Page 16 of Luck of the Devil (Harper Adams Mystery #3)

Around seven, I woke to light streaming through the window’s wooden blinds. Malcolm was slumped in the armchair, asleep. His feet were propped on the coffee table, his ankles crossed, and his head leaned to the side.

The lines around his eyes seemed softer, and he looked less jaded.

Less dangerous.

It made me wonder what life choices he’d made to get to this point.

You didn’t wake up one day and decide to become a crime boss, or at least, I didn’t think someone like Malcolm did.

Most people did it for money or power, often both.

Had that been his motivation? Fenton County was poor, one of the poorest in the state.

Maybe he’d seen it as a way out of poverty.

When I sat up, my head swam, so I rested my elbows on my thighs and leaned my forehead into my hands. My head and muscles ached like I was recovering from an illness, but I was a hell of a lot better than I’d been last night.

I turned my head to look at Malcolm and saw his eyes had cracked open.

“She lives,” he said with a tight smile.

I sent him a grim smile in return. “For another day.”

“You feel up to drivin’ to Jonesboro?” he asked, still slouched in his seat.

“I’ve felt better, but it doesn’t change my plans. We need to go by my mother’s house first. I can take a shower there and then we can head out of town.”

He gave a slight nod and stood. “Let’s not waste any time.”

I felt a little queasy as we drove to my mother’s house, but Malcolm snuck a glance at me and silently handed me his flask.

I unscrewed the lid, then took a swig, the warmth of cheap whiskey sliding down my throat.

Taking the sip still felt wrong, but I’d forced myself to accept that it was the only way I could make this trip, let alone investigate my mother’s death.

When Malcolm pulled into my driveway, I headed for the back of the house and found the poorly hidden spare key in the fakest looking rock I’d ever seen.

“You don’t have a key?” he asked in surprise.

“Not until a few weeks ago,” I said as I walked over to the door and inserted the key. “And that one is up in my apartment. This was faster.”

I pushed the door open and he followed me inside.

I headed for the kitchen counter, where my mother kept her address book, then flipped it open to the L section.

I’d already gotten the address from the internet, but it wasn’t a bad idea to get confirmation.

My grandparents were listed at the top, Gary and Shirley Langford, with the address I’d already found.

I closed the book and set it on the kitchen table. “We’re bringing this with us. We might need it later.”

“Okay,” he said, still standing by the back door.

I gave him a long look. “I’m surprised you didn’t just start searching the house.”

“It seemed rude to barge in and start rifling through things.”

I scoffed, realizing he was probably waiting for me because I knew where things were, not out of respect for me or my mother’s house.

Her laptop was on the kitchen table, but I bypassed it to head to my parents’ bedroom.

I’d already checked out my father’s office last week, looking for anything that might link him to Hugo Burton and J.R.

Simmons, but he’d cleared his things out.

If he had a paper trail for his financial information, he’d likely kept it in his home office and taken it with him, but I knew Mom had kept some papers in her bedroom.

I walked into her room, catching the faint whiff of Estée Lauder perfume.

She’d worn it as long as I could remember, and the scent stopped me in my tracks.

My heart wrenched, and I wondered why losing her hurt so much.

I’d spent most of my life without her, rarely giving her a second thought.

How could you grieve someone you had mostly written off?

Had she slipped through my defenses with her neediness over the last few weeks?

Or was I mourning the mother I’d always wanted?

“You okay?” Malcolm asked in a hushed tone behind me.

“Yeah,” I said, my voice gruff. I shoved my feelings down as I took a few more steps into the room. “Mom kept some papers in her dresser. She might have some of my father’s financial documents there.”

“You don’t think he took them?”

I bent over to open the bottom drawer of her dresser. “The chances of them being here are fairly small, but it’s worth a quick look.”

There was a stack of documents, but a quick search through them revealed about five years’ worth of electric and water bills, car and house insurance premiums, and their personal bank statements.

I pulled out the entire stack, closed the drawer and stood upright.

“I doubt anything useful is here, but I’ll bring it with us and go through it on the drive. ”

“Could they have kept financial statements anywhere else?” Malcolm asked.

“It’s possible, but this is where she always kept her bills and paperwork. If you want, feel free to search the rest of the house while I go check out her laptop.”

His brow rose in surprise. “You don’t want to keep an eye on me?”

I looked up at him. “Are you asking if I’m worried you’ll steal something? You never struck me as a petty thief.”

His mouth tipped into the hint of a grin. “Was that a compliment?”

“Take it as you will.”

“You’re not worried I’ll hide something from you?”

I quirked a brow. “Should I be?”

“We both know that’s how we’ve operated in the past,” he said matter-of-factly. “We’ve had our secrets. Only shared what we must.”

Was he warning me that he was still operating that way? But what could he possibly find that would only help him and not me? Was I willing to take the chance?

This man had shown multiple times now that he wouldn’t hurt me—that he’d go to great lengths to protect me—but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t keep secrets.

