The rest of the book club members had sat quietly while the Harper family drama played out, but at Butch’s words, everyone started talking at once.
Ralph simply looked stunned. Butch put his hand on Ralph’s arm and said, “Let’s wait for the detective downstairs.” He turned to me and jerked his head toward Jo.
I nodded, letting him know I’d look after her, and they left the room. Ralph didn’t say a word.
“Meeting’s over,” I said. “Everyone, time to leave. Louise Jane, will you please escort people downstairs and see them out. Louise Jane!”
“What?”
“Show people out, please.”
“Okay. Aunt Jo, are you ready to go?”
The older woman was huddled in on herself, weeping softly, while Mr. Snyder attempted to comfort her. “Perhaps Jo would prefer to rest for a few minutes,” I said. “I’ll wait with her.”
“Okay. Mrs. Peterson, how are … uh … your children? What are their names again?” Louise Jane edged toward the door, and Mrs. Peterson, who never could pass up the chance to brag about her daughters, followed.
“Diane,” Theodore said. “I haven’t had a chance to say welcome home. What are your plans going forward?” He guided her out. Josie and Steph widened their eyes at me as they passed, and the rest of the club followed them.
Footsteps clattered on the stairs, accompanied by excited voices. Soon, only Jo, Mr. Snyder, and I were left in the meeting room. I poured the last of the tea into a fresh glass and put it in the woman’s shaking hands. She lifted it to her lips and took a long drink. When she handed me the empty glass, she said, “Where’s Ralph gotten to?”
“He … uh … is needed to help the police with their inquiries.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Are you ready to leave? Ralph will … uh … be getting a lift into town. Can you drive yourself home? Do you have a driver’s license?”
She shook her head.
“I’ll take you, then, why don’t I?”
“Let me, Lucy,” Mr. Snyder said. “It would be my pleasure to offer Jo a ride.”
“Is that all right with you, Jo?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Mr. Snyder picked up his cane in one hand and took Jo’s arm in the other. I didn’t quite trust him to maneuver both of them successfully down the twisting stairs, so I took her other arm.
Ralph was sitting quietly in the dim light near the magazine rack while Butch stood over him. Ralph’s head was down, his shoulders slumped. He didn’t look up as his sister stepped off the bottom step, and I don’t think she noticed him.
Louise Jane stood on the front steps, waving everyone off. No one had lingered in hopes of finding out more about what was going on with Ralph or Jo, but I had no doubt the phone lines would be burning up shortly.
“Aunt Jo,” Louise Jane said. “Are you okay?”
Jo blinked. “I’m sorry. Who are you?”
“Louise Jane McKaughnan. I’m a great-niece of Ethel Harper Murray.”
“Ethel Murray? Is she still alive?”
“Probably. Last I heard anyway. About that ride home?”
“I’ll be fine. Thank you. Mr. Snyder has offered me a lift.”
“Call me Tony,” he said. “I’m not your teacher any longer.”
They slowly walked up the path together.
“When it comes to high drama,” Louise Jane said when they were out of hearing range, “that book has nothing on Jo and her story.”
“It’s tragic. All these years she’s believed her grandfather was talking to her from beyond the grave—and that he kept talking to her.”
“As you know, Lucy, I have made the study of the paranormal my life’s work.” I was about to rudely cut her off—I was running out of patience for Louise Jane’s ghost stories—when she added, “In this case, however, the tragedy is that she never saw a therapist.”
“I agree.”
“It wasn’t all that long ago, but back then families like the Harpers, like most families around these parts, would never have sent a son or daughter for therapy. ‘Get over it’ would have been the advice Jo got. She never did. Something terrified her that night, and from then on she heard her grandfather’s voice in her head.”
“So it would seem.”
“He must have been a heck of a horrid man in life for her to think he was cursing her after his death—and for nothing more shocking than dancing to modern music with a boy her own age. I knew the outlines of the story, but no one knew all the details or what she believed she’d seen. Not until tonight. I didn’t know Fred McNeil was there that night. And then Jimmy Harper up and died in the house after you and Connor bought it. Isn’t that a coincidence.”
I said nothing. Louise Jane’s eyes lit up as she had an idea. “You don’t think the real ghost of Ezekiel Froomer did Jimmy in? Scared him to death?”
“I do not, and don’t you go around telling people that.”
“How’d Jimmy die, anyway?” she asked casually.
Lights turned into the lighthouse lane, heading our way. “The police have ordered us not to talk about it. You can go on up; I’ll lock up once Butch and Ralph have left.”
“And now they’re arresting Ralph! Do you think someone saw the ghost of his grandfather and mistook it for Ralph?”
