“I would rather get it out of the way now,” Harper persisted. “I don’t want to leave Betty in the lurch. She’s a nice, if somewhat tempestuous, woman who has a potentially hazardous problem.”
“The scarecrow is not possessed,” Zander persisted. “There is no problem ... other than she’s crazy.”
“Yes, well ... .” Harper trailed off, something occurring to her. “What if I take Molly with me? She’s always complaining we don’t have her in the field enough. This is a literal field, and it will be perfectly safe. I doubt Quinn will bother tracking me down out there, but if he does, I won’t be alone.”
“I guess I can live with that,” Jared muttered. “I would appreciate it if you texted me when you arrived and left, though. That way I won’t worry.”
“I think you’ll worry anyway,” Harper teased, leaning closer in an enticing manner. “That’s because I’m your favorite person in the world and you can’t stop yourself from thinking about me twenty-four hours a day.”
“You’re not wrong.” Jared planted a firm kiss on her mouth. “I’ll probably be in the office making calls and tracking things down for the bulk of the day. I might leave for a bit, but I doubt it will be for long. Once we’re both done with our work today, I want to put all of this behind us for a bit. Do you think you can handle that?”
“Yes. I would love to spend the weekend handling you.” Harper was as giddy as Jared, and their overt flirting was enough to make Zander roll his eyes.
“Ugh. You guys are so gross sometimes. Honestly, I’m glad you’re moving out and abandoning me. That way I won’t have to watch you do this any longer.”
“We’re doing it to make you happy,” Jared supplied. “You’re the center of our world, after all. We live to serve you.”
Instead of playing into the sarcasm, Zander merely smiled. “Keep it up. You’re doing a good job.”
COMPUTER WORK WAS JARED’S least favorite part of the job. He wasn’t a fan of sitting behind a desk and pecking away at a keyboard. Unfortunately for him, that’s all he could accomplish the day before Thanksgiving.
“You must have run a background check on Quinn Jackson when he disappeared,” Jared noted as he swiveled to face his partner, who was busy working on his computer. “What did you come up with?”
Mel, a pumpkin spiced latte in his hand, didn’t appear surprised by the question. “Of course I ran a background search. It’s standard protocol in situations like what occurred with him.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Yes.”
That wasn’t the answer Jared was expecting. “What did you find?”
“I found a whole lot of things, but none of it seemed to matter given what went down. I mean ... he was in an accident. That’s not in dispute. A great deal of blood was found at the scene, which seemed to indicate that he was injured gravely in the rollover and it wasn’t anything from his past that came back to haunt him.”
Jared was officially intrigued. “You must have found something good. Otherwise you wouldn’t be playing coy like this.”
“I don’t know how good it is,” Mel cautioned. “I did find a few things that gave me pause, though. You have to understand, at the time I didn’t think it was smart to tell Harper what I uncovered because she was grieving. Zander was worried enough about her becoming obsessed with searching the woods that he insisted they move in together. I didn’t want to add to things.”
“Well, she’s fine now ... and I want to know. I’m going to dig deep myself, but if you already have the information, you’ll save me some time.”
“I have the information.” Mel opened the bottom drawer of his desk and came back with a blue file folder. He handed it to Jared and waited until his partner opened it to continue. “In a nutshell, Quinn Jackson was not a good student. He also, apparently, wasn’t a very good man.”
Jared’s stomach twisted at Mel’s choice of phrasing. “Meaning?”
“He went to Northwood University. It’s a business school in Midland. He met Harper and Zander when they were all in college. Their campuses were about thirty minutes apart, and Harper met Quinn at a bar one night. They didn’t immediately start dating, instead striking up a flirty friendship, but when they did get involved it was initially casual.
“The thing about Northwood is that there’s a different atmosphere there,” he continued. “The students are more serious — not to say there aren’t serious students at Central Michigan University, but they enjoy a good party there, too — and the degrees are more stylized, if you will, at Northwood.”
“Basically you’re saying that the students who attend come out with a grand plan,” Jared surmised. “They’re all focused on high-paying jobs and very few of them are looking to take a year off and find themselves.”
“You’re very good at this.” Mel winked. “I pulled Quinn’s transcript from the school. I’m still not sure why I did it. I guess I was curious. There was a notation about some disciplinary action while he was there, and I called to get more information.
“I had to jump through hoops because of privacy laws, but I convinced the dean that it was important because Quinn was in imminent danger,” he continued. “The dean informed me that Quinn had quite the reputation ... as a ladies' man who liked to steal from his girlfriends.”
Jared’s mouth dropped open. “And you didn’t think this was important to mention?”
“I don’t know that it ties into Quinn’s disappearance,” Mel shot back. “How could the fact that he seduced one of his female professors and convinced her to pay for an apartment and a car lease play into his death two years later?”
“It’s a pattern of behavior,” Jared shot back. “Harper had a right to know about this.”
“I made a judgment call,” Mel argued. “It might not have been the right call at the time, but I was convinced Quinn was dead. I didn’t see the point of tainting her memories after the fact. I couldn’t see how it would make things better, and I believed there was a very real chance it would make matters worse.”
