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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“THIS IS NOT GOING TO work,” Harper repeated from the passenger seat of the boat-like Continental, as I steered carefully around a bend in the narrow road—officially a state highway—that wound through the trees just outside Haigton.

As I was losing confidence by the second, I ignored Harper. The car was big. It felt as though there was barely room on the road for it to pass through the trees. If another car happened to come along from the opposite direction I would lose my nerve altogether.

“The town line is coming up.” I could feel it, not far ahead, like a heat map in my mind, with a narrow, glowing white band running perpendicular to our heading.

“Yes,” Harper said quietly. “I can sense it.” She’d stopped her blustering observations that my mad idea to take her to Gouverneur wouldn’t work. That made me mildly happier.

I glanced at her, then back at the road. It wound about too much to look away for longer than a second or two.

As we drew closer to the unofficial town border, my heartrate picked up. The tension in my gut wound up even higher and I could feel the remains of my headache threatening to start up its heavy thudding.

I could do nothing about it but continue driving. I concentrated on steering carefully around the bends.

…and even closer.

Harper cleared her throat and sat up straighter on the big bench seat.

I could feel my foot trying to lift off the gas pedal as we approached the invisible border. No outside force was making me slow down. It was just my own trepidation.

I made my boot stay against the pedal at exactly the same angle, maintaining our speed.

Then we were across the unseen line.

I gasped as the border fell behind us.

Harper made a sound in her throat, wordless and strangled. It might have been a gasp, too.

We looked at each other.

I quickly pulled my attention back to the road. My heartbeat slowed.

Harper resettled herself on the seat, looking ahead. She didn’t speak until I had carefully navigated the turn onto Gouverneur Road. I turned right. Heading to the left would take us into Edwards. To the right, the road ran into 58 just over a mile from here. The 58 curved around a big chunk of state forest and undeveloped land to reach Gouverneur.

I found it amusing and slightly irritating that Gouverneur was northwest of Haigton, but to get there, I had to point the car to the southeast, and do a 15 mile half-circle. Long ago, the road in front of the hotel that ran through Haigton had continued on to the northwest, coming out on 58 just south of Gouverneur. But that road no longer existed. The forest had taken it over and not even a trace of it was left beyond the big concrete barriers just outside the town borders.

Harper said, “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Pretending you’re a Fed. Looking into Calloway’s murder.”

“It’s not just me. Everyone is working on this,” I pointed out. “Broch is listening to every word they say.”

She made an impatient sound. “You don’t like me.”

“I don’t know you well enough to dislike you.”

“Semantics.” Her tone was highly irritated.

“If you want to think I dislike you, knock yourself out. I’m too old to care.”

“Like age means anything in Haigton.”

“How old are you?” I think it was the first time I’d wondered about her true age.

“None of your business.”

Fair enough. “I don’t dislike you, and I want you free of the Feds for purely selfish reasons. My daughter lives in Haigton, and the town cannot afford to have the FBI investigate the place.”

Harper didn’t respond to that. I turned the car onto 58 and relaxed. The road was wider, smoother and I could go faster.

A few minutes later, Harper said, “Do you know where the diner is that they say he was last seen in?” Her tone wasn’t diffident or meek. But it wasn’t belligerent, either.

I’d checked with Broch and his notes before we left. “I do,” I told her. “It’s on this side of the town. We’d have to pass it to go into the town itself.” Which was where the giant Life Savers were. I’d studied Google Maps to find the diner. A park was in the middle of the downtown area…and a Life Savers monument was located at the end of it.

That had made me even more certain that I was doing the right thing. “Did Axel King tell you they have dropped the diner as an avenue of enquiry?”

“He didn’t tell me zip.” Harper was back to sounding annoyed. Back to normal. “Why are you so gung ho about it?”

If someone from Los Angeles had asked me that, I would have hedged and made up a story about…I have no idea what. But Harper was from Haigton. Remembering that let me relax and speak the truth. “I had a dream. And my gut has been screaming at me since yesterday, when I heard about the woman speaking to Calloway in the diner.”

After a moment, Harper said, “Okay, then.”

My middle relaxed a bit more.

It didn’t take long to reach the outskirts of Gouverneur, and I looked around with interest. This was Haigton’s shopping town. We ordered our groceries from here. Any supplies that Amazon couldn’t deliver were carried to Haigton by the same unpleasant man who delivered our groceries. I had resisted visiting Gouverneur myself, because I was too busy learning how to run a hotel. The other reason I’d kept to myself whenever Olivia had suggested I take her car and run to Gouverneur for whatever it was we needed; I was still learning how to drive on icy and snow-covered roads. I was California born-and-raised, and I had rarely driven even though L.A. was driver-central.

