long, shuddering breath.
He’d be working her shift from now on.
Maybe that wasn’t so bad.
Maybe they’d find a way to forgive each other.
But in her heart she knew that was only another dream.
8
The next day, Harper arrived at the newspaper after noon with no story to write.
There’d been a time when she could have called Detective Daltrey and teased a few snippets of information out of her, but those days were over.
After her conversation with Bonnie, she’d hoped Naomi Scott’s father might get in touch, but so far her phone hadn’t rung. She’d tried his home number several times, but her calls went straight to voice mail.
She couldn’t blame him—his only daughter had died the day before. But still.
Dropping her bag next to her desk, she switched on her computer and turned her scanner on low, right as DJ walked into the room from the back hallway.
“Not you again,” he said, cheerily.
Harper ignored this.
“Is Baxter around? Please say no.”
“Okay. No,” he replied, before adding with an apologetic wince, “But she is. She’s in Dells’s office right now. Why? What did you do?”
“Nothing, and that’s the problem.” Harper reached for her coffee. “I haven’t got anything new on River Street. My source didn’t come through.”
“Oh, you’re screwed then,” DJ assured her. “Because she’s been telling everyone the update will be live at one o’clock. Says you’ve got an exclusive with the dad.”
This was worse than she’d thought.
“She’s going to kill me,” Harper said. “The dad stood me up.”
“Ah, bummer.” Giving her a sympathetic glance, DJ turned back to his desk. “RIP Harper. It was a great career while it lasted.”
Harper logged into the system and began searching local websites to see if any other news outlets had something she’d missed. Anything she could substitute instead of the father. But nobody seemed to have anything new. All news on the Scott case had stopped when Wilson Shepherd was arrested last night.
One article on a television website said Shepherd had a history of drug dealing, back in Atlanta. Harper made a note to look into that. It didn’t seem to fit the clean-cut law student he’d always appeared to be.
But that was it—just a line, buried in the middle of an article about his arrest.
The desk phone began ringing insistently, but, absorbed in her research, Harper took her time before finally snatching it from its cradle.
“McClain,” she snapped.
“Miss McClain, this is Gary at the front desk. There’s a man down here who says he needs to talk to you.” He sounded irritated. Gary hated visitors. “His name’s not on the visitors’ list. Now, you know the rules about updating the list with any expected guests. It’s a security issue, Miss McClain. I keep telling you—”
Harper let her head drop back hard against her chair.
“I’m not expecting a visitor, Gary,” she said, cutting him off impatiently. “Who is it?”
“Says his name’s Jerrod Scott. Should I send him away?”
Harper stood up so abruptly she knocked over her coffee, sending dark liquid flowing across her desk toward her scanner.
“Don’t send him away for God’s sake.” Her voice rose. “Send him right up.”
“Fine,” Gary sniffed. “But he should be on the list.”
Swearing under her breath, Harper set the phone down and threw a copy of yesterday’s paper on the spill.
Grabbing a clean notepad and pen from a drawer, she ran across the room, reaching the newsroom door just as a tall, thin man with dark skin and neatly cropped, graying hair walked in.
“Mr. Scott?” Harper said.
He nodded, looking around the newsroom warily.
“I’m here to see Harper McClain.” His voice was deep, with a strong Savannah accent that gave her last name three syllables.
“I’m Harper.” She held out her hand. “I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr. Scott.”
His fingers were long and sturdy, and his grip on her hand was so powerful it almost hurt. Up close she could see that his brown eyes were rimmed with red—from exhaustion and grief, she guessed.
“Miss McClain. Your friend Bonnie told me I could trust you.” His eyes searched her face with unexpected intensity. “Can I trust you?”
“You can,” she promised him, hoping it was true.
Conscious of the reporters watching this exchange curiously, she gestured for him to follow.
“Come over here. Let’s talk.”
She led him to a quiet back corner of the newsroom.
Something about Scott—a kind of exhausted energy in his manner—told her she should get straight to the point.
