Ghostly Endeavor (A Harper Harlow Mystery Book 19)

by Lily Harper Hart

  “Now you listen here,” Mel seethed in a dangerous voice, one Jared was convinced he’d never heard before.

  John slapped at Mel’s hands. “Let me go.”

  “No.” Mel was deadly serious. “We’re about to have a discussion, and it’s one we should’ve had twenty-five years ago. You’re not getting out of it this time. You’re going to listen, and by the time I’m finished, you’re either going to change your attitude or get out of my town.”

  Jared managed to keep his face impassive, but it took work. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “And what if I don’t care to listen to you?” John shot back. “What if I don’t care about any of it?”

  “Then everybody in this town is going to join together and run you out,” Mel replied simply, his lips quirking when he heard a few murmurs of assent behind his back. “We made a mistake with you and it allowed you to get out of control. We won’t make it again. You will listen ... and then you will either grow up or shut up. Those are your only two options.”

  17

  Seventeen

  Harper did her best to be calm as she approached Cassie, extending her hands at her sides to give the impression she wasn’t dangerous. Cassie noticed her right away, her expression momentarily flashing dark before clearing.

  “What are you doing here?” Cassie asked in a gravelly voice.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.” It was rare Harper found she was nervous when it came to dealing with ghosts, but that was the predicament she found herself in today. “After last night ... .” She trailed off.

  “What?” Cassie was hard to read. Her stance wasn’t overly aggressive, but Harper wasn’t taking anything for granted.

  “You were at my house last night,” she started. “Do you remember that?”

  “I ... don’t know.” Cassie shook her ghostly head. “Things are jumbled in my head.”

  The answer didn’t surprise Harper. Given the fact that Cassie was no longer a poltergeist — at least the apparition in front of her wasn’t giving off that impression — Harper had hope. The worry outweighed the hope. “Cassie, I need to ask you a question.” She licked her lips, briefly glanced around to make sure nobody had entered the cemetery with the intention of visiting a deceased loved one, and then painted a smile that was more akin to a grimace on her face. “Do you remember what happened to you?”

  “I told you I don’t.”

  “Yes, but ... I think you do. Somewhere, deep down, you remember what happened. It’s torturing you.”

  “How can something I don’t remember torture me?”

  “But you do remember. That’s why you did what you did last night.”

  “I didn’t do anything last night.”

  “You did.”

  “But ... I didn’t.” Cassie was insistent. “I would remember if I did something last night. Don’t you think I would remember?”

  “You don’t remember who killed you right this second, but I believe you did last night … at least for a time.” Harper’s voice was gentle. “I think ... you’re having trouble wrapping your head around what happened. Something went down yesterday, and you did remember what went down the night you died. When that happened, your anger took hold.”

  Cassie’s eyebrows drew together and it was clear she was concentrating. “I ... don’t think that’s true.” She sounded less certain this time.

  Harper made up her mind on the spot. “Let’s try something else.”

  “What?” Cassie’s voice took on an edge. “What do you want from me?”

  “To help.” That was true, although Harper had shifted her end goal. As much as she wanted Cassie to be at peace, she also wanted to make sure the woman wasn’t a threat to somebody else. It had become apparent the previous evening that it was important Cassie be neutralized ... one way or another.

  “Why do you want to help me?” Cassie’s voice turned bitter. “You never cared either way when we were younger.”

  “I didn’t know how to help,” Harper replied. “I knew your father was a bad man but ... I was a kid. I didn’t know how to help you, although I desperately wanted to. You have to understand that. When we’re kids, we expect the adults to swoop in and make things better. In your particular case, that didn’t happen.”

  “No.” Cassie turned her attention to the sun, as if drinking in the sight. “Nobody did anything about him.”

  “And I’m truly sorry. We can’t go back in time and change that, though. All we can do is move forward.”

  Cassie’s laugh was hollow. “And how do you expect me to move forward? I’m dead. It’s already too late for me.”

  “It’s never too late for you.” Harper was insistent. “I know it’s hard for you to see beyond this world because it’s all you’ve ever known but there’s more out there.”

  “And just like when I was alive, the walls are closing in,” Cassie grumbled.

  Harper narrowed her eyes, intrigued. She didn’t pursue that avenue of questioning right away, though. “Let’s talk about your father,” she suggested, changing course. “Was he always horrible to you? Do you have any memories where he was decent?”

  “He’s not a good man.”

  “Of course he’s not,” Harper readily agreed. “He’s the opposite of a good man. Even monsters have a few decent traits, though. Do you ever remember a time when he was decent to you?”

  “No.”

  “What’s your first memory of him?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure he was yelling. He spent his entire life yelling at me. He hated me, yelled about my mother being a whore and having me with another man. He was convinced it was true.”

  That was the first time Harper was hearing anything like that. “Wait ... .”

  “It wasn’t true,” Cassie said in a low voice. “Trust me. The idea that he wasn’t my real father and there was another man out there who could take me away from that house sustained me for a long time. I wanted it to be true.

  “I would make up elaborate scenarios,” she continued. “I would tell myself my real father didn’t know about me, that my mother had some sort of affair and didn’t tell him. Maybe he was a traveling salesman like they used to have on television, and they had a drunken night at the bar.”

