Hope's Peak (Harper and Lane #1)(37)

“I was right,” Ida says. “Weren’t I?”

“Yes.”

She nods, her voice grave. “Like I said.”

“Have you ever been to the scene of your mother’s murder?”

“No.”

“I thought it might stir something up, something new you might’ve forgotten from . . . well, you know . . .”

“Don’t need no convincing. I’ll do it,” Ida says. “But don’t be expecting some kind of revelation, sugar. In my experience, there’s only what there is, and what there ain’t.”



Stu is quiet on the drive to Wisher’s Pond.

“It’s a peaceful spot,” Ida says, walking ahead of them. “The old-timers would come up here, snag catfish, and throw ’em back, just for sport. I don’t think there’s any catfish in there now, though. Probably eaten. Some folk got no respect for anything.”

Harper looks at Stu. “You okay?” she whispers.

He nods. That’s it. Ida is still talking. It doesn’t sound like the spiel of a local tour guide, but the twittering of someone who is incredibly nervous, speaking just for the sake of doing so. They walk through the tall grass toward a cluster of trees in the middle of an abandoned field. On the drive over, Ida told them that no one had worked that land for a hundred years. “It’s never dried up,” she tells them. “Far as I’m aware. Always been here.”

The trees are spaced out around the pond’s edge, but far enough back from the bank to allow short, soft grass to grow there. Ida hesitates at the edge of the trees.

“You okay?” Stu asks Ida. It’s the most he’s spoken since leaving her house.

“Just cold.”

Harper looks at Stu, and he shrugs to say he doesn’t know what she’s talking about either. It’s extremely hot and sticky out. Stu removed his suit jacket and stripped off his tie back at the car. His shirt is undone a few buttons, revealing the vest beneath and the gathering of dark hairs on his chest. His sleeves are rolled up, as are Harper’s.

“You feel cold?” Harper asks Ida.

She shakes her head. “No. I feel the cold,” she says, walking slowly through the trees.

Ida picks her way around the old trunks, the strong smell of warm bark and the green pond water, the whisper of grass out in the field, pushed by a breath of hot air. She pauses, eyes closed, and it takes every inch of her resolve to continue. Coming up on the place she has revisited in her dreams since she was a little girl. Ida hunkers down on the ground, feeling the soil with her open hands, finding the spot where her mother died. Digging her fingers in, grabbing at the soil, clenching it, feeling it crushed in her hard grip, the grains, the coolness.

Here she lay. Here she died.

“Ida, is this the place?”

She nods.

“Damn . . . ,” Stu says, looking around. “I remember the photos in the file now.”

Harper squats down near Ida. “What’re you feeling?”

“Just . . . she was here. He was here. Nothing specific—it’s like turning a corner and seeing a building you used to look at as a kid,” Ida says, looking about. “My mamma used to pour glasses of lemonade. Full of ice. The glass was so cold it’d sweat and drip everywhere. I think of that every time I see a cold glass. This place is like that. It’s an echo. A memory.”

“Anything more specific coming through?” Harper asks her.

Ida shakes her head. “No,” she says, her face suddenly screwed up tight. Something sour in her mouth. “There’s only pain here.”

And fear.

Harper watches her get up. “Do you want to go home?”

“Yes,” she says, hugging herself. “And I don’t want to come back here ever again.”





9


The sun is far behind the buildings on the other side of town when Harper and Stu arrive at the station. The press is reduced to a few men and women by now.

She stops the engine, and talks to him for a short while, warning him to hold his tongue around Dudley until they know all the facts. Even then, she tells him, he should go directly to Captain Morelli.

Stu clenches his jaw, looks dead ahead, and she can see his rage is at a simmer. Before walking inside, she stops him again.

“Promise me you won’t go off.”

Stu lets loose a big sigh. “Yeah.”

“Stu?”

“Look, I said yes. Trust me. It’ll be hard not to knock the little prick out, but I’ll hold it back, okay?”

“Okay,” Harper says, opening the station door and letting him go first. “You know you’re hot when you’re mad, though, right?”

He shrugs, playing along. “Sure do.”

It must be fate, Harper thinks as Dudley approaches. Stu rubs his temple.

“Jane, I’ll go do that thing,” Stu says, heading straight for the basement.

“Okay. Check in with you later.”

Dudley frowns, watching him go, but Stu’s odd behavior is forgotten in Dudley’s eager rush to impart his information.

He walks with Harper to her desk, where she sets down her bag and keys. “I interviewed Gertie Wilson’s parents. They took it pretty hard. Said they listed her missing because it wasn’t like her not to come home. She’d never done it before.”