Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet (31 page)

“Thank you for seeing me, Dr. Roland.” I sat across from him at a ginormous mahogany
desk, trying not to read anything into it. “I just have a few questions about Harper
Lowell.”

“Ms. Davidson, as my receptionist has already told you, there is absolutely nothing
about Harper or her treatment that I can share with you. As a private investigator,
you should already know that.”

I did know that, but he didn’t have to actually say anything. He could just sit there
while I asked the questions. His own emotions would help me more than he could possibly
imagine. “I understand, but Harper hired me, Dr. Roland, and asked me to look into
her case.”

“Have you seen her?” he asked. “She missed her last appointment.”

“She came to see me a couple of days ago when she hired me. When was the last time
you saw her?”

“She left in the middle of our last appointment. Very abruptly and very apprehensively.
I haven’t seen or heard from her since.”

I nodded in an open and nonjudgmental way. “Do you know what sparked her sudden departure?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me?”

“You know I can’t.”

“But she got a phone call or a text, right?” What else would it be?

He smiled. “Perhaps.”

He was lying, so now I had to actually figure out what else it would be. Was it something
he said to her? Or maybe something came out during their session. Could something
he said have triggered a memory?

Knowing he wouldn’t tell me straight out, I asked, “And when did this happen?”

“She missed her last appointment, so a week ago Tuesday.”

“Did you call her?”

He seemed to be growing agitated. “I called and left a message, but she didn’t return
my call.”

“What happened to her when she was five?”

With a sigh of annoyance, he uncrossed his legs, adjusted his position, then recrossed
them yet still managed to look about as comfortable as a mouse in a boa tank. “Ms.
Davidson, I have a client coming in—”

“I believe her,” I said, leaning forward and waiting for his reaction to hit me. “I
think she has been terrorized methodically and systematically for a very long time.
And I truly believe her life is in danger.” Judging by the emotion pouring off him,
he did, too.

He averted his attention by picking lint off his jacket and said, “I cannot disagree.”

“Thank you,” I said, glad for an ally. “Without breaking your code of conduct or giving
anything away, do you have any idea, based upon what you’ve learned so far, who is
behind these attacks?”

Regret washed over him. “No, Ms. Davidson, I’m painfully sorry to say that I don’t.”

Crap. Another dead end.

“But I can say that—” He cleared his throat and examined a fruit tree outside his
window. “—sometimes our pasts come back to haunt us.”

I knew it. Whatever happened when she was five started it all, and Dr. Roland knew
it. With a smile of gratitude, I said, “It most certainly does. Thank you so much
for seeing me.”

He stood to shake my hand. “Can you please have her call me?”

“I’ll do my best.”

*   *   *

When I left the doctor’s office, I had a text from Cookie ordering me to call her.

“I think I got something,” she said.

“It better not be the flu, because we have a case to solve, and you’re not nearly
as good at your job on flu medicine.”

“Well, I’m not sure if this will matter, but the Lowells had Harper institutionalized
when she was twelve.”

A cold bitterness washed over me at the thought of Harper being institutionalized.
Then again, I could use that information against Mrs. Lowell. “And I’ll bet that’s
not something they want printed in the society pages. If Albuquerque has society pages.
Rich people are weird that way.”

“I’ve heard that. Not that I’d know from personal experience.”

“Hey, I’m trying to get us a million dollars. Just hang in there a little while longer.”

“You asked Reyes for a million dollars?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, well, tell him to hurry. I need a pedicure.”

“Cook, how can you think of your toes at a time like this?”

“Do you remember the time we were running for our lives from that guy with that weird
eye thing and you were upset because you’d left your mocha latte at his house?”

“I’m not sure I understand your point.”

*   *   *

I talked Garrett into taking me all the way across town back to Harper’s parents’
house in the hopes of catching Mr. Lowell out gardening. Since he was supposedly on
his deathbed, the odds were not in my favor, but I could grill his testy wife again
for good measure. Mrs. Lowell knew something, and she was damned well going to tell
me. And now, thanks to Cookie’s prowess with search engines, I knew something, too.

