Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet (Charley Davidson)

4

You can’t fix stupid,

but you can numb it with a 2 by 4.

—T-SHIRT

Having already driven across town, I’d gone from being fairly close to Harper’s parents’ house to way out in the boondocks. I pulled a uey amidst a blaring horn—mine—and headed back that way only to be blocked by another gate when I got there. One made of intricate iron surrounded by a high brick wall. I pushed a button on the speaker box.

An arrogant male voice crackled out of the speaker. “Yes?”

I must’ve been in the midst of old money. The massive expanse of mansion that loomed before me was a testament to two things: The Lowells were rich, and the Lowells liked people to know it.

When I glanced back at the speaker box, I said, “Yes, I’d like a taco with extra salsa.” When he didn’t ask if I’d like something to drink with that, I tried again. “I’m here to see Mr. and Mrs. Lowell.” I smiled into the video camera mounted above the box, then took out my PI license and held it up. “I’ve been hired by their daughter, Harper.”

When I received no answer, I decided to change my tack. “I just need to ask them a few questions.”

After a long moment in which I kept smiling at the dead kid in my backseat, trying not to contemplate how awkward the moment was becoming, the arrogant guy came back on.

“Mr. and Mrs. Lowell are not receiving.”

What the hell did that mean? “I’m not throwing a forty-yard pass. I just have a few questions. I think their daughter is in danger.”

“They are not accepting visitors.”

What a caring bunch. “In that case, I’ll have the police over in a few. I apologize beforehand if they come with lights flashing and sirens blaring.”

Rich people hated nothing more than scandal. I loved scandals. Especially the kinky kind with illicit affairs and CEOs photographed in heels and feather boas. But I did live in my own little world.

“You will have five minutes,” he said. He did the clenched-teeth thing much better than Ubie. I’d have to mention that next time I saw my surly uncle. Maybe he could take lessons.

After rolling up a long driveway that turned into a cobblestone entrance, I lifted Misery’s emergency brake and glanced in my rearview. “Don’t even think about going for a joy ride, buddy.”

His blank gaze didn’t flinch. He was fun.

A self-assured man who was dressed much more casually than I’d expected met me at the massive white door. The house looked more East Coast than most houses in New Mexico. Without saying a word, the man led me to what I could only assume was a drawing room, though there were no art supplies anywhere. Since I couldn’t draw, I decided to snoop. Pictures lined the walls and shelves, but there was not a single candid shot among them. Every photograph was a professional portrait, and each one had a color theme. Black. Brown. Navy blue. Four in the family: the parents, one boy, and one girl—Harper. They all had dark hair except the boy, and he didn’t particularly look like the others. I wondered if the rooster had gotten out of the henhouse. A blond rooster. The parade of portraits mapped out the development of the Lowell children, from around four or five until the kids were in their early twenties. Clearly the parents had a firm grip on their children. In one portrait, they got almost crazy and wore white.

These people were scary.

“How may I help you?”

I turned to a woman, the matriarch of this here hoity-toity club, if the pictures were any indication. By the upturn of her nose, she held herself in high regard. Either that, or she found my fascination with her drawing room distasteful.

I didn’t offer my hand. “My name is Charlotte Davidson, Mrs. Lowell. I’m here about Harper.”

“I’ve been told you are a private investigator?”

“Yes. Your daughter hired me. She believes someone is trying to kill her.”

A lengthy exhalation told me she probably didn’t care. “Stepdaughter,” she clarified, and my hackles rose instantly.

I wondered if my stepmother did the same with me. Corrected people when they called me her daughter. Cringed at the usage. The very thought.

“Has Harper mentioned the fact that she’s being stalked?”

“Fact?” she said, her expression full of a peevish kind of doubt. “Yes, Ms. Davidson. We’ve been through this with her ad nauseam. I can’t imagine you could bring anything new to the table.”

The woman’s indifference floored me. It was one thing not to believe Harper, but another altogether to be so blatantly unaffected by her step-daughter’s distress. Then I got a clue that might shed some light.

“May I ask, is Harper’s brother your stepson as well?”

Pride swelled her chest. “Arthur is mine. I married Harper’s father when Art was seven. Harper was five. She didn’t approve, and these antics of hers began soon after.”

“Antics?” I asked.

