Now I really felt bad about the Margaret thing. I chastised her with a glare. Margaret. Not Harper. Sobs racked her body as all her fears spilled forth. I scooted forward and put a hand on her shoulder. After a few minutes, she began to calm, so I started my questions anew.
“Have you called the police?”
She pulled a tissue from her coat pocket and dabbed at her nose. “Over and over. So much so, they actually assigned an officer to vet my calls.”
“Oh, really? Which officer?”
“Officer Taft,” she said, a hard edge leeching into her voice. Definitely no love lost there.
“Okay, I know him. I can talk to him to get—”
“But he doesn’t believe me. None of them do.”
“What about your brakes? Surely they could tell if they’d been tampered with?”
“The mechanic couldn’t say it was foul play specifically, so they just dismissed that like they did everything else.”
I leaned back and tapped my notebook in thought. “How long has this been going on?”
She bit her lip, glanced away in embarrassment. “A few weeks now.”
“What about your family?”
Her fingers smoothed the edge of her scarf. “My parents aren’t really the supportive type. And my ex-husband, well, he’d just use it against me every chance he got. I haven’t told him.”
“Do you suspect him?”
“Kenneth?” She scoffed softly. “No. He’s an ass, but he’s a harmless ass.”
Proceeding with caution, I asked, “Is he paying you alimony?”
“No. Not any. He has no reason to want me dead.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but decided to go along with it for now. “What about work colleagues?”
I’d embarrassed her again. She blanched under my questioning gaze. “I don’t really—I don’t work. I haven’t had a job for a while now.”
Interesting. “How do you pay your bills?”
“My parents are very well off. They basically pay me to stay away from them. It works out well for the both of us.”
I couldn’t help but conclude that if she weren’t around, they’d no longer have to carry her. Perhaps her parents were even less supportive than she imagined.
“What do they think of this situation?”
She shrugged. “They believe me even less than Officer Taft.”
She had me at Officer Taft. While we weren’t exactly enemies, we weren’t really friends either. We’d had an encounter once that ended in him cursing at me and storming out of my apartment. I tended not to forget such encounters. That one involved his sister, who’d died when he was very young. He got testy when I told him she’d stayed behind for him. Some people were so touchy when I told them their departed family members had taken up stalking.
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll take this case on one condition.”
The tension seemed to ooze out. I wasn’t sure if that was because I was taking her case or she really was that afraid for her life. “Anything,” she said.
“You have to promise to be honest with me. Once I take this case, I’m on your side, do you understand? Think of me as your doctor or your therapist. I can’t repeat anything you tell me in confidence without your express permission.”
She nodded. “I’ll tell you everything I can.”
“Okay, first, do you have any idea, any suspicion at all of who would want you dead?”
Most people, when threatened, did, but Harper shook her head. “I’ve tried and tried. I just have no idea who would want to hurt me.”
“Fair enough.” I didn’t want to push her too hard. She seemed fragile as it was, and my shoving a gun in her face couldn’t have helped.
I took down the names of her closest family and friends, anyone who might be able to corroborate her story. Attempted murder was no laughing matter. Neither was stalking or harassment. The fact that her immediate family wasn’t taking her seriously alarmed me. I’d have to pay them a visit ay-sap.
“Do you have a place to stay besides your house?” I asked when I was done.
Her hair fell forward with another soft shake of her head. “I haven’t thought about it. I guess I really don’t. Not anywhere safe.”
That could be a problem. Still … “You know, I might have just the place. It’s like a safe house, only it’s a tattoo parlor.”
“Oh … kay.”
She seemed open to the idea. That was good. “Awesome. You sit tight while I get this information to my assistant across the hall, then I’ll take you over.”
With an absent nod, she studied a box on the sofa beside me of collectible Kiss action figures.
“Yeah,” I said, agreeing with her bewilderment, “a lot of caffeine went into that decision.”
“I can imagine.”
I started across the hall, thrilled about the prospect of rubbing my new client in Cookie’s face—not literally, though, as that could be awkward—and almost ran down Mr. Zamora, the building’s superintendent.
“Oh—hey, there,” he said. He was shorter than me, pudgy with salt-and-pepper hair that always seemed to be in need of a good conditioning. And he always wore sweatpants and T-shirts that had seen more abuse than narcotics. But he was a good landlord. When my heater stopped working in mid-December, it took him only two weeks to get it fixed. Of course, it took me knocking on his door in need of a warm place to sleep to get it that way, but one night on his sofa, where I’d suddenly developed night terrors and epilepsy, and that puppy was running like a Mercedes the next day. It was awesome.