I couldn’t have had much more time before everything came out in the open. I had to
take advantage of the ace up my sleeve while I could.

Oddly enough, Garrett got through the gate easier than I had the first time I came
through. It probably helped that he didn’t try to order a taco. We were shown into
the drawing room again. I loved being able to say that.

I nudged Garrett with my elbow. “This is the drawing room.” An inane giggle bubbled
out of my chest.

“You scare me sometimes.”

“That happens to me, too. It’s weird.” I looked at the signature on one of the paintings
on the wall. It read
Norman Rockwell.
“Holy cow,” I said, impressed.

“Ms. Davidson, really,” Mrs. Lowell said, shushing me with a hiss and a glare, and
she hurried inside the room and shut the door.

“Sorry. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Norman Rockwell in real life.”

Her chest swelled with pride. “Jason acquired that at an auction in the early aughts.”

Did she just say
aughts
?

After Garrett introduced himself, we sat down and I decided to get right to the point.
“Can you tell me about the period in which Harper was institutionalized?”

Her face stretched into a mask of humiliation. No idea why.

“As you know, nothing we did was helping, so yes, we had to have her institutionalized
when she was twelve.”

Twelve? My heart broke for her.

“We tried several forms of therapy there until we found one that worked.”

She meant until they found one that shut Harper up.

“Unfortunately, Harper’s short-term memory was affected by some of the treatments,
but her behavior improved immensely.”

Without any further explanation, I knew exactly what kind of treatments she was talking
about. Electroshock therapy. She was talking about ECT. My disdain of Mrs. Lowell
sank to an all-time low.

“We were able to bring her home, and everything went back to normal for a couple of
years. Years, mind you. But slowly her erratic behaviors resurfaced until we had no
choice but to ask her to leave.” When my brows shot up, she qualified her actions
with, “She was eighteen at the time, and we bought her a house. It’s not as though
we threw her out on the street. Then she married that hooligan just to spite us. That
lasted all of five minutes.”

“Mrs. Lowell, can you remember anything out of the ordinary happening to Harper around
the time you and Mr. Lowell married? Was she threatened or bullied?”

“I’ve been over this a thousand times with her therapists and the police. The only
thing that changed, that would have brought on such extreme behavioral changes, was
our marriage. Nothing else happened.”

“You’re certain?”

When she hedged, glanced at her nails, then began perusing the carpet, I felt it.
That quake of doubt. That grain of skepticism rippling through her.

“Mrs. Lowell, anything you can remember would help. Did Harper have any cuts? Did
she come home one day especially dirty or frightened? Anything that would have had
you believing she had been abused in any way?”

“No.” Then she bowed her head. “Not anything that I noticed, but I didn’t really know
her before Jason and I married. She seemed like a sweet girl. She was cordial and
had decent enough manners. But after we came home, she was a very different child.”

So one person before their marriage and another after. “And she stayed with her biological
grandparents during that time?”

“Yes. They’ve since died, sadly, but even they were at a complete loss as to why Harper
would change so drastically.”

“Okay, well, maybe something happened on the trip home. I mean, was there any kind
of an accident?”

“None was ever mentioned. Really, Ms. Davidson, this could go on all day.”

Crap. I was simply getting nowhere with this case. Not a single clue to go on.

We stood and her young housekeeper showed us to the door again, but this time Mrs.
Lowell followed. The housekeeper seemed quite smitten with Garrett.

“I tried to call her,” Mrs. Lowell said. “She won’t accept my calls. Would you please
have her call her father?”

“I’ll do my best.”

*   *   *

I called Cookie the minute we got in Garrett’s truck.

“Are all stepmothers bitches?” I asked her, knowing how awful that sounded. I cringed
at the words myself. One of my good friends was a stepmother, and she was the best
thing that ever happened to those kids.

“I was raised by my stepmother,” Cookie said. And I knew that. That’s why I’d called
her.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

“Sure you did, and you have every right to wonder such a thing, hon, after what you’ve
been through with yours. But mine was amazing. If not for her, my childhood would
have been drastically different, and not in a good way.”

