Page 4 of Luck of the Devil (Harper Adams Mystery #3)

“What?” I blurted out. I supposed I now knew why he’d planned to stay, but his statement didn’t make any sense.

I shook my head. “First of all, why would you think that? And second, why the fuck would you care ?” My voice rose, practically shouting at him as I finished the sentence.

He turned back to his task. “To answer your second question,” he said calmly, “I have my reasons, but as far as the first, I looked at the evidence.”

“What are you talking about? It was an accident.”

“Let me finish with this, then you can make me that coffee and we’ll talk.”

I nearly pressed him to talk now, but I suspected my brain was still too dazed to listen to anything he presented as evidence.

Who would want to murder my mother? Okay, dumb question, I suspected most of the town hated her, but I also doubted most of the them had the stomach to actually kill someone, even her.

Besides, she had run off the road. There were skid marks on the bridge.

There was water in her lungs. She’d drowned.

Sure, the official autopsy report wasn’t out, but no one in the Lone County Sheriff’s Department was suspicious that she’d run into foul play. The idea had never even come up.

But the skid marks could have also meant someone had run her off.

I was still lost in my stupor while he finished removing the last stitch, and mercifully, he hadn’t said anything else about his suspicions. By the time I got up and started my espresso machine on autopilot, I’d already come to my own conclusion.

“I’m sure you think you’re helping, and I actually appreciate it more than you know,” I said in a slow, even tone.

“It’s not uncommon for families to search for reasons for their loved one’s death.

They think something sinister happened because they can’t accept that someone they love just died , through no fault of their own.

There has to be some external force that caused their death, because they can’t accept that it was random.

That someone could be here one moment, then gone the next.

” I looked him dead in the eye. “But I’m not like those people.

I’ve seen the randomness of death. I’ve accepted my mother’s death for what it was: an accident.

She was a terrible driver, and she ran off the road.

I don’t need you to try to make this more palatable for me.

I’ve accepted it just fine.” That wasn’t the complete truth, but believing it was murder wouldn’t make me feel less guilty that she’d been in the river two days longer than she’d needed to be.

“That’s not what I’m doin’, Harper,” he said softly, still sitting in his chair, his legs spread apart in a relaxed posture. “Finish makin’ the coffee, and I’ll explain my reasoning. “

I lifted the heel of my hand to my forehead. I could at least hear him out. “What do you want? Same as last time?”

“Sure.”

I went through the motions of making him a vanilla latte, then set it in front of him then returned to my chair. “What is your reasoning?”

He picked up his mug and took a sip. Something like appreciation filled his eyes, but he didn’t comment as he set it back down on the table. Was he buying himself some time before responding, or was I imagining it?

“What have you heard from the autopsy report?” he finally asked.

“That she had some bruising and water in her lungs.”

“What specifically do you know about the bruising?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t ask, and they didn’t say. Detective Monahan said it was consistent with the car accident. Her car dropped from a thirty-foot bridge into a twelve-foot-deep river. Bruising was to be expected.”

“What about the toxicology report?” he asked.

“It hasn’t come back yet.”

“There’s a preliminary one.”

“And it didn’t show anything,” I said, my head beginning to throb.

“Harper, she had Sertraline in her system.” His brow lifted. “Did she take Sertraline?”

A strange numbness crept over me, like my brain refused to process what he’d just said. Sertraline was the pharmaceutical name for Zoloft. “No way. Absolutely not. She would have considered it a sign of weakness.”

But had I missed something? My mother had always been so controlled—rigid, even. Could she have been self-medicating?

A flicker of a memory surfaced—her fingers shaking slightly when she set down her wine glass last week, but I’d brushed it off.

I considered asking him how he knew all of this, but figured now wasn’t the time. It was no surprise he had access to information even I wasn’t privy to. At the moment, I didn’t see how it mattered who’d fed it to him.

“Would your father know?”

“Uh…” My head was spinning. I asked myself, again, where she’d been going. She’d had that suitcase with her…

“Maybe,” I said, distracted. “Maybe not. I take it they weren’t very close.”

“You take it? You don’t know?”

“My mother pretty much kicked me out of the house the day I left for college. I wasn’t home much, so no, I don’t know.

I came back for the summer after my freshman year, and got the message loud and clear that she didn’t want me around.

So, I only came back for holidays after that, and over the past decade, I didn’t even do that much.

All I know is that he left her a month ago. ”

“Did she have a medicine cabinet?”

