Lover in the Shadows

by Lindsay Longford

“I reckon you have your passport with you?”

  “Why? Do I need an alibi, Detective, or is this idle conversation?” Reid grinned.

  “I haven’t made up my mind.” Harlan crossed one leg over his other knee. He heard Molly murmuring to the cat, her syllables liquid and restful. He liked sitting here in her living room and listening to the sound of her voice from the kitchen. “But I wonder if you’d let me see your passport? If you have it with you?”

  “Damn. You aren’t making chitchat, are you?” Reid frowned.

  “Not altogether, no. I really would like to see that passport, Mr. Harris.” Harlan held out his hand.

  “Sure. Hang on a sec. I dropped my bag at the door when you opened it and shoved your gun in my face.” Resentment turned his cheekbones red. “I’ll go get it, but this is stupid.” He opened the door, which they hadn’t locked, and stepped out onto the veranda.

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  Reid dug around in a small duffel bag and pulled out his passport. Tossing it carelessly to Harlan, he smiled and sat down in the chair opposite. “Everything’s in order, Detective.”

  “I’m sure it is, Mr. Harris.” Turning pages, Harlan checked dates, stamps, entry notations. “You travel a lot.”

  “Part of the job. A lot of red tape when you own property out of the country. And I like to see Moll whenever I can.”

  In the kitchen, Molly rattled flatware in a drawer. Harlan wanted to be in the kitchen with her, not here in the living room with her twin.

  Harlan flipped the passport back to Reid. “As you said, everything’s in order.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” Reid challenged, his mouth a tight line, nothing like Molly’s generous one.

  “I have no idea.” Harlan tilted his head and observed the man’s restless movements.

  He’d left the chair and was wandering around the room, his boot heels thwacking against the wood. He couldn’t seem to stay in one spot. “Look, Detective—” he brushed against an end table and the pictures on it trembled and righted “—it’s late, and I’m plumb out of energy. I’ve been on the go all day, and I may be giving you the wrong idea.”

  “I have no ideas,” Harlan said. “I ask questions and see what answers I get. I go from there.”

  “Well, look, I’m not ticked off with you, but I am worried about Sissy. If I could have let the ranch run itself after the folks died, I would have stayed with her, but I couldn’t. I know she insisted she’s fine and all that, but she’s not. She went to pieces. She’d call me at all hours of the night in Costa Rica. I don’t think she’s been sleeping, even with the pills Paul gave her. She can’t go on like this without cracking, and if you’re giving her a hard time about Camina’s murder, Molly’s going to—” Reid sat down heavily in the chair “—I don’t know what she’ll do. And I have to get back to the ranch.”

  “Ms. Harris seems to be handling herself,” Harlan said softly, watching Reid’s troubled expression. “I don’t think you have to worry.”

  “No?” Reid said, leaning back. “Damn, I hope you’re right. Sis is all the family I have left.” He leaned forward. “You don’t think she might…”

  “What, Mr. Harris? She might…what?” Harlan asked very, very softly.

  “Do something stupid?”

  A lid clanked onto a pot. The fan over the stove whirred.

  “For instance?” Behind his sunglasses, Harlan watched Reid’s anxious movements.

  “To herself?” Reid stood up and resumed his pacing, moving quickly around the room.

  “No. I don’t think she’ll do anything stupid, Mr. Harris.”

  “Really?” Reid lifted his duffel bag, dropped it. “You’re sure?”

  “I can’t read her mind. I don’t believe she’s…suicidal.”

  “Good. I hope you’re right. But she’s been under a lot of strain. It’s been too much. I should have figured out a way to stay with her.” He tugged the string on the duffel bag. “I’d blame myself if anything happened.”

  “Would you?”

  “Of course. We’re family. Blood’s thicker than water, and all that.” Hoisting his duffel bag, Reid added, “And you know she couldn’t have killed Camina. Molly doesn’t have a vicious bone in her body. If you’re putting Sissy on your suspect list, take her off. Find someone else.”

  “We’ll do our best, Mr. Harris,” Harlan said, as Reid headed toward the front staircase. “You’re staying here for a while?”