Even though he annoyed, Jared understood his partner’s protective instincts. “Okay. I get it. After he showed back up, though, why didn’t you say something then?”
“I couldn’t remember all the details. I stuffed the file in a cabinet at home and forgot about it ... until I went looking last night. When I was going through the files I managed to reacquaint myself with some of the facts and, sad as I am to admit it, there’s some pertinent information in there.”
Jared was practically salivating. “Show me.”
“I figured you would say that.”
“SO, BETTY THINKS THIS thing is possessed?”
Molly wasn’t nearly as thrilled to be pulled into the field as Harper envisioned. That probably had something to do with the fact that she was cuddled up with Eric on the couch in the GHI office when Harper called. Since things had been slow — the after-Halloween lull always worked that way — she knew declining the invitation was a bad idea.
“She does,” Harper confirmed, flipping the switch on an EMF reader as she slowly paced around the scarecrow. “She swears up and down she’s seen it moving out here, although this is my second visit and it’s done nothing but sit there the entire time.”
“This thing isn’t real.” Molly poked her finger into the scarecrow’s mask hole and made a disgusted face. “Ugh. It’s all wet and gross in here.”
“That’s because it’s stuffed with straw,” Harper pointed out, her attention firmly on the device in her hand. “It’s also a rainy time of year. Of course it’s gross and wet in there.”
Molly’s tone was accusatory. “You could’ve warned me.”
“I thought it was common sense.”
“Well, apparently I’m devoid of common sense.” Molly pulled away from the scarecrow and started circling the figure. “That’s what Eric says, by the way. He says that I skipped the line the day they were handing out common sense.”
Harper smirked at the youn
g woman’s forlorn expression. “Molly, I hate to break it to you, but that’s an old saying. My father used to say the same thing about me when I was a teenager. It’s fine. You’ll outgrow it.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Molly complained. “Everyone you come into contact with thinks you’re a genius. Eric says he adores me, but I’m a pain in the butt and I need to think before I do things. Do you know how annoying that is to hear?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. Jared says the same thing to me at least once a month.”
Molly brightened considerably. “He does? You mean ... it’s not just me?”
“Of course it’s not just you.” Harper didn’t fancy herself an expert on men — especially in light of recent developments — but she opted to impart whatever wisdom she had to offer on Molly all the same. “All men think they’re smarter than women. Even when a man acknowledges you’re smart, he still needs to feel as if he’s smarter.”
A cracking sound filled the air as Molly snapped her gum. She didn’t seem thrilled to hear Harper’s take on the nature of men. “Doesn’t that drive you crazy?”
“Only a little.”
“It drives me a lot crazy.”
“Yes, well, get used to it. It’s not going to change.”
“It’s important to be the change you want to see in the world,” Molly countered. “I read that somewhere, although I forget where. That’s how I want to be, though. I want to change the world ... and if I have to convince Eric I’m smart to do it, I’ll simply hold him down until he agrees I’m brilliant.”
Harper’s grin was easy and wide. “That sounds like a great idea. I bet that works out exactly how you envision it.”
“I bet it will, too.”
“Men don’t equate wrestling with sex or anything. All that grappling won’t end with you two in bed and him congratulating himself for being the smartest man in the world. That would never happen.”
Molly’s smile faltered. “Huh. I didn’t even think of that.”
“Yes, well, you haven’t been at this as long as me.”
“I guess not.” Her expression thoughtful, Molly scuffed her shoes against the ground and internally debated how to broach a new topic. Finally, she simply decided to go for it. “How are things with Quinn? By the way, I think he’s really nice. Do you think you’ll get back together with him?”
The question caught Harper off guard. “Why would you ask that?”
Clearly uncomfortable, Molly shifted from one foot to the other and held out her hands. “I don’t know. You were with him when you were my age. Then he died — or you thought he died — and I couldn’t help but wonder if he was the great love of your life or something. I always assumed that was Jared, but then I heard the full story about what happened to Quinn and I wasn’t sure. You never really talked about him, and I figured there had to be a reason for that.”
“I didn’t talk about Quinn because there was nothing left to say,” Harper supplied. “I was young when I was with him. My relationship with Quinn was much different from my relationship with Jared. I was having fun back then.”
“And you’re not having fun now?”
“We’re having a lot of fun. It’s just a different type of fun. Jared and I were adults when we met, and not just in name only. Neither of us were looking for a relationship, but we found one anyway. It was more than either of us expected — so much more — and we blossomed together.”
“Oh, that’s so romantic.” Molly took on a faraway expression. “You blossomed together. I’m going to ask Eric if he wants to blossom with me.”
Harper recognized Molly’s moony expression and made a tsking sound with her tongue. “Don’t do that. It’s no wonder Eric things you’re a bit daft. You keep pushing the romance book angle on him. Life is not a chick flick. A real relationship means grappling with real feelings and emotions.”
Molly balked. “And you don’t think that Eric and I have a real relationship?”
“Of course I do. I even get that you’re prone to fits of whimsy because of your age. You can’t let that overtake the relationship, though.”
“Is that what happened with Quinn?”
