Page 10 of Luck of the Devil (Harper Adams Mystery #3)

Once I collected myself, I headed out to the dining area and sat at the bar in front of Malcolm.

He gave me his attention while he filled a glass with draft beer. “You look like you just talked to a ghost.”

“I talked to my father.”

“Ah… I take it you didn’t like what he had to say.”

I leaned closer and lowered my voice. “He claims she committed suicide.”

His brow shot up.

“He said he and Detective Monahan agreed to keep it quiet. She didn’t have a life insurance policy, so they figured they weren’t defrauding anyone.”

“That’s bullshit. They would have been defrauding you ,” he said gruffly. “You would have had a right to know.”

I was surprised by the outrage in his voice. “You’re not buying that she committed suicide, are you? I mean, the evidence you dug up could partially corroborate it.”

“Fuck no, I don’t buy it,” he growled. “How did the subject of suicide come up?”

“I told him she was acting weird after he left.”

“So he blamed it on depression and claimed she killed herself because of it.”

“Pretty much. Yeah.” No need to tell him my father had partially blamed it on me.

“What about the suitcase? Why would she have bothered packing a bag if she’d planned to drive off a bridge?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t ask. I didn’t want him to realize we were suspicious.”

“Good call.” He set the mug he’d been filling on the counter and gave me a cursory glance. “How’re you doin’ after talking to him?”

I released a bitter laugh. “Not good.”

He started to reach for a shot glass, then hesitated. “You want a drink?”

“More than I want oxygen, but no.” I’d stopped shaking for the moment, so maybe the worst was over.

He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “While I applaud your decision to give up drinking, you can’t just quit.

Your body is addicted to it. You need to taper off, or you’re gonna deal with some nasty side effects.

” When I started to protest, he said, “All I’m sayin’ is, if you want to keep your wits about you, you might need one at some point. ”

Shame filled me. “How pathetic is that?”

He shook his head, his jaw tightening. “You’re not gonna start feelin’ sorry for yourself now, are you?” But his words didn’t carry their usual bite. “Are you a whiner or a fighter, Detective?”

“All I know at the moment is that I’m gonna find out what happened to my mother.”

A glint filled his eyes. “See? You’re a fighter.”

Was I? I felt like I’d rolled over and played dead after the Little Rock Police Department had thrown me under the bus.

I knew the kid I’d shot had pointed a gun at me, but sometime between the shooting and the investigation, the gun had disappeared.

Someone had obviously set me up, but I hadn’t seriously considered it might be the department before Malcolm had made me question the possibility.

Being a part of that department had meant everything to me, and losing my job and reputation had taken away my purpose.

The only thing that had numbed the pain was alcohol.

Which is how I’d gone from sipping a few glasses of whiskey at night to pouring it into my coffee first thing in the morning.

Part of me was terrified of who I was going to be once the detox ran its course. Maybe I wasn’t a fighter. Maybe I never had been. But I wanted to be one.

“You’re sure your father doesn’t suspect you think she was murdered?”

I shook my head. “I was careful. The topic of her taking antidepressants came up, but he was the one who mentioned it, not me.”

Surprise filled his eyes. “To cover the Zoloft in her bloodstream?”

“Maybe?” I raked my top teeth over my bottom lip. “I think…” I had to be Detective Adams, not my father’s daughter, even if it meant facing some hard truths.

I started again. “If my father had something to do with her death, I’m not sure she was collateral damage.” I held his gaze. “The way he suggested it was suicide and then played up her depression … it makes me think he had something to do with it.”

“And if he did?” Malcolm asked. “What will you do about it then?”

“I don’t know. But I’m not letting him get away with it.”

He gave a curt nod. “Carter called a short bit ago about reports of accidents on the bridge.” He took a beat. “There hasn’t been an accident out there in over two years.”

“But the skid marks.”

His mouth tipped into the hint of a grin. “Teens like to go out there and race. Carter says they are likely from that.”

“But the skid marks do go toward the embankment.”

“Yep, and Carter called around and got Roy from RM Towing to admit he pulled a kid’s car off the hill and didn’t report it to the cops. That was last fall.”

That helped back up our theory, but it also sobered me. My mother was murdered . But it reminded me of the other piece of information I needed to tell him.

“I have to drive to Jonesboro tomorrow.”

