“It’s just that I know you and Jennifer—you’d become friends since she’d moved back.”
“Yes.”
The gesture was too familiar, Harley thought, and she pulled her hand away. While it probably meant nothing to him, it meant something to her, all too much.
“And I was wondering, too,” he said, “if maybe we could stop by sometime. See you.”
She guessed the purpose of this proposed visit, and she said, “I’ve been wanting to meet Clarissa.”
“I’m sure you’ll love her, Harley. Everybody does.”
Luckily Jed appeared over his shoulder. “You’re not finished up yet, are you, Eric?”
“Uh, no … no, I’m not.”
Jed’s expression relayed it was time for the medical examiner to do just that, and receiving the message, Eric excused himself. “I’ll be in touch about the pathology reports,” he said, before disappearing back into the woods.
Jed eyed Harley with a raised brow. “Dr. Charming’s been working his magic on you again, hasn’t he?”
Harley’s body fell into a slump, and her voice dropped to a near whisper. “That’s not fair, Jed.”
“Sure, it’s not. And it’s also not fair how he lays on the charm when he knows good and well he’s got a girlfriend and you’re sweet on him.”
“He was just checking on me,” Harley said. “That’s all.”
That was all it ever was.
“And so?” Jed said, eyeing her. “How are you?”
Harley kept her eyes focused on the expanse of trees beyond them. In a resigned voice, she said, “Jennifer was a good person. She didn’t deserve to die like that, not alone and cold in these woods.”
Jed stretched his arm across her shoulders and squeezed them gently. “I know,” he said. “She was. And we’ll find out who did this, all right?” He dropped his arm back to his side and smiled at her. “Why don’t I walk y’all back to the entrance?”
When they had gotten a little further along the trail, and Matilda had relinquished her rooting for the sure path home, Harley said, “All of this is interconnected somehow. I just don’t know exactly how yet. Two people killed in the park in two days, in the same way.”
Jed remained quiet, keeping his eyes focused on the snow-packed trail as they walked.
Harley was the first to speak again. “And like I already said, I don’t have a good feeling about Justin Wheeler. I don’t think it’s a coincidence he came here not long after Beau did … and now he’s telling these awful stories about the Sutcliffes, about Briarcliffe, seeing ghosts in the woods near there.”
“You think he’s up to no-good?”
“Beau’s rich and famous. What a story this would make for the paparazzi—or let’s say a con-man—somebody who could put it all in a best-selling book. Make himself famous.”
“A fortune hunter then?”
“Maybe,” she said, “but it’s not just that either. There’s something—something personal about it, too. It’s like he has a vendetta against Beau for some reason.”
Jed nodded. “Somethin’ seems off to me, too. But don’t worry. I’ve got my eye on ’im.” They continued their walk, snow, leaves, and mud squishing beneath their boots. “Why are you always takin’ up for him anyway?” he asked. “For Beau. It’s gotta be more than just out of the kindness of your heart.”
Harley paused for a moment in thought, and with her voice still low, she said, “It’s a long story … and an old one.” She released a sigh, pondering the best way to tell it. Nothing would give the story justice, and Jed, she knew, would never quite understand. It was a story about two children, both young in age and old in soul, both sad and vulnerable in a time of life that was already sad and vulnerable. It was a story only she and Beau really understood.
“I met him back when we were just kids,” she said at last. “I guess you and I would’ve been about eight, and he was a teenager. He was a foster kid—you probably know that—and the Winstons were keeping him at their house as a favor to Patrick Middleton. Patrick was his benefactor, if you remember. Anyway, I used to see him in the Winstons’ backyard a lot that summer, and well, believe it or not, we became friends.”
“Talk about the odd couple.”
Above them snowflakes floated among the tree limbs, settling on branches, then falling to their shoulders.
