Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet

“See ya round, handsome.”

He winked and went back to work with a grin sparkling in his eyes. I felt sorry for the girl.

* * *

On the way back, I cut through the parking lot and made a beeline for Misery, my cherry red Jeep Wrangler. In the semi-open space of downtown Albuquerque, I felt naked. I’d been na**d in public once, so while this definitely synthesized that level of discomfort, this was different. More raw. More acute. More feral.

“He misses you, you know.”

I spun around to see a statuesque African American woman walking past me toward the back of Dad’s bar. I’d seen her a few times in the last few weeks and figured she was the new bartender Dad had been planning to hire when I refused the job. He’d wanted me to give up my PI business and work for him. Silly rabbit. She stopped and offered me a friendly, I-come-in-peace smile. To say that she was stunning would have been an understatement. She was like a shimmering skyscraper, jutting proudly into the sky and daring the world to try to knock her down.

“Your father,” she said, elaborating. Her exotic eyes held me captive for a full minute before she turned back to the bar. “You’re all he talks about.”

Clearly she knew about our falling out, but I had no use for anything she’d just told me. Even if it were true, my father did not deserve my forgiveness at that moment. Nor my attention.

I climbed into Misery and sank into her faux leather seats. She fit like a big red glove and felt just as warm. Well, not literally. The weather was chilly and her plastic windows were frosted over. I turned the key to let her warm up. She roared to life, then settled into a purr. It’d been a while since the two of us had had any alone time together. We’d have to talk later, but for now, we had places to be and suspects to see.

Harper had given me her address, and I wanted to check out her dwelling before diving in too deep. If the person stalking her had left another threat, I wanted to see it for myself. One could judge a lot about a person by how they left threatening evidence. Was the culprit violent or just menacing? Would he really harm her or did he just want to get that rise out of her? That control?

She lived in the gated Tanoan Estates, and I didn’t know if entrance would require Harper’s express permission or not. I dragged out my PI license just in case. It might help. It might not.

After pulling up to the gate, I offered the uniformed security guard a placating smile.

He stared, unimpressed.

“Hi,” I said.

He offered a brisk nod. Still unimpressed. I’d have to up my game.

“My name is Charley Davidson. I’m investigating a situation with one of your residents. Have you had any break-ins recently? Any alarms going off?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Alarms go off every now and then, mostly by the residents themselves. And we have the occasional break-in, but they’re pretty rare here. Can I ask who hired you?”

“Harper Lowell. She lives on—”

“I know where she lives.”

When I raised my brows, he tipped his hat back to scratch his head.

“Look, we’ve gotten a couple of calls from her, but we’ve never found any evidence of foul play on site. No signs of a break-in. No footprints or cars parked near her house. And she never could describe the intruder. If there was an intruder.”

“So, you think she was lying?”

“No,” he said with a noncommittal shrug. And now it was his turn to lie. “Not so much lying as … mistaken.”

“You mean paranoid.”

He thought a moment. “Overzealous.”

“Ah. Okay. Well, you don’t mind if I check it out, do you? Ms. Lowell gave me the key and the security code.”

“Knock yourself out. I’ll just need to record your license-plate number.”

“Do you record the information of every nonresident who comes through?”

“Sure do.”

I offered him my best smile. “Is there any way I can get a copy of the most recent pages?”

He shook his head. “Not without a warrant.”

Darn. I made a mental note to set Cookie on that. She had a knack for getting protected documents without a warrant. I was pretty sure that was her superpower.

After he took down my information, I drove through the estates until I came to Harper’s house. Tanoan was one of the nicer parts of Albuquerque. At least Harper’s parents did that much for her.

And Harper was doing everything right: Gated community with uniformed security guards. Active security system. Triple locks on all the doors. I went from room to room, checking for any signs of foul play before I hit the kitchen. It’d been something like an hour since I last had a cup of coffee. Surely she wouldn’t mind.

To my utter delight, she had one of those machines that used those individual cups and made one serving of coffee at a time. I may have ordered one of those. I’d have to go through the boxes when I got home.

I searched her cabinets, wondering where I’d be if I were a K-Cup before coming to the conclusion that I’d be in heaven, that’s where. Filled to the brim with grinds of shimmering black gold. I opened the last cabinet door and jumped back in surprise. A stuffed white rabbit sat against a can of beets. Normally white rabbits, especially stuffed ones, didn’t bother me, but there was something creepy about having one in a kitchen cabinet.

Staring.

Judging.

I started to reach up and take it down, then stopped myself. This was evidence. True, it wasn’t particularly incriminating or overtly threatening, but it was evidence nonetheless.