Haunting Harold

by Jenna Bennett

  Sure thing. I opened my own door and swung my legs out. And then I scurried to keep up with Mendoza’s sneakers across the street.

  At the door, he put his finger on the bell and held it there. It was the kind of bell that didn’t sound a musical ding-dong when you pressed it, but the kind that let out a prolonged and irritating siren. Mendoza kept his finger on the buzzer, and the buzzer sounded until the door was yanked open with an irritated, “I hear you, I hear you! Hold your… Oh!”

  Tara Cullinan, in a robe over flannel pajamas and with her hair—brown and straight—pulled back in a ponytail, fell back a step. Mendoza took it as an invitation to come in, although I’m pretty sure it wasn’t intended that way.

  “Mrs. Kelly.” He gestured to me to cross the threshold before him. Tara, perforce, couldn’t do much but keep stepping back.

  “What are you—?” she began, but by then we were inside the house and Mendoza had pulled out his badge and ID card.

  “MNPD. Homicide.”

  Tara stopped pretending. “I know who you are. I saw you yesterday.”

  She shut the door before turning to me. “That wasn’t me, shooting at you last night.”

  “I know,” I said. “My associate saw you come around the corner when the shots started.”

  “Although that doesn’t mean you couldn’t have had someone else up on top of the hill with a gun,” Mendoza added, sliding the wallet with his badge and ID back into his pocket. There was a gun holstered on his hip, that I hadn’t noticed until now.

  “I didn’t,” Tara said, and then stopped when a voice sounded from upstairs.

  “Aunt Tara? Who’s here?”

  “Nobody,” Tara said, but of course that didn’t work. I could have told her it wouldn’t. Back when David’s daughter Krystal had been Cressida’s age, nothing would have made it more likely that she’d come downstairs than to be told nobody was there.

  Sure enough, Cressida came halfway down the stairs and leaned over the banister. “That doesn’t look like nobody.”

  Mendoza glanced at me. I glanced at him. This was his party. I was just along for the ride.

  He drew a sigh, but turned to Cressida and flashed those dimples. “I’m Jaime. This is Gina. We’re just here to talk to your Aunt Tara about something.”

  “This is about my dad,” Cressida said, “isn’t it?”

  She took a couple more steps down the stairs, to where we could get a better look at her. She was almost as tall as Tara, and more gangly, and I saw a hint of Harold in her face. The eyes were certainly his. And there went any idea that she might not have been Harold’s child.

  “Go on upstairs and put on some clothes,” Tara ordered. “Brush your teeth and so forth. You can come down after that.”

  Cressida didn’t say anything to that, just turned around and took the steps two at a time. I deduced she was eager to dress and brush and come downstairs again to find out what was going on.

  It was Tara’s turn to sigh. “You’d better come in here.”

  She led the way into a comfortably messy living room, with blankets jumbled across a denim sofa, and paperback books and magazines strewn across the surface of the coffee table. It wasn’t elegant, or even tidy, but it looked lived-in and like the people who spent time there liked their space. A far cry from Harold’s and Heidi’s house, in other words.

  “I’ll put on some coffee.” Tara crossed into the kitchen with Mendoza and me in pursuit. “Have a seat.”

  She waved to the round table in the breakfast area. Half of it was taken up with school books and papers—I deduced that this was where Cressida did her homework—and the rest held the jumbled placemats and napkins the girl must have pushed out of her way when she started the work last night.

  Mendoza pulled out a chair for me. It wasn’t in an attempt to impress, because he didn’t seem aware he was doing it. All his attention was on Tara as she headed into the kitchen, and when she opened a drawer and reached in, his body tensed.

  She came out with a coffee filter, and Mendoza relaxed again.

  “Sit,” I told him, and he gave me a distracted look before he pulled out the other chair, the one where he could keep both me and Tara in his sights. And I’m not going to swear to it, but he dropped his hand below the edge of the table, and I think he might have put it on the handle of the gun. Just in case Tara picked up a knife and tried to do anything crazy, I guess.

  She didn’t. “All I have is instant.”