“Good night, Louise Jane.”
“I don’t mind staying with you.”
“No need. Here’s Detective Watson now.”
The car pulled to a stop at the top of the path, and Watson got out and approached us. “Evening, Lucy, Louise Jane.”
“Butch and Mr. Harper are waiting for you inside,” I said.
“Thanks. I won’t need you anymore tonight.”
“I need to lock up after you,” I said.
“Okay. Louise Jane, you can go off home.”
“I am home,” she said.
“What?”
“I live here.”
“Here? You live on this front step?”
“Well, no. Upstairs. In what used to be Lucy’s apartment.”
“You can be off home then, like I told you.”
“Okay. I guess. If you don’t need me anymore, Lucy?”
“I don’t,” I said.
We went inside. Louise Jane called a cheery good-night and headed for the stairs. She didn’t get far, and I could see the bottoms of her shoes lingering at the first bend.
Ralph lifted his head when Watson stood next to him. “Evening, Detective.”
“Mr. Harper. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to come into town with me.”
Ralph stood up. “This young fellow says you’re arresting me for killing my brother. You’ve got it wrong.”
“You are not under arrest at this time, but I do have some questions for you. Let’s go. Thanks, Butch.”
Butch nodded.
“Steph got a lift home with Josie,” I said. “So your car’s still here.”
We left the library together. Once we were all outside, I locked the front door behind us. Watson and Ralph walked down the path, but Butch waited to escort me to my car. The moon was bright, and the night was quiet. Frogs and insects called from the depths of the marsh. High above us, the thousand-watt light flashed.
“Did Detective Watson say what happened?” I asked. “Why Ralph is—or isn’t—under arrest.”
“He went around to Harper’s house,” Butch said in a low voice. “No one was home, so he sent an alert for us to be on the lookout for Ralph. As it happens, I was sitting in the same room with the guy when I got the text, so I called it in. It seems Ralph wasn’t being entirely honest when he says he hadn’t had any contact with his brother for years. Someone reported seeing them together not long ago, and having a mighty loud argument to boot.”
When I arrived home, I found Connor at the kitchen island with his laptop open and a stack of work papers and a bottle of beer in front of him. He looked up with a smile when he heard me come in. “How was the meeting?”
I dropped onto the stool opposite him. “Anything but dull. Jo Harper broke down and told everyone that her grandfather had appeared in front of her when she was a teenager and ordered her to never step foot in his house again or he’d haunt her forever.”
“Wow! I can’t even get past the idea that Jo came to your meeting. She never leaves the house.”
“She read the book, and the discussion struck something very powerful in her. Once she started to talk, it was as though she couldn’t stop. Connor, I have to ask you something. Everyone heard her, and you can be sure the story is spreading far and wide as we speak. Did you know your dad and Jo were dating in high school?”
“What?”
“Yup. According to Ralph, they were, and according to what Jo told us tonight, your dad was in the house that night and that’s what threw the ghost of Ezekiel into a rage.”
Connor closed his laptop. “I had no idea. My parents married not long after they graduated high school. Natural enough they’d have dated other kids before then. Jo’s the right age to have been a classmate of Dad’s.”
“Jo hasn’t, shall we say, entirely forgiven him.”
“What does that mean? It happened so long ago. A lifetime ago. More than my lifetime ago. More than yours.”
“The events of that night in 1978 were the defining incidents of Jo Harper’s entire life. She never moved on from it.”
“That is so incredibly sad.”
“It is. She’s not happy that we bought this house. I should say that you bought this house. She likes me okay. But …” I shifted in my seat. I felt awkward and foolish simply saying the words. “She warned me off marrying you. She told me the McNeil family has bad blood.”
“Okay”—Connor stood up—“I’m getting another beer. Would you like a glass of wine?”
“After the night I’ve had, yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier, Lucy?”
“I should have, but to be honest, I didn’t know how to take it. At first I thought she might be thinking of someone else, or that there was some ancient Harper McNeil family feud no one remembers but Jo. When I met Ralph at his breakfast place the other morning, he told me your dad had been Jo’s mysterious boyfriend. I didn’t mention it to you because it’s Fred’s business, and if he hasn’t told you …”
“You’d be right not to spread rumors, except that we seem to be caught up in all this ancient drama, whether we want to know about it or not.”
“Ralph and Jo owned the house jointly following the death of their mother, but we dealt strictly with Ralph. It’s likely he told Jo where to sign and she did so without reading the documents over, so she didn’t know the names of the buyers. One more thing: she says Jimmy died in this house because we … I mean you … live here now.” Involuntarily, I glanced down at the floor. I’d bought a colorful hand-woven rug to throw over the spot where we’d found Jimmy.