“Then I’m grateful for her, too.”

“Thank you. I’ll let her know. Did you need something?”

“Affirmation.”

She chuckled. “What kind?”

“The kind you just gave me.”

I told Garrett to head to the bank. I couldn’t imagine Agent Carson would wait for
me much longer. My phone rang as we were headed over to the scene. Of course, everything
would be back to normal now, but Agent Carson might be a bit miffed at me for not
showing immediately.

“Where the hell are you?” she said in answer to my “Charley’s House of Edible Thongs.”

“Sorry,” I said, cringing at her tone, “I was making a delivery. Edible thongs are
very popular right now.”

“So are prison uniforms.”

“Are they edible? That seems to be my best selling point.”

“If you are not here in two minutes—”

“Here!” I shouted into the phone as we pulled into the parking lot across from the
bank in question. “I’m here.” I put one hand over the phone and whispered to Garrett,
“She’s so sensitive.”

“Where here?”

“Turn around.”

Her short, dark bob swiveled to her left.

“Other way.”

She did a 180 and spotted us parking.

“Here I am.” I waved through the windshield. “And just in the nick of time. Whew.”

Before I got out, I turned to Garrett. He kept his gaze front and center, waiting
for me to vacate the premises. He’d been quieter than usual. Well, okay, he was always
quiet, but not deathly quiet. Not I’ve-been-to-hell-and-I’ll-never-be-the-same quiet.

I crinkled my chin and said, “Do you want to talk about it? What it was like to be
in hell?”

He turned on me so fast, his movements reminded me of Reyes’s. His silvery eyes locked
on to mine, his gaze hard, his jaw locked. When he spoke, he did so with eerie purpose,
each syllable precise. “Do you want to talk about what it was like to have razor-sharp
metal slice through your flesh until it scored across bone?”

Goodness. He was in a mood all of a sudden. “So, that’s a no?”

He quirked one corner of his mouth, but the gesture held no humor whatsoever.

“Okay, well, good talk,” I said, feeling blindly for the door handle.

He went back to staring out his windshield.

When I got out, Agent Carson stood tapping her toes on the pavement. I had no idea
people really did that.

“So, what makes you think this was an inside job?” she asked. No hello. No how’s the
wife and kids. Just business as usual. I liked her.

“I was told so by the robbers.”

“And their names are?”

“I told you, the Bandits.”

“The Bandits are a motorcycle club two-hundred strong. I need the names of the men
who entered the premises at gunpoint, held a group of patrons hostage, and took currency
that did not belong to them out of that bank.” She pointed across the street for reference.

“They didn’t actually pull their guns,” I said, correcting her. “They don’t unless
they have to. I’ve seen the stories on the news.”

“Charley,” she said, a sharp edge of warning in her voice.

“Okay.” I filled my lungs and released the air slowly, sorry for what I was about
to do. “I don’t know all of their names,” I said, lying. For some reason, I couldn’t
bring myself to tell her about Sabrina. She was a girl. No one would suspect her.
Who’s to say if I saw the driver’s face or not? She was in it to help my biker guys,
and for some reason, I felt I owed her for that. “The three I do know, the three who
are being blackmailed, are Michael, Eric, and Donovan. There are two more, but I don’t
know their names. Oh, wait,” I said, rethinking that. Donovan had mentioned blondie’s
name. “There was a blond guy named Edwards. He wants to take me out.”

She wrote down everything I told her. Without looking up, she asked, “Really? Is he
cute?”

“No, I mean, like to keep me from testifying, he wants my head on a platter.”

“You just make friends wherever you go, don’t you?”

“It’s weird, right?” Then I leaned into her. “They’re not bad guys, Agent Carson.
They were being blackmailed, for real.”

“You’ve said that, but no one held a gun to their heads in there.”

I knew she’d see it that way. She had to, and I couldn’t blame her, but I had to at
least try to get the other guy convicted as well. He had just as much to do with this
as my biker guys, if not more. No one except me blackmailed my friends and got away
with it.