“I suppose you know about Wilson Shepherd’s arrest?” Harper said.
His eyes rose to meet hers. “It was all over the front of the newspaper today. If I wanted to miss it I’d have to go blind.”
“Bonnie told me you don’t think he killed your daughter,” she said. “You still feel that way?”
He didn’t hesitate.
“I am one hundred percent positive Wilson didn’t lay a finger on Naomi.” His voice was firm. “That’s why I’m here. You have to do something about this situation.”
Harper thought of the Wilson she’d seen last night—waving a gun and screaming at the police.
“I watched him get arrested last night,” she told him. “He didn’t look very innocent to me.”
“I don’t know about that.” Scott fixed her with a stern look. “I know how he was when we got the news about Naomi. He didn’t sleep. He didn’t eat. Grief…” He paused—his eyes reddening. “Grief can break your mind as well as your heart.”
Harper knew this better than anyone. But what she’d seen last night had seemed beyond grief. Still, she didn’t want to argue with a man who’d just lost his daughter.
She studied his tired face. Deep lines were scored into his forehead. More radiated out from the corners of his mouth.
“I hear you,” she said.
Scott must have sensed her doubts.
“I know what you think, Miss McClain,” he told her. “You think I’m a sad old man, who doesn’t know what’s going on right in front of him. But I’m telling you, the police arrested the wrong person. And while they’re so focused on Wilson, the real killer is walking free.”
“Tell me why you believe he couldn’t do it.” She reached for her notebook. “Do you know where he was that night? If you know someone who can vouch for where he was at the time of the shooting that would really help.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know where Wilson was when my girl was shot. What I know is, that boy would let a spider crawl across him before he’d hurt it. He’s got no killer in him, Miss McClain. And he loved my daughter.”
His voice broke and he pressed his fingers against his forehead.
“Mr. Scott.” Harper softened her voice. “He had a gun when the police pulled him over. If it’s the weapon used in the murder, they’re going to charge him.”
He shook his head stubbornly.
“You have to believe me. It was someone else. I know my Naomi was scared of someone. A man from school. She wouldn’t tell me what happened, or why she didn’t like him, but something about him made her afraid.” He jutted his finger at her. “Find him. Find that man. Ask him your questions.”
Harper had hoped he’d have something concrete for her about Shepherd or Naomi—but random theories about unknown men the dead woman might have been anxious about … That wasn’t what she was looking for.
She tried to guide him back to what she needed.
“First, tell me about Naomi and Wilson,” she urged. “How did they meet? What brought them together?” Seeing a rebellious look in his eyes, she added quickly, “This will help me understand why you think Wilson couldn’t hurt her. I need to know more about them.”
“Well.” He rested his hands on his legs. “They met at college. And Naomi knew right away that he was special. She made her mind up fast about things, even when she was little. She decided she wanted to become a lawyer when she was ten. Watched some TV show and said, ‘That’s what I want to do, Daddy. I want to help people.’”
He smiled at the memory.
“Being a lawyer—that was a big dream in our family. Maybe you know, but I drive a cab. My father, he lived outside Vidalia. Worked the land. Our family has always been working people. People who use their hands. Naomi wanted something different.”
He drew a breath, hands clenching convulsively.
“She made straight As all her life, always top of her class. When the time came, she wanted to go away to college. Got a scholarship to UGA, over in Athens. But we couldn’t afford to send her. Housing’s too much over there. So she went to Savannah State, instead.”
His voice trailed off.
“And that was where she met Wilson?”
He nodded slowly.
“She worked part-time as a tutor for kids who were the first in their family to go to college. Some of them had a hard time fitting in, so the school had people like Naomi to guide them.”
He glanced at her.
“Wilson—he got in trouble when he was a teenager. Got messed up with a gang back in Atlanta. Got caught dealing drugs. For a while, he was on the wrong path. By the time she met him, he’d cleaned himself up. Made up his mind to walk a true road. Came to Savannah to get away from that life. Wasn’t going to look back.”
