Ghostly Issues (A Harper Harlow Mystery Book 2)

by Hart, Lily Harper

  “Teenager,” Mel corrected hurriedly. “That’s all I can tell you right now. We don’t know how he died. Jared is going over his body now.”

  Harper and Zander exchanged a look. Mel seemed beaten down. That was the opposite of his usually gregarious self. This had to be bad.

  “You can tell us,” Zander prodded. “We’ll keep it to ourselves. I promise.”

  “You know I can’t do that,” Mel said.

  Movement out of the corner of her eye caught Harper’s attention and she lifted her head, her stomach churning when she realized what she was looking at. “It’s Derek Thompson, isn’t it?”

  Mel froze. “How do you know that?”

  Harper pressed her lips together and remained silent.

  “Is he a … ghost?” Mel asked, glancing over his shoulder and focusing on the spot Harper stared. He was aware of Harper’s reputation and the fact that she claimed to see ghosts. While he knew there was something special about the woman, he’d never been able to fully reconcile the idea of her talking to ghosts. Now he wasn’t so sure. The body was too far away for her to make identification and she was staring intently at the tree line behind the merry-go-round. “Can you see him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, no,” Zander said, wrapping an arm around Harper’s shoulders. He glanced around, but more and more people from town were joining the fray. “You can’t try to talk to him now, Harp. There are too many people.”

  “I know.” Harper felt as if her heart was breaking. “This is awful.”

  “It’s about to get worse,” Zander muttered, frowning as Jared moved up behind Mel.

  “I’m done,” Jared said. “The coroner can take him right away. I … .” Jared broke off when he saw Harper. “Hi.”

  Harper opened her mouth to answer but no sound would come out. Instead of standing there looking like an idiot, she turned on her heel and stomped away.

  Jared turned to Zander. “Are you ticked off, too?”

  “You’re a very bad man,” Zander hissed. “You’d better bring gifts and be prepared to beg when you show up. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to make sure she doesn’t damage anyone’s property on the walk back to the office. This is so not good.”

  “Wait,” Mel whispered. “What about the ghost?”

  Zander shrugged. “We can’t do anything with all these people around,” he said. “We’ll try to come back later. I’ll tell you if we find something.”

  Five

  “Son of a … .” Jared watched Harper hurry away, frustrated.

  “That went well,” Mel deadpanned, regaining a modicum of swagger even though he was still pale and grim.

  “Women are crazy,” Jared muttered.

  “Do you honestly blame her for being upset?”

  Jared searched his heart. “No. I do blame her for walking away from a crime scene when she knows I can’t leave and follow her. Zander isn’t exactly helping matters.”

  Mel snorted. “He told you what you wanted to hear. You just weren’t listening.”

  “What did he tell me?”

  “He told you to be prepared to beg and bring gifts,” Mel pointed out. “That means he knows she’s going to forgive you. I’d take that as a good sign. No one knows Harper better than Zander.”

  “That’s one of the things that drives me crazy,” Jared admitted. “No matter how well I get to know her, he’s going to know her better.”

  “You’re looking at it from the wrong perspective,” Mel said. “You’re looking at Zander as a man who knows your potential woman better than you do. If Zander was a woman, would it bother you as much?”

  Jared mulled the question. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because women are chatty and talk about everything – including their feelings – to death,” Jared responded.

  “Harper has never really had any female friends,” Mel said. “Zander is her best friend. They’re never going to be romantically involved. Just think of Zander as a woman.”

  “Isn’t that stereotypical and offensive?”

  Mel shrugged. “Harper tells him he complains like a woman all of the time,” he said. “I don’t think he takes it personally. Now, if you wear socks and sandals together, that he takes personally.”

  Despite himself, Jared smirked. “I wish I could go after her.”

  “I wish you could, too,” Mel said. “You can’t, though. We have to find out what happened to Derek. If it wasn’t an accident … .”

