Deadly Intentions Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chater Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Epilogue

  A Note From The Author

  About The Author

  Excerpt From Ghostly Paws

  This is a work of fiction.

  None of it is real. All names, places, and events are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to real names, places, or events are purely coincidental, and should not be construed as being real.

  Deadly Intentions

  Copyright © 2014

  Leighann Dobbs

  http://www.leighanndobbs.com

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner, except as allowable under “fair use,” without the express written permission of the author.

  Cover art by: http://www.coverkicks.com

  To my father:

  Frank J. Trabucco

  January 17, 1931 - April 29, 2014

  You had a good run.

  Chapter One

  Jolene Blackmoore had always known there was something suspicious about her mother’s death. She’d tried to say so at the time, but no one had listened seven years ago.

  Back then, she’d been only fourteen … and who listened to a hormone-riddled, grief-stricken teenager?

  No one.

  But, now she was twenty-one with a private investigator’s license and the knowledge and skills that went with it. It was time to prove what she’d always known.

  She stared at the pictures on her computer screen, which she’d downloaded from the Noquitt Police Department database. It had been surprisingly easy to hack into.

  Okay, so it wasn’t quite legal, she thought, but if they really didn’t want people in there, they should make the password a bit more secure.

  The file on Johanna Blackmoore’s death was sorely lacking in information.

  There had been just one witness who claimed to have seen Johanna fling herself over the cliff—Earl Whiting. The report stated that Earl had been out lobstering in his boat off the point that evening and had seen Johanna on the edge of the cliff, alone.

  According to Earl, she ‘looked up to the heavens then threw herself off’. Too bad Earl was known to spend most of his days drinking. He wasn’t what Jolene would call a reliable witness.

  It looked like the whole investigation had been a sham from the start, just as she’d suspected. Even at her young age, she’d been able to tell they weren’t doing a good job, but when she’d tried to voice her objections, the new sheriff in town, Sheriff Overton, had brushed her off, saying that she was just an emotional child.

  Overton hadn’t liked anyone questioning his methods and paid her back by constantly dogging her throughout the rest of her teenage years, threatening to arrest her for any slight violation and making life as miserable as he could for her and her sisters every chance he got. She’d always had the distinct impression that Overton had bungled the investigation on purpose.

  Needless to say, she’d been rather pleased when Overton mysteriously disappeared from town last summer. Good riddance, she thought.

  “Meow.”

  The family cat, Belladonna, jumped up on the table, stepping lightly on the keyboard and standing right in front of the screen. She turned her pale blue eyes on Jolene, who sighed and reached out to pull the cat into her lap.

  “What’s the matter, can’t find any mice to torture?” Jolene stroked that cat’s silky white fur affectionately as she stared at the pictures on the screen—pictures of the cliff her mother had jumped from seven years ago.

  The cliff sat on the edge of their property. In fact, she could see it pretty well from the the room she was sitting in right now.

  Her eyes drifted over to the large window. Outside, the view of the Atlantic Ocean was usually stunning. Today, gray clouds hovered over the dark, stormy seas. Rain beat against the window, obscuring her view, but she could still make out the edge of the cliff.

  The very same cliff from which her mother had jumped seven years ago, smashing on the rocks thirty feet below before being swept into the sea.

  Jolene’s fingers stole up to the silver heart shaped locket she wore around her neck. She’d discovered the locket in an old suitcase she’d used to take on an assignment she and her sisters had gone on out west. As soon as she’d seen the locket, she felt an immediate connection. It wasn’t until later that she found out it looked exactly like the one her mother had always worn.

  Jolene guessed her subconscious must have recognized it, even though she didn’t consciously remember it as her mother’s locket. She’d been too self-absorbed at fourteen to think much about what jewelry other people wore, but she’d been told her mother never took that locket off.

  So, the locket she’d found couldn’t possibly be her mother’s. It didn’t have any pictures inside and the design wasn’t that uncommon—she’d researched it—so it must be just a strange coincidence.

  Too bad Jolene didn’t believe in coincidences.

  Belladonna reached a pink paw up and batted at the locket.

  “You don’t think it’s a coincidence either, do you?” Jolene asked the cat, who answered her by settling into her lap and purring loudly.

  But the locket couldn’t be her mother’s, because she would have been wearing it when she jumped. And if that were the case, it would have smashed to bits on the rock, and those bits would have fallen into the ocean. Unless she hadn’t been wearing it that day … or someone had taken it from her before she fell.

  Jolene shuddered at the thought of her mother’s slim body plummeting down the steep cliff. She could almost hear the sickening crunch of her hitting the jagged rocks below.

  She couldn’t imagine why anyone would do that to themselves, especially not her mother, who she remembered as being perpetually cheerful and happy.