Connor put a glass of white wine in front of me. “Jimmy Harper died in this house because he broke in looking for something and one of his partners in crime wanted whatever it was for himself. That’s if something was here, waiting to be found, which I doubt. And that’s the end of that.” He began gathering his papers. “I’ve done enough work for tonight. I want to catch the local news before turning in.”
“About the local news …”
“Don’t tell me there’s more?”
“Sadly, yes. Sam Watson has taken Ralph in for questioning in the matter of the murder of his brother.” I went on to tell Connor what little I’d heard from Butch.
Connor dropped onto his stool with a groan. “For once, I dared to hope this had nothing to do with us or with anyone we know.”
“It still might turn out that way. If Ralph did see Jimmy recently and they did argue, he might have perfectly innocent reasons for not telling the police. But …”
“But?”
“I have to talk to Sam about what happened at book club tonight. It’s possible the origins of this murder go back a lot of years.”
Sam Watson would be occupied questioning Ralph tonight, and I decided my information could wait until the morning.
I slept well, undisturbed by creaking floorboards or other strange noises in the night. I was also undisturbed by a big cat until minutes before the alarm went off. Charles had decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and when Connor was back in the bed, he spent his nights elsewhere.
While Connor used the shower, I put the coffee on before calling Detective Watson. Because of past involvement in other cases, I have his personal cell phone number in my contact list.
He’d been working late last night and I hoped I wasn’t bothering him too early, but when he answered, I could hear the low buzz of a busy office in the background. “Good morning, Lucy.”
“Detective. I’m calling about the Harper case. CeeCee left our book club meeting early last night, so you might not have heard what happened, and I thought you should know.”
“Something happened at your book club that’s pertinent to the case?”
“It might be. Jo and Ralph Harper came to the meeting.”
“I am aware of that, Lucy. I was there, remember. I was surprised to see Jo, though. I’d been told she never leaves the property except for solitary nightly walks. Is that not true?”
“She made an exception last night because of the book we’d chosen. What I have to tell you is going to sound like common gossip, which I suppose it is, but it might be important.”
“I’ve just gotten in. Haven’t even had a cup of coffee yet. Josie’s, fifteen minutes?”
“I’ll be there.” I hung up the phone and dashed into the bedroom. The shower was free, so I leapt in for all of ten seconds. I dragged a brush through my hair, decided that it had looked worse (although not often), grabbed the nearest clean dress out of the closet, and stuffed my feet into the first pair of shoes I saw. “Gotta run,” I said to a startled Connor as he emerged from the pantry with a container of cereal. I grabbed the doorknob, then swung around, ran back, and gave him a quick kiss. “I’ll be by to get you later,” I called to Charles as I threw open the door.
If Sam Watson said fifteen minutes, he meant fifteen minutes. If I showed up at the sixteen-minute mark, he might well have left without me.
It was early enough that traffic heading into town was light, and I made it to Josie’s Cozy Bakery in time to pull up next to Sam as he was getting out of his car.
“Lovely day,” I said as we walked into the bakery together.
“CeeCee’s daring to hope spring has arrived at last, but I always say don’t get your hopes up too soon.”
The line waiting to be served was long, but it moved quickly. Espresso machines hissed and emitted fragrant steam, the scent of warm baking and spices drifted out of the back, the customers chatted to each other or on their phones, and the baristas cheerfully called out orders.
“Morning, Lucy, Detective,” Alison said when it was our turn. “What can I get you?”
I knew by now that Watson wouldn’t let me pay for as much as a cup of coffee for him, so I gave Alison my order. “A low-fat latte and a blueberry muffin, please.”
“Coming up. Josie’s in the back. Do you want me to let her know you’re here?”
“No thanks; she’ll be busy at this time of the morning. I’ll stick my head into the kitchen before I leave.”
Most of the customers were grabbing their orders to take to the office, so plenty of seats were free. While my drink was being made, I snagged us a table in a quiet corner, beneath a photograph of the Bodie Island Lighthouse taken on a snowy night. The picture had been taken by a local photographer and was for sale, as was all the art Josie had hung on her walls. Our table had been made out of a reclaimed wooden ship’s barrel, like much of the furniture in the otherwise ultramodern coffeehouse.
Watson joined me, holding his regular extra-large black coffee, and he swung his right leg over the stool. “What’s up?”
“You’re a Banker,” I said, referring to the nickname for longtime Outer Banks people. Sam had been raised in Nags Head, but he’d spent most of his career with the NYPD, returning to his hometown a few years ago to spend the last few years until his retirement. “Did you know anything about the Froomer and Harper family story before the recent events?”