“No. She kept some medication in a kitchen cabinet, but only Tylenol, antibiotic ointment, and things like that. Besides, she had a suitcase with her, like she was going out of town. She would have taken any prescription medication with her.”

“Did they return her belongings to you?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I was trying to wrap my head around the possibility that she’d been murdered . “It was all wet and soggy. I didn’t go through it.”

“Where is it now?”

“In a plastic bag in the garage. My dad didn’t want it and it didn’t seem right to just throw it away, even though everything had to be completely ruined.” I narrowed my eyes. “Surely you’re not basing your theory on the fact she had a Zoloft in her bloodstream.”

“Remember the bruising? She had a contusion on the back of her head.”

“Maybe she hit it on the head rest,” I countered. “Or maybe she turned her head when the car was falling and hit it on the window.”

“The indentation in her skull fits blunt force trauma better than it does cracking her head on a window or head rest.”

I gave him a hard stare. “Where’s the report with this information? It seems unlikely that the sheriff’s department would overlook blunt force trauma. Everyone knows they’re leaps and bounds better than the Jackson Creek police.”

“The preliminary report doesn’t state she had blunt force trauma. I had my own expert talk to the pathologist.”

My blood iced in my veins. “Why?”

He reached over and picked up the mug. “Why what?” He took a sip, as though we were discussing the weather and not my mother’s potential murder.

“Why would you have someone look at the report?” A new thought hit me. “I’m not paying you for that, and I sure don’t owe you a favor.”

He took another sip and shook his head. Tsking, he said, “So cynical.”

I snorted. “Coming from you, that’s laughable.”

He lowered the cup but held onto it. “The timing of her death seemed suspicious.”

“Because I was looking into Hugo Burton’s murder?

The last time I talked to her was around noon last Tuesday when I was on my way out to meet with Hugo’s widow.

I didn’t see her lights on in the house when I headed out to Scooters around seven that night, and they were still off when I came back well after ten.

I suspect she left that afternoon. The timing makes it unlikely her accident had anything to do with my investigation into Hugo. ”

He shook his head. “I’m not necessarily talkin’ about Hugo.

I’m talking about you bein’ back in town, diggin’ shit up.

Your father was involved with J.R. Simmons, who had some very mean and deadly people in his back pocket.

Your parents were in the process of going through a divorce.

What if she dug something up and it made someone nervous? ”

I shook my head. “Sure, she dug up dirt on people, but they were rumors, whispered into the right ears. Nothing serious enough to get her killed.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “It wouldn’t be the first time someone was murdered for destroying someone’s reputation. Had your mother been nervous lately? Acting out of character?”

I didn’t have to consider it to reluctantly admit, “She seemed super needy. She wanted me around all the time in the evening. I ate dinner with her most nights, and she wanted me to stay late. I figured she was just lonely after my dad left.”

“I thought your parents weren’t close,” he said. “So why would she be lonely?”

“I suspected she was probably doing it to manipulate me.”

“How so?”

I pushed out a sigh of frustration. “She liked to control people, and I was usually uncontrollable.” I ran my hand over my head.

“Look, I don’t want to get into the details of my family trauma, but suffice it to say, my mother and I didn’t get along before my sister’s kidnapping, and after, well, she blamed me, and she made no secret that she hated me. ”

I took a breath, then reached for my cup with shaky hands.

Malcolm’s gaze, of course, followed my movement. “You’re in withdrawal.”

“Bullshit. I’m not an alcoholic.”

“You’re shaking. You’re sweating. You’re anxious. You have a headache.”

“I have a headache because I had to suffer fools at my mother’s funeral, and I’m anxious because you’re at my kitchen table, accusing me of suffering DTs.”

But I could see that he might be right, and it scared the hell out of me.

He lifted his shoulder in a half shrug. “I call it as I see it.”

I hated his smug sneer. “You don’t know everything, James Malcolm.”

“Never claimed to, but I’ve seen a few drunks detox in my time, so I recognize the signs.”

“Fuck you.”

He just continued to smirk at me.

“I can’t do this right now,” I said, my voice breaking. It was all too much. Him in my personal space… His insinuations that my mother might have been murdered because of me… Him claiming I was suffering from alcohol withdrawal…

My breaths were coming in short bursts, and I felt like my chest was going to explode.

He got to his feet in one fluid motion. “Come on.”

I glared up at him. “What? Where do you think we’re going?”

“Somewhere you can breathe.”