Harley continued. “And he was pretty much like how he is now—brooding, sad, thoughtful. One afternoon, he saved me from some bullies, gave me hope for my future, was really kind, and … Well, at the time, I thought he must’ve been some kind of angel.” She shook her head at the thought of it. “But then again, I guess I always was a fanciful kid—”
“Still are.”
“And weird, too, I think you said.” She smiled and gave a little laugh, showing him there were no hurt feelings on her part.
Jed lowered his gaze to his feet and watched his boots as they hit the trail. The two walked in amiable silence. “I never knew y’all were friends,” he said at last.
“Nobody did. Not until now anyway.”
“And that also explains why you’re always takin’ up for him, and why you probably don’t think he had anything to do with Jennifer’s murder.”
“We don’t know who left that watch back there, Jed. And we know it couldn’t have been Beau because I was with him last night. And even if I weren’t friends with him, I still wouldn’t trust Justin Wheeler.”
“And I’m not done with him yet.” Jed stopped and clarified. “But I am gonna let him go for now, see what he does. That’s more helpful to me.”
They reached the edge of the park, and as they stood at the tree line, with the burgeoning bustle of Main Street visible in the distance, Jed said, “Thanks for tellin’ me about your history with Beau. Makes a lot more sense now. And,” he said in consideration, “maybe he’s not so bad, after all—at least not as bad as I thought anyway.”
“People never really are, are they?” Harley said, looking up at him. “Not when you really get to know them.”
“Naw. Naw, I guess they’re not. I guess you might say they’re nuanced.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, they are nuanced.”
Harley said goodbye to Jed, and when she and Matilda turned to leave, he called after them, “And be careful, okay? We’ve still got a killer in town somewhere.”
46
A Study in Scarlet
Less than a half-hour later, Harley stood outside Modern Vintage, staring at the paper sign in disbelief. Like an ugly scar it hung on the door, marring the pristine storefront with its hatred.
The scarlet “A” on the sign stood for Adulterer, Harley surmised, an allusion to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.
It could not have been there long, she thought. And with the bustle of tourist traffic on Main Street, someone surely had seen who had placed it there.
She resisted the urge to rip it from the door and hide it from passersby. The right thing to do was to leave it there for Jed to find, which he inevitably would when he visited the shop to question Samantha. The other right thing to do was stay out of the investigation and leave the sleuthing to Jed. He would not appreciate her interference, and while she understood his feelings, she could not just stand by while Jennifer’s killer was still free.
As she paused in the open doorway, with the aroma of leather, wood polish, and sandalwood intoxicating her senses, she made a mental note to ask various people around town. Then she stepped inside, the lilts of a mandolin welcoming her into what she had always considered a world of enchantment.
When Harley was a child, she had begged her grandfather to take her to Modern Vintage during the holidays. Jennifer’s mother had owned the shop then, and she’d spared no expense in transforming it into a Christmas wonderland filled with vintage holiday trees bursting with antique bulbs and ornaments. Nutcrackers, Santa Clauses, and trains covered every inch of space on the antique tables, chairs, and armoires.
As she navigate
d her way through the shop, dodging desk corners, chair legs, and breakables, she thought how visiting an antiques store was like peeking into the private lives of those who had lived long ago, their trinkets and treasures made priceless by the memories they held. Now on display for the discerning modern eye, those treasures no longer held any sentimental value, per se, yet they were more valuable, at least on the market, than they had ever been.
Harley approached the back of the store where Jennifer and her business partner, Samantha, kept an office and a workshop for the purposes of refinishing and repairing furniture. In the back room, Samantha crouched beside an antique desk, sanding the corners with cloths. Samantha feverishly sanded the desk with meticulous care, seemingly hoping to allay her worries about Jennifer. Samantha would be devastated, Harley knew, and she dreaded being the one to break the news. At last, Samantha registered Harley’s presence, and looked up from her work.
She did not speak. It was almost as if she was afraid to, as if asking about Jennifer would have somehow determined her missing friend’s fate.
