“Next time? Listen to yourself. I don’t want her touching you.”
“It’s not your decision, and I’m no quitter. Do you know me so little you’d think I’d just, yes, Harper, and trot along like a nice little puppy?”
“I’m not trying to run your life, goddamn it, Hayley. I’m just trying to protect you.”
Of course, he was. And he looked so aggrieved, so frustrated, she had to sympathize. A little. “You can’t. Not this way. And the only thing that you’re going to accomplish by making plans around me that don’t include talking to me first is piss me off.”
“There’s a news flash. Just give me a week then. Just do this for a week and let me try to—”
“Harper, they took her child away. They drove her mad. Maybe she was heading there anyway, but they sure as hell gave her the last push over the edge. I’ve been part of this for over a year now. I can’t walk away from it.”
She lifted her hand, stroked the bracelet she continued to wear. “She showed me this. Somehow. I’m wearing what was hers. You gave it to me. It means something. I have to find out what that is. And I, very much, need to stay here with you.” She softened enough to touch his cheek. “You had to know I’d stay. What did your mother say when you said you were going to tell me to go to Stella’s?”
He shrugged, walked back to the terrace rail.
“Figured that. And Stella, I imagine said the same.”
“Logan agreed with me.”
“I bet he did.” She moved to him now, wrapped her arms around him, rested her cheek on his back.
He had a good, strong back. Working man, prince of the castle. What a fascinating combination of both he was. “I appreciate the thought, if not the method. That help any?”
“Not so much.”
“How about it’s nice that you care enough about me to try to boss me around?”
“It’s not bossing you around to—” He broke off with a curse and a sigh when he turned to see her grinning at him. “You’re not going to budge.”
“Not an inch. I think some of the Ashby blood, even as diluted as it is in me, must have stubborn corpuscles. And I want to be a part of finding the answers to all this, Harper. It’s important to me, maybe more important now that I’ve shared a kind of consciousness with her. Boy, that sounds pretty woo-woo, but I don’t know how else to say it.”
“How about she invades you?”
Her face sobered. “All right, that’s fair. You’re still mad, and that’s fair, too. I guess I don’t mind knowing you’re worried enough about me to be mad.”
“If you’re going to be reasonable about this, it’s just going to piss me off more.” He laid his hands on her shoulders, rubbed. “I do care about you, Hayley, and I am worried.”
“I know. Just remember I care about me, too, and worry enough to be as careful as I can be.”
“I’m going to stay with you tonight. I’m not budging about that.”
“Good thing that’s just where I want you. You know . . .” She slid her hands up his chest, linked them around his neck. “If we start fooling around, she might do something. So I think we ought to test that.” She rose on her toes, played her lips over his. “Like an experiment.”
“In my line of work I live for experiments.”
“Come on inside.” She stepped back, caught both his hands in hers. “We’ll set up the lab.”
LATER, WHEN THEY lay turned toward each other in the dark, she brushed at his hair. “She didn’t seem to be interested this time.”
“You can’t predict a ghost who should be haunting an asylum.”
“Guess not.” She snuggled closer. “You’re a kind of scientist, right?”
“Kind of.”
“When scientists are experimenting, they usually have to try more than once, maybe with some slight varieties, over a course of time. I’ve heard.”
“Absolutely.”
“So.” She closed her eyes, all but purring at the stroke of his hand. “We’ll just have to try this again, at some opportunity. Don’t you think?”
“I do. And I think I hear opportunity knocking right now.”
She opened her eyes, laughed into his. “They don’t call that opportunity where I come from.”twelve
DAVID TURNED THE map upside down, and ran a fingertip down a line of road. “We’re like detectives. Like Batman and Robin.”
“They weren’t detectives,” Harper corrected. “They were crime fighters.”
“Picky, picky. All right, like Nick and Nora Charles.”
“Just tell me where I turn, Nora.”
“Should be a right in about two miles.” David let the map lay on his lap and shifted to enjoy the scenery. “Now that we’re so hot on the trail of the mysterious jewels, just what are we going to do if and when we find out where the bracelet originally came from?”
“Knowledge is power.” Harper shrugged. “Something like that. And I’ve had enough of sitting around waiting for something to happen. The jeweler said it came from the Hopkins estate.”
“Cream cheese.”
“What? You’re hungry?”
“Cream cheese,” David repeated. “You spread it on smooth and thick. ‘My girlfriend really loved the bracelet. She’s got a birthday coming up soon, and since it was such a hit with her, I wondered if you had any matching pieces. Something from the same estate? That’s the Kent estate, isn’t it?’ Guy practically fell over himself to give you the information, even if he did try to sell you a couple of gaudy rings. Ethel Hopkins did not have flawless taste. You should’ve sprung for the earrings, though. Hayley would love them.”
“I just bought her a bracelet. Earrings are overkill at this point.”
“Your right’s coming up. Earrings are never overkill,” he added when Harper made the turn. “About a half mile down this road. Should be on the left.”
He pulled into a double drive beside a late-model Town Car, then sat tapping his fingers on the steering wheel as he studied the lay of the land.
The house was large and well-kept in an old, well-to-do neighborhood. It was a two-story English Tudor with a good selection of foundation plants, an old oak, and a nicely shaped dogwood in the front. The lawn was trimmed and lushly green, which meant lawn service or automatic sprinklers.
“Okay, what have we got here?” he queried. “Established, upper middle class.”
“Ethel’s only surviving daughter, Mae Hopkins Ives Fitzpatrick,” David read from the notes he’d taken from the courthouse records. “She’s seventy-six. Twice married, twice widowed. And you can thank me for digging that up so quickly due to my brilliant observation of Mitch’s methods.”