But now the roads were perfectly clear. I just had to get used to Olivia’s car.

Harper spotted the diner before I did because she wasn’t concentrating on navigating the light traffic. “Over there on the left,” she murmured as we approached the river. I could see a high, rusty railway bridge ahead, and on either side, many blue and red buildings and homes with white trim on the corners and around the buildings.

And squatting among them was the diner; a long trailer-like building with quaint rounded corners and metal siding. The sign, mounted on a tall post announced this was the “Sock Hop Diner.” Half a dozen cars were parked on the compacted gravel in front of it.

I pulled off the road and into the unmarked parking area. I couldn’t think of a reason why I wouldn’t just pull up beside the other cars, except that we weren’t proper customers.

“So, Sherlock,” Harper said, as I reluctantly eased the Continental up alongside a Ford Explorer and came to a halt with a tiny squeak of the brakes. “What’s your plan?”

“I don’t have one,” I confessed.

Harper rolled her eyes.

“I was going to start with the wait staff. Ask them what they remember about Calloway and the woman. See where that gets us.”

“I’m getting something to eat,” Harper declared.

“You’re hungry?” She never seemed to stint herself when it came to meals. And booze. And holding back her feelings.

“It’s not your cooking,” Harper said. “I’m taking the opportunity.”

I didn’t let it touch me. I was a short order cook and indifferent housewife who had learned how to cook for a crowd only in the last few years. I was not a foodie. I was not into cooking for the love of flavor.

Even I thought it would be nice to eat something I hadn’t cooked myself.

We pushed open the swing doors and stepped inside, then paused to absorb the ambience.

Everything was red. The stools, the benches, the front of the counter. The floor was black they were steel, or chrome. The walls had red horizontal stripes running across the pristine white paint, and between the big windows, red sidelights were mounted.

“My eyes…!” Harper breathed.

“It’s cute,” I decided.

“It’s making me think of ice cream sundaes and bobby socks.” She said it in a hushed tone, for at least a dozen people were sitting in the booths, eating and talking. A young couple sat at the counter, and I nearly laughed aloud when I realized they were sipping milkshakes through striped straws.

“The counter,” I decided. “More staff to talk to.”

“Your show, Sherlock.”

I took a seat four stools along from the couple with the milkshakes. Harper took the stool beside me that was farthest from the couple. That put the booths along the windows only a few feet away from us, but no one had stopped to watch us sit down, or glare at the out-of-towners. Conversations continued as if we were not there.

For now, that suited me.

A waitress wearing a uniform that was nearly identical to those the staff had worn at my last place of employment walked along the length of the counter and placed two laminated menus on the counter between us. She bent and retrieved squat coffee cups and saucers and placed them in front of us, along with a knife and fork rolled in a paper serviette each. “Coffee?”

“Damn, yes,” Harper said.

“Do you have tea?” I asked.

Debbie, according to her name badge, spoke with complete indifference. “I got tea bags in the back.” She was already pouring coffee into Harper’s cup. She returned the pot to the warmer beneath the counter and moved away.

“Tea?” Harper intoned, picking up her unadulterated cup.

“It’s too late in the day for coffee, for me.”

Harper snorted. “Your loss.” She drank.

The waitress came back and placed a small pot of hot water on the counter by my cup, and a bent and wrinkled packet of black tea. I thanked her.

Harper didn’t glance around for observers, or look like she was taking an interest in anything but her coffee, yet as soon as the waitress moved away once more, she said, “Why did the town let me through?”

I pulled the teabag out of the packet, put it in my cup and poured the water. “What makes you think I know?”

“You knew it would let me through. You said you dreamed about it.”

“That was all the dream showed me. You, here in Gouverneur. I don’t know anything else. I don’t know why.”

“It doesn’t let people leave.”

“It lets Olivia leave. And me.”

“You’ve both got ties that bring you back.” Harper shrugged. “I don’t.”

I scanned the menu. It was breakfast-all-day stuff that I had spent four years making a ton of each day. I put the menu aside. “Perhaps the town has higher priorities right now? Maybe it wants you clear of this Calloway thing, and the Feds gone, just like we all do?”