Harper was uncomfortable with the question. “No. I was young and having a good time. I wasn’t worried about forever. Heck, I was barely worried about next week. Zander and I hadn’t even really started GHI yet. I was floating and having a good time. It wasn’t love, though.”
“It wasn’t?” Molly widened her eyes to comical proportions. “Oh, man. You’re totally ruining my daydream. Are you saying you didn’t love the guy who lost his memory and somehow magically made it back to you after years of suffering? That’s so disappointing.”
Harper bit back a chuckle. “I cared about him. I didn’t love him, though. Of course, back then, I might have convinced myself that I did love him. It’s all a little fuzzy now. What’s important is that I didn’t love him. Now that I’ve found Jared, I know what real love is. What I had with Quinn wasn’t real.”
“So ... what’s going to happen now?” Molly was genuinely curious. “Will you just wave goodbye and never see him again? That seems anticlimactic. Like ... that’s not how the movie is supposed to end.”
“Life isn’t a movie.”
“No, but ... that doesn’t feel like the right ending to me.”
“No offense, Molly, but I’m not worried about the ending you want.” Harper kept her tone stern. She was starting to regret bringing the enthusiastic younger woman out to the scene with her. The last thing she needed was relationship advice from a woman who tried to make her boyfriend dress up in a couple’s costume on their first Halloween together. “I know the ending that’s right for me, and Quinn isn’t going to be there when it’s time to cross the finish line. Jared is.”
“I think you’re taking this the wrong way,” Molly protested. “I like Jared. In fact, I love him. If he hadn’t seen you first and fallen head over heels, I totally would’ve gone after him.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that Quinn’s story is more entertaining. That’s the story that would win an Oscar.”
“I don’t care about his story, or if it would win awards,” Harper said. “I care about the truth. That’s the most important thing to me.”
“I guess.” Molly couldn’t hide her disappointment. “I still like the other story better.”
“And I happen to be with the blonde,” a voice said from their left, causing both women to jerk and snap their heads in that direction as they registered a new player in the game. It was one they weren’t expecting. “She’s right. The truth is better than fiction every time.”
Eighteen
It was the man from the grocery store, the one Zander was convinced was checking him out (something Shawn played into, but Harper could tell he didn’t believe). He stood at the edge of the dead cornstalks and stared at Molly and Harper, his hands clutched into fists at his sides.
Instinctively, Harper extended her arm to push Molly behind her and serve as a shield. Since she was young and foolish, though, Molly had other ideas.
“Who are you?”
The man’s gaze bounced between Harper and Molly.
“Who are you?” He finally asked with a raspy voice, one that sounded as if his vocal cords had been raked over barbed wire at some point over the course of his life.
“I’m Molly Parker.” The younger woman was all business as she planted her hands on her hips. “May we ask what you’re doing in this particular cornfield? It’s kind of late in the season for shucking.”
Even though she was annoyed, Harper couldn’t stop herself from being impressed with Molly’s moxie. The woman was so self-possessed that she simply refused to believe anything bad could happen to her ... even though bad things had already happened to her.
The stranger snagged Harper’s gaze and extended a finger. “Is she for real?”
Nervous, Harper licked her lips and nodded. “She is. She’s also ou
t of the loop. She doesn’t recognize you.”
“And you do?” He cocked a challenging eyebrow, as if daring Harper to wow him with knowledge she didn’t have.
“I don’t know your name,” Harper clarified. “I’ve seen you around, though. You were in the grocery store yesterday.”
“Oh.” Molly made a clucking sound with her tongue as she bobbed her head. “Is this the guy that’s hot for Zander’s body?”
“I most certainly am not!” The man barked, his eyes flashing. “Is she saying what I think she’s saying?”
Harper held her hands up in a placating manner. “Don’t get worked up about it. Zander thinks everyone wants him, including every Kardashian he sees on the television. He simply likes to talk. There’s no reason to freak out.”
“Who says I’m freaking out?” A muscle worked in the man’s jaw as he looked Harper from top to bottom. “How would you like it if I made you uncomfortable and said I was watching you in the grocery store?”
“I think we’re well beyond that,” Harper said. “You obviously followed us out here, which is creepy, and I already feel uncomfortable. What is it that you want? Why have you been following me?”
“Believe it or not, I’m not following you,” the man shot back. “Er, well, I guess I kind of am. I’m not following you for the reasons you think, though, and I wanted you to come out here anyway. It was fate ... or something like it.”
Harper had trouble following the conversation. “I’m sorry but ... I don’t understand.” She felt lost, awash in confusion. She was also worried. No matter what Jared said, Harper felt in her heart that Quinn couldn’t be a murderer. That meant this guy, whoever he was, had to be the culprit.
That put Harper and Molly in a very precarious position.
The look the man pinned her with was searching, as if he was looking for the lie he was certain she was hiding. Finally, he merely shook his head. “You really don’t know, do you? I thought for sure all that was a smokescreen. I figured Jackson had to tell you what he was up to. Isn’t that why you’re out here?”
Ghostly Despair (A Harper Harlow Mystery Book 10) Page 17