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

As he handed her the last casserole dish, his phone rang, and he pressed it to his ear. “Hold on a sec, will you, Ross?” He motioned toward the phone with his other hand. “I’ve got to take this call. I’ll be back shortly.”

“No problem.” She had her own call to make. “I’ve got to schedule an appointment with an attorney. I’m sure my sister didn’t have a will.”

He darted through the living room and out the front door, closing it behind him. He obviously didn’t want her to hear his side of the conversation. That was all right. She didn’t plan to get close enough to him to worry about whatever secrets he might have.

One thing was for sure. Regardless of what he said about the scenery, Shane Dalton was in Harmony Grove for more than cow pastures, pine trees and palmettos.

“Have you got something for me?”

“I do.” Shane’s supervisor’s bass voice boomed through the line. “Are you at your computer?”

“I will be in a minute.” He jogged up the steps, taking them two at a time, then let himself inside. “Okay, I’m on. Send it through.”

A couple of clicks later, banking records filled the screen. “This is Priscilla Parker’s account?”

“It is.”

He leaned forward, scrolling backward through the entries. “Deposits of around four thousand a week. All the way back to the beginning of November.”

“Yep, eleven weeks’ worth.”

Shane finished scrolling and leaned back in his chair. “Where did she waitress?”

“A local pizza joint, Pappy’s Pizzeria. Been there for two years. Unless she suddenly acquired some wealthy customers who were great tippers, I’d say she had her hands in something a little more lucrative than waitressing.”

“What kind of background does she have?”

“Squeaky clean. Not even a speeding ticket.”

Shane smiled wryly. “That just means she hadn’t been caught.” After all, she’d been young, had just celebrated her twenty-first birthday. She’d been a pretty girl. He’d seen her photo on the end table in the Parker living room.

The Parker sisters looked nothing alike. Besides the obvious difference in hair color, Jess’s eyes were a rich, deep brown, while Priscilla’s had been blue–he would call them ice blue—with a coldness that came through even in the photo. Priscilla had possessed almost wispy features that needed enhancement with makeup, whereas Jess’s high cheekbones, deep-set eyes and angled jaw gave her an exotic beauty.

And Jess was very much alive. Priscilla wasn’t. Suicides were always sad. Even more so when someone had her whole life ahead of her.

He picked up a pen and tapped it on the desk. “Any details on her death?”

“Looks like she overdosed on oxycodone. I’ve got a police report and an autopsy report. I’ll send them through. They estimate her time of death at around 12:30 a.m., but she wasn’t found until midafternoon the following day when she didn’t show up for work. The house was locked up tight, and when the police broke in, she was lying in bed in her PJs. There was a syringe beside her, along with the empty pill bottle, and a mortar and pestle on the nightstand.”

“She crushed and injected them?”

“Yep. Shooting that mess up gives them a faster and better high. Or in this case, a quick, sure death. The autopsy report shows a needle mark in her left arm, just below the bend of the elbow.”

Shane hit print and watched the pages drop into the tray. “Anything else interesting?”

“She had some faint bruising on her upper arms and wrists, like someone had manhandled her a bit. Makes me wonder if she didn’t have some help injecting that lethal dose. Or maybe the bruises are nothing more than the marks of a rough boyfriend.”

“That raises some serious questions.” Priscilla Parker’s suicide was starting to smell an awful lot like murder.

“I agree. But based on the evidence, the medical examiner ruled it a suicide. The house was locked up tight and her prints were all over the bottle and the mortar and pestle, with some partials taken from the syringe. It’ll be interesting to see how the local police are handling it.”

“It will.” He’d met the local police, at least the chief, and he wasn’t impressed. “Sometime between her death and when I got there, the house was ransacked. Someone’s after something.”

“You’ve been inside?”

“Oh, yeah, I was inside.” He rose from the chair and rubbed his bruised ribs. “So was Priscilla Parker’s sister. I saw her breaking in, and when I went to investigate, she got a wee bit defensive.”

Ross’s throaty chuckle flowed through the phone. “Sounds like she might have gotten the better of you.”

“The woman’s a second-degree black belt.” He moved to the window where he had an unobstructed view of the front and one side of the Parker place. Jess was inside, probably on the phone securing her appointment. He intended to keep her close. Because the more he learned, the more convinced he was that there’d been foul play. And Jess Parker was just bold enough to put herself right in the middle of it. If she wasn’t there already.

He moved away from the window and strode across the room. The apartment was small, but its proximity to Jess made it perfect for his purposes. The front half consisted of a single large room containing a kitchen, eating area and living room. The bedroom and bath were in the back.

“Do me a favor.” He eased onto the couch and propped his feet on the coffee table. “I need you to run Priscilla Parker’s tag, one of those vanity plates, PRIS 00. It’s on a Lotus Exige. See what you can find out about the purchase.”

“Will do.”

“And how about checking out this sister for me. The name’s Jess, probably short for Jessica.”

Her record probably wasn’t as spotless as her little sister’s. If the ease with which she’d gained access to the locked house hadn’t tipped him off, the tough air, defensive stance and guarded eyes would have. The brief exchange with Chief Branch