The woman, her lower lip trembling, extended a finger and pointed toward what Jared had missed on his initial assessment. “She’s dead.”
“Isn’t that part of the game?” Zander asked, confused.
Rather than answer, Harper moved closer to the body on the ground, her mouth dropping open when she got a better look. “I don’t think this is part of the game.” She was breathless. “In fact, I think this is something else entirely.”
Jared moved closer to her, staring hard. “Is that ... ?”
“Leslie,” Harper confirmed. “I’m pretty sure she’s really dead.”
7
Seven
Jared checked Leslie himself — there was always a chance she was part of the show after all — but it was obvious she was dead. He ordered the others who had gathered around the body to stand back and then called 911. He was calm and collected as he explained the situation and then agreed to take control of the scene until responding officers were on-site.
Harper knelt close to the body but didn’t get too close. Life with Jared had taught her a thing or two about crime scenes. This one seemed odd to her.
“Was she stabbed?” Shawn asked, hunkering down next to Harper. He was paler than normal and seemed shocked by the turn of events. “Is that why there’s so much blood up here?” He gestured toward his own body for emphasis, highlighting the spot between his neck and shoulder.
“I’m not sure.” Harper glanced toward Jared, who studied the body with a cool eye from a few feet away. He seemed lost in thought. “I’ve never seen a wound exactly like this one.”
“How can you even say what sort of wound it is?” Zander challenged. “There’s too much blood.”
“There’s a lot of blood,” Harper agreed, rolling back on her haunches so she could study the tree line. Technically she wasn’t looking for anything specific, maybe a flash of color or errant footprint, but it was too dark to make much out.
“Anything?” Zander asked when she’d finished studying the area. “Is her ghost here?”
Shawn brightened considerably. “Oh, right. You can see ghosts. What does she say?”
Harper didn’t know if she should laugh or cry. Murder always made her twitchy. In this particular instance, though, there were too many questions to form an opinion. “Her ghost isn’t here.”
“Oh, no.” Shawn made a face. “That sucks. It would be easier if she could just tell us what happened.”
“It doesn’t always work like that.” Harper was rueful. “A lot of the time ghosts don’t spring up for hours, or even days in some instances. Very often they’re confused as to what happened to them. Death is often jarring.”
“You’ve worked with ghosts to solve cases before, though,” Shawn pointed out. “How does it work?”
Zander rolled his eyes. “Oh, now you’re interested in what we do for a living.”
Shawn scowled at him. “I’ve always been interested. Don’t be a pain. It’s just ... I never really thought about it. I guess I had a specific picture in my head when you guys went out to solve a murder. I didn’t really think about how the pieces fit together.”
Harper shot him a reassuring look. “It’s okay. You couldn’t know. I guarantee whenever Zander relates stories about what we do that he’s the star.”
“Pfft.” Zander folded his arms over his chest and lifted his chin. “I am the star of our little tag team and you know it.”
Harper ignored her friend and kept her focus on Shawn. “Some ghosts do remember what happened to them right from the start. Not everybody comes back as a ghost, though. I’ve found that those who had a particularly traumatic death are more likely to return, but that’s not a hard and fast rule.
“Some people just let go,” she continued. “Some people don’t want to hold on to the cruelty surrounding their death. Still others cling to the life they left behind because they’re not ready to say goodbye to loved ones, or they simply don’t realize they’ve died.”
“Wow.” Shawn was perplexed. “That’s really sad. What happens to the ghosts then?”
Harper held out her hands. “Sometimes they watch over their loved ones, serve as a guardian angel of sorts. Other times they turn themselves into pesky poltergeists and wreak havoc on those they’ve left behind.
“Like, there was this one time when a guy we knew died, Harold Dobkins.” She looked to Zander with a half-smile. “He was known as the town jerk.”
“He was a total cranky-pants,” Zander agreed. “When you went to his house on Halloween, he would steal candy from your bag rather than hand any out.”
Shawn was amused despite the situation. “He sounds ... lovely.”
“He was mean,” Harper corrected. “He yelled at his wife all the time, said horrible things to her, and was generally just a miserable cuss. Nobody missed him when he was dead.”
“And he stayed behind?”
Harper nodded. “He did, just to torture his wife. He was very upset, when less than a year after his death, his wife met another man and moved him into the house they used to share. If it had been anyone else, it would’ve turned into a scandal. Since Harold was such a pill, though, nobody begrudged his wife a little happiness ... except Harold.”
Shawn was enthralled with the story. “What did he do?”
“At first he started by knocking things off shelves,” Harper explained. “Technically I think he discovered he could move things through a fluke of nature. He was happy when he figured it out, though, and broke things left and right.
“His wife couldn’t figure out what was happening, although she was fearful and called us. It didn’t take more than a few minutes to track Harold down in the attic,” she continued. “When I asked him what his deal was, he expressed the opinion that his wife was his property and