“Yes.” She waved a dismissive hand. “The drama. The theatrics. Someone is always after her, trying to scare her or hurt her or kill her. You can imagine how hard it is to take this seriously when it has been happening for over twenty-five years.”

That was interesting. Harper hadn’t mentioned that part. “So this started when she was young?”

“Five.”

“I see.” I took out my notepad and pretended to take notes. Partly to look official, but mostly to give myself a minute to get a well-rounded read off her. From what I could tell, she wasn’t lying. She didn’t believe Harper’s accusations were real. She didn’t believe Harper’s life was in danger.

Then again, my stepmother had never believed a word I’d said growing up either. Mrs. Lowell’s indifference meant nothing in the grand scheme of things besides the fact that she was petty and vain.

“According to her therapists,” she continued, her tone waspish to the extreme, “seven therapists, to be exact—it’s not unusual for a daughter to feel neglected and crave attention when her father remarries. Her biological mother died when she was an infant. Jason was all she had.”

“Is your husband home? May I talk to him?”

She chafed under my forwardness. “No, you may not. Mr. Lowell is very ill. He can hardly entertain Harper’s delusions of doom, much less those of a hired private investigator.”

Mrs. Lowell’s expression would suggest she thought I was nothing more than a charlatan, out to take Harper’s—aka her—money. Since I was quite used to people believing me a charlatan, the snub didn’t irritate. But the slight to Harper did. She clearly harbored no genuine affection for her stepdaughter. She saw her as a nuisance. A burden. Much like my own stepmother thought of me.

“And,” Mrs. Lowell continued, a thought having occurred to her, “she disappeared for three years. Three! Off the face of the Earth, as far as we knew. Did she tell you that?”

While I wanted to say, I would have, too, with a stepmother like you, what I said was, “No, ma’am, she didn’t.”

“See. She is completely unstable. When she finally deigned us with her presence, she said she had been on the run for her life. Of all the ludicrous …” Mrs. Lowell shifted in irritation. “And now she hires a private investigator? She has gone over the edge.”

I wrote the word psycho in my notebook, then scribbled it out before she saw. I was letting my own biases guide me on this case, and that would get me nowhere. Taking a mental step back, I took a deep breath and tried to see this from Mrs. Lowell’s perspective, as difficult as that might be. I didn’t often identify with rich bitches, but they were people, too. Weren’t they?

So Mrs. Lowell marries a man, a rich man, only to find out the man’s daughter hates her with a passion and despises the relationship her new mother has with her father, so much so that she makes up wild stories about someone trying to kill her. To get back at her new mother? Her father for abandoning her?

Nope. I didn’t buy it. Mrs. Lowell was a cold bitch. She most likely married for the money, not that I could blame her entirely for that—a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do—but to dismiss Harper’s fears outright and so callously bordered on neglect, in my opinion. Jason Lowell was her meal ticket, and his daughter was part of the deal. I couldn’t help but feel a little ambivalent toward Harper’s father. Where was he in all this? Why was he not here supporting his daughter? Taking up for her?

I cleared my throat and said, “You mentioned drama. Can you give me an example?”

“Oh, goodness, you name it. One minute someone is leaving dead rabbits on her bed, and the next minute a party popper made her throw up all over her cousin’s birthday cake. A party popper. Then there were the nightmares. We used to wake up to her screams in the middle of the night, or we would find her standing beside our bed at three in the morning.”

“She sleepwalked?”

“No, she was wide awake. She would say someone was in her room. The first few times, Jason would jump out of bed and go investigate, but the therapist told us that was exactly what she wanted. So, we stopped. We started to ignore her and told her to go back to bed.”

“And would she?”

“Of course not. We’d find her the next morning asleep under the stairs or behind the sofa. And searching for her would always make us late to this or that. Her antics were absolutely exhausting.”

“I can only imagine.”

“So, we stopped searching for her altogether. If she wanted to sleep in the broom closet, so be it. We let her and went about our usual routine. But the doctor insisted there was nothing wrong with her. She said the more attention we gave Harper, the more she would act out. So we stopped paying attention.”

A dull ache ricocheted through the cavern of my chest. To know what Harper went through with no one to support her. No one to believe her. “So you did nothing?”

