Karen Harper - Chasing Shadows

“That’s it. And because Jasmine happened to find her, and they had rather publicly disagreed on whether the mansion and estate should go in trust to the state, be sold or be kept in the family...”

“Jasmine’s their number one suspect, but they can’t prove it.”

“They’re working on it, though. And now you’ve got the case. I won’t say this again or try to push you on it, but I’m telling you, Jasmine’s not a murderer.”

“You’ve evidently known her for a long time and well. Maybe I should interview you first.”

“If I can help—be a character witness, whatever. But I knew Jasmine best years ago. My father’s ties to Francine, not Jasmine, go even further back. He and Francine were romantically involved before he married my mother.”

“You said earlier you aren’t emotionally tied to Jasmine now.”

He cleared his throat, glanced back out his side window, signaled and did a lane change. She saw the sign ahead to I-4 toward Orlando that would take them across the state to the other coast.

“The fairest thing to say is I’m involved with proving her innocence. I still care for her deeply. But not romantically—free as a bird.”

Claire recalled how Darcy had said he was a ladies’ man. He was avoiding her question again. She’d told him that was one way people avoided the truth, so was he testing her tenacity? She had to admit she didn’t really know him, except he seemed a sort of knight in shining armor to want to help Jasmine, evidently others, too, through his shadowy South Shores company. If she didn’t need another quick nap, she’d question him again on that, but there would be time enough. Riding in a car always made her nod off, so if she was the one driving, she prepped herself with stimulants—not only coffee, but her favorite, hand-made-in-Naples dark chocolates.

She skimmed the death certificate itself. Mode of death: cardiac arrest from cardiac arrhythmia. Cause of death, overdose of beta-blocker Propranolol. But under Manner of Death where the boxes to be checked were natural, homicide, suicide and accident was written, UNDER INVESTIGATION.

* * *

As they left the series of Disney World exits behind and passed the tall buildings of downtown Orlando, Nick stole quick glances to watch Claire sleep. He’d done a lot of fast reading last night on narcolepsy and cataplexy. A weird and dangerous disease, but she obviously coped well with it. And with being a single mom and starting her Clear Path consulting firm. He knew how hard it was to get something off the ground from when he fought like hell to resurrect his father’s tarnished law firm.

Claire Britten was innocent-looking, almost angelic, as she slept. Her trust in him moved him deeply. He prayed he would not betray it. She’d shared with him about her Achilles’ heel, so should he tell her about his? That he was hiding one of the real purposes of South Shores, something that was a risk for him. Hopefully, not for her.

One of the secrets his dad had hidden from most people was that he loved writing poetry. Didn’t fit with the image of hard-hitting attorney-at-law. The so-called suicide note left beside his hand holding the gun had one line which read, I will be safe on those South Shores forever more.

No way his dad had shot himself, however bad it looked, despite that poetic touch in the note! If it was the last thing Nick ever did, he’d prove it and nail who killed him. He knew who that was, or thought he did. Trouble was, Nick knew he, too, was being stalked. But by his dad’s killer or by someone else he had let down? He had enemies. Most criminal lawyers did.

Claire stirred so suddenly he wondered for a second if he’d said that out loud. He shot another fast glance at her. Waking, she looked dazed, upset, maybe surprised she was here with him in a rain-coated car. Was that look of dismay she quickly hid part of being between the worlds of sleep and wakefulness? He’d read that PWNs sometimes had terrifying waking nightmares.

“Still raining, I see,” she said, shifting her hips in her seat. She arched her back and stretched her good arm.

He shifted in his seat, too, and cleared his throat. “Letting up a little.”

“I warned you about my naps. That beef sandwich hit the spot. Lexi would have a fit if she knew we were that close to Disney and didn’t visit the Magic Kingdom.”

“Yeah, well, when you see Shadowlawn, that will be enough magic kingdom for now.”

For a few minutes, they talked easily about everything and nothing, though he knew they should be back on track about the interviews she would have. Still, she’d been touchy about choosing those herself. He should have known she was tenacious, because she suddenly asked him in the midst of talk about their alma maters: “So at the University of Miami—is that where you met Jasmine?”

So, no more skirting around that, he thought. Actually, he didn’t trust lawyers who had a personal stake in a case, and here he was, with exactly that.

“That’s where and when I dated her,” he explained. “We discovered our parents’ past connection by accident—that her mother and my father had once been in love but had broken up. She figured it out when her mother met me, and wasn’t too pleased Jasmine and I were a couple.”

“Nothing like a bolt-from-the-blue coincidence—though I’ve learned chance meets often aren’t. Did you two ever figure out why they didn’t end up together?”

“No, but as for Jasmine and me, her mother seemed like a tyrant back then, raising her alone, and the scholarship boy didn’t fit in until later when I’d made good—then too late because Jasmine was married. It was hard to forgive Francine about that for a while, but I didn’t want to marry an heiress and move to north Florida anyway. All the Montgomery women from way back ran the roost and Shadowlawn. I mean from way back. They seemed to devour their men after they mated, like a male gator tried to if it got too near its hatchlings and, hopefully, was run off by the female. By the way, I have a small pamphlet Francine put together on the history of Shadowlawn in that packet with the other information—interesting reading for later.”

“Great, because that’s one thing I couldn’t research yesterday. I found info on a place called Kingsley Plantation but not Shadowlawn. And I can sympathize with Francine being overly protective of her only child and a daughter.”

Curious, she paged through the pamphlet. It included a family tree. The Montgomerys were a matriarchal family with the men dying young of disease or in wars, including the Civil War. Right after the Civil War, one man had met his death suddenly and violently, but it didn’t say how.

“Wow,” she said. “My actor friend Liz is always looking for a plot for a play. Couldn’t do much better than this. What interesting facts if Shadowlawn would become a state site.”

“Which Jasmine doesn’t want. Keep that in mind.”

She stretched and put the book aside. “The rain is letting up a little, isn’t it? Look at that large lake off to the right. I’ll bet this view is great on a sunny day.”

“That’s Lake Monroe on the Volusia-Seminole County line near Sanford, the little town that made national headlines in 2012. Remember the Trayvon Martin shooting by George Zimmerman, who called himself a neighborhood watch coordinator?”

“I do. And Zimmerman got off.”

“The seventeen-year-old was wearing a hoodie and looked suspicious. I always tell myself looks aren’t everything, but I know you read body language and that was a part of the case, too—witnesses were important. Anyway, we’ll soon pass over part of the lake on this elevated bridge, but I don’t know how much you’ll glimpse of the lake or Sanford in this weather.”