  “Tonight. I’m entertaining some prospective investors at my fishing cabin for a few days. I’ll be there until I go back to the ranch. Now that I’ve heard about Camina, I’m hoping I can close out my deal early and come back here to be with Sis. Maybe I can get somebody to cover the ranch for a week or two.” The muscles along his arms flexed as Reid swung the duffel bag back and forth. He glanced down the hall toward Molly. “Damn, I wish I didn’t have this meeting.”

  Harlan restrained his sarcastic comment. Everybody had the same twenty-four hours. If Reid wanted to be with Molly, he would be. Harlan rubbed his neck. He’d told Molly she was too trusting, but he was, possibly, too skeptical. His cynicism was too ingrained, tainting even the most normal reactions with a nasty tinge. Perhaps Reid was sincerely concerned about Molly. Perhaps sincerely selfish. Either way, he was going to be here one night.

  Reid’s flight from Costa Rica would still have been in the air while Molly was at the medical center. Clearing customs would have slowed him down further.

  His timing was probably coincidental.

  But Harlan had never believed in coincidences, so he watched with narrowed eyes as Reid walked out of the living room. Harlan intended to check the flight time.

  He went up the front stairs although his bedroom was closer to the back stairs off the kitchen. Harlan reckoned Reid didn’t want any more close encounters of the feline kind.

  Leaning back against the couch, Harlan took off his sunglasses and hooked them back into his pocket. Resting, he opened himself to the free-floating impressions he was picking up, letting them flow through him as he listened to Molly’s noisy cheerfulness in the kitchen.

  He’d gone home to change after leaving the medical center and fallen asleep for a while even though he’d planned on driving straight to her house. Jolted awake by an impulse too strong to ignore, Harlan had decided to pay a call in spite of the late hour. He intended to stay on surveillance outside, but he’d seen her moving around her kitchen through the gap where her shutters didn’t quite dovetail with the window. Seeing her, he’d given in and knocked on her door.

  If he hadn’t fallen asleep, he would have arrived and departed earlier, missing Reid.

  The sense of evil that had rushed through him at the medical center swirled around him once more and he turned his head toward the hall leading to the kitchen.

  Auras. Impressions. Blood. Death. If he were Molly, he wouldn’t be able to stay in this house. It shrieked of pain and sadness. He had to give her credit. Like a willow tree, Molly Harris had an unexpected and resilient strength. Harlan knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep in the house, beautiful and gracious as it was. He rolled his shoulders and stood up, suddenly as restless as Reid.

  Molly and the cat were eyeball-to-eyeball over the bowl of spaghetti on the counter. “Cats don’t like tomatoes. You’re being an old bully again. I’ll give you a taste—you’ll turn up your nose and walk away. Don’t pretend you won’t, buster. I know your type.”

  “Do you?”

  Molly jerked upright. “Detective Harlan! You startled me. You’re always sneaking up on me.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t intend to be sneaky.” Harlan raised his arm and propped himself in the doorway, angled so he could see Reid when he came down the front stairs. Reid wouldn’t enter the kitchen from the back stairway, not while Bully Cat was on the scene, and Harlan wasn’t through with what he wanted to find out from Molly. “What’s his type?” Harlan gestured toward the cat and lifted his eyebrow.

  The cat le
apt down from the counter and padded to him. Launching himself with a thrust of his haunches, he landed on Harlan’s shoulders and draped himself at the back of his neck, his tail curling forward onto Harlan’s chest.

  “He likes to intimidate people. Like you.” Ms. Molly was teasing him. The quirk at the corner of her mouth gave her away.

  “Not me,” Harlan said lazily. “I only ask questions. There’s a difference.”

  “Maybe to you,” she groused, wiping her hands down her jeans. Red streaks paralleled the cereal trail.

  “Nice fashion statement,” he said, tipping his head toward her food-smeared jeans and indicating the paste. “Goes well with the cereal.”

  “I make a mess when I cook.” She shrugged. “What can I say?”

  Harlan saw the opened cans of tomato paste, the colander balanced precariously in the sink, the sprinkles of oregano. “That you’re enthusiastic? That you’re happy?”

