Ghostly Visions: A Harper Harlow Mystery Books 10-12

by Lily Harper Hart

  “Definitely. My father was one of the most well-regarded attorneys in the tri-county area. Carl kept trying to find ways to ingratiate himself with my father, but it never ended well. My father was mean ... and dismissive ... and he didn’t want anything to do with me while I insisted on being married to Carl.”

  Jared felt sick to his stomach. It was clear Fran had been mistreated by more than one man. “So ... what happened?”

  “Pretty much what you would expect.” She held her hands palms out and shrugged. “I got pregnant before the ink on my voluntary withdrawal papers was dry. We were married within two months. We had a baby seven months after that. Carl, Jr. I just call him Junior.” She smiled at mention of her son. “He’s the only good thing that came out of this.”

  “How long were you married?” Mel asked gently.

  “We divorced when Junior was ten.”

  Jared did the math in his head. “And how old is he now?”

  “Twenty-five. He’s putting himself through law school … with a lot of help from my parents, that is. He works hard to supplement what they give him, though. He says he wants to be like my father instead of his.”

  “Does he know your father well?”

  “My father doesn’t have much use for me,” she answered, choosing her words carefully. “He thinks I was weak when I married Carl. It only got worse when we divorced and he found out how Carl managed to railroad me. He was furious ... at me as much as Carl.”

  Jared found his fury building. “I’m sorry to hear that. It sounds like you’ve had it rough all around.”

  “Oh, I’m fine.” Fran forced a smile for Jared’s benefit. “I’m the manager of the bakery over at Thirteen Mile and Groesbeck now. I get benefits and a retirement package. I’ll have to work until I’m seventy-five, but eventually I’ll get there.”

  “Yeah, well ... it’s still unfair,” Jared noted. “You didn’t do anything wrong and yet you were screwed on every side.”

  “One might say I earned some of that by not listening to my parents when they warned me about Carl. They saw him for what he was when I didn’t.”

  “They’re still your parents. They should’ve supported you no matter what.”

  “They didn’t see it that way. They did support Junior, though. Once Carl and I were separated, they went out of their way to help Junior. They took him once a week and spent time with him. They saw that he had decent clothes when he was in school. My parents helped pay his college tuition and for law school. They’re very good like that.”

  The information didn’t make Jared feel better. “I don’t understand why they can’t forgive and forget where you’re concerned.”

  “There’s too many bad feelings to contend with. It’s better this way. I only care that Junior gets what he needs, and he seems to be ... so that’s that.”

  “Yeah, well ... .” Jared dragged a restless hand through his hair as he regrouped. “It’s been explained to us that Carl completely screwed you over in the divorce. He somehow arranged it so he didn’t have to pay you a penny, even in child support.”

  “That’s true.” Fran swallowed hard. “I wasn’t all that upset when Carl said he wanted a divorce. We hadn’t been happy for a very long time. In fact, I’m not sure we were ever really happy. I digress, though.

  “He announced he wanted a divorce, said he was giving me the house and planned to move out, and that we would meet in a few weeks to discuss how everything would shake out,” she continued. “Instead, I was served three days later, found out the house was going to drag me under financially, and the divorce was rammed through six weeks later ... and I didn’t get a thing. It was an eye-opening experience.”

  “But how?” Mel asked. “I can’t see a judge simply allowing that to stand. You had a minor child.”

  “On paper we shared custody and that’s all that mattered,” Fran explained. “He acted like he was doing me a favor by not seeking full custody of Junior. I have to admit ... I was so terrified that he would take my son that I willingly let him screw me to keep Junior in my life. I believed him when he said a judge would take away Junior because I had no marketable job skills.”

  Jared was convinced, if Carl wasn’t already dead, he would strangle the life out of the diabolical man. “I’m sorry you went through it.”

  “It’s over now.”

  “What about your son, though?”

  “I’m here.” A new voice entered the fray and when Jared jerked his eyes to the back of the room, he found a twenty-something man with brown eyes watching him dubiously.

  “You’re Carl, Jr.?” Mel asked.

  “I prefer going by Junior,” he said as he moved to the spot behind his mother. His eyes reflected suspicion as he glanced around the room. “May I ask what you gentlemen are doing here?”

  “It’s okay, Junior,” Fran chided. “They’re here to talk about your father. They were just asking simple questions.”

  “It’s not okay.” Junior was firm as he folded his arms across his chest. “I assume you’re looking to pin my father’s death on someone and my mother makes an enticing target. Well, let me tell you something, she’s innocent and I’m not going to let you railroad her.”

  “We have no intention of railroading her,” Mel reassured the young man. “We simply wanted to hear about your mother’s marriage to your father.”

  “It was an unhappy time,” Junior volunteered. “My mother is a saint, though, and works sixty hours a week. She didn’t kill my father.”

  Jared was impressed with Junior’s fortitude. Of course, if Fran was his mother, he would’ve gone overboard standing up for her, too. The woman had been through a terrible ordeal and yet she came out the other side refusing to blame anyone for the things she was forced to overcome. She was a pure soul, something Jared figured out five seconds upon meeting her.