  We assured her instant coffee would be just fine, and she went about brewing a pot while she kept chatting. It might have been nerves—probably was—or maybe she was just trying to fill up the silence. “How did you find me? I didn’t report the move to the DMV. I don’t have a landline. We don’t even have cable.”

  “An associate of mine followed you from Brentwood last night,” I said.

  She looked embarrassed. “The whole way home?”

  I nodded, and didn’t mention the fact that she’d trailed us all the way to Hillwood before coming back here to Tusculum. “He’s a dedicated guy.”

  And he was probably cursing me right now, since I’d left him at my house, with my dog, and no way to get here. I’d have to make it up to him somehow, because if anyone deserved to be here for this interview, it was Zachary.

  Mendoza winced, so maybe he was thinking the same thing. “Tell me what happened yesterday,” he said.

  “Last night?” Tara shook her head. “Nothing happened.”

  Mendoza and I both projected polite disbelief, and she changed it to, “Nothing more than you already know. I made an appointment to meet you,” she glanced at me as she pulled mugs from one of the cabinets, “outside Harold’s office at nine. I was running a couple of minutes late, because I didn’t want to get there first. When I turned the corner and started down the street, I heard gunshots, so I made a U-turn and went back the way I came.”

  “You didn’t stop to see if anyone needed help?” Mendoza asked. His tone was critical.

  Tara flushed. “I stopped on the next street. I watched through the trees. But by then you were there—I saw you—and it was obvious that everyone was all right. And at first I wasn’t sure who they were shooting at. It might have been me.”

  Fair point, I guess.

  “It was me,” I said, “although I’m not sure the person shooting knew that.”

  Tara nodded. “Sorry.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Unless you put whoever it was on top of that hill and told him to shoot Gina,” Mendoza added.

  Tara flushed. “No. I had no reason to want you dead.”

  “I saw you come out of Harold’s subdivision less than two minutes after he got killed Saturday morning,” I pointed out. “I can put you at the scene of the crime. And I was pressuring you about it. You had every reason to want me dead.”

  She shook her head. “That’s crazy. I didn’t shoot Harold, and you can’t prove that I did.”

  “You were there,” Mendoza said. “You ran away. Both times. I’ve arrested people on less evidence.”

  “When they were guilty!”

  Tara’s voice rose, and she shot a look at the doorway to the living room. Probably afraid Cressida had heard her. “I’m not guilty,” she added, her voice softer, as the coffee bubbled and spat on the counter. “I didn’t do it. You can’t prove I did it because I didn’t.”

  “I don’t have to prove you did it,” Mendoza informed her. “All I have to prove is motive, means, and opportunity. You were there and you wanted him dead. That’s two of the three. A judge—”

  “I didn’t want him dead!” Tara shrieked. “He’s Cressie’s father. Of course I didn’t want him dead!”

  “What was the point of dressing up like your sister and following him around, then?” I wanted to know. “You obviously thought he killed Carly.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t. Mom thought he’d killed Carly, but that was just because she didn’t want to believe that Carly killed
herself.”

  “And you don’t have a problem with that?”

  “I was there,” Tara said. “I lived with them. I saw what she was like.”

  “So Harold didn’t kill her?”

  She opened her mouth, and then shut it again and put a finger to her lips. After a second, I could hear what she had heard: Cressida’s footsteps on the staircase.

  “Can we talk about this later?” Tara asked, and then raised her voice before waiting for an answer, “Come on into the kitchen, Cressie. What do you want for breakfast?”

  “Just some cereal,” Cressida said, ambling through the door.

  “I bought Lucky Charms yesterday,” Tara informed her brightly, pulling a bowl down from the cabinet. “The box is in the pantry. Milk in the fridge.”

  “I know where the milk is,” Cressida said. “What’s going on?”

  She looked from me to Mendoza—her eyes lingered a little there, so he was obviously appealing to the tween-crowd, too—and back at her aunt.

  “Nothing you need to worry about,” Tara told her, but Mendoza cleared his throat.