  “I am.” She nodded emphatically. “I was so surprised to see Reid. It was almost as if I conjured him up.”

  Harlan stroked the cat’s tail. “Careful with conjuring spells, Ms. Molly. You never know what you’ll summon.”

  The widening of her eyes told him she was remembering what he’d said about evil roaming loose in the world.

  “I’m safe here with Reid. And I’ll be careful when I leave the house.”

  “I doubt it. I’m learning you’re not a cautious lady, Ms. Molly. Even when you should be.” Harlan didn’t like what he was about to do to Molly and the happiness radiating from her face. He liked seeing her sparkling and shining. But it was necessary. For her sake, most of all.

  “I’m cautious enough.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Harlan moved away from the doorway.

  The cat’s tail twitched once. He placed his front paws on Harlan’s chest, balanced and dropped to the floor. Sniffing Harlan’s feet, the cat flicked his tail and disappeared.

  “Reckon he’s gone looking for Reid?”

  Molly’s smile wavered. “If that cat’s as smart as I think he is, he’ll give Reid plenty of walking-around room.”

  Harlan lifted one of her black-and-white place mats. “How well did your brother know Camina?”

  She wrinkled her nose. The tip of it was dotted with tomato paste. “Only casually at best. I don’t think Reid and Camina exchanged more than a dozen words that I know of before I fired her. Maybe he can help you, but I doubt it. What are you looking for?”

  “Her habits. People who knew her, knew why she might have been on your dock in the rain. Why did you fire her, Molly?”

  Molly pursed her mouth and raised her hands helplessly. “You never give up, do you?”

  “I told you I didn’t.”

  “I remember. Does why I fired her matter? Really?”

  Holding her gaze, Harlan brushed the dried paste off her nose and nodded. “Yeah.”

  “You’re always handing me paper towels, cleaning up. You’re a very tidy man.” She was avoiding the subject.

  “It’s because I like order, and, yes, it’s important for me to know why you fired her. Tell me.”

  Molly’s shoulders sagged. “She was stealing. Nothing of importance at first, then some of my clothes, my jewelry. A ring. Things from the house. Some of Reid’s things he’d left here.”

  “Ah.” Harlan smiled. “That helps. Why were you so reluctant to tell me?”

  “I felt petty. I had so much and Camina so little that what she took seemed unimportant.”

  “Things are unimportant, but motives aren’t. What did she say when you fired her?”

  Rubbing her wrist across her forehead, Molly said passionately, “I hate this!”

  “What did she say, Ms. Harris? She didn’t admit the theft, did she?”

  “No.” Molly looked at the floor. She was clearly having a difficult time telling him the rest of the story. “But by then I had no choice. I found Reid’s watch and a pair of my earrings in a plastic bag stuffed in a container in the freezer. Camina always cleaned out the freezer. The container was labeled in her handwriting. Beef stew. Way at the back, underneath all the other containers. The damned thing could have stayed there forever before I found it. It was only a fluke that I unearthed it anyway. I wish I’d never seen it! I thought I’d lost the earrings at the funeral, and I’d given up any hope of recovering them. They didn’t matter anymore to me!”

  “I’m sure they didn’t,” Harlan said.

  “Camina came in just as I opened the container and pulled out the bag. Neither of us said much. We were both embarrassed. That’s all. And if I had it to do over, I wouldn’t fire her. If I’d known she needed money, I would have given the damn things to her.” She gestured helplessly. “But it all happened so fast.”

  “Did you ever see her again? Did she call you?”

  “No. I wrote out a check, she packed her suitcase. She left that afternoon.”

  “Thank you. That was a help. Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

  “When I saw Camina’s body, I couldn’t think straight. Nothing made sense to me. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me.” She glanced away, tugged at her shirt. “You thought I’d killed her, and I—”

  “And you were afraid you had, weren’t you, Ms. Harris?” Harlan pitched his voice low, letting it ride the air between them. “You thought you’d gone out on the dock and stabbed her with the butcher knife I found on your kitchen floor, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” Her whisper overrode his last words.