His brow lowered as he tried to explain. “Kids like Wilson, they usually don’t find their way. He did, though. When Naomi met him, she knew he was intelligent. His grades were good—she helped him stay focused. In the end, she talked him into applying to law school at the same time she did.”
He gave a faint, wistful smile. “Tell you one thing, once that girl set her mind to something, nobody had a chance. Wilson knew better than to argue. They both got in, like she knew they would. Around then, that’s when they decided they were in love. After that, you couldn’t get a cigarette paper between them. They were always together.”
“Did they fight?” Harper suggested. “Get mad at each other about things?”
“Every couple argues,” he said. “But they never had a fight like you’re talking about. He never raised a hand against her. She’d never put up with that. Neither would I.”
“Are you sure?” Harper’s tone was skeptical. “We don’t tell our dads everything about our relationships.”
His held her gaze steadily.
“Miss McClain, my wife died of breast cancer when Naomi was ten years old. She and me, we’ve always been close. We had to be. Closer than most fathers and daughters. The first time she got her period? She came to me. I took her to the drug store, got the things she needed. She got her first boyfriend? She talked to me about him. I made sure she knew the facts of life. When she met Wilson, she told me, ‘Daddy, I think I’m going to marry this man. His heart’s big enough for me.’”
His voice trembled, and he paused for a moment. When he looked up again, his face was shadowed.
“If he ever hurt her, she’d have told me.”
So much about Naomi’s story sounded familiar. Harper knew what it was like to grow up without a mother. Only in her case, it hadn’t made her closer to her father. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Her father had been a suspect in her mother’s murder in the early days of the investigation. He was cleared of suspicion by the young paralegal in whose bed he’d been lingering while someone stabbed his wife to death in their kitchen.
Harper had never forgiven him.
She wondered what it was like to be so close to your father that you would confide everything to him. And she simply wasn’t convinced Naomi had been so open with her dad. It was clear that she had secrets.
“Wilson often went to the Library to meet Naomi when
she worked late,” Harper said. “But in the last few weeks he hadn’t been there. Were they having some trouble?”
Scott’s brow lowered. “Who told you he wasn’t there?”
“Bonnie,” Harper said.
“I have to say, I didn’t know. Naomi didn’t mention anything.” He rubbed a hand on his jaw, his eyes troubled. “Now I think about it, she was quiet those last weeks. I thought she was busy. Working and studying. But it wasn’t normal.”
“She didn’t say anything to you?”
He shook his head. “No. And if it was bad, I think she would have told me something.”
But, for the first time, he sounded uncertain.
There it was. Naomi’s secrets. Kept even from him.
“Mr. Scott,” Harper leaned forward, “isn’t it possible they had a fight and Naomi didn’t tell you because she didn’t want to upset you? And someone like Wilson, with his background, maybe his temper snapped…”
He didn’t let her finish. “Miss McClain, I know what you’re thinking but if you keep looking at Wilson you’ll be looking at the wrong man, just like the police are.” His voice trembled with frustration. “You need to find the other man. The one who scared her.”
Harper sighed.
“Fine. Tell me about the man.”
He hesitated. “Now, you’re going to think I’m a liar because I told you she told me everything. But with this man, all she said was she wanted him out of her life. Told me he wasn’t a good person and that if I ever saw him I should walk away without even talking to him.”
This was exactly what Harper had feared. He wanted the murderer not to be Shepherd, so he was looking for anyone else to blame. Even some random guy his daughter didn’t like.
“Do you have a name?” she asked, trying not to sound as doubtful as she felt. “If you give it to me, I’ll see what I can find out.”
“His name is Peyton Anderson,” Scott told her. “His family’s big in this town. Maybe you’ve heard of them…”
But Harper was no longer listening—she stared at him in stunned disbelief.
“Do you mean Peyton Anderson, as in the son of the district attorney?” she asked, cutting him off.
A Beautiful Corpse--A Harper McClain Mystery Page 6
