The Reverend didn’t look up from his Bible, but did startle her by asking, “What kind of case?”
That silenced the boys. Rachel stepped into the doorway, her fingers bunching up her apron, glancing at the Reverend in confusion. It was the first time he’d asked Harper about her job since she’d joined the force eight years ago. At her promotion ceremony last week, she’d invited her parents, had reserved seats for the Reverend and Rachel, ever hopeful. But nobody had come and the seats sat empty.
So now, Harper leaned forward, anxious to grasp the olive branch her father had offered. “A homicide. My first as lead detective.”
“They’re trusting you to solve a murder?” John scoffed. He was the closest to Harper in age but had always seemed to resent the fact that she’d been “chosen” by the Harpers when they adopted her, as if they were rivals competing for Rachel and the Reverend’s love. “The police must be hard up.”
“Shut up, John,” Jacob said. “Someone’s died. Show some respect for the dead.”
Not respect for Harper’s abilities to bring the dead justice, she noted.
“We should offer a prayer for them,” he continued.
“Who died?” the Reverend asked, closing his Bible and removing his reading glasses, slowly cleaning them with slow, rhythmic circles. It was the silent signal for service to begin and the women emerged from the kitchen bearing steaming platters of food.
Harper was surprised he was interested enough to follow up beyond his initial perfunctory enquiry. “A young woman,” she told him. “Just turned eighteen.”
“Really, Naomi,” Rachel chided her. “This is not appropriate conversation for the dinner table. What if the children heard you?”
The Reverend waved a hand, dismissing Harper and her victim as if his patience with polite small talk was spent. The women sat and everyone joined hands. “Let us pray,” he intoned.
The Reverend didn’t glance in Harper’s direction during the entire meal that followed. After receiving a text summons from Luka, she left before dessert, not even sure if anyone noticed her departure. But as she approached the car, her mother ran out with a cooler of packaged leftovers.
“It’s nice to see you and your father getting along so well,” Rachel said.
Harper cradled the small cooler. “Yeah, five whole unsolicited words. My heart is aglow.”
“Naomi Harper! Don’t you use that tone about your father.”
Harper hung her head. “No, ma’am. Sorry.” She jerked her chin up toward the house. “It’s just—I try so hard and I can’t get anywhere with him.”
“Your father has a lot on his mind, you know that. Not only the ministry but preparing your brothers to eventually lead—” A worried look dampened Rachel’s smile. “He’s doing his best.”
“So am I. And speaking of doing, I need to get to work.”
“Right. Your poor young dead girl. I’ll keep her in my prayers.”
“Actually, I’ve been called out to another case.”
“Really?” Rachel’s voice dropped to a dramatic whisper. “Two murders? In one day?”
“We get called to any suspicious deaths, so I’m not sure if it’s a murder,” she told Rachel as she loaded the leftovers into the car. At least she’d have dinner covered—not always a certainty while working fresh cases. “But you can only hope.”
Rachel gave a small laugh. “Don’t talk that way around your father,” she warned. But after Naomi got into the driver’s seat, Rachel leaned into the car and said in a conspiratorial tone, “But feel free to call later, fill me in.”
Harper glanced up at that, almost couldn’t speak for a moment. All these years she’d been praying for a chance to be welcomed back into her parents’ lives. “You sure, Mom?”
Rachel kissed her fingers and touched them to Harper’s forehead. “I’m sure. I want to know everything about your life, Naomi. I’m sorry it’s taken so long. Will you call me?”
“Yes. It might be late—”
“That’s fine. I don’t sleep much. But it would ease my mind, knowing that you’re safe, understanding more about what you face out there.” Rachel closed the car door and stepped back. She mimed a phone and mouthed the words, “call me.”
Naomi smiled and waved back, then put the car in gear and headed out. She couldn’t believe how well that had gone. A weight lifted from her chest as if she’d been holding her breath for years. Rachel was only the first step—regaining her place in the Reverend’s heart would take work.
Her phone rang. Luka. “We’re still waiting on the coroner. How far out are you?”
The address he’d given her was up the mountain, barely inside the city limits, which placed her at an advantage since her father’s home was only a few miles away. It was an exclusive neighborhood, large wooded lots with even larger mansions situated on them, a combination of historical summer homes built by the coal barons and steel magnates of the prior century and new construction by equally new tech millionaires. “I’ll be there in five. What have we got?”
“Not sure. Rich guy. First responders thought suicide.” But then he said the magic words that had her pressing down on the accelerator. “But at this stage, we can’t rule out murder.”
Five
As he waited for their reporting witness to calm down, waited for the dead man’s wife to be located, waited for a Mincey warrant to search the premises, waited for the coroner’s investigator to arrive, and waited for the fire department to complete their work, Luka kept checking his phone for a message from Nate. Juggling crime scene tasks he was used to. Anxiously waiting for news about family? This was a foreign experience for a thirty-seven-year-old lifelong workaholic bachelor who was suddenly a newly minted adopted father to his eight-year-old nephew and caretaker for his eighty-four-year-old grandfather.
There could be worse places to wait. His victim, forty-three-year-old Spencer Standish, lived in a centuries-old mansion. The grounds contained the main house, the guest house, a