  “Then we have a murderer loose,” Jared finished, inclining his chin in the direction of the nearby parking lot. “Here comes the medical examiner.”

  “Good. Hopefully he can give us some information. We’re not going to be able to hold off for very long without informing Kim and Scott that their son is dead.”

  Jared pressed his lips together, thoughtful. “I can do that for you,” he said finally.

  “I appreciate it,” Mel said. “This isn’t a duty I can push off on someone else, though. They’re my friends. I owe them the respect to be the one to tell them.”

  “THIS could honestly go either way.” Macomb County’s chief medical examiner Tom Pfeiffer studied Derek’s head wound. “The blow was hard enough that someone could’ve inflicted it on him, or he could’ve fallen and accidentally did it to himself.”

  Jared glanced around. “If he fell, what did he fall on?”

  Tom shrugged. “Do you notice any blood on the merry-go-round anywhere?”

  Jared shook his head. “I looked. It’s old. A lot of it is rusty. I didn’t see anything. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing there.”

  “I can’t really give you serious answers until I do a full autopsy and it might not be completed until tomorrow,” Tom said. “I’ll do my best to get it in today, but we need to put a rush on toxicology results because they could have an impact here. I just … I can’t promise you anything.”

  “Do your best,” Mel instructed. “Get him out of here, though. Word is starting to spread. Make sure he’s covered so no one can catch sight of him. We need to make notification to the parents.”

  “Good luck,” Tom said. “I don’t envy what’s in front of you.”

  “That’s funny,” Mel said. “I would say the same thing to you.”

  Jared and Mel watched Tom load up Derek’s body and instructed two uniformed police officers to watch the scene and make sure no one breached it. Then they headed toward the Thompson house with heavy hearts and grim determination. Jared drove while Mel navigated, the younger detective watching his new partner become more and more antsy as they grew closer to their destination.

  “I can do this without you,” Jared offered, his voice low.

  “No, you can’t.”

  Since he’d met Mel, Jared had never seen the older man lose his nerve. He was almost always singularly gregarious and effusive. Now he appeared to be shrinking in the passenger seat of the car.

  “I think you’re a brave man,” Jared said as he parked in front of the Thompson’s brick colonial. “I’ll help you however I can.”

  Mel shot Jared a half-hearted smile. “I think you’re a brave man,” he said. “Only someone with true courage would date Harper and Zander.”

  “I’m not dating Zander.”

  Mel snorted. “You are. You just don’t know it yet.”

  Jared and Mel pulled themselves together for the long walk up the short driveway. Jared knocked, patting Mel’s back before straightening his shoulders and gracing the middle-aged woman who answered the door with a solemn look.

  “Hi, Kim,” Mel said, shifting uncomfortable.

  Kim Thompson was a pretty woman. In her younger years she probably would’ve qualified as “beautiful” on almost every scale. She was still a looker, but as her eyes met Mel’s and realization started to dawn it was almost as if she aged twenty years in front of Jared’s eyes. “I … what are you doing here, Mel?”

  “Can we come in?”

  Kim bit her lip. Jared did
n’t know the woman – he’d never laid eyes on her until today – and yet he could read every stray thought as it flitted through her mind. She wanted to go back in time. She wanted to pick a time before she answered the door. She wanted to wake up in her own bed and start the day over again. She hadn’t heard the worst news she was ever going to hear yet, but she was already rationalizing some way out of her predicament.

  “Ma’am, can we come inside?” Jared asked, his tone gentle.

  Kim pushed open the door, taking a step back and ushering Mel and Jared inside. “I … .”

  “What’s going on?” Scott Thompson appeared in the hallway, a newspaper in his hand. “Hey, Mel. Are you here for me to school you in euchre again?” Unlike his wife Scott hadn’t come to an awful conclusion at the sight of his friend. Jared wished him a few more seconds of jocularity before reality set in.

  “We need to talk, Scott,” Mel said, his voice even. Jared marveled at his partner’s ability to hold himself together even though he was sure Mel wanted to fall apart with his friends.