The waitress, Debbie, appeared in front of us. “Ready to order?”

“Oh yeah.” Harper held out the menu. “The Philly cheesesteak sandwich and cheesecake for dessert. Fries on the side, with gravy. And more coffee.”

Debbie nodded and looked at me. “I’m good,” I told her, handing the menu back. “I heard you had some excitement here the other day.”

She looked confused.

“Didn’t the FBI stop by?” Harper said.

“And give you guys a hard time,” I added.

That meant something to her. It would mean something to any waitress in America. Hard times were legion; from customers who demanded the world and didn’t tip, to outright abuse, some of it physical.

“Oh, yeah ,” Debbie breathed. “I wasn’t on shift, but Ramona was lead. They didn’t let her leave until three hours after her shift had ended.”

I didn’t have to try hard to look sympathetic, although I had to fake the surprise. “Do you know what it was about?”

“Some guy, a customer.” She shrugged.

“Did they keep Ramona back because they thought she knew something?” I sipped my tea. It was adequate.

“Assholes kept hounding her…” Debbie frowned. “How come you want to know?”

I took a deep breath, weighing my options. I had pushed a bit too far, too fast. Now she was wary. I had to get her back to thinking I was one of her people. I had to make her trust me.

This would either backfire badly or win her over. I waved toward Harper. “The Feds came and hounded Harper. They think she killed the guy.”

Debbie’s eyes widened and I felt Harper go still beside me. Debbie sized Harper up. The long, black, wavy hair. The fine chin and Harper’s beautiful, pale blue eyes, with their thick lashes. If you didn’t know she had a knife in her boot and a backup somewhere else on her body, and could use them, that she was a superior hunter with superb instincts, then you would dismiss her as incapable of killing someone.

I willed Harper to keep her mouth shut, or at least not sound off with one of her pithier observations. Not right now.

Debbie said to Harper, “You? They think you killed him?”

Harper didn’t quite roll her eyes. “They kept at me for a whole day.”

“They came out to Haigton,” I said. “They’re all staying in my hotel.” And I sighed.

Debbie looked from me to Harper and back. “You came here figuring we’d tell you something that would…” She stopped. “Hey, you wouldn’t be here at all if you’d really done it. The Feds have the wrong person….” Then she shook her head. “Typical,” she said in disgust. “They’re hounding you into a confession ‘cause they don’t want to find the real killer.”

“They’re absolutely hounding me.” Harper’s tone was meek and put-upon.

Debbie nodded and refilled her coffee cup. “I’ll get your order started. Ramona clocks on at the top of the hour. I’ll send her over when she does.”

I let out my breath as Debbie marched away.

“Damn, you’re good,” Harper told me. “You had her on your side and willing to fight for you.”

“Us,” I corrected her. “She sees you as the victim of Big Brother and wants to help you as a member of the oppressed.”

“Yeah, I figured that out.”

“You’re pretty good, yourself. That was nearly a whine in your voice at the end.”

Harper smiled grimly. “Hunting involves a lot of coaxing for information. You have to figure out pretty quick how to get people on your side. Or you don’t hunt.”

When Harper’s meal arrived, she ate with relish, as if she had not recently eaten a huge lunch. For a moment I envied her youthful metabolism, which was endlessly forgiving.

The long hand on the clock at the back of the store had slid past the 12 by a few minutes when a Latina woman with crimson hair came over to our end of the counter. She refilled Harper’s coffee. “I’m Ramona,” she said. “Deb told me about you. I’m not sure about…is it against the law to talk to you?”

“Harper hasn’t been arrested,” I said. “And probably won’t be. They’ve ground to a halt, questioning her.”

Harper gave Ramona a friendly grin that made me blink. I don’t think I had seen that expression on Harper before. “The Feds slipped,” Harper said. “They told me that Calloway had been here with a woman. Someone who knew where the CCTVs are, so her face doesn’t show on any of them.”

Ramona nodded. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember her. Who wouldn’t?”

“She was memorable?” I asked.

“I wanted to hate her fuckin’…I mean, ‘scuse me—”

“That’s okay,” I said, with a smile. “You wanted to hate her fucking guts?”

“Wanted to, ‘coz she was so fucking beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous, made me want to do her myself.” Ramona hooked her thumb over her shoulder. “Like that chick in that movie with the big dresses. About the south, ya know?”

It took me a second or two. “You mean Gone with the Wind ?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s the one.”

