“Positive. I’m not a ghost person, Detective. Or, to rephrase, I suppose in a weird way I am, but I’m a skeptic and I thought the ghost tour was silly. I’m a historian, a professor at Monterey College.”
“Oh yeah? My neighbor’s kid goes there. What kind of history do you teach?”
“I’m sort of a history department of one, so I teach it all. But my research specialty is the social and cultural meaning of witchcraft, ghost stories, and tales of rising from the dead, that sort of thing. Botanical poisons are a sideline. I’mcurrently writing about being—” She stopped, realizing she might incriminate herself in some way, given the circumstances. Never, in a million years, would she have thought her historical research would make her a possible suspect in an attempted homicide.
“Being what?”
“Being buried alive.”
Three
“Buried alive?” Detective Serrano raised a sandy-blond eyebrow. “That seems like quite a coincidence. You study things like that, then come across someone who was buried alive? What are the odds of that, do you suppose?”
“Not good,” Harper conceded. “It’s all sort of…surreal.”
“I’ll bet.”
Harper felt Tariq’s eyes on her and met his gaze. He gave her an encouraging smile, which helped to center her. He stood with the others by the gate, accompanied by the young officer. The retired couple was quietly attempting to comfort Joel, who was sobbing loudly and wiping away his tears with the tail of his velvet jacket.
“Did you find anything useful in the house?” Harper asked. “Anything that might tell us what’s going on?”
Detective Serrano shook his head. “We entered due to exigent circumstances because another victim or the perpetrator might have been inside. Now we’re waiting on a warrant to do a more thorough search. Shouldn’t take long.”
“Oh. That makes sense.”
“Anything else you want to tell me? Anything at all?”
“There’s not much to tell. We came into the garden, heard something that sounded like grunting or groaning, saw the mound of dirt move and…” Harper paused and took a breath. “We dug her up.”
“By ‘we’ you mean…?”
“Me, Tariq Johnson, and the older gentleman, the retired nurse.”
“What is your relationship to them?”
“I met Lamont and his wife tonight, on the ghost tour.
“And you say you and Mr. Johnson are just friends?”
“Just friends.”
“Uh-huh.” The detective wrote something down. “So, Dr. Grae, while you and Mr. Johnson and the older man were digging up the victim, what was the tour leader doing?” He checked his notes. “Joel Aristide?”
“Joel appeared to be in shock. He watched the three of us dig.” Harper held up her arms, which were covered with dirt from her fingertips to her elbows. “I just wish…” Her voice caught in her throat.
“They got her to the hospital alive,” said the detective, his tone surprisingly gentle. “That’s something.”
He looked over his notes once again, then nodded. “Okay. I think that’s all for now. I’ve got your information, and I imagine we’ll have more questions later. In the meantime, here’s my card—let me know if anything else occurs to you.”
He called out, “Joel Aristide.”
Harper rejoined Tariq.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine, but then I wasn’t the one buried alive.”
“I knew Delilah, you know,” he said, letting out a long breath. “But I didn’t even recognize her, given…”