  “We’re not accusing your mother,” Mel promised. “Since she didn’t regularly engage with your father, now seems like a weird time for her to finally get her revenge.”

  “Yes, well ... .” Junior remained suspicious as he grabbed the kettle and poured more hot water into his mother’s mug. “If you’re not here because she’s a suspect, why are you here?”

  “We were hoping she might have some information regarding your father’s enemies,” Mel replied. “It seems he had quite a few of them.”

  “That was something he took pride in,” Junior explained. “He always told me that he wasn’t doing his job correctly if he didn’t make someone want to kill him.”

  “That might be a colorful saying, but it creates a problem for us,” Jared noted. “We need to find out who hated him enough to kill him.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you.” Junior rested his hand on Fran’s shoulder. “My mother didn’t kill my father. She doesn’t have it in her.”

  “What about your relationship with your father?”

  “It was ... fairly normal,” Junior replied, tilting his head in consideration. “He wasn’t a bad guy where I was concerned. I only saw him one day a month, though. He would take me to the mall and buy me something on the fourth Saturday of each month. He thought that would mean he was my favorite because my mother couldn’t afford to buy me anything.

  “All that did was make me realize what he truly was,” he continued. “I didn’t dislike my father. I didn’t hate him. He was emotionally limited, though. He wasn’t an easy man to get along with. On top of that, my mother was the true parent. She’s the one who went to all my parent-teacher conferences.

  “She played with me when I was a kid, helped me with my homework, and sat with me when I had a broken heart as a teenager,” he continued. “She taught me right from wrong. My father had a more flexible moral code.”

  “Yes, we’ve heard about that flexibility,” Jared drawled. “Your father was considered a shark in divorce lawyer circles.”

  “That was a title he happily carted around. In fact, I believe the last set of business cards he purchased said exactly
that.”

  Jared arched an eyebrow. “I see. What about your relationship with your father now? How would you describe it?”

  “Boring,” Junior replied without hesitation. “I saw him occasionally. I guess it would still be about once a month, but as I got older those visits moved from the mall to a restaurant. He would always pick an expensive one and buy me lunch. It was almost as if he was bragging.”

  “Did that bother you?” Mel asked.

  “Yes. I can’t remember when my mother last got to have an expensive meal.” Junior’s eyes momentarily fired. “I take her out for her birthday every year, but she always selects the cheapest thing on the menu because she doesn’t want to be a burden. I hate that my father did that to her.”

  “And yet you still spent time with him,” Jared noted.

  “He was my father.” For a brief moment, helplessness washed over Junior’s features. “I don’t know how to explain it. Part of me hated him. No, Mom, I often hated him.” He squeezed Fran’s hand when she made a move to protest the words. “It’s not easy for me to admit, especially since it probably makes me a suspect, but he wasn’t easy to deal with.”

  “He was still your father, though.” Jared understood the sentiment. “You saw him once a month, which probably means you weren’t very close. What were those meals like?”

  “I basically sat around and listened to him brag about how he screwed people in court,” Junior replied. “He got off on it. Winning was more important than money, but the money was really important, too. He couldn’t stop himself from bragging. It’s simply who he was.

  “When you compare that to my grandfather, a man who happens to believe justice is more important than winning, he becomes even more of a louse,” he continued. “My grandfather is a jerk in a different way. And, before you think I’m talking bad about him, I’ve told him that more than once. He thinks it’s funny when I stand up to him ... which is exactly why he’s still paying for my schooling.

  “I plan to pay him back,” he said. “I’ll make sure he gets every penny. For now, though, I have an uneasy relationship with him. It’s for different reasons than why I had an uneasy relationship with my father, though. I respect my grandfather. I tolerated my father.”

  The young man was soft-spoken and yet blunt. Jared liked that about him. “Did your father ever mention having enemies to you?”

  “He bragged about it. He was proud people hated him.”

  “I guess I’m more interested in him being worried about someone wanting to hurt him,” Jared hedged. “Whoever killed your father most likely issued the sort of threats that would cause chills instead of laughter.”

  “I understand what you’re saying.” Junior stroked his chin as he thought about it. “He didn’t mention anything at our last lunch. That was about two weeks ago. All he talked about at the time was the new woman he was seeing.”

  A sense of dread weighed down Jared’s shoulders. “And what did he say about her?”

  “I can’t really remember. Um ... her name was Gloria. He said she pretended to be forty-four, but she was really in her fifties. Apparently she was quite ... energetic. That’s the word he used to describe her.”

  “Did you meet her? What about the other women he dated?” Mel asked.

  “Oh, I met very few of Dad’s dates, although I’m familiar with Gloria’s name and fairly certain I’ve met her at various functions,” Junior replied. “I might’ve even met her at a party not too long ago, although I can’t be certain. If I did, it was brief.

  “I don’t particularly remember her offhand,” he continued. “As for my father’s dates, they were never around long enough for me to even remember most of them. He liked to brag about his sexual conquests, but I once saw he had a Viagra prescription — he pulled it out of his wallet once when trying to boast about all the money he had in there and didn’t notice me looking — so I figured those stories were mostly made up.”