  Everyone had said the premature death of Johanna’s husband, their father, years before had worn her down. She’d been depressed and finally couldn’t go on. But Jolene didn’t remember her that way. Naturally they’d all been devastated when their father died, but Johanna had bravely soldiered on. It had brought her even closer to her daughters. Jolene felt certain her mother would never have left them alone like that … not unless she was forced to.

  Or maybe Jolene had just been too absorbed in herself to notice how her mother had been hurting.

  Jolene leaned forward, dislodging the cat from her lap. She clicked the mouse, flipping from picture to picture.

  There has to be something here in these pictures … some kind of clue.

  Belladonna stretched and let out a tiny ‘meow’, then stepped back onto the table blocking the screen once again.

  “Shoo.” Jolene wrestled the resistant cat out of the way.

  In the struggle, Belladonna’s paws pushed down on the keyboard, pressing keys at random. The cat jumped down from
the table and Jolene looked back at the computer screen. Apparently, Belladonna had pressed the right combination of keys to enlarge the picture. Jolene fiddled with the keyboard, trying to put the screen back to normal size.

  Then something in the picture caught her eye. Jolene squinted at the picture on the screen that showed the edge of the cliff where the grass ended and there was just bare dirt. This was the exact place where her mother supposedly stood before jumping thirty feet to the ocean below. All accounts said her mother had been alone on the cliff that night.

  But if the accounts were true and her mother had been alone … why were there men’s shoe prints in the dirt?

  ***

  The sound of laughter drifted down the hall, announcing the arrival of her sisters and pulling Jolene from her thoughts. She clicked off the screen before they could see what she was doing. She didn’t want them to know she was looking into their mother’s death until she had something more to go on. No sense in stirring up those painful memories until there was a solid reason.

  “Working this late?” Fiona frowned at Jolene. “You should take some time to relax.”

  Jolene’s heart warmed at her sister’s concern. Fiona was the second oldest, and she and the oldest sister, Morgan, had taken over the job of mothering Jolene after Johanna had died. Celeste, the sister in between Jolene and Fiona had been barely eighteen when Johanna died and, even though she’d helped keep Jolene on track, she was much more relaxed about it than the older sisters. Jolene was an adult now, but old habits are hard to break and the two older sisters still looked after her like mother hens.

  “I will. I was just finishing up some research on the case Jake has me working on,” Jolene said, referring to Fiona’s boyfriend, Jake Cooper. Fiona’s eyes lit up at the mention of the former member of the Noquitt police department who’d turned in his badge last summer to open his own private detective agency. He’d hired Jolene as his assistant when she’d shown an uncanny aptitude for police work, computer forensics in particular.

  “What’s the case about?” Celeste rubbed her hands through her short-cropped, blonde hair as she glanced out the window at the quickly darkening sky. The sun had a few hours longer before it would set, but the dark clouds made it seem like night had fallen already.

  “Jebediah Powers hired us to prove that Gordon Ellis fooled with his lobstering traps.”

  “That old feud again?” Morgan made a face. “Those two have been feuding for over twenty years.”

  “It’s funny. The feud has been going on so long, no one even knows what started it.” Fiona plopped into an oversized, white linen slipcovered chair and Morgan sat on the matching couch, pulling her long, silky jet-black hair over one shoulder as she settled back.

  This was the girls’ favorite room—the one they were most comfortable in. It had been their mother’s favorite too. Jolene could see her influence everywhere, from the muted blues and grays to the overstuffed furniture to the seaside accents. Her heart tugged, remembering the care her mother had put into decorating the room.

  “So, how are things at Sticks and Stones?” Jolene asked about the shop Morgan and Fiona ran together mostly to distract herself from thinking about Johanna.

  “Great,” Morgan said. “We’re getting more and more customers traveling from all over the place. Not just people here on vacation.”

  “Word is getting out about how powerful Morgan’s herbal remedies are,” Fiona added.

  “Not just the remedies,” Celeste cut in, “I’ve heard more than one person talking about your healing gemstone jewelry and how it helped them with certain problems. You guys are getting quite a reputation.”

  The sisters ran Sticks and Stones from an old cottage located just outside the main part of town. They sold herbal remedies and healing crystals. It was no surprise that business was booming. The healing herbs and stones the girls made were more powerful than any ordinary herbs and stones because Morgan and Fiona had a special way with energy that enhanced the power of the herbs and stones. And they weren’t the only ones in the family who had special powers.

  All four of the girls had discovered they had what they called ‘gifts’ over the past two years. It had come on slowly at first, but over time, they had developed them so they could control them better.

