Pay the Price (Harmony Grove Book 3) by Carol Post (which ebook reader txt) 📕

my cell number. If you think of anything that might help me figure out what happened, give me a call.”

He took the paper and, without looking at it, laid it on the table. That phone call wasn’t likely. Whatever Hammy knew, he wasn’t going to share it with Jess.

She stood to leave. “Thanks for talking to us. We’ll let ourselves out.”

Shane followed her across the room, and when she pushed open the double doors and stepped through, she almost bumped into an older, more hardened version of Hammy.

“What are you doing here?” The man stared down at her, narrowed eyes reflecting the suspicion in his tone.

Jess didn’t flinch. “Hello, Spike. Just offering my condolences. I lost my sister, but he lost his girlfriend.”

Spike stared at her in silence, his features as hard as flint. Shane resisted the urge to drape a protective arm across her shoulder. It wasn’t necessary. She was holding her own. Finally, Spike brushed past them and closed himself in the room with his brother.

A hushed male voice filtered through the heavy wooden doors. Shane couldn’t make out the words, but judging from the harshness in the tone, it delivered a reprimand. Jess held back, craning her neck in that direction. Unless her hearing was a lot keener than his, she was wasting her time.

The sound of footsteps came from the front of the house and drew closer. Shane prodded her away from the door a moment before the butler stepped around the corner. Jess gave him a nod as she and Shane approached. “We were getting ready to show ourselves out.”

He turned on one heel and led them to the front. When they reached the car, Shane glanced back at the closed door of the house. “It looks like there’s some bad blood between you and Spike.”

“There hadn’t been before. He obviously doesn’t want me talking to Hammy.”

“You think he knows something?”

She climbed into the driver’s seat, and he slid in opposite her.

“Without a doubt.”

“What about Hammy?”

“I still can’t imagine Prissy with him. She was always so goody-goody, at least that’s the image she’d always tried so hard to project. But like Hammy said, she was also opportunistic. She’d probably figured out how to look past his faults, and whatever gossip their relationship might stir up, to the dollar signs beneath.”

She cranked the car and moved around the loop, the fountain to her left. It was lit now, each tier flowing into the next in shimmering gold cascades. She peered over at him. “Do you think he had anything to do with her death?”

“No.” Hammy was no angel. Far from it. Ten minutes in the same room with him had told Shane that. The man probably had a rap sheet long enough to stretch from Harmony Grove to Lakeland. Someone likely killed Priscilla, but it hadn’t been Hammy.

Jess eased to a stop under the wrought iron arch. “He insists he has no idea who could have wanted her dead.”

Yeah, that was what he’d said. He also wouldn’t look them in the eye when he said it. “Do you believe him?”

“Not for a second.”

Chapter Five

The slightest hint of dawn sifted through the gaps in the mini-blinds. Jessica straightened her legs, then stopped mid-roll at a familiar warm pressure in the center of her back. Buttons.

Four days ago, she’d had no intention of allowing a dog in her bed. But when she’d trudged to the master bedroom on Buttons’s first night home, he’d looked up at her with such pathetic longing, all her objections had dissolved. He had no one, not a soul in the world. She’d been there. She could relate.

Now she had friends, at least close acquaintances, and other students at the karate studio. But that long-ago night when she fled Harmony Grove, she’d been totally alone. She’d hitched a ride to Miami and spent eight weeks in a shelter before landing a job and saving enough to make it on her own.

She wiggled onto her other side and ran a hand down Buttons’s back. His tail thumped against the mattress, and he opened one eye. He was starting to settle in. The quivering had stopped almost immediately, and devotion was replacing the insecurity in his eyes. Last night he’d eaten without having to be coaxed. Someday he’d have to go. Just not yet. He needed some time to adjust to life without Prissy before being torn from his home. Jessica’s chest clenched. Another unpleasant task to handle before she could return to her life.

She rolled from the bed and put Buttons on the floor. She had an investigation to do, so she needed to get moving. Since she’d be gainfully employed come Monday, that left today and tomorrow to get it done, or at least make some serious headway. She wanted to get away before Shane showed up, too.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like him, because she did. The attraction had been there right from the start, at least on her end. She’d always found guys like him irresistible—the quick wit, the careless air, a potent type of handsome that bordered on dangerous, those free spirits that could never be nailed down. But this was her mission, not his. Why did he want to get involved anyway?

She pulled her keys from her purse. Now to find out what Prissy had gotten mixed up in. Hammy was somehow involved. He at least knew something. He just wasn’t talking, even half plastered.

And Spike…well, he’d bumped Buck out of first place on her list of suspects. The way he’d stared her down in the wide hall—she hadn’t missed the overt threat. It was there in his gaze, so strong it was almost palpable.

She stepped out the front door and cast a glance at Yesteryear Antiques. Shane’s Grand Cherokee still sat in the small parking lot. Unless he was watching through one of the upstairs windows, he wouldn’t see her leave.

She was still trying to figure him out. She knew his type, at least what she’d thought was