  “That’s probably a good presumption,” Jared agreed. “The thing is, someone out there hated your father enough to kill him. It’s possible that one of his former clients — or more likely the ex-partner of one of his former clients — bided his or her time and then went after him when they thought the coast was clear. It’s more likely, though, that he upset someone recently and that’s who went after him.”

  “Are you looking at the girlfriend?”

  Jared cleared his throat, uncomfortable. “We’re looking at everyone right now. In fact, we’re about to pick up a warrant so we can go through your father’s case files. We don’t have a specific suspect right now. We hope that changes relatively quickly, though.”

  “I hope so, too,” Junior said. “The man was a lousy husband and an absent father, but he was still my dad. I don’t want anyone to get away with his murder.”

  “None of us want that. We’ll let you know when we have more information.”

  “I would appreciate that. Thank you.”

  Eight

  Jared met Harper downtown for dinner. He was surprised by the text she sent, which basically said “meet me at Jason’s restaurant at seven” and didn’t question the reasoning behind it. He already understood why she did it. Together time with her parents was obviously wearing on her and she needed an excuse to be away from them ... and maybe drink.

  In fact, she already had a huge martini sitting in front of her when Jared arrived. She was halfway through it and seemed to be ranting at a feverish pace as her friend Jason Thurman sat next to her and listened to the diatribe with sympathetic eyes.

  “And then they started arguing about which one of them had worse taste in partners,” Harper said as Jared shrugged out of his coat and hung it over the back of his chair. “They actually got in a competition with one another about who has worse taste in dates. Can you believe that?”

  “That sounds ... kind of funny,” Jason said after a beat, smiling at Jared as the police officer leaned over the table to press a kiss to Harper’s cheek.

  “It wasn’t funny.” Harper scowled as she flicked her eyes to Jared. “I blame you for this.”

  “I’m glad you’re pounding the alcohol if you’re blaming me.” He flashed a worried smile. “Heart, I don’t want to be a nag, but do you think you should be drinking hard liquor if you have to drive home?”

  “That shows what you know. I didn’t drive here. My car is back at the house. My father insisted on driving because he said my mother taught me how to drive — which isn’t even true, mind you, because she was always too busy to do it — and he dropped me off downtown when I couldn’t take another second of their fighting. I told him I had work at the office and walked from there.”

  Jared made a face as he slid into his chair. “That’s like seven blocks away. You walked that far in this cold?”

  “It was better than hanging out with my parents.”

  “Okay.” Jared wasn’t sure what response she was looking for so he ran a hand through his hair to brush away the light dusting of snow that had fallen on him between the parking lot and the front door of the restaurant and sipped the glass of water waiting for him. “I take it you didn’t have a good day.”

  Jason held up a hand to still the conversation. “I’m going to warn you that questions regarding her day are going to involve some really loud answers. She’s been here for forty-five minutes and barely taken a breath. All I asked is how things were going.”

  “I see,” Jared smirked at the gregarious restaurant owner. When Jason first arrived in town, he had designs on Harper. They briefly dated in high school before he was forced to move away. He hoped they would have a second chance, but his hopes were quickly dashed when he saw Harper and Jared together. Now he was merely a friend to them, although he still irritated Jared from time to time. That was on purpose. “I’m betting you were willing to listen to the diatribe, huh?”

  “While feeding her martinis.” Jason winked. “By the way, I noticed the ring on her finger. I guess you finally got it together and propo
sed, huh? Congratulations.”

  Jared’s smile widened. “It was a Christmas gift of sorts.”

  “For both of us,” Harper added, finishing her drink. “I think I need another one.”

  Jason moved to stand, as if he was going to get the drink for her, but Jared shook his head, confusing the bartender who could do nothing but lift an eyebrow. “No?”

  “I think you should have some food before you have another drink, Heart,” Jared admonished. “I don’t happen to believe that drinking when you’re this worked up is a good thing.”

  “Why?” Her expression was blank. “I’m not driving.”

  “No, but I would like to talk to you, have a nice dinner conversation, and I don’t think the liquor is going to make that possible.”

  Instead of arguing, Harper let loose a world-weary sigh that made Jason snort. “Fine. I’m done drinking.” She pushed the empty glass toward Jason. “I want a Shirley Temple. If I can’t have the liquor, I’ll get hopped up on sugar instead.”

  “Now you’re talking.” Jared leaned back in his chair and kicked out his long legs in front of him. “Tell me about your day.”

  “You’re stepping in it now.” Jason carefully backed away from the table. “I think I’ll get your drinks and let you guys talk about this in private ... because you’re engaged now and that seems like the respectful thing to do.”

  Jared glowered at him and shook his head. “I’ll have an iced tea. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Jason clapped him on the shoulder and leaned close so he could whisper. “Don’t ask about what happened when she took her parents to the coffee shop. It’s best left forgotten.”

  Jared’s lips twitched, but he remained calm as he held Harper’s gaze. “Tell me about your day,” he repeated. “I’m sorry I wasn’t in touch, but I had a lot going on. We conducted quite a few interviews and then the entire afternoon was spent going through Gibbons’s client files.”

  Harper fixed him with a dark stare. “What did Jason just say to you?”