“What’s in Jonesboro?”

“My grandparents. My mother had been estranged from them since my sister’s death, but my dad said that he thought she’d been in contact with them in recent years.”

“Why were they estranged?”

“Honestly? At the time, my mother and I weren’t talking, so she never told me why they were no longer part of our lives, and I was buried too deep in my own guilt and depression to really notice.

I thought it was strange we weren’t seeing them around the holidays, but when they didn’t come to my high school graduation, I finally asked why.

My dad wouldn’t talk about it, and my mother said they wrote us off years ago.

But on the phone call with my dad, he said they’d stopped talking to us because they needed someone to blame for Andi’s murder. ”

Malcolm’s eyes narrowed. “Why blame him?”

“I asked,” I said. “At least my mother’s reasons for blaming me for what happened had some merit.”

“Bull-fucking-shit,” he grunted, “You were not to blame, and any real mother would have comforted her daughter instead of blaming her.”

His outrage on my behalf caught me off guard. He’d known about my mother’s reaction to Andi’s murder since our first case together, but while he’d insisted it wasn’t my fault before, he’d never sounded this pissed about it.

“Well, maybe so,” I admitted, “but there’s no changing what’s done. All I’m saying is that she had some basis for her resentment. I was with my sister when she was kidnapped, and I let her be taken.”

“You were a child.”

“I could have tried to stop him. If we’d both fought him, if we’d?—”

He leaned closer, his face inches from mine. “Stop.”

Surprisingly, I did, my breath coming in rapid pants.

“Goin’ down that path won’t change what happened,” he said with surprising gentleness. “You’re only beatin’ yourself by doin’ it.”

He had a point, but maybe that was exactly why I kept at it. I sucked in a slow breath before saying, “My father had absolutely nothing to do with my sister’s death.”

His brow cocked. “You sure about that?”

I eyed the half-full bottles lining the back wall, my palms itchy with the need to hold a glass of whiskey. A cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck and my stomach churned. But I forced myself to focus on his question.

“Sure that my father had nothing to do with her death? I don’t see how he could have been involved. My sister was randomly targeted. It had nothing to do with him.”

“And nothing to do with you,” he asserted.

But I let him take her.

He shook his head as though reading my mind but remained silent.

“In any case,” I said, with more force than necessary.

“My father didn’t tell my grandparents about my mother’s death, and I think I should inform them in person.

It’s the least I can do, and maybe I can find out why they stopped talking to her.

” Then I added, “And if my mother was in contact with them again.”

He leaned back, resting the palm of his hand on the edge of the bar. “I’ll take the day off. We’ll go together.”

My lips parted in shock. I knew he’d planned on helping me investigate, but I hadn’t expected him to take this road trip with me.

“I’m not going to hide anything from you,” I said, meaning it. “I’m not trying to protect my father, if that’s what you're afraid of. I’ll tell you everything they say. I’ll even record the conversation if you like.”

He studied me so closely, I was sure he could see the blackness swirling in my soul. He didn’t flinch. Maybe he saw something familiar. “So you say, but I’m goin’ anyway.”

“Why?”

He started to say something, then stopped, a hard look filling his eyes.

“Because while you claim you intend to keep me in the loop, past experience proves otherwise. Besides, your car’s in the shop and you’re too poor to rent one.

I’m goin’. End of discussion.” Then he carried the beer to the other end of the bar and placed it in front of a patron.

This nicer version of Malcolm had me on edge.

Sure, he’d practically called me a liar, but in the past, he would have told me to fuck off.

What was with this softer version? Was he playing me?

No, not playing me. But he clearly thought my mother’s death played into his grand scheme somehow.

Maybe I should be warier, but as far as I was concerned, as long as he helped me, then I could help him.

It had worked for us before. I really did intend to tell him anything I learned from them.

Sure, he hadn’t reciprocated, but that didn’t matter.

My best chance of finding the person or persons behind my mother’s murder was by teaming up with Malcolm.

He could do whatever he wanted with the information we dug up.

I’d come a long way since last February. When my investigation to find Ava Peterman, Vanessa’s eight-year-old daughter, kept crossing paths with the notorious James Malcolm, I’d expected he’d shoot me for crossing him. I sure hadn’t expected him to suggest we pool resources.