“Not that I recall,” he said.
I filled him in on what was general knowledge about Jo Harper and why she hadn’t set foot in her family home in more than forty years. “She firmly believes, and has for all these years, that the ghost of her grandfather not only threatened her the night in question but continued to do so for a long time after.”
“Latte and muffin for you, Lucy?” Blair, one of the café assistants, said. I leaned back, and he put my order in front of me. “And a breakfast sandwich with all the works. Is that for you, Detective?”
“Thanks.” When Blair had gone, Watson took a sip of his coffee and said, “What does that mean, he ‘continued to do so’?”
“She claims he could reach into her mind and speak to her that way, even when she wasn’t in the house.”
One eyebrow rose. “Isn’t that taking things a bit far?”
“That’s what she says, and I believe she believes it. From what I gather, she’d been sheltered as a child and teen. She was seventeen when the incident happened, and her parents should have made some attempt to get her psychological help, but it appears they didn’t. Relatives took her in, and then she moved in with Ralph, and that seems to have been good enough for the parents. As for the ghostly grandfather—I suspect he hadn’t been a nice person when he was alive. Not toward Jo, anyway. Ralph admitted that old Ezekiel had no time for him, but Ralph was older and a boy. He could get away, and he did so as soon as he was able.”
“Go on.”
“Essentially, that one incident ruined Jo’s life. Last night I wanted to tell her about the secret entrance, because we think that’s how whoever pretended to be the ghost—Ralph says it was likely Jimmy—got into the house without being seen. But Ralph told me not to bother. That Jo wouldn’t believe it.”
“I fail to see where you’re going with this, Lucy.”
“I don’t like where I’m going. But I have to wonder if Ralph was wrong. Is it possible Jo finally realized Jimmy had been the one pretending to be their grandfather that night? Maybe she saw him going into our house via the secret entrance. Maybe he told her about it, thinking it was some big joke. Did she finally understand what had happened and finally get her revenge?”
“Anything’s possible. But she hasn’t been placed anywhere near the scene.”
“Okay. The same’s true for Ralph, isn’t it? Ralph’s always suspected it was Jimmy who scared Jo, but he didn’t know for sure. He seemed to be surprised to see the secret entrance when we showed it to him, but was he really? Had Jimmy told him about it when he decided for whatever reason he needed to get into our house? Ralph’s life has also been affected by the events of that night long ago. His sister was never able to live on her own, to have a life, a career, a family. He’s cared for her all this time.”
“More like she’s looked after him,” Watson said. “Okay, Lucy. As always, I appreciate your attention to detail, and I know you’ve got a good mind for these things.”
I took a sip of my latte and allowed myself a moment to bask in the praise.
“I’ve been looking into the relationship between the Harper siblings. No one has ever heard Ralph express a word of resentment toward his sister. It’s more that he likes having a wife without the bother of being married. By “wife,” I mean in the housekeeper and cook sense. Seeing as to how Ralph never married because, as he always says—”
“The sea is a hard mistress.”
Watson chuckled. “I hauled Ralph down to the station last night because we’d had a credible report of Jimmy being seen on their street in the nights before he died. Not only on their street but watching their house. That wasn’t news, we learned that early on, but one of their neighbors had been away and didn’t get back until yesterday, meaning we hadn’t talked to him in the initial canvass of the street.”
“This person said they’d been arguing?”
“Yes. He didn’t hear what was said, but the voices were loud enough and the gestures on the part of both men so aggressive he told them he’d call the police if they kept it up. That was early Friday evening.”
“Not long before Jimmy died. Is this neighbor positive it was Ralph and Jimmy he saw?”
“Ralph for sure, who he knows. He described the other man as a carbon copy of Ralph who looked like he’d been left out in the rain even more than Ralph has.”
“Have you arrested Ralph?”
“No. When I told him what his neighbor had to say, he admitted to seeing Jimmy last Wednesday evening hanging around outside watching his house. He says he came out but Jimmy had gone. He saw Jimmy again on Friday, and this time he confronted his brother, and the two men started arguing. When the neighbor warned them off, Ralph says Jimmy left and he went inside.”
“Wednesday. Connor was away and I thought I heard something moving around upstairs. And then Friday was the night Jimmy died. Has Jo confirmed this?”
“I sent Officer Rankin to her house last night to speak to her again. Rankin asked no leading questions, just asked Jo what she and Ralph had been doing Friday evening before I sent an officer around to their house. She repeated what she told us earlier: she was watching TV, and she can’t say if her brother was at home or not. They ate dinner together around five, as they usually do, and then went their separate ways. They have different tastes in TV so often spend their evenings in their own spaces. They each have their own living area.”
