Haunting Harold

by Jenna Bennett

  Haunting Harold

  Fidelity Investigations Case 3

  Jenna Bennett

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  About the Author

  At the request of an old friend, Fidelity Investigations private eye Gina Beaufort Kelly takes on the task of surveilling Harold Newsome, one of her late husband’s clients. Harold’s third wife Heidi thinks something’s going on with Harold, and she wants Gina to discover what.

  * * *

  But as she trails Harold from the gym to the office to lunch and back, it soon becomes clear that Gina isn’t the only one haunting Harold. Another local PI is also on the trail, and then there’s the young blonde who often shows up where Harold is - a young blonde dressed in the fashions of a bygone era… or at least the fashions of a dozen years ago.

  * * *

  When another seemingly simple case of philandering turns to murder, Detective Jaime Mendoza gets involved. And as it turns out, this might not be the first time murder has struck the Newsomes…

  Chapter 1

  Heidi Newsome walked into my office like she owned it, trailing a fur coat that had probably cost almost as much as the building, and dripping with diamonds. The rock on her finger could have fed a small, third-world country for a year.

  She was the wife of one of my late husband’s clients. On that fateful evening two months ago, when David had plowed his car into a median on I-440 south of Nashville and became my late husband just in time to avoid becoming my ex, he’d been on his way home from a dinner party he had attended with his new girlfriend, his business partner, and a couple of clients. Harold and Heidi Newsome had been among them.

  After David’s death—since we’d still been married when he crashed—I inherited a third of his fortune. I’d also inherited the location of the business David ran with his partner Farley: this little one-story building on Music Row in Nashville, built sometime in the nineteen-fifties, that hadn’t been updated since. The walls in the reception area were knotty pine, hung with signed photographs of some of the country music greats, like Patsy Cline, Hank Williams Senior, and Johnny Cash. All of whom—except Johnny—had died while David and Farley were in diapers, but the photos gave the impression of business longevity and celebrity clients. When I took over the building and turned it into the headquarters for Fidelity Investigations, the PI firm I had established so I could continue to follow cheating husbands around, I kept things the way they were.

  Heidi clearly wasn’t impressed. And it was hard to blame her. The place looked like it had been here forever, and hadn’t been updated since. But that was the point. Longevity and celebrity clients.

  There were four of us in the lobby when Heidi walked in. My name is Gina Beaufort Kelly, and I’m David’s widow. My business partner Rachel was David’s administrative assistant before he died. Now she’s mine, as penance for not telling me about Jackie-with-a-q—David’s mistress—as soon as she found out that he was cheating on me.

  Zachary is our only employee. Young, cute, and freckled, he’s passing time with us until he’s old enough to apply to the police academy, which is what he really wants. At the moment, his eyes were bugging out of his skull as he took in the splendor—and sex appeal—that was Heidi Newsome.

  The final member of the team also had eyes that bugged out of her skull. She was curled up on the sofa between me and Zachary, rumbling low in her throat.

  “It’s OK,” I told her, and put my hand on her head for a second before I got to my feet. “Hello, Heidi.”

  Heidi was still looking at Edwina. “What’s that?”

  “Edwina,” I said. “New hire.”

  Heidi’s perfectly plucked brows arched, but she didn’t speak. Instead she took another look around the room. “I thought this was supposed to be an open house.”

  It was supposed to be an open house. At least that’s the way Rachel and I had conceived it when we’d sent out the invitations last week. They’d gone to the wives of all of David’s old clients. Women like me, trophy-wives married to older men who were probably looking, or would soon be looking, to replace them with newer models.

  Until Heidi showed up, we’d been sitting here enjoying the wine and canapés by ourselves.

  “The door was open,” I pointed out, “wasn’t it?”

  She looked at me.

  “Wine?” I lifted the bottle.

  She glanced at the label before she deigned to accept a glass. While I poured, Rachel and Zachary exchanged a glance. He got to his feet. “I’m just gonna… um…” He nodded down the hallway toward his office.

  “I’ll take the dog out,” Rachel said, and produced Edwina’s leash from a drawer in her desk. The pop-eyed Boston Terrier stopped grumbling at Heidi and hopped off the sofa, her tiny tail wagging. Rachel clipped the leash to her collar, and the two of them moved past us and out the front door. Edwina did take the time to sniff Heidi’s designer boots on her way past, before she trotted out the door after Rachel.

  I took a seat behind the desk, and waved Heidi into one of the chairs in front. “What’s going on?”

  She sipped the wine and took another glance around the room. Avoiding my eyes. Or maybe trying to figure out what to say. “This place isn’t much to look at.”

  I shrugged, even as I felt a little bubble of resentment rise in my chest. “David liked it this way. He thought it made the business look established.”

  “Old,” Heidi said.

  That, too. “So what can I do for you?”

  She took another sip of wine. I waited patiently.

  “I want to hire you,” she said finally.