  Jolene frowned slightly. Was it strange the four sisters shared paranormal powers? Maybe it was a family trait like the ice-blue eyes that each of them had in common? Had their mother had special ‘gifts’, too? Jolene didn’t remember anything like that, but then again most people with ‘gifts’ didn’t talk about them much. She knew she and her sisters tried to keep their odd powers a secret. Maybe her mother had, too.

  “Anyway, I’m glad I caught you all home tonight,” Morgan reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a piece of lavender-colored paper. “I got this letter in the mail today. It’s from Aunt Eliza.”

  “Aunt Eliza?” Fiona’s long red curls fell over her shoulder as she leaned over the arm of the chair to take the paper from Morgan. “Jeez, I barely remember her.”

  “I don’t remember her at all.” Jolene eyed the letter Fiona was reading. The thick paper looked expensive. The writing was neat and orderly. “Who sends letters these days, anyway?”

  “You were just a baby the last time we saw her.” Fiona passed the letter over to Celeste. “She was Dad’s younger sister, but I think there was some sort of falling out and they stopped talking to each other.”

  “It says here she’s coming to Noquitt for a visit.” Celeste tapped the paper.

  “I know,” Morgan said. “I was thinking we should invite her to stay here. After all, this was her home, once.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Celeste passed the letter to Jolene. “I guess I forgot that Dad’s family lived here before we did.”

  The centuries old house had been home to generations of Blackmoore’s. Originally built by Isaiah Blackmoore three-hundred years earlier, it sat on a point of land situated at the mouth of Perkins Cove with the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the channel leading to the cove on the other.

  The house had been modified and added to over the years, but a Blackmoore family had always lived there, including Jolene’s family along with their grandmother, who had passed away years ago.

  And now it was just her and her sisters.

  It was hard to imagine her father as a little boy, running around the big mansion with his sister, not to mention the countless other generations that had lived there before them. If the house could only talk, Jolene was sure it would have some stories to tell.

  She looked down at the letter in her hand. A chocolate brown curl fell in front of her face and she brushed it away absently as she studied the words in dark purple ink that looked almost like they had come from a fountain pen. The scent of lavender wafted up from the paper.

  She got the distinct impression that even though she didn’t remember Eliza Blackmoore from her youth, the woman was going to be someone she would never forget.

  “So, what do you guys say?” Morgan prompted. “Should we ask her to stay with us?”

  “Sure,” Fiona said. “As long as no one else objects, I don’t see why not.”

  “Yeah, it could be fun getting to know her better. I mean we really didn’t know her well as kids. She was a lot younger than Dad, wasn’t she?” Celeste asked.

  “Yes, as I recall she was. I think she’s only in her early forties. We have so few relatives now that I think it will be fun to have another Blackmoore to connect with.” Morgan turned to Jolene who was still staring down at the letter. “Don’t you agree, Jolene?”

  “Huh?” Jolene looked up. “Oh, yes, of course. Invite her here for as long as she wants to stay. I don’t see any phone number or email address to contact her, though. Did the envelope have a return address?”

  “No,” Morgan frowned. “That’s the strange thing. It wasn’t even postmarked. I just opened the mailbox and there it was.”

  “So how will we let her know
she can stay here?” Fiona asked. “I wouldn’t want her to book a hotel and lose her deposit.”

  Morgan shrugged. “I guess the only way is to tell her when she gets here.”

  “And when is that?” Celeste asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Meow!” Belladonna wailed just as a blinding flash of light lit up the sky outside the widow. Two seconds later, the thunderous boom had them all jumping out of their seats. The lights flickered, but stayed on.

  Jolene’s heart thudded in her chest as the four sisters exchanged nervous looks. It was early summer and thunderstorms certainly weren’t unusual. The girls had weathered plenty of them in this house before. Jolene just hoped this storm wasn’t a harbinger of things to come.

  Chapter Two

  Celeste Blackmoore woke to the warm rays of the sun on her face. She squinted one eye open and looked directly out her window at the glowing yellow ball rising out of the ocean. Last night’s storm had passed and it looked like today was going to be a beauty.

  She kicked the covers off, slid out of bed and stretched her slim, muscular body. Turning toward her closet, she rooted around in the pile of clothes on the floor for a pair of yoga pants she could wear down to the kitchen for her morning wheat grass drink before showering and heading off to the studio where she taught yoga and meditation.

  “Looks like it’s going to be a corker today.”

  Celeste’s heart leaped into her throat. She whirled toward the voice, then relaxed as she recognized the misty figure swirling in the corner. She should be used to this by now.

  “Morning, Grandma,” Celeste said.

  The mist swirled around and then manifested into a see-through version of Celeste’s grandmother.

  “Morning, dear.” She turned to the window. “I do so miss these summer sunrises.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Oh nothing to be sorry about.” Grandma turned from the window, a big smile on her face. “It’s much nicer on the other side, anyway.”