Chapter 15 Jagg
JAGG
“I’ve got to call the chief.” Colson said. “He’ll want to make this call personally. He knows the pastor. Hell, I think Pastor Griggs baptized the chief’s kids. He’ll probably come up here. Dammit.” He reached for his phone.
“Darby.” I jerked my chin to the door.
Colson was already dialing the chief when Darby and I stepped into the hallway.
He began, “I got everything else you asked—”
“Not here, kid.”
The station was a flurry of chatter and whispers, sudden overachievers swinging by the station at four in the morning. I had no doubt everyone in town would know about the “Slaying in the Park,” by daybreak.
I led Darby down to the hallway, past the conference room, glancing in to make sure Sunny Harper hadn’t popped the window locks and escaped, because, for some reason, I knew she was capable of it.
But she hadn’t moved. Same posture. Same unnerving composure. She sat perfectly still, her expression unreadable, except for the tell: her curls were frizzier than before. She’d been running her hands through them. Nervous energy.
Our eyes met.
She didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch. Her gaze tracked me like a wolf sizing up a threat—or a challenge. It landed right in my chest, pressed down hard, and stirred something I didn’t like acknowledging.
There was something magnetic about her. Dangerous.
I broke the stare first and led Darby into the observation room, clicking the door shut behind us.
“Go.” I crossed my arms over my chest and faced him, keeping Sunny in my peripheral.
He fumbled with the papers he was carrying, a slight tremble in his hands. “Uh. Yes. Okay—”
“Darby.”
He looked up.
“Take a deep breath. Calm yourself. You are stressing me the fuck out.”
He nodded, took a shaky deep breath, then another. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I know you just saw your first dead body. Accept it, get over it, and focus. It happens. Control yourself. Now. Go.”
“Okay.” Another breath. “So I dug up everything I could on Miss Harper…”
“Yes. Go.”
Holy hell this kid.
“Do you want her background first or—”
“Background.”
“Okay. Miss Harper is a twenty-eight year old—”
“Dog trainer who’s social media is comprised primarily of work-related posts. It appears that Miss Harper is an introvert, has no friends or social life, and is a hermit on all counts…”
“You got all that from one ten minute interview?”
“Comes with experience. Deeper, I need deeper, Darby.”
“Okay, so yes, you’re right on all counts. The woman appears to be a hermit. She started an LLC for her dog training company a few months ago. Runs it by herself. Other than social media posts about that, there are a few posts about wine and that’s it. She likes wine.”
“What kind?”
“Uh, reds. Bordeauxs.”
“Okay, go on.”
“No obvious men, or women, for that matter, in her life”—my brain momentarily short-circuited.
Did Darby think she was gay? Was she a lesbian?
No. No way. … Why did I care, anyway?—“and, like I said, no besties or book club pics. By all accounts, Sunny appears to be a dog-loving homebody who likes good wine, which isn’t surprising considering who her dad is. ”
“Who’s her dad?”
Darby’s eyes flashed with victory. “Ah, so you don’t know everything about Sunny Harper. Interesting…”
“Darby,” I growled between my teeth.
“Sunny is the daughter of the one and only Arlo Harper, multi-millionaire real estate mogul born and raised in good ol’ Berry Springs.”
My brows arched. I knew the name. Everyone in the tri-state area knew the name Arlo Harper.
The man started his own construction business when he was just nineteen, and in two decades, owned half of the surrounding counties.
Years later, he moved to Dallas where he tripled his net worth.
There wasn’t a county line you could cross without going onto one of his properties.
Sunny Harper was a rich girl.
A very rich girl.
I had a thing about rich people. Call it a chip on my shoulder from growing up dirt poor but I never got along with them, their type.
Not much set me off more than entitlement.
Spoiled brats who had doors open for them simply because of their last names, not because of busting through it with grit and determination.
Brats who thought they owned the world and everyone in it.
I’d broken my fair share of rich kids’ noses and didn’t regret a single one.
Darby continued, “Appears Arlo’s had some run-ins with the law over the last few years in Dallas.”
“Yeah?”
He handed me a police report with DPD stamped on the letterhead—Dallas Police Department—for a DUI. “There’s another DUI after that one, and one drunk and disorderly.”
Huh.
“Guy got off, of course.”
Of course he did. Money always talked… but not from Sunny’s lips, apparently.
I kicked myself for not connecting the dots, but nothing about this woman screamed heiress to a real estate fortune.
I was pretty good at pegging rich girls but the thought hadn’t even popped into my head with Sunny.
Not only were her jogging clothes faded and mismatched, they didn’t appear to be designer, either.
(You know, like Nike or Adidas). Her right running shoe had a hole at the tip, her nail polish chipped on each finger.
No diamond studs in her ears, no jewelry, no perfectly coiffed mane of highlighted hair—quite the contrary, in fact.
Her hair was long, wild, a horse’s mane blowing in the wind.
Nothing—not a single thing—about her suggested she had money.
Considering her daddy’s obvious business acumen, you’d figure she would have had the wits to demand a lawyer. Or at least throw her daddy’s name around while I was pinning her to the ground. Why hadn’t she mentioned him? Or demanded one of her daddy’s lawyers?
Nothing about Sunny Harper made sense.
… Until it suddenly did.