  “Until I told you I saw you on the dock last night and followed you back, you weren’t even sure how the knife could have gotten from Camina’s body back into your tightly locked house, were you?”

  “No.” She nibbled the edge of her thumb.

  “And neither of us knows for sure whether or not you might have killed Camina while you were…unconscious.”

  “But—”

  Harlan shook his head. “No, let me finish. We both know what happened at the medical center. You were the victim there. As for what really happened with Camina, I’ll tell you God’s own truth, Ms. Harris. I don’t know. You might have stabbed her. It’s possible. We know you have periods of amnesialike behavior. And unless someone can verify that you didn’t kill her, that possibility is still viable.”

  She looked as if he’d slapped her across the face.

  “You have to face facts. I can’t rule out that possibility but, frankly, I think it’s the least likely explanation.”

  Her shoulders sagged with relief. “Thank you for that, in any case.” Her voice was thin but it didn’t quiver. Molly Harris was holding her own.

  “So here’s why I think you probably didn’t kill her. You weren’t violent last night when I saw you. In fact, you were extraordinarily passive. That’s why I thought you were on drugs.”

  As clearly as if he could read her mind, Harlan knew she was sorting through the options. He wanted her to. It was a small thing he could do for her. “For a while, I thought you and a cohort might have stabbed Camina because she knew something about your parents’ murder. Other people will jump to that conclusion, too, Ms. Harris.” He stretched his hand toward her, stopping her before she spoke. “No, I don’t believe you killed your parents, either. I do believe, though, that in some fashion the deaths of Camina and your parents are linked. If you didn’t kill Camina, you’re in danger, too. And you can’t let yourself forget that. Because if you’re innocent, there’s someone out there with a very clever mind who’s messing with your head, Ms. Harris. And anyone who would do that is a very dangerous, very evil person.”

  Harlan heard the cat’s claws clicking against the wooden floor upstairs.

  “What if I did kill her and don’t ever remember doing it?” She faced him with only a minute tremble in her chin.

  “Then that will be between you and your lawyer.”

  She gained control of the tremble, but the light died from her eyes, and he could tell she was accepting
what was in front of her.

  That was all he could do for her.

  He’d had to wipe out the happiness shining from her eyes. He’d seen that she was on a roller coaster of emotions, but it wasn’t prudent for her in any sense to forget that she was in danger. Happiness had a way of blunting the body’s gut reactions.

  “Ms. Harris,” Harlan said, seized with an increasing sense of urgency, “whatever happens with this damned case, it’s going to be better for you in the long run if you face the worst that can happen.”

  “The worst would be if I killed Camina and didn’t know I’d done it.” Her voice caught, a heartbreaking hiccup of sound.

  “All right, but you’ve got to remember that you might not be safe, either.” His hand hovered over her shoulder, but he repressed the urge to comfort her and, instead, with an effort, jammed his hand into his pocket with such strength that the inside seam of the pocket fabric ripped.

  What she needed most from him was reality. Harlan frowned. He didn’t know how to put his impressions into words, and something was driving him to protect her in spite of his cynicism, his skepticism, in spite of every good reason he could think of for keeping his damned mouth shut and letting events fall out as they would. So in spite of his resolve not to touch her again, he gripped her arm tightly and struggled for words. “Listen to me, Ms. Harris. You can’t afford to forget for even one second that you’re in danger. From the police, from someone hiding in the shadows—I don’t know. But you’re not safe.”

  She nodded, one short dip of her head, her light brown hair swinging forward over her face and catching in the corner of her mouth. Reid’s boots thunked against the stairs, and Harlan spoke quickly, “Do you understand?” He gave her arm a light shake, and she nodded again.

  She stood there, small and vulnerable in her big house with its history of explosive violence, its scent of blood beneath its fresh paint, and whatever she might have done, she was brave, her shoulders straight, her gaze holding his, and Harlan stooped down to her and took her soft pink mouth in a fierce, hard kiss. She tasted of tomatoes and basil and something infinitely precious that stunned him with its power. “Remember. Not with anyone. Not with people you love and especially not with me.”