In the blinding white sunlight, she couldn’t make out his features. He didn’t leave when he realized he’d been seen. Instead, he stood there for a second, feet spread, arms crossed. As if he wanted her to notice him.
Something about this—his posture, a tension in his shoulders—made her uneasy. A warning prickle ran down her spine.
Shading her eyes with one hand, Harper peered at him.
“Hello?” she said, raising her voice and taking a step toward him. “Do I know you?”
Instead of replying, he walked away, moving fast.
Without knowing why, Harper found herself running after him.
But by the time she reached the corner, he was gone.
She turned a slow circle. The leafy square, with its statue of a sword-wielding city founder, held a handful of people—a cluster of tourists, a mother holding a toddler by the hand.
There was no sign of the man she’d seen. He’d vanished.
Bewildered, she made her way to the coffee shop, pausing, occasionally, to look over her shoulder.
Nobody was behind her.
Pangaea occupied a prime, corner spot on the square. Most of the buildings around it were brick or gray stone. In that setting, the coffee shop’s lemon-yellow walls fairly glowed. Its swinging wooden sign showed a hand-painted globe with one sprawling continent.
Inside, the air was cool and fragrant with the spicy sweet scent of coffee. Harper spotted the two women almost instantly. They were both strikingly attractive. Both had latte-colored skin; one with short black hair; the other with glossy dark hair falling in waves past her shoulders.
Peyton Anderson had a type.
They sat close together at a table against the back wall, talking in whispers, looking at the door with quiet apprehension.
Harper walked over to them, the sweat cooling on her skin with every step.
“Cameron? Angela?”
They nodded without speaking, their faces watchful.
“I’m Harper McClain. Thank you so much for agreeing to meet me.”
They shook hands. The woman with short hair identified herself as Cameron.
“We’re still not sure this is a good idea,” she said, before Harper even sat down. “We want to help. But we don’t want the Anderson family coming after us.”
“I understand completely,” Harper said. “You don’t have to talk at all. Please, just let me explain what’s happening first. And then you can make up your minds.”
They’d chosen a good spot—nobody was sitting near them. They could talk without being overheard.
After buying them both coffees, Harper sat down across from them.
Keeping her voice low and confiding, she said, “I know I told you both a little on the phone about what’s happening. Let me explain the rest.”
She told them what she’d learned about Naomi’s case, and her suspicions about Peyton Anderson.
“I’ve read your restraining orders. I know you’re afraid to talk. I understand that. Why don’t you tell me as much as you can off the record, and then we can discuss what, if anything, you want me to put in the newspaper. Maybe that will be nothing. But it will help me understand what I’m dealing with here.”
The two women exchanged a loaded look. Neither of them seemed eager to be the first to speak.
“The thing you need to know,” Cameron said, after the silence had stretched on too long, “is how vindictive the Anderson family can be.”
She was slim, with warm brown eyes. She wore snug-fitting white capri pants with a striped top. A delicate gold cross sparkled at her throat.
Angela was curvier, in a dark miniskirt and matching top. Her huge dark eyes were filled with suspicion.
“Maybe it won’t surprise you to hear that we’ve both been threatened,” she said.
“Who threatened you?” Harper searched their faces. “Peyton? Or his father?”
Angela’s mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “Try both of them.”
“Yesterday, we each got a letter from the Anderson family lawyer outlining the libel laws,” Cameron explained, in her soft, Georgia accent. “There was no explanation. Just a lesson in defamation. So…”
“You can imagine why we’re not eager to talk to you right now.” Angela finished the thought for her.
Buying time, Harper sipped her coffee. She needed them to understand that she was on their side. She thought she knew how to do that.
“Peyton’s dad came in to the paper this week, threatening to shut it down over this story,” she revealed.
“So they’re after you, too.” Angela shook her head. “They think they own this town.”
“You should take him seriously,” Cameron advised. “He doesn’t make idle threats.”
“This is why I need your help,” Harper told them. “I can’t write this story without knowing everything. You’re a key part in this.”
The two women glanced at each other.
“I’ll tell you what I can,” Cameron said.
Angela dropped her gaze to her cup. Harper could tell she hadn’t made her mind up yet.
Pulling her recorder from her bag, Harper set it on the table and switched it on.
The women gave it an alarmed look.
“This is only for my own use,” Harper said, soothingly. “I need to remember what you’ve said but I stick by my word. If you don’t want me to put it in the paper, I won’t.” She hurried on before they could think about it too much. “Let’s go over the basics. Cameron, can you describe in your own words how things first started with Peyton? How did he become obsessed with you?”
The woman picked up a teaspoon and stirred her coffee.
“It started in my last year of undergrad. I was doing pre-law. It’s a small school, and Peyton transferred in from UGA to finish out his degree.” She gave Harper a look. “I heard a rumor UGA threw him out. And that’s why he ended up at Savannah State.”
Harper made a note of that. What had gotten Peyton tossed out of the University of Georgia? She had a feeling she knew.
“Were you friends with him?” Harper asked.
