Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet - Darynda Jones Page 0,19

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