Chapter 7
“There’s no way in hell I’m riding in that thing,” Noah said as he ran his disbelieving eyes over what was once called a car. It looked like it had been rescued from a car crusher too late. He kicked a half-flat tire and the hubcap fell off, rolled down the garage driveway, and disappeared into a sewer grate.
“Thanks for that,” Harper sniped as she walked toward the grate and bent to look inside the damp darkness.
Without a flashlight and a heck of a lot of motivation to spend all day digging through sludge with a long stick, she wasn’t getting the missing car part back.
She grumbled, “Excellent. Benny will probably charge me two hundred bucks for a replacement.” She stalked back over to Noah.
“The whole car isn’t worth that much.”
“Try to tell that to the thieves at Cheap Rentals.”
“This is a rental? Whatever you paid was too much.” He raked a disapproving eye over the vehicle. “Why are you driving this piece of shit anyway? Don’t you have a car?”
She closed her eyes for a second, then looked up at him. From the look in her blood-shot eyes, she was on the edge of a meltdown. But she wouldn’t express those feelings to him.
“Yes, I have a car.” She told him what happened to her classic car. “Since I’m a murderer, no one will rent to me. It’s this or nothing.”
Fists closed, he wanted to snap the vandal in half. He also wanted to pull her into his arms and tell her everything would be all right.
However, that was a lie. Last night he’d done some initial investigation and discovered the detectives had focused on her as their suspect: something about drunken threats at a bar. With a dozen or so witnesses, she’d all but confessed to wanting Covington dead and had been found with the body.
At this point, there were no other suspects.
“The Mustang is a 1970 Boss 302,” she added, not realizing he’d been woolgathering. “It will cost a fortune to fix and I have a high deductible. I had it towed to my aunt’s house.”
He let out a low whistle. “Those cars can run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Did you win the lottery?”
“I wish.” She rubbed her eyes. “I’m Facebook friends with Summer, a former Muskrats cheerleader. She has a cool 50’s convertible. When I drooled over her car, she mentioned knowing someone who had the Mustang in a barn. It’s very rough but it was love at first sight. My grandmother left me a small inheritance and I got a loan for the rest. I cleaned it out, got a friend to get her running for me, and planned to someday make restorations. Now the car is worse off than when I bought it.”
The hitch in her throat was impossible to ignore.
“It sounds great.” He didn’t know what to say to make anything that she’d gone through better. Her life was on a downhill slide.
“So, unless you have an extra car sitting around,” she added, “Harvey is mine for the near future.”
“Harvey?”
They both turned to the car. She exhaled loudly. “I thought if I talk to him nicely and named him, he’d to his best not to die and leave me stranded in the middle of nowhere.”
He was sure no amount of sweet-talk would keep the wreck running. “We’ll take my truck.” At least the Chevy had an engine that could take them to Mars and back.
Her jaw tightened. “No. Harvey is mine. I’m paying for him and I’m driving him.”
Deep down, he suspected that she wanted to give in and let him chauffer her around. Pride kept her from that admission. Harper had been the princess of stubborn as a teen; she’d had eleven years to move up to queen.
Figuring she’d ditch Harvey after she’d had a day of driving the rent-a-wreck around, he turned and leaned against the car. The hatch popped open. She quickly slammed it closed.
“I give,” he said. Some of her tension eased. “Let’s get to the case.” He filled her in on what he’d learned. It wasn’t much. Still, what the police had was circumstantial.
“Me and my big mouth.”
“You certainly didn’t help yourself,” he agreed. “Let’s hope they don’t find your fingerprints on the knife.”
“Not funny.” Her shoulders slumped. “I hate orange jumpsuits. They’ll make me look sickly. I should turn myself in and save the county some cash for the investigation. They’ll find me guilty anyway.”
Noah’s spine tingled. Now he was pissed off. He reached into his pocket for his keys. Without a word, he turned and headed for his truck.
“Hey!” she called and rushed after him. “Where are you going? Noah!”
He paused and looked back. “Your defeatist attitude is grating on my nerves. I hate whiners.” Her eyes widened with the verbal slap. Good. “Call me when you’re prepared to fight.”
* * * *
Outrage burned her belly. How dare he talk to her that way? She had a right to feel down, didn’t she?
He jerked open the truck door when she got clarity.
Damn. He was right, even if she wanted to punch him in the nose. Whining wouldn’t help. Whimpering in the corner with her thumb in her mouth wouldn’t help either. She had to put on her big girl skivvies and kick butt.
“Wait!” she said in her best authoritative voice. He stopped with one foot inside the truck. “Okay. I’m done whining.” He looked skeptical. “Really. Come back. Please.”
Noah seemed torn, scanned her face, and dropped his foot. With a door slam, he walked back over and pocketed his keys.
Instead of a scowl, a smile tugged his mouth. His Jedi mind game had worked. “That’s my girl.”
She wanted to remind him that she wasn’t a girl, or his for that matter, but let it go. If the big sexy hunk of a man helped save her from prison, he could call her whatever he wanted, within reason, of course. Anything said in a baby talk voice was out. That was just creepy.
“Thank you.” She smiled back. “Where do we start?”
Noah gave her a breakdown of the plan for the day. “Since Covington had so many enemies, I thought we should start with his family. They knew him before he was a world class ass.”
“I suspect he came out of the chute an ass,” she joked. “I’m surprised his mother didn’t switch him at the hospital with a nice baby. I would have.”
“Try not to go off track please.”