  “What’s wrong?” Scott asked, reaching for Kim’s shaking hand. It was as if he already knew the answer.

  “Maybe you should sit down,” Mel suggested.

  “Tell me.”

  “We found Derek about two hours ago,” Mel said, opting to rip the Band-Aid off rather than watch his friends suffer. “He was near the merry-go-round at the town park. There’s no other way to tell you this so … I’m sorry. He’s dead.”

  “No!” Kim’s wail wasn’t something Jared would soon forget. He was stoic as he watched the woman crumple, her husband struggling to hold her steady, but inside his heart hurt. How were parents supposed to survive the loss of their child?

  “I DON’T understand any of this,” Scott said, pacing the living room as Kim curled up in a chair and cried. She hadn’t said a word since Mel told her the bad news, and Jared was legitimately worried about how pale she was. “We didn’t even know he was out of the house. I … how is that possible?”

  “He’s a teenager, Scott,” Mel said, choosing his words carefully. “You don’t watch teenagers twenty-four hours a day. It can’t be done.”

  “But … how long has he been dead?”

  “The medical examiner is taking him back to do a full autopsy,” Mel replied. “We’re not sure yet. The best guess is that he died between midnight and two this morning. We’ll have more information when the autopsy is finished.”

  Kim stifled a sob and buried her face in her hands. The idea of her child being cut open was almost too much to bear. Instead of going to her and offering comfort, though, Scott maintained his distance. They were a couple, but they were dealing with their tragedy in different ways. Kim was ready to wallow and disappear. Scott wanted answers and was fueled by anger. Eventually they would meet in the middle. For now, though, they were on separate paths.

  “Who are your suspects?” Scott pressed. “Who killed my son?”

  Jared and Mel exchanged a wary look.

  “We don’t know if it was murder yet,” Jared cautioned. “The medical examiner says it’s too early to tell.”

  “If it wasn’t murder, what was it? A seventeen-year-old boy doesn’t just drop dead from natural causes!”

  Jared rubbed the back of his neck. “He had a wound on his head,” he explained. “The problem is, he could’ve been struck – which would mean we’re looking for a killer – or he could’ve stumbled and hit his own head. He was very close to the merry-go-round. We just don’t know yet.”

  “Stumble? Derek is an athlete. He doesn’t stumble.”

  “Scott, I know this is a terrible time, but you need to calm down,” Mel instructed. “I do not want to cast aspersions on Derek because he was a good kid, but we don’t know if he was out there drinking with other kids or … .”

  “Derek didn’t drink!” Kim snapped. “He was a good boy.”

  “I’m not saying he wasn’t a good boy,” Mel countered. “Of course he was a good boy. Even good boys party at that age. Don’t you remember what it was like when you were the same age? I like to consider myself a relatively good man, but I liked to party back then, too. I seem to remember you two partying along with me when we were in high school.”

  Kim bit her lip, conflicted.

  “Even if Derek was out partying, he was still a good boy,” Mel added. “Until we know exactly how he died, though, we’re stuck.”

  “So you’re not going to do anything?” Scott challenged.

  “Of course we’re going to do something,” Mel answered. “We’re going to find out if anyone else was out there last night. We’re going to wait for the medical examiner’s report. We need facts to move forward. We’re going to get those facts.”

  “You make sure you do,” Scott said. “I want whoever killed my boy to pay!”

  “THAT was … surreal,” Jared said an hour later, leaning back in the driver’s seat of the patrol car and casting a sidelong look in Mel’s direction. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like I’ve been run over by a train.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Jared said. “That was rough.”

  “It was almost as if Scott was accusing me of not caring about Derek,” Mel said. “I don’t understand how he could think that. I loved the boy, too.”

  “When people are grieving they say and do things they wouldn’t normally say or do,” Jared said. “Scott is so angry at losing his son he needs someone to blame. You’re the only target right now because he doesn’t know me well enough to accuse me of anything.