Harper grew still. I ignored it, keeping my attention firmly upon Ramona. “Calloway yelled at her?”

Ramona wiped at the steel countertop. “Yeah. Something about Harper did it. I told the Feds that. I don’t know what it was about.”

“Did she get upset when he yelled at her?” I asked.

“Nope. Just kept on talking. She was doing most of it. I told the Feds that, too. They wanted to know what they were talking about, but they had their heads together. And she seemed to know when I was getting close to the booth, coz when I got there she was talking about her daughter. Chloe.” Ramona grimaced. “She’s a mother and still has a twenty inch waist. It’s just not fair….”

Harper burped softly and put her knife and fork together on the plate. I mentally sighed. Putting down her knife and fork would trigger Ramona into clearing up.

Ramona swept up the plate and the empty bowl that had held the chips and gravy. “Anything else?” she asked Harper.

“I asked for cheesecake.”

“Strawberry, blueberry or caramel?”

“Caramel,” Harper said quickly, looking happy.

She liked sugar and cheese. And I thought she was a steak person. Although she’d had a Philly cheesesteak….

Ramona went away. I knew she wouldn’t come back unless we asked for her, and that would make her even more cautious about opening up.

Harper barely waited for Ramona to move beyond hearing distance. “I know who Vivian Leigh is,” she said in an undertone.

“Really? Just because someone says someone else looks vaguely like a long dead movie star?”

Harper shook her head. “Calloway was a hunter. The woman he was talking to, if it’s who I’m pretty damn sure it is, is also a hunter. A brilliant one—fourth generation and responsible for ending the third return of the Stonebrood clan.”

“Who are they ?” I breathed, fascinated by the hints and implications of a layered and detailed hunting world Harper had once lived and worked in. A fourth generation hunter? Until now I’d thought they all took up the profession the way Hunter and Calloway both did; because a supernatural species had killed someone close them.

“The Stonebrood Clan was the last clan of gargoyles to ever exist. Azazel brought them back twice and Riley Connors’s mother got rid of them the first time. Riley took care of them the second time because they came after her and her two partners.”

Too much detail! “Azazel?” I asked cautiously, because I was swiftly realizing that if I tugged on any thread at all to do with the hunting world, I would be just as swamped with bewildering answers as I was now.

“Demon.” Harper curled her mouth down and wrinkled her nose. “It’s probably still around, but I don’t think even Azazel is stupid enough to try a third time. Riley will deal with him, if he does.”

I shuddered without warning, as I added demons to my list of species that lived among humans, who weren’t just ripped from the pages of paranormal novels.

“It does sound like the woman Calloway was talking to is this Riley Connors,” I said in agreement.

Harper looked even more grim. Perhaps even a little depressed. She nodded.

“That’s not good news?” I asked. “We’re a step ahead of Axel King. You can reach out to Riley Connors and find out why Calloway was talking about you and trying to find you.”

“You don’t just reach out to someone like Riley Connors!” Harper said, with a tone that said I should know that. “Even if I asked nicely, she’d probably refuse to speak to me.”

“Why?”

“Because…” Harper shook her head. “I have a history. Especially with Calloway.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Riley Connors and her two partners run all of New York state and most of New England. They’re damn near royalty.” Harper shifted on her stool. “You don’t just stroll up and knock on the door.”

I weighed that up. “There’s something about this you’re not telling me.”

Harper blew out her breath. “We haven’t got a few weeks for me to hold your hand and walk you through Hunting 101. Just trust me. This isn’t happening.”

“But—”

“No.” She snapped the word, then sat up straighter as Ramona came closer, carrying a plate with a hefty slice of caramel cheesecake with whipped cream on the side and two spoons. Ramona winked at me as she put the plate in front of Harper, but close enough to me that we could share if we wanted to.

Boy, had she misread her customers!

Harper pulled the cheesecake closer and used one of the spoons to attack it and eat.

I could almost feel the waves of resentment coming off her like a radiant heater. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that Harper wasn’t used to needing help. She was suspicious of my help. And she wouldn’t reach out to Riley Connors for the same reason. Harper wanted to do this all by herself, because that was easier for her. It didn’t require dealing with other people.

From the few hints I’d picked up about her life before she arrived in Haigton, she had worked alone and been alone for a long time. And that was the way she liked it. Or maybe she just thought she preferred it that way.

It fit with the way she lived in Haigton. Among a small group of privacy freaks, Harper was the ultimate loner.