When she noticed the troubled expression on Harley’s face, she dropped the sanding cloth on the desk, staring at her. The lines in her forehead relaxed, and her look of worry drooped into a frown.
At last she spoke. “Harley?”
Harley swallowed hard, and in a soft voice, she said, “I think you need to sit down.”
47
A Fine Line
Samantha dabbed tears from her flushed cheeks with a tissue, then rubbed her eyes with her bare hand. She balled the tissue up in her palm, squeezing it as she spoke.
“I … I, um … um …”
She swallowed hard, trying to steady her voice. In normal circumstances, Samantha was a very articulate person, but the grief over Jennifer’s death had revived a childhood stutter. Harley leaned in, trying to piece together her words.
“I-I-I can’t remember a time wh-when she-she wasn’t there, when I-I didn’t have her … to-to turn to.” She looked up at Harley with red, sobbing eyes. “We-we’ve been best friends since-since we were five. Know-know everything about each other.” She sniffled, then pushed her bangs from her forehead. “I-I don’t know. I-I feel like, like I just-just lost half myself.”
“I’m so sorry,” Harley said.
“It was Jen, her—you know—she got me through it. The divorce. Because of her, I was able to-to move past it, start over.”
According to local gossip, Samantha’s husband had left her the year before for another woman.
“And … I-I helped her out, too, when Larry died. She didn’t wanna go on. Not after that. Not for a while. It was me. I’m-I’m the one that encouraged her to move back, start over, get through it—with this-this business. And it worked. We did it. Together. We got through it. All of it. Because of each other.”
Her hands gripped the tissue tighter, her knuckles turning white.
Harley asked, “Do you know of anyone who might’ve wanted to hurt her?”
“I-I-I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “Just don’t know.” In between wheezes and sniffles, she added, “There’s been a lot of men, you know, interested in her since she got back. Some of them were married, I think. Didn’t make her very popular with the women in town. And some of the men, they didn’t like it when she didn’t like them back. But she was just friendly, Harley, friendly with everybody.”
Jennifer had had a playful friendliness about her that could’ve been misinterpreted as flirtatious. But Jennifer was non-discriminatory with her attentions. Men, women, dogs, cats—she smiled and chatted with all of them.
Harley told Samantha about the sign she’d found on the shop’s front door, the one with the scarlet letter “A.”
Samantha sighed, a line forming between her brows. “Oh, no. N-n-not another one. F-first she was a ‘tr-tr-trophy wife,’ then a ‘black-black widow,’ and now,” she said, her red, swollen face grimacing at the thought of it, “she was a—an ‘adulterer.’” She shook her head. “None of it’s true. None of it.”
Samantha started to convulse again, and Harley said, “Just take some deep breaths. Rest for a second.”
Samantha did so, drawing oxygen in and out of her lungs, once, twice, three times as she steadied herself in the chair. Though her face was flushed and welted with tears, her body started to settle a bit and with it, her voice. With an almost catatonic expression on her face, her blank eyes stared down at the desk.
“I think the black widow one hurt her the most.” She linked her hands together and placed them on her lap, staring down at them in thought. “She never dreamed she’d be a widow in her forties. Larry—he was twenty years older than her, yeah, but it never seemed like it, not to her. Never seemed like there was any age difference between them at all.”
She contemplated this for a moment and added, “The only thing Jen was guilty of was falling in love with somebody twenty years older than her … somebody who just happened to be rich. That made her a trophy wife. Then when Larry died—that made her a black widow. And then because the men in this town wanted her and her money, she was an adulterer.” She shut her eyes and her reddened features wrenched in despair. “And now … now she’s dead.”
Harley walked behind the desk and wrapped Samantha in a hug, the woman’s tears moistening her shirt sleeve.
“Samantha,” she said, still holding her. “Do you know why Jennifer would’ve been in Briarwood Park last night?”