“Not really.” Cameron shrugged. “I knew him in that way you know people in your classes. He was good-looking, so I noticed him. Then, one day, I arrived at the library to study, and he was sitting at my usual table. At the time, I thought it was a coincidence. Later, when I knew more, I started to believe it was intentional.”
She turned the teaspoon over in her hands.
“Anyway, we talked,” she continued. “He was polite. Charming. Even funny at times. He asked me out, but I told him I was seeing someone else. He said something like, ‘What a lucky guy.’” She set the spoon down. “The next day when I walked out to go to class he was standing in front of my apartment.”
“Did he explain what he was doing there?” Harper asked.
Cameron smiled darkly. “Oh, he always had reasonable explanations. Like, he was just passing by when I walked out. What a coincidence. Except I’d looked out the window ten minutes before I left the house and he was standing there. Staring at my door.”
“That’s exactly what he did to me.” Finally emboldened to talk, Angela leaned in. “I’d get out of class and he’d be standing outside the classroom, like it was hilarious to follow me around. I asked him to stop doing it and he’d say, ‘Doing what? I go to school here. What do you want me to do? Drop out?’”
“Was your experience the same as Cameron’s?” Harper asked.
Angela’s jaw was tight as she nodded, her dark hair swinging.
“I guess he noticed me after he gave up on you,” she told Cameron.
Turning to Harper, she said, “He was in my class at law school. He asked me out the second week of classes. I didn’t know many people yet and he seemed so nice. Like Cameron says, he was good-looking. Always dressed well. I was actually excited before our first date. I spent hours deciding what to wear.” She gave an unhappy laugh. “God, I was such an idiot.”
“What did he
do to you?” It was Cameron who asked. She was watching Angela intently.
“We dated for a few weeks.” Angela’s mouth turned down at the memory. “The usual thing—we went to a mixer at school, and out to dinner on River Street. He seemed nice enough but I didn’t feel it. We didn’t click. He was very intense—always staring at me. Hanging on my every word. I found him creepy. When he wanted to take the relationship further, I decided to end it.”
“That’s when it started,” Cameron guessed.
Angela nodded. “Like with you, he seemed to take the news well. He said he appreciated my honesty.” She paused. “The next day he was outside my apartment when I got home from class.”
Cameron turned to Harper—her eyes pleaded for understanding.
“It’s so hard to explain how awful it is to be followed everywhere,” she said. “It’s this constant threat hanging over you. And no matter what I said to him to try and get him to stop, it only made it worse. He always pretended that I was the crazy one. He was like, ‘Why are you being so unreasonable? I was just walking home or to class.…’” She glanced at Angela, whose hands were clenched in front of her. “It was never a coincidence.”
“How long did this go on?” Harper asked.
The two exchanged a look. Cameron pointed at herself. “In my case five months. How about you?”
“The same,” Angela said. “Maybe a little longer. I lost track.”
“I’ve read your restraining orders. I know how bad it got,” Harper said. “How did it end?”
“I told my dean what was happening,” Cameron said. “She referred me to the Legal Aid Department, and they helped me file for a restraining order. This was after he broke in.”
“He broke in to your apartment?”
Cameron nodded. “I got up one morning, walked into the kitchen to find him sitting there, holding a cup of coffee.” She shivered. “He said ‘Good morning!’ and I just … ran. I was in my pajamas, no shoes. But I ran downstairs and knocked on my neighbor’s door. Luckily, she was home. She let me in and called the police.”
Harper wrote a hurried note, Check police records for burglary charge, and underlined it.
“What happened when the police got there?” she asked.
“They found him sitting on the front porch.” Cameron gave her a bitter look. “He told them who he was, who his father was. They treated him like a silly child who’d done something naughty. Instead of like the criminal he was. They told me I could file charges if I wanted to, but they made it sound like I was being unreasonable. It was only a prank.”
Harper could imagine this. The DA’s kid committing a nonviolent crime was their worst nightmare. He wasn’t their boss—not really. But he was close enough.
“Did you file charges?”
“They charged him with disturbing the peace.” Cameron’s lip curled. “He pleaded guilty and the charge was expunged after six months of good behavior.”
“What happened after that?”
“He stopped following me,” she said. “When I started at law school, I knew he’d be there, so I had a meeting with the dean before classes even began, and asked to be kept out of all of his classes. I showed her the restraining order, and she kept us apart.” She glanced at Angela. “By then, he’d moved on.”
Angela grimaced. “Lucky me.”
Harper turned to her. “So what happened after you broke it off with him?”
“He started showing up at my work, my apartment, my classes. All of a sudden he was everywhere I was.” Angela’s earlier reticence had faded. She seemed eager to tell Harper all she’d been through. “It was creepy as hell. The thing is, I’m a law student. And I understand how things work. But, how do you quantify that into a crime? He could always claim it was a coincidence. It wasn’t, though. It was systematic. When I say he was everywhere—I mean it. I remember walking out of the girls’ restroom at a bar one night and finding him standing in front of the door, smiling.” She folded her arms across her torso. “He scared the shit out of me.”