Maybe he should. There was no denying he’d been a criminal in his previous life.

And while I suspected he’d gotten immunity with the feds prior to his release from federal prison three years ago, I didn’t have confirmation of that.

If I ever find out anything about his previous illegal activities, I’d be duty bound to report them.

Then again, that had been Little Rock Detective Adams, not private citizen Harper Adams. Sure, I knew I was still obligated to report such things, but unless he confessed to something truly heinous, I wouldn’t. I’d keep his secrets.

Last week, when I still hadn’t fully trusted him, I’d done some research about Malcolm’s connection to J.R.

Simmons. I’d discovered he’d worked with a woman named Rose Gardner to get J.R.

Simmons arrested in Fenton County over four years ago.

At that time, Rose had been the girlfriend of the ADA of Fenton County, Mason Deveraux.

Malcolm and Rose’s partnership had struck me as strange, especially since he’d been on law enforcement’s radar.

So, I’d made an impulsive call to Mason Deveraux, who was now the lead prosecuting attorney in the Arkansas Attorney General’s office, to ask about it.

His assistant had taken my message because he was in court.

Deveraux had called late the previous Friday, leaving me a message to call him on his personal phone, something that wasn’t typically done.

But I’d listened to the message a couple hours before I’d been kidnapped, and the next day I’d learned about my mother’s death.

I’d forgotten about calling him back, and now, I didn’t want to.

I wanted Malcolm to explain the past to me himself, and it no longer seemed urgent for it to happen immediately. What I did need to know was what he was up to right now.

I tilted my head, studying him. “What are you really doing here in Lone County, Malcolm?”

He released a short laugh.

I shot him a smile. “Didn’t expect that question?”

“I suppose I opened that door when I asked if you trusted me.” When I didn’t respond, he said, “I already told you I’m sniffing out Simmons’s successor.”

“And it’s taken you this long?”

His eyes darkened. “I never said when I started looking.”

“True.” But if he’d only recently started looking, what had he been doing here before that?

As far as I knew, Malcolm had no previous ties to Lone County, and it seemed like an odd place for him to suddenly decide to open a tavern.

I’d presumed the feds had asked him to come here, but while they might have been playing the long game, three years seemed like a stretch.

Nevertheless, I had no doubt he was interested in the successor now. That was why he’d been so interested in Hugo Burton and his associates. And that made me wonder why he was so invested in unmasking my mother’s murderer. “Do you think my mother’s death has something to do with the successor?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“But you do think it has something to do with my father.” We’d both agreed we believed it possible, but standing in my parents’ bedroom, looking at my mother’s neatly made bed, it seemed insane.

How could you live with someone for forty years and have them killed?

But that was a stupid question. The world was full of murderers who justified what they did.

It was possible my father had done the same thing.

Is it really? my inner voice protested.

I knew I had to pretend my father wasn’t my father, that he was just the husband of a murdered woman, and there was no denying the spouse of the deceased was always the number one suspect until proven otherwise. But he was still my father.

Malcolm’s gaze found mine. “I honestly don’t know if your father was involved, but it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

It did, which was why I was suddenly feeling nauseous in a way that went beyond withdrawal sickness.

Walking past him, I paused in the doorway. “Search wherever you want. I trust you.” Then I headed back toward the kitchen.

He didn’t follow me, not that I expected him to. I didn’t care what he found, because I did trust that he’d tell me if he found something related to my mother’s murder.

Before doing anything else, I started a pot of coffee. I wasn’t sure my stomach would be able to handle it, but my brain needed the caffeine boost.

While the coffee maker began to brew, I sat down at the table and opened the laptop, entering the password Primrose to wake it up. At least I remembered that one.

While I’d planned to log on to her pharmacy first, I saw the phone icon at the bottom of the screen. My mother had connected her phone to her laptop, so the first thing I did was search her phone calls.

She hadn’t made many, and most had names attached, which meant they were in her contact list. But my gaze narrowed in on the call she’d made after I’d phoned to cancel on her last Tuesday around noon.

It had been made ten minutes later after my call was recorded.

There was only a number with no name attached.

The interesting part was that it had a 327 area code, which was a relatively new area code.

While Northwest Arkansas and Little Rock and the surrounding areas had their own area codes, the rest of the state had used 870.

But recently, the FCC had added a second area code—327—since the 870 area was nearly out of numbers.

Lone County and all the southern and northern parts of the state fell into the 870 and 327 areas.

So did Jonesboro. Did the number belong to my grandparents?

It didn’t seem likely since the number had to be relatively new.

I pulled up the service I signed up for skip tracing after I’d passed my PI license test and entered the number. I expected to see a name and hopefully an address pop up, but there was nothing.

No name. No utilities or credit attached. No address. Just the carrier, a known burner phone service. And the most ominous part was that the phone had been activated a week ago Sunday, two days before my mother called the number.

Whoever my mother had called wanted to be untraceable.

What had my mother been up to?