  Since it had been either that or idle curiosity, I wasn’t too surprised. “Is Harold cheating?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  No surprise there, either. By the time a husband comes clean and actually admits to it, there’s not much need for a private investigator. Mostly, wives suspect that something’s going on and hire me, or someone like me, to verify.

  “You think he might be?”

  She shrugged. Sexily. The way she did everything. “He’s been acting strange. Distracted. I’d like to know one way or the other.”

  Sure. “At least you suspect that something’s going on. When David told me he’d been sleeping with Jacquie, I was floored. I had no idea he’d even thought about cheating, let alone found someone to cheat with.”

  Heidi smirked. Feeling superior, I gathered, since she was smart enough to suspect her husband of infidelity sooner than I had.

  “I’ll need a retainer,” I told her, my pulse fluttering. Heidi would be my first paying client. I had solved my husband’s murder, and after I got my PI license, I had followed my divorce attorney’s husband around for a few days, but that had been pro bono. This would be my first time actually taking a case for pay. It was exhilarating and a bit scary, all at the same time.

  Heidi stuck two red-tipped fingers into her designer purse and came out with a small stack of bills. It was deceptively small, as it turned out. She counted out ten hundred-dollar bills and shoved them across the desk toward me.

  I tried not to snatch too obviously as I gathered them up. “That’s a start. There’s a contract I need you to sign.”
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  I opened the file drawer in Rachel’s desk and looked through it until I found a blank contract. Then I filled in Heidi’s name, Harold’s name, the date, the parameters—follow Harold until further notice; per diem rate—and had her sign it. Until she had, I was secretly afraid she’d change her mind and ask for her money back, but she didn’t, just scribbled her name at the bottom of the contract.

  I pulled it toward me and looked it over while I tried to sit still. The inner me wanted to sing and dance. The professional kept her butt firmly planted in the chair. “Excellent. Would you like a copy?”

  “No,” Heidi said. “I don’t want to bring anything home that Harold might find.”

  “Is he going through your things?”

  “Of course not,” Heidi said, with a flip of her hair. “I just don’t want to take any chances.”

  Sure. “If you change your mind, it’ll be on file here. You can always ask me or Rachel for a copy.”

  She didn’t answer that, just tipped the glass up and poured the rest of the wine into her mouth.

  I offered a refill, which she declined.

  “Why don’t you tell me a little about you and Harold,” I said.

  I didn’t know Harold well. He’d been a client of David’s and Farley Hollingsworth’s financial investment firm, and I’d met him at the annual Christmas party and whenever David thought it was time to stroke the clients. Harold had always been polite to me, chummy with David and Farley, and very doting when it came to Heidi.

  “What do you want to know?” she hedged. Or maybe she wasn’t hedging. Maybe she just didn’t know where to start.

  “How about you tell me how long you’ve been married? Are you Harold’s first wife?”

  I was pretty sure she wasn’t. He’d had at least one before, maybe two, if memory served.

  “No,” Heidi said. “He married Lorraine just after college. They had two kids. Then he divorced Lorraine and married Carly. When Carly died, he married me.”

  So she was his third. “And how long ago was that?”

  “Twelve years,” Heidi said.

  Making her right around twenty-two or so when he’d married her. The same age I’d been when I married David.

  “Where do the two of you live?”

  Heidi’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you need to know that?”

  “So that, if I follow him there, I’ll know that he’s going home.” I waited, pencil poised above the pad.

  “Oh,” Heidi said. “We live in Somerset.”

  Probably not the one in England. “Where, exactly?”

  It turned out to be a very exclusive gated community south of Nashville, past the exclusiveness that’s Green Hills and into the even more exclusive Forest Hills.

  “They look like fairytale castles,” Heidi said, helpfully.

  “Oh.” I wrote ‘castles’ on my pad. “Those.”

  I knew where they were. A half dozen or so homes clinging to the side of a little hill off Hillsboro Road. A small medieval Europe, all gathered on a couple acres in Middle Tennessee. I distinctly remembered seeing a French Chateau, a crenellated Scottish fortress, and a miniature copy of Mad Ludwig’s Neuschwanstein, complete with a lake, a fountain, and two swans.

  And when I say miniature, I’m talking 6,500 square feet, a mere tenth of the original, but not small by anyone’s standards. Except perhaps Ludwig’s.

  “When did you move there?” If memory served, they hadn’t been there that long. Probably not the full length of her marriage to Harold.

  “Ten years ago,” Heidi said. “I wanted to get Harold out of the house he’d been sharing with Carly. And buy something just for us.”

  Admirable. “Which castle is yours?”

  “The English manor house,” Heidi said. “Modeled after Chatsworth. Where Darcy lived in Pride and Prejudice.”

  Fitzwilliam Darcy? “Didn’t Darcy own Pemberley?”

  “In the movie,” Heidi said.

  Ah. Yes, that made more sense. Even in my wildest fantasies I wouldn’t have pegged her for a reader.

  “Do you work?”

  She looked shocked that I’d asked. “Of course not.”