“When did you file the restraining order?” Harper asked Angela.
Angela fell silent for so long, Harper thought she wasn’t going to answer. She was about to give up and try a different question when the woman finally spoke.
“One night,” she said, “I was on a date. We had a great time—he was someone I could have imagined having a real relationship with.” She drew a breath. “When he left in the morning, Peyton was waiting outside. He must have been there all night. He told him he just wanted to warn him, for his own good, that I was a slut. That I had slept with half the guys in my law school class. He showed him pictures on his phone that he said were me, doing things. Sex things. He kept saying, ‘I’m telling you this for your own good. I mean, she probably has diseases, at this stage.’”
Her voice broke.
Cameron, who had been listening with horrified fascination, rested her hand on her arm.
Angela turned to her. “I know you understand, even if no one else does. It shattered me. The guy—I don’t know if he believed him completely, or he didn’t want to get caught up in the mess, but … I never went out with him again.” She swiped her cheek with one hand. “The next time I saw Peyton, he told me if I ever went out with anyone else, he’d kill me.”
Harper’s pen froze on the paper.
“He threatened your life?”
Angela nodded. “And I believed him. I wasn’t sure he was capable of actual murder, but in that moment, I believed he would at least give killing me a try. That was when I went to the cops.”
“Was he ever charged for stalking you or making threats?” Harper asked.
Angela’s smile was thin.
“He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor drunken disorder,” she said. “His lawyer said he’d been on an all-night bender and didn’t know what he was saying. He got community service for six weeks, and was told to stay away from me. Which he did, thank God.”
Harper thought she could see the process of escalation right in front of her. There’d been no punishment for stalking Cameron, so he ratcheted things up with Angela. He threatened her and got away with it.
What if Naomi was his third try? And this time he took it all the way.
“Has either of you been interviewed by the police, since Naomi died?” she asked.
They both shook their heads.
“I knew Naomi,” Cameron said before Harper could answer. “She was a sweet girl. Really smart. Just that bastard’s type.” She fixed Harper with a piercing look. “Do you think he did it?”
“I don’t know,” Harper confessed. “There are other suspects. Out of all of them, Peyton makes sense as the shooter. But the police say there’s no way he did it.”
“Of course they do.” Angela’s expression was dark. “Daddy’s going to protect his baby boy from all the mean women out there who say he hurt them.”
“My advice?” Cameron looked at Harper. “Don’t believe anything Peyton Anderson says. And don’t count on the police to do anything about it.”
27
By the time Harper got back to the newsroom, it was after five o’clock. Dells was usually there until six—tonight, though, his office was dark. But Baxter was at her desk as usual.
When Harper finished filling her in, the editor leaned back in her chair, tapping her silver pen against the black, plastic arm.
“You’re getting close. But you’re still not there. We need more before we go out with this.”
Harper tried not to show her disappointment. She could sense how close she was to having the story Dells and Baxter wanted. But there was always something missing. One more interview. One more piece of evidence.
“If I could just get Anderson’s alibi. I’m working on it as fast as I can. But the cops won’t talk.”
“If they won’t, they won’t,” Baxter said. “But, I’ll tell you something—I know cops pretty well, and I’m positive they won’t be happy with how the investigation is going. If Randall A
nderson is using them to protect his son, they’ll want to tell you.”
She paused. The pen kept tap-tap-tapping.
“Work on Julie Daltrey,” she said, dropping the pen on her desk. “I knew her back when she was a patrol cop. There’s nothing about the Anderson kid Daltrey will like. Especially given what those women told you. You just need to catch her at the right time.”
“Sure,” Harper said, and headed back to her desk.
She didn’t see the point in explaining that Daltrey had been one of the first to turn on her after the Smith case.
She’d have to find another way to get her hands on Anderson’s alibi. And soon.
* * *
There was no time to work on it further that night, though, as first an armed robbery and later a shooting outside a bar kept Harper and Miles on the run.
Harper didn’t mind. The work stopped her from thinking too much about last night.
But when her shift ended, at midnight, and she parked in front of her house, she found herself staring at the empty front steps where Luke had waited for her.
It was hard to believe now that it had felt so much like the start of something.
When all along, it was the end.
Now she had to explain it all to Bonnie. Who still believed, in her optimistic way, that Harper and Luke were going to get married, buy a ranch-style house on the edge of town, and adopt a pack of dogs.
With a sigh, Harper climbed out of the car and slammed the door harder than she needed to.
The Library was only a fifteen-minute walk away—one she’d made hundreds of times before. Tonight, though, it seemed longer and darker.
Everything that had happened in the last week had climbed inside her head and uncoiled.
She felt on edge. The skin at the top of her spine prickled.
When she heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps behind her, her heart began to race.
At first, she slowed her pace deliberately, pretending to check her phone.
The footsteps stopped when she did.
She knew she was tired. But there was no way she was imagining this.
A Beautiful Corpse--A Harper McClain Mystery Page 21
