“She sleepwalked?”
“No, she was wide awake. She would say someone was in her room. The first few times, Jason would jump out of bed and go investigate, but the therapist told us that was exactly what she wanted. So, we stopped. We started to ignore her and told her to go back to bed.”
“And would she?”
“Of course not. We’d find her the next morning asleep under the stairs or behind the sofa. And searching for her would always make us late to this or that. Her antics were absolutely exhausting.”
“I can only imagine.”
“So, we stopped searching for her altogether. If she wanted to sleep in the broom closet, so be it. We let her and went about our usual routine. But the doctor insisted there was nothing wrong with her. She said the more attention we gave Harper, the more she would act out. So we stopped paying attention.”
A dull ache ricocheted through the cavern of my chest. To know what Harper went through with no one to support her. No one to believe her. “So you did nothing?”
“As per her doctor’s instructions,” Mrs. Lowell said with a sniff. “But her outbursts escalated. We went through the nightmares and the panic attacks night after night, and did nothing but order her back to bed. So, she stopped eating to get back at us.”
“To get back at you?” I asked, my throat constricting.
“Yes. And then she stopped bathing, stopped combing her hair. Do you have any idea how humiliating that is? To have a child who looks more like a street rat than a proper young lady?”
“That must’ve been awful,” I said, my tone flat and unattractive.
My sarcasm was not lost on the foul woman, and I regretted it instantly. She shut down. Any information I might have gained was now lost to the frivolity of my mouth.
“I think your time is up, Ms. Davidson.”
I chastised myself inwardly and asked, “Is Harper’s brother around? Can I talk to him?”
“Stepbrother,” she corrected, seeming to sense my chagrin. “And he has a place of his own.” The statement wrenched an interesting rush of indignation out of her. I sensed no small amount of displeasure from Mrs. Lowell that her son had moved out. But he had to be in his thirties, for heaven’s sake. What did she expect?
She had her housekeeper show me out before I could ask anything else. Like who trimmed her lawn, because day-um, I had no idea bushes could be clipped into the shape of a Kokopelli.
“Have you worked here long?” I asked the young woman as she escorted me to the door, knowing she couldn’t have. She looked around twenty.
She glanced nervously over her shoulder, then shook her head.
“Can I ask how long you’ve known the Lowells?”
After opening the door, she scanned the area again before saying, “No. I just started here a couple of weeks ago. Their long-term housekeeper retired.”
“Really?”
She seemed to want me out of the house. Bad. And I didn’t want to get her in trouble. I knew how these people worked, and their employees were not to speak of anything that happened at their house or they would lose their jobs immediately, but we were talking about the well-being of one of their own. “How long had the last housekeeper worked here?”
“Almost thirty years,” she said, seeming as baffled by the idea as I was. How someone could last thirty years under the reign of that woman was beyond me. But if anyone knew what happened in a house like this, it was the hired help.
“Thank you,” I said, offering her a wink. She grinned shyly.
I left the Lowell mansion with way more questions than I’d had when I went in, but at least I had a clearer picture of what Harper had endured growing up. Still, she didn’t tell me how long this had been going on. While I could guess why—nobody believed her, why should I—I would need to confront her as soon as possible. I was missing pertinent information that could help us solve this entire case.
But one thing stuck out in my head. Everything Harper had done, all the nightmares and delusions and lashing out, pointed to one thing: posttraumatic stress disorder. The tip-off was the party poppers. I had taken enough psych in college to recognize the most basic symptom of PTSD: extreme response, like shaking and nausea, to loud noises.
Being stalked could cause posttraumatic stress to a degree, especially if the situation was life-threatening, but Harper’s symptoms would indicate a more severe form. Surely a licensed psychotherapist would know that. Maybe I needed to visit these seven therapists Mrs. Lowell was telling me about.
I called Cookie to have her find out exactly who Harper was seeing and when. “Also, I want to talk to their housekeeper who recently retired, and then I need more info on the Lowell family.”
“Housekeeper. Got it. But info?” she asked, typing away at her keyboard.
“Dirt, Cook. I need you to scrounge up all the dirt you can get on them. Any family with that much hot air has something to hide, and I want to know what it is.”
“That kind of dirt rarely makes the headlines, but I’ll see what I can dig up.”
“And I want to actually talk to the therapists the Lowells were sending Harper to. She’s been seeing them since around the age of five.”
“That could be difficult.”
“Are you saying you can’t do it?”
“No,” she said, a smile in her voice. “I’m saying it’s about time you gave me a challenge.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”