“Any idea what the paintings are about?” Harper asked. “What all the symbolism means?”
He shook his head. “The inner workings of the human mind confound me, whether Delilah’s or anyone else’s. That’s why I stick to jellyfish husbandry. You can see right through your average medusa.”
“Yes, but jellyfish sting.”
He chuckled. “So can humans.”
“Did a jellyfish get you there?” She touched the top of his hand, where an angry red mark marred his otherwise smooth skin.
Tariq cleared his throat and pulled his hand away, checking his watch.
“Looks like no one else is showing up tonight.”
He scanned the bar, and his expression hardened.
Harper craned her neck to follow his gaze and spotted a dark-haired man hunched over a drink.
“Friend of yours?” she asked.
“Delilah’s brother, Asher.”
“Oh no, really? Poor guy, to lose his sister like that.” At Tariq’s silence, she added, “I take it you’re not a fan?”
“You could say that. He wasn’t happy—atall—with my dating his sister. Long story. Anyway, I should get back to the lab. I have some copepod cultures I need to check on before calling it a night. Are you staying, or shall I walk you to your car?”
“No, I’ve got some copepod cultures of my own that need tending to.”
“Cute.”
“What’s a copepod?”
“Food for jellyfish, basically.”
“Oh, gotcha. That reminds me, I have to stop by the grocery store for Ellen, but after that, reading in bed is about my speed tonight.”
As they were leaving, Delilah’s brother glanced up from his drink. He and Tariq exchanged glares before Asher’s gaze shifted to Harper. The Mason family resemblance was remarkable: Like his sister, Delilah, Asher was movie-star handsome, with a strong jaw and high cheekbones. But most astonishing were his eyes: bright blue pools in an olive complexion.
Harper nodded at him and opened her mouth to speak, but what did one say to a stranger who had just lost his sister? “I’m sorry” seemed so trivial, while “I was one of the last people your sister saw before she left this life” seemed far too personal, even macabre. So she kept walking, leaving him to his beer.
But as she turned to slip out the door, she found his gaze was still on her.
Ten
Over coffee the next morning, Harper sat at the table to research her book manuscript on the history of being buried alive and the widespreadfearof being buried alive in the turbulent nineteenth century. She planned to elaborate on her published article linking the pervasive anxiety over premature burial and the many newspaper stories alluding to it to the fear in the antebellum era not only of the difficulty of knowing when someone was truly dead, but also of failure itself: financial, social, moral.
It was an inherently dramatic topic that she usually enjoyed writing about, but this morning her prose fell flat. Digging up someone who actually had been buried alive made the intellectual argument much too real, dampening her enthusiasm.
After several false starts, she gave up and went downstairs to collect the newspaper. The top stories today concerned a measles outbreak in a local elementary school, a new farmer’s market near Cannery Row, and efforts to save the steelhead inthe Carmel River. A short follow-up article on Delilah Mason’s death contained mostly unsourced speculation and empty quotations from Joel, who never failed to mention his tours.
What was his story? Harper had disliked the tour guide from the start because of his wild tales, but he had seemed truly distraught when they discovered Delilah Mason in the garden. And yet now he felt no compunction in cashing in on the drama.
Harper pushed the paper aside and drummed her fingers on the table. What happened had to have been personal, right? A home invader was extremely unlikely to take the time to bury their victim in that person’s garden. Somebody must have hated Delilah enough to not only stab her but then bury her while she was still alive. Had the murderer intended to kill, or might the burial have been a ghoulish form of torture? Could the murderer have known the ghost tour would be coming by, and might save her in the nick of time?
Whoever the killer was must have had knowledge of local history. It stretched credulity to think it was a coincidence that the murderer just happened to bury Delilah under the Witch Tree alongside the spot Isabel Perles had been found more than a century and a half earlier. So that pointed to the killer being someone local, though that hardly narrowed down the possible suspects. The morbid history of the Perles family and the Perles Mansion was no secret. Anyone now living in town, or who had lived here in the past, might be familiar with it. But who would be motivated to stab Delilah and copycat Isabel’s death scene?
Harper sat back and blew out a long sigh.
On the kitchen counter sat the bag of dog goodies she had bought at the grocery store last night, hoping to entice theblack dog the next time she saw it. They were Paul Newman treats, which put her in mind of Newman’s famous blue eyes—and that reminded her of the eyes of the man in the bar last night: Delilah Mason’s brother, Asher. What was his story?
