he had decided he was just going to have to force upon her.
“What you want Tyrecee for?”
“I’d just like to talk to her for a minute. Regarding her friend Harper Stowe.”
“She didn’t have nothin’ to do with him killin’ that woman.”
“I’m sure she didn’t. In fact, I don’t think Harper had anything to do with it, either.”
Tyrecee Abbott’s mother stood in the doorway to their Panorama City apartment, measuring Gunner with the unabashed distrust of a jaded parole officer. She was a big woman with unruly brown hair and glassy eyes, dressed either for bed or a trip to the nearest Walmart, and if Gunner had been of a mind to try and bull his way past her into her apartment, it would have likely cost him the loss of a limb.
“You got a warrant?”
“No. I’m not a cop.” He gave no thought to mentioning that a cop wouldn’t have needed a warrant just to talk to her daughter, even if he’d been one. “I’m a private investigator. I’m working for Harper’s lawyer and I think Ty can help us with his defense.”
“How’s she gonna do that?”
Before Gunner could answer, somebody behind the woman said, “Momma, who you talking to?”
Tyrecee Abbott stepped into view alongside her mother. Gunner had never seen the girl before, but he’d recognized the voice; her particular brand of pouty sensuality was hard to forget.
“Who’s this?” She regarded Gunner as if he were an unmarked package someone had dumped on their doorstep.
“Nobody you need to talk to. Go back inside.” Her mother tried to guide her back into the apartment.
“Aaron Gunner. The investigator working for Harper’s attorney,” he said. “We spoke over the phone a few days ago.”
Holding her ground in the doorway, Tyrecee said, “So? I already told you all I know.” She tore her mother’s hand from her arm and, with a glare, dared her to lay it upon her again. Her mother huffed, disgusted, and with a final glance in Gunner’s direction, left the two of them to do what they would to each other.
“I’m just following up,” Gunner said. “In case you might have forgotten something.”
“Like what?”
She looked like a “Real Housewife of” dressed down for a day off. Gunner wondered if the department store bling and makeup ever left her body, even for sleep.
“Like what time Harper left here the morning after he got fired.”
Stowe had said he couldn’t recall when he’d left, or where he’d gone afterward.
“I don’t know when he left. He was gone when I woke up.”
“And what time was that?”
“What?”
“When you woke up.” Gunner took a wild guess without stating it openly: 10 a.m.
“I don’t know. ’Bout 10:30, something like that.” “And he was already gone?”
“Yeah.”
“How about your mother? Maybe she was awake when he left?”
“Momma?” She glanced over her shoulder, checking for witnesses, and chuckled. “She wasn’t home that night.”
“So it was just the two of you here?”
It seemed like a simple question, but she had to pause before answering it. “Yeah.”
“What about Eric?”
“What about him?”
“Eric says he was the one who dropped Harper off, somewhere around 10 or 11 p.m.” In fact, Eric Woods claimed to have spent most of the evening beforehand with Stowe, trying to talk him down from the raging resentment he was continuing to harbor for Darlene Evans. “He didn’t hang around a while afterwards?” “No”
“Not even for a minute or two?”
“No.”
“Okay. Getting back to Harper. You don’t know where he might have gone that morning?”
“No. I told you—”
“You weren’t awake when he left. I got that. But maybe he mentioned where he was going before he took off. Or has told you where he went since. You have spoken to him since that night, haven’t you?”
“Once. On the phone.”
“The phone? When?”
“A few days ago. Last week, I think. Why?”
“Well, he was arrested three weeks ago. I thought you might’ve gone down to the jail to see him by now.”
“No. Not yet.” If she felt at all guilty about it, she was hiding it well. “Any more questions?”
“Just a few. You said Harper never told you where he went after leaving here that morning.”
“That’s right. He says he can’t remember.”
“And you believe him?”
“Harper forgets all kinds of shit. He can’t help it. Why wouldn’t I believe him?”
“No reason. What did you two talk about the night before? Did he talk about his firing?”
“Of course. That’s all he did talk about.”
“So what did he say?”
“He said it was all that fuckin’ bus driver’s fault. If she hadn’t thrown him off the bus, he woulda never been late and gotten fired in the first place.”
“The bus driver? What about his boss? Didn’t he blame her, too?”
“Darlene? Oh, yeah. He was pissed at her, too, hell yes. But it was that bitch on the bus he wanted to kill.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t neither. But Harp was like, Darlene only did what she had to do. ’Cause his bein’ late all the time, he put her in that position, right? It was just business. But that driver, kickin’ him off the bus for no reason like that—he took that shit personal.”
What the girl was saying seemed to turn Eric Woods’s testimony on its head. The Harper Stowe he had described both to Gunner and the authorities would hardly have developed such a forgiving attitude toward Darlene Evans so soon after his termination.
“Did Harper have a gun that night?”
“A