“If Jo can’t provide an alibi for Ralph, then …”
Watson finished the sentence. “Ralph can’t provide an alibi for Jo.”
“Did Rankin ask Jo if she’d seen Jimmy hanging around?”
Watson nodded. “As before, she maintains she hasn’t seen or spoken to or communicated in any way with that brother for many years.” He let out a long breath. “Jo Harper, as you know, doesn’t get out much.”
“To put it mildly.”
“Right. Which means she has little contact with people. I gather the Harpers never entertain, and the neighbors maintain that the only time they’ve ever seen vehicles in front of their house is if it’s a plumber’s van or the like. One of the local children has been hired to help Jo in the garden, but the parents say that was arranged over the phone and they themselves have never been inside the Harper house.”
“Phoebe Peterson,” I said. “I know her from the library.”
“Jo Harper isn’t playing at being a recluse. She is one, no doubt about it. During the canvass, everyone my officers spoke to said they’d never seen her set foot off her property in daylight. She sometimes goes for walks after dark, but they’ve learned not to do anything more than give her a polite nod good evening and continue on their way.”
“You mean she’s aggressive to them?”
“Nothing like that. She makes it obvious she doesn’t want to engage in conversation, so people keep their distance. They’ve never seen her so much as coming out of the house to get into Ralph’s truck. She spends a lot of time in her yard and will exchange a wave with anyone who waves at her, but that’s about it. For that reason, I scarcely considered her to be a suspect. In light of what you told me and the sighting of Jimmy outside their house, she’s now, as we say, a person of interest.”
I thought of Jo’s delight in her garden and her chickens. I thought of the anguish in her eyes when she remembered what had happened to her when she was seventeen. “I hate to think it.”
“Ralph’s in and out of the house all the time. He has his boat and his charter fishing trips to take. He does all the shopping and is known in some bars and restaurants around town. Meaning Jo’s alone much of the time. Did Jimmy pay a call on her when Ralph was out? She says not. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, not if Ralph thought Jimmy was bothering her.”
“Did Ralph tell you why he initially lied to you about not seeing his brother?”
“People lie to us for all sorts of reasons, Lucy, and sometimes for no reason at all. Sometimes they lie because they think they know better than I do what’s relevant and what’s not. He claimed he didn’t follow Jimmy that evening and he didn’t kill him, so he didn’t want to muddy the waters of the investigation.” Watson shrugged. “Instead, as usually happens, all he accomplished was to muddy them more. Jo Harper’s a recluse and Ralph is not, but he’s still an odd one.”
I nibbled on my muffin. Watson chewed his sandwich and stared over my shoulder.
“You didn’t arrest Ralph,” I said.
“No. It doesn’t look good that he openly lied to me when I asked him when he last saw his brother, but as proof of guilt, it’s not much. He said problems in his family aren’t the business of anyone else, and that includes the Nags Head Police. Ralph’s fingerprints were found in your house, but as he’s the previous owner and he was regularly in the house to do minor maintenance, that means little. The lab says, from what they can tell, the prints weren’t laid down recently.”
“What did he and Jimmy argue about? Did he say?”
“According to Ralph, Jimmy wanted a share of the money from the sale of the house. He was cut out of their mother’s will when he went to prison for the first time because she considered it a disgrace to the family.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Black sheep and all that.”
“Jimmy wanted a full half of what they got for the house.”
“Half, not third?”
“Half, because Jo and Ralph live together, so they count as one. According to Jimmy.”
“I hate to say it,” I admitted, “but that sounds like another reason for Ralph to want to get rid of his errant brother. Jo too.”
“Jo doesn’t have a driver’s license and never has. Doesn’t mean she can’t drive, of course; Ralph might have taught her. It’s what, six or seven miles from the Harper house to yours? That would take about two hours to walk one way, four hours return. Not an excessive amount for a sixty-year-old woman who’s known to go for long, solitary walks at night.”
“Meaning you think it possible Jo’s been to our house?”
“Possible is the word. We also canvassed your neighbors and asked if they’d seen anyone watching your house at night. Nothing, but that doesn’t always mean much. People close their curtains, watch TV, read a good book. They aren’t keeping an eye on the neighbors.”
“And that,” I said, “is usually a good thing.”
Watson crumpled his sandwich wrappings. “Let’s hope the Raleigh police come up with something. I’m not forgetting Jimmy Harper had a lot of shady contacts and a pretty long rap sheet. In the meantime, I’m going to have a nose around about what actually happened all those years ago. Did anyone else know about that secret entrance to the house?”
I bit my tongue and didn’t say the words: Fred McNeil.