  “Actually, Cressida…”

  Cressida looked at him again, and gulped. So did Tara.

  Mendoza didn’t let it bother him. He might have been used to people reacting that way. “I’m Detective Mendoza with the Nashville PD.” He pulled out his badge and let her look at it. “I have to tell you, officially, that your father’s dead, and ask you some questions.”

  “Aunt Tara told me,” Cressida said, her eyes on the badge. “And my brother. And it was on the news. What kinds of questions?”

  “Simple ones. You came here from Knoxville this summer to spend time with your dad, is that right?”

  The girl nodded.

  “How did it go? Did you like it?”

  “It was OK,” Cressida said, with a notable lack of enthusiasm. “Nice house. But you could tell they weren’t used to kids.”

  Yes, from what I’d seen of Harold’s and Heidi’s home, it wasn’t a kid’s paradise. David’s and my house hadn’t been, either, when Krystal and Kenny were young. The bottom line was that David just hadn’t been that interested in them, or in making them comfortable. He’d dropped Sandra—and with her Krystal and Kenny—and married me, and from then on (at least until he started cheating on me with Jacquie) his life had revolved around being the stud with the young, beautiful wife. He didn’t want the reminder that he had children not that much younger than me.

  Mendoza was looking sympathetic. “And then when school started, you moved here?”

  Cressida nodded. Behind her, Tara stayed busy with the coffee mugs and with getting Cressida her bowl of Lucky Charms with milk, but I could tell she was keeping an ear on the conversation.

  “Grandma died last year,” Cressida said, “and Aunt Tara sold the house in Knoxville before we came here. So there was nowhere else to go.”

  “How did you feel when your Aunt Tara told you that your dad had died?”

  Tara made a protesting little movement back there in the kitchen, but she didn’t say anything. Cressida didn’t seem to have noticed. When Tara brought her the bowl of cereal, she slid onto a chair on the other side of the table and began spooning up marshmallows. My stomach made a little noise, and I shifted on the chair and took a sip of coffee to mask it.

  “Sad, I guess,” Cressida said, without sounding like she was entirely sure. “I didn’t really know him. I met him when I was a baby, but I don’t remember that, and then I didn’t see him again until this summer. And I’m twelve.”

  “What about since then? Have you seen your dad since this summer?”

  “We went out to lunch sometimes on the weekends,” Cressida said. “I have school during the week.”

  “Was that just you and him, or his wife too?”

  “Just me and him,” Cressida said. “Sometimes he’d bring his other kids. Only they aren’t kids anymore. They’re all adults. But they’re my siblings, so he wanted me to meet them.”

  “Did you like them?” Mendoza wanted to know.

  Cressida twisted skinny legs around the legs of the chair. “I guess. I didn’t not like them.”

  “Did they get along with their dad? Your dad?”

  “Seemed like it,” Cressida said, and then her eyes opened wide. They were icy blue, like Harold’s. “Do you think one of them did it?”

  “I have to consider everyone who knew him,” Mendoza said, and Cressida blinked.

  “Even me? And Aunt Tara?”

  “I don’t think you had a reason to kill him,” Mendoza said with a charming smile, “did you?”

  Cressida shook her head, mesmerized.

  “Besides, you probably don’t have a gun. Right?”

  “Cressie…” Tara said, and Mendoza shot her a look. She snapped her mouth shut.

  “No,” Cressida said, without really noticing the byplay. Or if she did, she didn’t think anything of it. “I don’t. I’m twelve.”

  “What about your aunt?”

  The look Mendoza had shot Tara earlier must have done the trick, because while Tara looked unhappy about the questioning, she didn’t try to interrupt again.

  “No,” Cressida said. “Aunt Tara doesn’t need a gun. Her boyfriend has one.”

  “Oh, really?” Mendoza arched his brows in Tara’s direction. She rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything. Mendoza turned back to Cressida. “What’s your aunt’s boyfriend’s name?”

  “Wyatt,” Cressida said, as she slid off the chair. “He lives in Knoxville.” She grabbed her bowl and took it to the sink. “And I don’t think they’re dating anymore.”