  She let loose a laugh so hollow it caused chills to race down Harper’s spine. “Like my mother would ever go to a bar. I mean ... the most boring woman in the world. Her whole life was about my father. She didn’t do anything that wasn’t aimed at making him happy.”

  “She probably didn’t realize there was no making him happy,” Harper offered.

  “No, what she didn’t realize was that he took joy in the rage,” Cassie corrected. “He only found emotional release when he was angry, so he always embraced that emotion.”

  It was a fairly profound assessment, Harper mused. She imagined Cassie spent a great deal of time as a teenager researching the psychology of her father. Harper figured that’s what she would’ve done if she’d been in the same position. Understanding was better than nothing.

  “My mother enabled him,” Cassie continued. She no longer had to breathe so pausing for oxygen wasn’t an issue. “I was sixteen or so when I realized my fantasies were stupid.”

  “Not stupid,” Harper countered, her heart constricting at the ghost’s morose expression. “They weren’t stupid. They were a way for you to escape.”

  “They weren’t reality, though. I needed to face reality, which was something I didn’t do well. My mother was the one who told me about reality, and how escaping was a mistake.” She shifted her voice so it was higher than normal. “‘Pretending you’re somewhere else, someone else, only delays the inevitable.’”

  It was obvious to Harper that Cassie was mimicking her mother now.

  “She said I was never going to get ahead as long as I had my head in the clouds,” Cassie explained. “It was the one good piece of advice she ever gave me, and I took it to heart. I didn’t want to be so distract
ed by my dreams that I missed my chance to escape. So, I started planning.”

  “What were you planning?” Harper found she was honestly curious.

  “I was sixteen when I realized the truth,” Cassie replied. “I was sixteen when I acknowledged that things wouldn’t be getting better. That’s when it came time to plan for survival. The first thing I did was save up and buy one of those home DNA kits. They weren’t as readily available then, compared to what they are now — and much more expensive — but I found some online.

  “It wasn’t hard to get my father’s DNA because he drank all day and sometimes chewed tobacco,” she continued. “He would spit in a bottle, something I always considered to be gross, and leave it around the house. My mother would pick it up after a few hours, leave him a fresh bottle, and go on her merry way as if it wasn’t absolutely disgusting. I just took one of the bottles.”

  “You compared your DNA to his,” Harper surmised.

  “Yeah. I wanted to be sure. I was fairly certain that my father was holding onto the delusion that I wasn’t his daughter because it somehow made him feel better. It bothered him that I wasn’t as good at following the rules as my mother. He thought I was defective. He never realized that I found my joy in disappointing him. I could never make him happy, no matter how hard I tried, so I decided to stop trying. It was the one thing in that house I had power over.”

  Harper pressed her lips together and nodded. In a weird sort of way, it made sense to her. Cassie was a girl left at the mercy of jerks. She needed control, even if it was over something negative. “How did that go?”

  Cassie shrugged. “He didn’t notice when I was doing it purposely. It was all the same to him. I couldn’t completely let go of the fantasy until I knew for sure that he was really my father. Back then, the tests took months. I was the one who had to get the mail every day so I wasn’t worried about someone else seeing what I’d done. Honestly, if the results had proven he wasn’t my father, he probably would’ve been happy I made the effort.”

  She was silent a beat, something akin to wistful longing appearing on her face, and then she continued. “The results proved what I always knew. He was my father. It was another dream dashed, but I’d pretty much resolved myself to that outcome so I wasn’t as crushed as you might think.”

  “Still, it would’ve allowed you to keep dreaming,” Harper said in a low voice. “Everybody needs dreams.”

  “Not practical people. Not my mother. She never dreamed of getting away. She said making it work was just as good as living a good life. I mean ... can you believe that?”

  Harper shrugged. Her feelings for Mary were complicated. She hated John with a fiery passion — and this conversation with Cassie was doing nothing to make her feel better about him — but she looked at Mary as another victim. Harper figured the older woman did what she thought she had to survive. She couldn’t fault her for it.

  “I got a job at sixteen, at the ice cream shop,” Cassie said. “It was the first time my father thought I wasn’t useless. Nobody told me to go out and get the job. Nobody said I had to learn to take care of myself. When asked, I simply told my father that I would be leaving the house at eighteen and needed to be prepared to take care of myself financially. He actually smiled at me that day.”

  Harper hated this story and it took everything she had not to melt down. Her parents were complete and total pains — dramatic ones at that — but they’d always loved her. Sure, they’d embarrassed her and suggested she hide her abilities at various times, but their love was never in doubt. Cassie had never had that, not even for an instant.

  “For the most part, once I hit sixteen, he left me alone as long as I kept my grades up in school and spent my off hours at work,” she continued. “I didn’t date. I knew better because that would just open me up for his wrath. There was one time when we were supposed to go to that dance, they were giving extra-credit if we learned to waltz. You had to go with a partner, though.”