“As per her doctor’s instructions,” Mrs. Lowell said with a sniff. “But her outbursts escalated. We went through the nightmares and the panic attacks night after night, and did nothing but order her back to bed. So, she stopped eating to get back at us.”

“To get back at you?” I asked, my throat constricting.

“Yes. And then she stopped bathing, stopped combing her hair. Do you have any idea how humiliating that is? To have a child who looks more like a street rat than a proper young lady?”

“That must’ve been awful,” I said, my tone flat and unattractive.

My sarcasm was not lost on the foul woman, and I regretted it instantly. She shut down. Any information I might have gained was now lost to the frivolity of my mouth.

“I think your time is up, Ms. Davidson.”

I chastised myself inwardly and asked, “Is Harper’s brother around? Can I talk to him?”

“Stepbrother,” she corrected, seeming to sense my chagrin. “And he has a place of his own.” The statement wrenched an interesting rush of indignation out of her. I sensed no small amount of displeasure from Mrs. Lowell that her son had moved out. But he had to be in his thirties, for heaven’s sake. What did she expect?

She had her housekeeper show me out before I could ask anything else. Like who trimmed her lawn, because day-um, I had no idea bushes could be clipped into the shape of a Kokopelli.

“Have you worked here long?” I asked the young woman as she escorted me to the door, knowing she couldn’t have. She looked around twenty.

She glanced nervously over her shoulder, then shook her head.

“Can I ask how long you’ve known the Lowells?”

After opening the door, she scanned the area again before saying, “No. I just started here a couple of weeks ago. Their long-term house keeper retired.”

“Really?”

She seemed to want me out of the house. Bad. And I didn’t want to get her in trouble. I knew how these people worked, and their employees were not to speak of anything that happened at their house or they would lose their jobs immediately, but we were talking about the well-being of one of their own. “How long had the last housekeeper worked here?”

“Almost thirty years,” she said, seeming as baffled by the idea as I was. How someone could last thirty years under the reign of that woman was beyond me. But if anyone knew what happened in a house like this, it was the hired help.

“Thank you,” I said, offering her a wink. She grinned shyly.

I left the Lowell mansion with way more questions than I’d had when I went in, but at least I had a clearer picture of what Harper had endured growing up. Still, she didn’t tell me how long this had been going on. While I could guess why—nobody believed her, why should I—I would need to confront her as soon as possible. I was missing pertinent information that could help us solve this entire case.

But one thing stuck out in my head. Everything Harper had done, all the nightmares and delusions and lashing out, pointed to one thing: posttraumatic stress disorder. The tip-off was the party poppers. I had taken enough psych in college to recognize the most basic symptom of PTSD: extreme response, like shaking and nausea, to loud noises.

Being stalked could cause posttraumatic stress to a degree, especially if the situation was life-threatening, but Harper’s symptoms would indicate a more severe form. Surely a licensed psychotherapist would know that. Maybe I needed to visit these seven therapists Mrs. Lowell was telling me about.

I called Cookie to have her find out exactly who Harper was seeing and when. “Also, I want to talk to their housekeeper who recently retired, and then I need more info on the Lowell family.”

“Housekeeper. Got it. But info?” she asked, typing away at her keyboard.

“Dirt, Cook. I need you to scrounge up all the dirt you can get on them. Any family with that much hot air has something to hide, and I want to know what it is.”

“That kind of dirt rarely makes the headlines, but I’ll see what I can dig up.”

“And I want to actually talk to the therapists the Lowells were sending Harper to. She’s been seeing them since around the age of five.”

“That could be difficult.”

“Are you saying you can’t do it?”

“No,” she said, a smile in her voice. “I’m saying it’s about time you gave me a challenge.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

The second I hung up, I called David Taft. Officer Taft worked the same precinct as Uncle Bob and had a departed little sister who liked to visit me at the worst times possible. Namely any. We weren’t exactly friends, Taft and I. Which might explain the cold reception.

“Taft,” he said when he picked up.

“Hey, Charley Davidson here.” When he didn’t say anything, I continued. “I have a client who says you’re her liaison at the precinct. Harper Lowell?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell. So, you’re back?”

“I was never gone. She claims someone is stalking her. Trying to kill her.”

“I know who you’re talking about. We never got anything on any stalker.”

“Do you believe her?”