Samantha’s body went limp in Harley’s arms. In between sniffles she said, “I don’t know. Don’t know why she would’ve been there.” She released Harley’s forearm and shook her head, staring down at the desk. “It d-doesn’t make any sense. Any of it.”
Harley was not convinced Samantha was being entirely honest.
“And she hasn’t been acting strangely lately?” she asked. “Nothing out of the ordinary?”
“No.” She stopped and looked up at Harley in earnest. “Well, um … there was something—yesterday. I’d missed several calls on my phone from her. But I didn’t get them ’til early this morning. Like I said, I was on a buying trip in Louisville and …”
“Did she leave a message?”
“No, but that’s why I came looking for her this morning. I was worried. And then when she didn’t show up for work, I—”
“What time did she call?”
“Um … a little before midnight.”
Harley returned to her seat and sunk down into the cushion. “What about Briarcliffe? Did she mention anything about her time there?”
Samantha paused in consideration, her sniffles marking her thoughts. “Well, the house kind of creeped her out. Said she heard lots of weird noises when she was up there.”
“What kind of weird noises?”
“Creaks. Footsteps. Drafts. Jen didn’t believe in ghosts, but Briarcliffe did freak her out a little bit. Said it was eerie. Didn’t like to be by herself when she was up there.”
“And what about Beau Arson? Did she say anything about him?”
“Just that he was nice. Not what she expected.”
Harley adjusted herself in the chair, her mind turning to the issue that had been gnawing at her for two days. “Samantha … there was a woman outside your shop recently. Dark hair, beautiful, well-dressed. She was looking for y’all—frantically looking.” She didn’t mention she’d found the woman’s body in Briarwood Park the following day. “Do you know why she was looking for you? Who she was?”
Samantha’s look of sorrow turned to one of perplexity. “A woman? No.” She shook her head. “No, I don’t know who she was.”
“Jennifer didn’t mention her to you?”
She shook her head again. “No. This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“And you’re sure you’ve never seen the woman, never heard anything about her?”
“No, Harley,” she said with determination. “I told you I didn’t.”
Another dead end, she thought.
She tried a
different angle. “Jeremy Griggs. Can you tell me anything about her relationship with him?”
“Jeremy?” She shrugged. “He was her psychiatrist. She started seeing him after her mom and Larry died.”
“Was there anything between them—do you know—romantically?”
“Not on Jen’s part, I don’t think. Maybe on his. He’s a good doctor, I’m sure, and basically a good person, but—but he’s got a little bit of a reputation.”
“Reputation?”
“With women.”
“Oh.”
Although, given Rebecca’s behavior the night before at Briarcliffe after she had seen Jennifer and Jeremy together, she did not find this all that surprising.
“Women like him, I guess,” Samantha said. “I think ’cause he’s got that nurturing thing about him. You feel like he’s really listening to you, that he really understands. That’s what Jen said anyway.”
Psychiatrists tended to be good listeners. After all, that was their job.
“And he did help her,” Samantha said. “Jeremy did. Helped her get out of her depression. It got pretty bad there for a while.”
Harley decided to grasp at another straw. “Henry Trainor. Were they acquainted at all?”
Samantha almost smiled, but the muscles in her face were so exhausted, her emotions so depleted, she merely sputtered. “We used to have the biggest crush on him. Back in the day.” She peered over Harley’s shoulder in sad reverie, remembering a happier, more carefree time in her and Jennifer’s lives. “He was really good looking, you know. Still is. Best looking man in town, Jennifer always said. Hands down.” In an aside, she added, “But then again, she always liked older guys.”
“And were they seeing each other?”
“I don’t think so. I think Jen would’ve told me. Surely. She always did. Besides, she would’ve been excited. But they were spending some time together up at Briarcliffe—when they were working. She said he was really nice to her.” She considered this for a moment and added, “But I think he’s kind of nice to everybody, though.”
The Ghosts of Notchey Creek Page 14