  “I hate to say it, but you want him blaming you right now, because when things shift and he starts blaming himself … well … then things are really going to get rough,” he said.

  Mel frowned. “Why would he blame himself?”

  “You heard him,” Jared replied. “He didn’t know his son was even out last night. They thought Derek was upstairs sleeping the whole night. He wasn’t. He was out. They don’t want to think he might’ve been doing something they wouldn’t approve of so they’d rather blame you. That will change.”

  “I guess,” Mel said, pressing the heel of his hand against his forehead. “We have a lot of things to look at. I wouldn’t be surprised if the kids were out in that park drinking last night. Those woods provide natural cover, and the park is far enough away from the downtown that most people can’t see what’s going on from the road.”

  “Did you guys drink there when you were younger?”

  Mel nodded. “It’s always been a teenage party spot,” he said. “If you walk back into those woods about a half a mile out there’s even a slow-moving river. We used to party out there, too.

  “Heck, when Zander and Harper were teenagers I busted them partying out there and Zander declared me the world’s biggest hypocrite when his mother told him about how I used to party out there,” he continued.

  Jared smirked. “I’ll bet those two were cute when they were drunk as teenagers.”

  “Zander was drunk that night as I recall,” Mel countered. “Harper wasn’t. She never let herself drink too much.”

  “How come?”

  “She always had trouble letting go,” Mel answered. “I think … I think seeing the things she sees wears on her. If she’s not careful, she might have a tendency to drink too much to dull her senses. I think she’s always worried about stuff like that.”

  “I never thought of that,” Jared admitted.

  “Speaking of Harper, someone needs to go and talk to her,” Mel said pointedly.

  “I’ll handle my problems with Harper,” Jared said. “I don’t think my romantic issues take precedence over a possible murder investigation.”

  Mel chuckled. “That’s not what I was talking about,” he said. “Before you interrupted us, Harper knew who the victim was. She was staring at the tree line behind Derek’s body. The only way she could know who was dead is if she saw Derek’s ghost.”

  “I thought you couldn’t decide if Harper really saw ghosts?�
�� Jared pressed.

  “How else did she know who died? She couldn’t see who was on the ground. The merry-go-round was in the way. Besides, I thought you believed her?”

  “I do believe her,” Jared said. “I just don’t want to grovel.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to get over it,” Mel said. “We need her to try and talk to Derek’s ghost. Right now he’s the only one who knows what happened in that park last night.”

  “I guess that means I need to buy some flowers.”

  “Don’t forget the candy,” Mel instructed. “You need to make sure you cover all of your bases.”

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Mel said. “While you’re doing that, I’m going to go and see if I can find any of the kids who usually hang out at the park. Someone has to have seen something.”

  “For now, that’s all we can do,” Jared agreed. “Just for curiosity’s sake, how do I look?”

  Mel scowled. “I don’t care how you look. I’m not going to go out with you.”

  “Yes, but would you forgive me if you were a woman?”

  “Son, you’re starting to freak me out,” Mel said. “There’s such a thing as being too close.”

  Jared sighed. “I’d settle for being just close enough to touch her right now.”

  “You’ve got it bad.”

  “What was your first clue?”

  “That morose look on your face when she stormed off,” Mel replied, not missing a beat. “Now, come on. I need to start asking questions and you need to go and beg a certain blonde for forgiveness. I hate to say it, but she’s looking to be our best shot at getting ahead on this one.”

  “You never told me how I look,” Jared prodded.

  “You’re a hunk of burning love.”

  Jared made a face. “I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”

  Six

  “Well, I think I handled that well,” Harper announced, striding into the GHI office and dramatically throwing herself in her desk chair. They’d taken the roundabout way back – stopping in the local diner for lunch and a gossip session to see if anyone knew anything about the hoopla at the park – and now they could finally talk about the real afternoon excitement. “That looked cool, right?”