“It’s not good that Riley Connors is involved.” Harper’s tone was defensive.

“Mmmm….” I replied. I was busy dealing with a new idea, one that had occurred to me just now. I pushed my empty teacup away from me. “You should go.”

“Go?” Harper frowned.

“Get out of here. Leave and not look back. Now. This is likely your one chance. The town let you leave. So, really leave. I know you can take care of yourself.”

Harper put down her fork and swiveled the stool to look at me squarely. “Are you saying what I think…yeah, you are.” She examined me for another long moment. “I gotta say that’s twice you’ve surprised me, today. And I thought I had you figured.”

“Glad I’m not a cliché,” I murmured. Was I that transparent? But I’d surprised her.

Harper put her hands between her knees. “I can’t run.”

“There’s nothing stopping you. Not even me.”

Harper’s expressive mouth thinned. “There are at least two sets of posters with my name on them.”

I thought it through. “The FBI and…the hunting people?”

Harper nodded.

“Then what everyone told me at Christmas, the reason you came to Haigton in the first place—that you were being hunted by the hunters…that’s still in play?”

“I told you I had a history. And honestly, Crackstone, it’s the hunters that worry me more. But if I run, I’ll be telling King I’m guilty and then the Feds will never stop looking for me.”

“Head to Venezuela, then.”

Harper looked at me as though I had disappointed her. “Hunters don’t have to worry about extradition.”

Oh. “This is why you don’t want to talk to Riley Connors?”

“It’s a big chunk of it,” Harper said. “But everything else is true, too. You don’t just message them. It’s…rude.”

“You’re just going to go back to Haigton?” I asked.

Harper’s knees bounced a little. “I don’t have a choice.” Her tone was bleak. “Maybe that’s why the town let me leave with you. It knew this just as well as I did.”

“I don’t think the town cares about anything beyond its borders, unless it’s something that threatens the town. It’s inhuman and doesn’t have morals or emotions. It doesn’t feel pity.”

“Listen to you. Three months in town and you’re an expert,” Harper said sourly.

I recognized that she was deflecting me in typical Harper style, by going on the offensive.

I eased off the stool, feeling the ache in my back from sitting without support for too long. Getting older sucked. “It’s getting late,” I said, my tone firm. “We are going to stay the night in Gouverneur. We’ll find a cheap motel, and we’ll go out and have a nice dinner, and drink too much. Find a club with a band, maybe.”

I had made hasty arrangements with Olivia and Ben to take care of dinner in the hotel that night. Most of it was made, already. It just had to be heated up. I thought about relaxing in a real bar full of purely human people, crowd-watching and listening to a semi-pro rock band and watching men try to hit on Harper and what she did with them when they messed it up.

I was already looking forward to it.

Harper gave me another of those “you are stupid” looks. “That’s not going to happen,” she said with complete certainty. She pulled a billfold out of her pocket and slid two bills under the dessert plate. She was a good tipper.

“There’s no reason it can’t. You need to de-stress, Harper. Take the night. Enjoy yourself. Go back to Haigton tomorrow.”

Harper gave a soft, muffled laugh. “You have no idea…” She paused, then smiled at me. The full wattage she had given Debbie, earlier. “You know what? Sure. Let’s find a motel. There’s gotta be one along the road into town.”

·

Twenty-three minutes later, I pulled my credit card out of my wallet. It took enormous effort, as if my arm was moving through concrete. I concentrated on the credit machine that was showing the total for a room and taxes, waiting for me to tap it.

I pulled my hand away from my body, clutching the card, aiming for the machine, while the check-in clerk for the Lofty Inn watched me with bored indifference.

Just a foot more… I had brought my hand this far.

Then, just as I thought I had won, I found myself returning the card to my wallet, my hand moving swiftly. “You know what, I’ve changed my mind.”

“No probs,” the kid told me, putting the machine away. He sat behind his desk and went back to watching whatever he had been watching when I stepped into the reception area.

I trod heavily back to the car sitting under the portico inside. I got in behind the steering wheel. Harper’s shoulders were shaking.

“Do not say anything,” I warned her and started the car. I drove out of the parking lot and back onto 58…heading southeast.

Harper laughed openly, then. She held her sides and whooped, her boot thumping the floor.

When we reached the little graveled parking area beside the hotel in Haigton, Axel King was sitting on the steps leading up to the side door into the bar.

It was getting dark, so I wasn’t sure, but I think it was relief I saw on his face.