AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“There’s something going on up here but it ain’t supernatural. I’m hoping to figure it all out but…if things go like I think they will, there will be repercussions. I may need a cleaning crew.”
“Noted,” Archer said. “Give me a heads up beforehand so I can review and make sure the punishment suits the crime.”
“Will do.” He hung up. It was still a tangled mess but if the secret passages did exist, it changed a lot of things. No one’s alibi would hold, not that anyone had one besides him and Fisher. It was a damn shame it wasn’t Fisher. But it also gave a window into how Astrid moved around the house without being seen. Only someone who knew about the passages could have killed her.
He also was certain Gina had lied to him. Along with Mrs. Carruthers. There were a lot of action items necessary to sort this out. First, though he had to figure out what to do with Harper. He stared at his door. No time like the present.
He slipped back into his room as quietly as possible, but it was wasted effort. She was already awake and sitting in one of the wingback chairs.
“Did you go searching without me?” she demanded.
“No. I watched you sleep and then made a call.”
“Oh,” she said but he wasn’t sure she believed him.
He sat down in a second wingback chair. “We need to figure out a couple of things.”
“Like?” she asked.
“Who left you the candle and the note?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“I do.” He met her gaze. “Think about it for a minute.”
Frowning, she said, “I’ve thought about it a lot and I don’t see…” her voice faded. She cocked her head. “But I just can’t believe he would do that.”
“Why? You said yourself it wasn’t particularly threatening. Just something to scare you. And if you were scared, who did he expect you to call?”
“Him.” Her eyes flashed. “That fucker!” She pulled out her phone, but Flynn took it from her. “Hey!”
“We have no proof that Jason broke in.”
“But he was the only person I mentioned the paint to. The only one who would know I was poking around in the investigation. And,” she held up a finger, “he was the only one with access to my door to unlock it. He commented about the chairs on my deck while I was pouring him tea. He could’ve easily unlocked it then.”
Flynn had come to that conclusion a while ago. “The thing is, I think he did it to scare you into calling him.” That rankled. Flynn wanted to kill him for scaring Harper. “It was innocuous in the grand scheme of things. He wanted you to stay the hell out of his investigation and call him so he could protect you.” If it were up to Flynn, Jason Merritt would pay a hefty price for that but retribution on the fucker wasn’t his call, and any action he took could make things more difficult.
“You don’t think he was the one that tried to push me down the stairs, do you?”
Flynn shook his head. “Not likely. I think whoever was in the passageway by the library overheard us talking and wanted you to stop looking into things so they tried to push you down the stairs. I don’t think it would’ve killed you. Just put you out of commission a bit.”
“But it killed Calli.”
He shook his head again. “Calli was dead before she went down the stairs. I’m pretty sure someone beat her to death and then threw her body down the stairs to make it look like she fell.”
“Why do that?”
“Calli made some serious enemies.”
Harper’s eyes narrowed. “You know something.”
He didn’t deny it.
“You have to tell me.”
This was the moment that he knew was coming but didn’t want to face. The moment where he had to put the Society first over Harper. The moment when she suddenly understood how this was going to go.
“I can’t tell you. There are things I can’t share. It goes with the job.”