“I didn’t. Until I spoke to her parents.”

Well, well. I was starting to like him. “Why is that?”

“I don’t know. They seemed a little too eager to convince me their daughter was crazy.”

“I got the exact same feeling.”

“So, she hired you?”

“Yep. Did you ever find any evidence at all?” I couldn’t hide the hope in my voice.

“Nothing that couldn’t be explained away as a crazy woman seeking attention. Stuffed rabbits aren’t exactly life-threatening.”

“When they’re not stuffed and they’re placed on your bed while you sleep with their throats cut, they are.”

“Look, I’m not arguing with you. We just never found any evidence to corroborate her story.”

Just when I was starting to like him. “And I’m sure you tried really hard.”

“I tried, Davidson,” he said, adding a sharp edge to his voice.

“Okay, okay. You don’t have to get obstinate.”

“Have you seen my sister?”

Taft’s sister died when they were young, and she’d recently decided that haunting me was more fun than following her brother around day in and day out. It took him a while to believe that I could see her and talk to her and grow uncharacteristically homicidal by her annoying habit of asking question after question. But once he realized I was the real deal, he’d decided to keep tabs on her through me. Joy of joys.

“Not lately,” I said. “She’s spending a lot of time at Rocket’s.”

“You mean that abandoned mental hospital where you talk to ghosts?”

“Yes, and I only talk to one ghost. Rocket. He has a little sister, and she and your little sister get along famously. I’m going to check on them soon. I’ll let you know how she is.”

“Thanks. I really appreciate—”

Yeah, yeah. “If you hear anything.”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

“In case your sister asks, are you still dating skanks?”

A light chuckle filtered into my ear. “No. Well, not for the most part.”

“Okay. Don’t make me come down there and kick your skank-lovin’ ass.”

“I’ll try not to let that threat keep me up nights.”

“Good luck.”

I hung up and took in a long breath, deciding it was time. Harper’s brother would have gone home for the day by now, and I still didn’t have a home address on him, so I’d have to catch him at work on the morrow. If Cookie was right, he worked for some kind of energy-conservation company, but tonight I had bigger issues. I straightened my shoulders and tightened my grip on the steering wheel, because tonight I had a dragon to slay. A dragon named Reyes Farrow.

I steered Misery through the warehouse district of Albuquerque near the railroad tracks downtown. A cold rain tumbled in sheets down my windshield, but one never complained about the rain in such an arid climate. Complaining about rain in Albuquerque would be like complaining about sunshine in Seattle. So I wasn’t complaining so much as bemoaning the fact that I had to drive in it. Hard rain made it almost impossible to see the road. Hopefully, whoever owned those trash cans I’d sideswiped would understand that.

After idling on a side street for a bit, watching through chain link as car after car entered a fenced-in area, I decided to grow some balls and go through, too. How bad could this be? I removed Margaret and stuffed her under my seat before heading in.

A gigantic man in a black plastic poncho held up a hand to stop me the minute I drove past the entrance. I stopped. Partly because he was massive and partly because pulling off that look was awe-inspiring.

I unzipped my window, wondering if I should think about getting a car with all the latest gadgets. I could do without unzipping windows, but Misery was such a part of me, I couldn’t imagine my life without her. Unless my new ride sported a jaguar on the hood. Then I’d kick Misery to the curb faster than a crushed aluminum can.

I patted the dash. “Just kidding, girl. I’d never abandon you. Unless you catch fire and I have to run for my life.”

As if launching a comeback, she sputtered and shimmied before returning back to her normal purr. Such sass. We were totally made for each other.

“You a cop?” the poncho guy asked.

“No, but I dated one once.”

He raised a flashlight and scanned Misery’s innards. Sadly, all he’d find was a mishmash of files, a couple of jackets, and basic survival gear that consisted mainly of Cheez-Its and an emergency stash of Thin Mints. Frickin’ Girl Scouts. Those things were way too addictive. They had to be laced with crack.

I couldn’t see Poncho Guy’s face past the darkness of the night and the shadows of his hood. But he did the menacing bit well. His head tilted to the side. “Were you sent here by cops?”

“Not today.” I smiled, pretending rain was not pelting me in the face.

“Did you get an invitation?”

“I got an invitation to Nancy Burke’s slumber party in the sixth grade. We played spin the bottle. I had to kiss a turtle named Esther.”

