Page 47 of Deathmarch

“Didn’t much like it. Half the time, heforgotto invite Dave to meetings. Or gave him the wrong passwordaccidentallywhen there was a password change for the safe. You know what President Lincoln said?”

Harper waited until Frank told him. “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

“I’m guessing Chuck’s shenanigans made Dave unhappy?”

“Dave proposed that we vote to elect the leader of the group instead of going with Chuck as default, just because Chuck started it.”

So Dave was mad at Chuck and wanted to replace him. There was a word for that, Harper thought.Motive.Just as strong, if not stronger, than Brody Cash’s. Which pretty much settled where Harper was going next.

Chapter Thirteen

Allie poked her head out when she heard Shannon moving around outside her room in the hallway. The B and B’s proprietor was dusting her shelves of curiosities with an ancient feather duster.

Allie opened her door wider. “Can I help with anything?”

“I need this much exercise, but thank you, dear.” Shannon lifted a jar of eyes and cleaned behind it. “I have a nice young woman come and clean every day when the place is full. Off-season, she only comes once a week. She spruces this place up pretty well. I just dust here and there in between.”

She lifted a pair of antique brass binoculars off the shelf next, cleaned them, then hugged them to her heart before she gently returned them to their place. “I miss my Henry. We used to go bird-watching whenever we could steal a minute away from the business.”

“I don’t know a thing about birds.”

“Me neither, honestly. I only went along to be with him.” Shannon lowered her feather duster with a nostalgic smile. “You know, he asked me to go for a walk in the woods with him on our first date. I thought he was a pervert!Lord knows what he’d do with me,that’s what I thought.”

While Allie laughed, Shannon shook her head. “I turned him right down. And the next time. And the next.”

“How did he ever convince you?”

“He came to call on me and asked if I’d just sit on a bench with him in Broslin Square. So we did that, just sat on the bench, and he’d point to a tree and tell me to look. He brought his father’s binoculars. Eventually, he got me trusting him for that walk in the woods. Didn’t do anything untowardly, just talked to me about birds. There was a patience to that man, a kindness.”

The longing in Shannon’s eyes made Allie wonder what it’d be like to find love like that, the love of a lifetime.

“I thought,” Shannon said, “there’s a difference between a boy who’d shoot a bird for fun, and one who’d shoot a bird for dinner, and one who’d look at a bird in a tree and give thanks to God for blessing the world with beauty.” She paused. “My father was an honest man, but a harsh man. He had a hardness to him, especially after his business went under. Too hard on my mother, at times, I used to think. But not all men are the same, dear.”

Allie thought about her father, then about Zane, then Harper. No, all men were not the same. Some men weren’t even who she thought they were. Take Harper.

He used to be the boy who’d broken her heart.

Then the detective who’d arrested her for murder.

And now…the man she couldn’t evict from her thoughts.

Flipping Harper Finnegan.

* * *

Since Dave Grambus didn’t answer the door at his ground-floor apartment when Harper stopped by for an interview, he decided to drive back to the station, the thought of which gave him a brief thrill before he realized Allie was no longer there.

“Do you know anyone who works with safes?” he asked Leila as he walked through the door. She replaced Robin when the morning shift ended.

She didn’t even have to think about it. “Sure. Dusty, my neighbor’s nephew. He used to install safes for pawn shops. Now he works at one, part-time. One of those gig people. Delivers food too. I think he’s got four jobs.”

“Could you please set up a time at his earliest convenience for a police consultation? Preferably today?”

“Yep.”

“Thanks.”

In the meanwhile, Harper ate ramen soup out of the vending machine—not something he’d ever tell his mother. Not that he was scared of his mother, because he was not, but… Rose Finnegan was an Irish woman who’d raised a houseful of boys. Only a fool got on her bad side.