She sobered. “Right. Sorry. You are correct.” Time to behave. “Many murders are perpetrated by family members,” she offered. “Even if his parents didn’t kill him, they may have an idea of who would.”
“I agree.” Their investigation was off to a good start. At least they weren’t arguing and she wasn’t imagining him naked.
Shoot. She just imagined him naked.
Focus! What were the steps to solving a case? She’d watched enough murder shows that she should be able to break it down.
Harper also loved playing Clue as a kid. However, Colonel Mustard rarely bashed the victim to death with the candlestick in real life. Nor were the clues on cards.
“Gerald didn’t die in a conservatory, but the killer did use the knife.” She didn’t realize she’d said that aloud until he spoke.
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, nothing.” Her face went warm. “Starting with his parents is an excellent plan. Do you have the address to the Covington farm?”
Staring at her like she was an unsolvable riddle, he nodded. “I do.”
“Then let’s go.” Harper heard him groan as she walked over and climbed into her rental. If nothing else, seeing Noah folded into the junker was enough to bring some satisfaction to the hurt teenage girl still lingering in Harper. It took a notch out of her desire for retribution for his past evil deeds.
Revenge was best served in a junky, messed-up rental.
The farm was about a half hour from Ann Arbor and tucked back on the property, but not far enough that the large yellow house couldn’t be seen from the road. From a distance, the house was cute. Gerald had told everyone his family came from the rich and fictitious New York Covingtons. Up close, it needed a new layer of paint and the shutters replaced. It wasn’t as if his family was living under a tarp over a manhole. The farm was quite nice.
“It’s a big spread,” Noah said as he looked out over several hundred acres of corn. Harper checked out the big red barn at the end of the driveway, just behind the house. She rarely saw barns like that anymore, still in good condition.
Most fell to ruin, replaced by metal monstrosities.
A flash of movement in front of the car caught the corner of her eye. She cried out and jammed the brakes. Noah jerked like a crash test dummy against his seat belt.
“What the hell?” he said once his teeth stopped clattering.
“Something ran in front of the car.” She unsnapped her seatbelt and hurried out. Lying on the driveway about a foot from her bumper was a plump black and white goat. Its skinny legs stood straight up in the air and its eyes were closed.
Her heart stopped. “Oh, no.”
Noah rounded the car and looked down. He tugged on one of its hooves. The animal didn’t move. “I think you killed him.” He leaned closer. “Her.”
The goat did look dead. Harper had once accidently taken out a rabbit that ran in front of her car and she had cried for an hour. This was much worse.
“Noah, I swear I didn’t hit her.” She swallowed a lump. “Wouldn’t we have felt the bump?”
“I don’t think she died of heart failure.” He shook his head sadly. “First Gerald, then his goat. When will your misdeeds against this family end?”
The comment took a second to process. “You are a horrible, horrible man. This isn’t funny.”
Just what she needed—the blood of dead goat on her hands. Willard’s lawyer would probably use it against her in court to show a pattern of bad behavior.
“Can you check for a pulse?” she said and rubbed her bare arms. She had to keep hope alive.
“Do I look like a vet?” He bent for a better look. He poked its round belly. She didn’t move. “Nope, it’s dead.”
Harper shuddered and glanced at the house. There was no sign of life. Thank God. Running down their goat was not the best way to start contact with Gerald’s parents. Maybe they could put it in the hatchback before anyone noticed.
“You have to do something.”
“Me?” He frowned. She was somewhat certain she saw a hint of amusement that he quickly hid. “You ran it over. Why don’t you try CPR?”
“I’m not doing CPR on a goat.” She glanced at the car and bent down. The poor thing. “You do it.”
Before Noah could respond, the noise of a screen door slammed shut brought them upright. A tall, rawboned, elderly woman in a baggy denim shirt, loose brown workpants, and grimy rubber boots stepped to the edge of the porch.
“Knock it off, Harriet!” she yelled and stomped a foot. The goat twitched, flailed her hooves, and rolled to her feet. She baa’d and raced off for the barn at a rapid clip.
Harper gaped. “I told you I didn’t hit her,” she stated with a flood of relief. Thankfully, goat CPR was off the table.
Noah chuckled. Suspicion welled.
“You butt-face!” she exclaimed and socked him in the arm. “You knew she wasn’t dead.”
He snorted and rubbed the spot. “Butt-face? You haven’t called me that since elementary school.”
She spun away from him. “And you deserved it. You called my shoes ugly.” The only time he’d talked to her before senior year was that one time in the hallway outside of Mrs. Stanley’s math class. He’d earned the insult.
“They were ugly shoes.”
“They were not.” She gritted her teeth. “Don’t we have a case to investigate?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
How had she ever fallen for such an annoying man?
Harriet ran by, chasing a butterfly.
“Most of those goats only faint for a couple seconds,” the woman called after she’d waited patiently for them to stop squabbling. “Harriet is a drama queen.”
A dramatic goat? Harper blinked. Day one of the investigation and she’d dropped into the Twilight Zone.
Recovering from the near fatal goat collision, she led the way to the white-washed porch. The woman frowned down at them, but her eyes locked on Harper. She was closer to Irving’s age than Harper first thought. Well into her eighties.
She stepped forward. “Do I know you?”
“We’re PI’s investigating the Gerald Covington case,” Noah interjected. “Are you Fanny Covington, Gerald’s mother?”
Pale gray eyes went steely-hard. “That’s where I know you. From the news.” She ignored the question and pointed an arthritic finger at Harper as if casting an ancient curse upon Harper’s head. “You murdered my grandson.”