  “What about Harold? Where does he work?”

  He was in private practice in Brentwood, Heidi said. I’d known he was in the medical field, but I didn’t think I’d known he worked on feet. Or if I had known, I’d forgotten.

  “Any idea who he might be cheating with? If he’s cheating? Someone he works with? A patient?”

  Heidi shook her head. “If I knew, I wouldn’t need you.”

  Point. “Does he do anything else, beyond medicine? Work out? Play golf?”

  He golfed, of course. He and David had golfed together, if memory served. And he worked out. Like most men past middle age, he was trying to hold onto his youth, and his appeal with young women, the best he could. Like most men his age—including David—he didn’t seem to realize that he could look like the bloated corpse of a wild boar and younger women would still flock to him for the letters after his name and the zeros in his bank account.

  “When would you like me to start?” I asked.

  “As soon as possible,” Heidi answered. “He’s been acting weird for a few weeks.”

  “How so?”

  She shrugged. “Jumpy. Looking over his shoulder, like he has a guilty conscience. And he hasn’t wanted sex.”

  That’s definitely not normal. Not unless he was getting it elsewhere.

  “I’ll start tomorrow,” I said. “Does he spend all day at his practice, or is it only from time to time.”

  At his age, Heidi explained, Harold was only taking appointments for a few hours in the middle of the day, before and after lunch. “He starts with a workout every morning. Then he gets to the office around ten or so. He takes appointments until twelve, goes to lunch, takes appointments again from one to three or four, and then he either comes home or goes to the golf course.”

  Or possibly somewhere else, while Heidi thought he was going to the golf course.

  “What kind of car does he drive?”

  “Mercedes,” Heidi said. “White.”

  Excellent. There aren’t enough of those on the roads in Nashville that it should be a problem keeping track of this one. “I’ll be outside your house in the morning.”

  Heidi smiled pleasantly. “Thank you, Gina.”

  “No problem,” I said. She was paying me, after all.

  I pushed my chair—or more accurately Rachel’s chair—back, just as I heard voices outside the front door. Rachel and Edwina must be finished with their walk, and Rachel was telling Edwina to wipe her paws on the mat.

  Or not. When the door opened, Rachel walked in, followed by a dancing Edwina. She was so excited there could only be one explanation.

  And sure enough, as soon as she was through the door, gazing adoringly over her shoulder, Mendoza stepped across the threshold.

  Metro Nashville homicide detective Jaime Mendoza had been the cop in charge of David’s murder. I’d been the obvious suspect, at least at first. David died the evening before we were set to go before a judge to dissolve our marriage. Because he died when he did, I inherited some of his money. If he’d died a day later, I wouldn’t have. So yes, I was the obvious suspect.

  Although I was too obvious for Mendoza, it seemed, because he took his time slapping handcuffs on me. And in the end, got to arrest someone else for David’s murder. Now, he stops by once in a while, to see how things are going.

  My reaction to Mendoza is pretty much the same as Edwina’s, although I like to tell myself that I hide it better. Although I want to collapse at his feet and present my belly for rubbing, I manage to refrain from actually doing it.

  Heidi managed, too, but her reaction was equally obvious. She stiffened like a pointer, and flipped her hair over her shoulder with a practiced move. “Why, Detective! How nice to see you again.”

  He flashed a smile, complete with blindingly white teeth and dimples. “Mrs. Newsome.”<
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  Heidi presented a hand in the perfect position for kissing. Mendoza held it for a second, just long enough to probably give her a hot flash, and gave it back to her. He glanced at me, eyes dancing. “Mrs. Kelly.”

  “Detective,” I said. A week or two ago, I had suggested that he might call me Gina. He’d told me he didn’t think it would be a good idea. I was still trying to figure out what he might have meant. “What can I do for you?”

  His eyes—brown, like melting chocolate—flicked to the hors d’oeuvres. “Those look good.”

  “Knock yourself out.” There was plenty of food left. Zachary, like any young man, can pack away edibles at a rate that seemed to have no relationship to how skinny he is, and Rachel and I had both sampled the goodies, too, but since it had been just the three of us here until Heidi showed up, we’d barely made a dent. I’d been hoping for a much bigger crowd.

  Mendoza made his way toward the food with Edwina doing her best to get in his way. This time I wasn’t entirely sure whether he was the draw, or whether she was just hoping that he might drop a shrimp puff.

  “I’ll walk you out,” I told Heidi, who was still watching Mendoza.

  She looked at me for a second before she headed toward the door.

  “What’s he doing here?” she asked when we’d cleared the door and were outside in the shadowy parking lot.

  “He probably came for the food.” I moved toward the zippy little Porsche that must be Heidi’s ride. My incognito black Lexus was parked next to Rachel’s white compact and Zachary’s old beater in the back of the lot, and Mendoza’s non-descript sedan, with its extra antennae and government plates, was parked in front of the door. That left the Porsche for Heidi.

  “Are you…” She hesitated, “seeing each other?”