“Yeah? Well, I don’t know you, and I don’t give a shit.”

“Oh!” I jutted my hand out of the window. “I’m Charley.”

He backed away and motioned for me to turn around. “No entrance. Go back the way you came in.”

Damn. I totally should have dressed sexy and called myself Bunny. “Wait!” I felt under the dash for my emergency mocha latte money. “I’m just here to talk to Reyes Farrow.”

He seemed unimpressed. “Farrow doesn’t talk. Now go or I’ll drag your ass out of your vehicle and beat the shit out of you.”

That was totally uncalled for. As if in involuntary reaction, my fingers felt blindly along the door until they found the lock. Just in case. Then I held out the fifty-dollar bill and decided to play his game. The forlorn girl so in love with the god Reyes that I’d do anything to get in. Anything to see him. “Please. I just want to see him. I just … want to watch.”

With a loud sigh, he took the fifty out of my hand. “If I catch you recording anything, I’ll drag your ass out of that building and beat the shit out of you.”

Holy cow, he liked to drag and drop. “Thank you.” I blinked a few times in concession, only partly because rain was still pelting me in the face. “Thank you so much.”

He frowned and swept the flashlight to the left, showing me where to park. I followed his directions, grabbed one of the cast-off jackets from the backseat as a makeshift umbrella, saluted a good-bye to the kid sitting there, staring off into his own little space station, then hurried to a side door, where I’d seen a couple run in earlier. Sadly, I was stopped again. By another big guy in a black plastic poncho. Who wanted money.

“Fifty bucks,” he said, his tone flat.

No way. “Fifty bucks? I just gave that guy a fifty to get in.”

I could just make out the lower half of the guy’s face. He smiled. “That was just to park. To get in, it’s another fifty.”

Well, crap. Being broke sucked ass. I pulled out my wallet while a group of men moaned behind me.

“It’s raining, lady. Hurry it up.”

“This is going to be so badass,” another said, ignoring his friend.

“No shit. I hear he’s undefeated.”

“Damn straight he’s undefeated. Have you seen that guy? He moves like a fucking panther.”

Knowing exactly who they were talking about, I tore through my wallet, looking for my other emergency mocha latte stash. This was the last of anything and everything I had, and it’d damned well better be worth it.

“I don’t know. I think I could take him,” another guy said.

I looked over my shoulder as his friends gaped at him.

The guy grinned. “If he were unarmed and I had an AK-47 in my hands.”

They laughed along with their buddy until they noticed I’d stopped looking for money. One of them shouldered me, pushing me a solid three feet forward. “C’mon, honey. We have an ass-kicking to watch.”

“Fuck, it’s already started.”

I heard a loud roar as an audience cheered beyond the door.

“Here,” one of them said, handing the guy a fifty, then sidling past me. The others followed suit, and I soon knew what it felt like to be a washing machine in spin cycle. They pushed me into Black Poncho Guy number two, and oddly enough, a fifty-dollar bill just sort of materialized in my hand. Probably because I jacked it as the last guy slid past me, in that moment where both the giver and the receiver thought the other had it.

“Here it is.” I held up the fifty with a little too much enthusiasm. The bouncer didn’t seem to notice. He snatched it out of my hand, then offered me help inside by way of a none-too-gentle shove. Geez. I stumbled forward as more people entered behind me, so I hurried toward a bright spotlight in the middle of an otherwise very dark and very empty warehouse. The smell of dirt mingled with the aromas of beer and smoke and manly cologne. I liked manly things. Especially cologne.

Still, I strode forward on high alert.

As I drew closer to the action, I realized the crowd was way bigger than I thought it would be. People, mostly men, stood cheering around a chain-link cage like the ones on TV, only rougher. The crude structure had no padding around the bars, and the gate to get in was chained and locked from the outside. That couldn’t be good.

By the sounds of the crowd’s cheers, they thirsted for blood more than the beer that flowed freely. Drinks were bought. Bets were made. Fists were thrown. I was actually rather surprised at how many women were present, then realized they weren’t cheering like the men. They were watching, all eyes focused on one thing. That’s when I saw it. Him. Reyes Alexander Farrow. Through the grid of chain link, I focused on the action, the show the crowd had come to see.