  She swished her lips at the memory, her eyes remaining adrift rather than focusing on Harper. “I’d learned a few things by then. I knew what not to do. I approached him, explained how the credit would help me, and then explained I had no choice but to go with a date. I let him pick the date. He picked Josh Anderson. Do you remember him?”

  “He was a nice guy,” Harper replied automatically.

  “He was a nice guy who spent all of his time in the computer lab and not talking to girls,” Cassie corrected. “That worked well for me. My father thought it was funny that I was going with a ‘geek.’ That was his word, mind you, not mine. I was already figuring things out by then, though. Josh was the sort of guy I should want because he would make money one day.”

  “I’m pretty sure Josh was gay,” Harper offered out of nowhere. “I caught him making eyes at Zander a few times.”

  Cassie turned rueful. “Yes, well, I was just using him as an example. I didn’t really want Josh.”

  “Oh.” Harper didn’t know what to say so she let it go.

  “The day of my eighteenth birthday, I was packed and ready to go. I knew where I was staying — they had those rooms out at the resort that you could stay in for free if you worked there — and was ready to head out. That’s when things took their final turn, although I didn’t realize it at the time.”

  Harper was at a loss so she simply hooked her fingers through her belt loops and rolled back on her heels and listened. This was Cassie’s show now.

  “My mother tried to stop me from leaving that day,” she said in a low voice. “She came up to my room — something she almost never did — and explained that I didn’t have to leave. I had this moment of confusion because she’d never been that nice to me before. Then she said the thing I’ll never forget. She said that if I wanted to stay, I just had to help her take care of my father. That’s it. That’s all I had to do.”

  “I’m sure I can imagine your response,” Harper said dryly.

  “It was pretty funny,” Cassie agreed. “I laughed so hard I thought I might cry. Before then, I didn’t ever remember doing that. I did that day, though. My mother was mad, said that I should stop thinking about myself and start thinking about others. She said she was getting old and it was my duty to take care of my father.

  “I told her that I never wanted to see that man again,” she continued. “I explained how she was the one who chose that life — not me — and I wouldn’t be punished for it a second longer. Then I grabbed my bags — everything I owned fit into two duffle bags — and headed downstairs.

  “My father was in the kitchen that day,” she said, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “I strolled up to him, offered him a handshake, and said I was leaving. He didn’t even wish me a happy birthday. All he asked is where I would go. I told him I was going to be working two jobs and staying in the dorms at the resort. He thought it was a good idea.

  “When I was leaving, I handed over my copy of the house key,” she continued. “I said that way he wouldn’t have to worry about changing the locks. He said he would change them anyway because I wasn’t trustworthy ... and laughed. Then he reminded me I was on my own. I told him that was the way I preferred it.

  “Then I left. I walked through the door of that house and I’ve never been back. The only time I’ve seen them was when I was out on the town ... or at my wedding to Chuck. They did show up for that because the town would’ve talked if they didn’t. They didn’t help pay, though. In fact, when I explained the situation to Chuck, his family decided to pay because they felt so bad for me.”

  “Chuck is a good guy,” Harper said. “I know he wasn’t right for you, but he doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.”

  “No,” Cassie agreed. “If he would’ve just considered moving ... or getting a better job ... something to prove to me that he wasn’t content just hanging around Whisper Cove for the rest of his life … well … . I would’ve stayed with him if he’d done any of those things.”

  “You didn’t l
ove him, though,” Harper pointed out.

  “Love is overrated.”

  Harper thought of the way Jared had looked with his head cushioned against her chest this morning. “True love is worth more than you can ever imagine.”

  “If you say so.” Cassie would never be convinced of that so Harper knew pressing the issue was a waste of time. “I was on my own at eighteen and never looked back.”

  It was a meandering story, and exactly what Harper was looking for. She wanted Cassie’s mind to wander in such a way that when she tripped over the truth of her murder, it would be with an open mind. It was time to take Cassie back to something else she’d said, though.

  “Did your mother say anything else to you when you left?”

  “Just that an ungrateful daughter was a plague.” Cassie snorted at the memory. “She was always such a trip. Even after Chuck and I got divorced she tried to suggest I come back to help with my father. I mean ... why would I want to do that?”

  “I think your mother missed you and that’s the only way she knew how to tell you.”

  “She didn’t miss me. She missed having another target in the house. In fact, she mentioned that my father had gone off the rails when he heard I was getting divorced. He was taking it out on her, and she didn’t think it was fair. She demanded I come home and deal with the situation.”

  Harper frowned. That sounded like an odd demand to her. “Wait ... she wanted you to come home just so you could be yelled at?”

  “Oh, it was hardly the first time. In fact, she was more than willing to throw me under the bus when I was a kid. When she did something wrong, she would blame me so Dad would yell at me and she could avoid another screaming fit.”

  “But ... she was your mother.”

  “That didn’t stop her from sacrificing me.” Cassie’s eyes gleamed when they finally landed on Harper, red glowing hot and hard in their vacant depths. “That didn’t stop her from killing me.”

  “Holy crap,” Zander gasped from behind the bushes as Cassie’s form appeared out of nowhere, rippling with darkness. “I ... um ... what is happening?” He popped out from behind the hedge, the dreamcatcher gripped in his hand.