  She glanced at Tara, who shook her head. “Grab your stuff and put it in your backpack, Cressie. You have to leave soon, or you’ll miss the bus.”

  Cressida nodded. “’Scuse me,” she told me and Mendoza as she gathered up the books and papers from the table in front of us, and stuffed them into a blue plaid backpack.

  “No problem,” Mendoza said politely. “Can you think of anybody else who might have wanted your dad dead? Anyone who argued with him? Someone he didn’t like, or who didn’t like him?”

  “Just Heidi,” Cressida said, zipping up her pack.

  “He and Heidi argued?”

  “About me.” Cressida stuck skinny arms through the sleeves of a faded denim jacket that was hanging over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “Heidi didn’t want me there. She told my dad he couldn’t even be sure I was really his.”

  She looked halfway truculent and halfway miserable.

  “You didn’t tell me that,” Tara said.

  Cressida shrugged. “It didn’t matter. And anyway, he told her he knew. That I have his eyes. And that I look just like his mother did when she was a kid.”

  “Did he take you to meet his mother?” Mendoza cut in.

  Cressida nodded. “Can I go now? I don’t want to miss the bus.”

  “Just one more thing. Did anything happen over the summer that you remember? While you were there? Anything out of the ordinary? Something that might help me figure out who killed him?”

  Silence reigned for a second. Cressida stood on one foot with the other wrapped around her ankle. “I don’t think so,” she said eventually. “There was a burglary.”

  Of course Mendoza knew that already, but he didn’t show any sign of it. “At the house?”

  She nodded. “We went to Six Flags for the weekend. Heidi didn’t want to go, but my daddy made her. And while we were gone, someone broke in.”

  “What did they steal?”

  “Some old painting,” Cressida said with a shrug. “And some of Heidi’s jewelry that wasn’t in the safe.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Not from our house,” Cressida said. “Someone else’s house was broken into, too, while they were on vacation.”

  Mendoza nodded. “Thank you.” He waved her toward the front of the duplex. Cressida grabbed her backpack and hustled toward the door.

  “I’m just
going to stand in the door and make sure she gets on the bus,” Tara said, moving to follow.

  Mendoza shook his head. “Mrs. Kelly.” He nodded in the direction Cressida has gone.

  “You know,” I told him, “I’m not one of your underlings that you can order around.”

  But I pushed my chair back and followed Cressida. By the time I got to the front door, the girl was already on the sidewalk, and moving across the street at a brisk trot, with glances over her shoulder for the bus.

  “Come over here and have a seat,” Mendoza’s voice said from the kitchen, “and tell me about this summer.”

  I didn’t hear Tara’s response, if she made one, but a few seconds later, there was the scrape of chair legs on the floor. “What do you want to know?”

  Outside in the street, a yellow school bus rolled by, and came to a stop two houses down, just behind Mendoza’s truck. The little red arm with the stop sign on it swung out, and the lights started flashing. Cressida and two other kids, one male and one female, both younger than her, climbed onboard. The bus retracted the stop sign, the lights stopped flashing, and it lumbered by, up the street. Cressida’s pale face stared out one of the windows. I gave her what I thought of as a reassuring wave, but she didn’t wave back.

  Chapter 15

  “It all happened after Mama died,” Tara was saying as I shut the front door and made my way back toward the kitchen. “She was the one who was adamant that Cressie not have any contact with her father.”

  After a second she added, “She was happy to take his money. He paid child support all these years. But she wouldn’t let him see her, and while she was alive, Cressie and I abided by that.”

  “Cressida was OK with it?”

  “Mama’d cut up every time Cressida mentioned Harold,” Tara said, “so we learned not to talk about him much.”

  “And when your mother died?”

  “Harold’s Cressie’s father,” Tara said, “so I had to let him know that Mama was gone. He agreed to let me become Cressie’s legal guardian—I don’t think he wanted her with him full time—but he did want to get to know her. So we agreed that she should finish out the school year in Knoxville, and then come here and spend part of the summer with him and Heidi.”