Spotlight & Giveaway: Murder Never Forgets by Nicole Helm

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Nicole Helm’s new release: Murder Never Forgets

When the past knocks, deadbolt the door…

For private investigator Samantha Price, life is finally starting to feel more settled. Working investigations with her live-in boyfriend, Nate Bennet, is both personally and professionally fulfilling. With one of Nate’s brothers engaged and his older brother, Cal, finally moving back home to Marietta, Montana, the only thing that can disrupt the present…is the past.

Mystery author Jill Harrington can no longer pretend that her grandmother’s history isn’t important. She secretly hires Sam to get to the bottom of what caused Glenda’s traumatic muteness decades ago. But Glenda Harrington is a local ghost story to the people of Marietta, and she has no desire to change that. For years, she’s protected Bennet secrets along with her own, and she’ll do whatever she can to stop Sam and Nate from discovering the truth.

But attorney Cal Bennett knows his childhood memories still shield critical secrets. To understand what happened when he was a child, he joins forces with Jill, Sam, and Nate to dig up what Glenda’s been hiding. And what they unearth endangers all of them.

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from Murder Never Forgets 

Chapter One

Honor’s Edge Investigations Office

Spring was a hint of sunlight that kept the air from digging its icy winter daggers into the lungs. Fickle, that warmth. Just when you were about to count on it, winter clawed its way back, settling in with a dumping of snow.

But Samantha Price had been dealing with the twist and turns of Montana seasons her whole life. She knew how different a spring snow felt from a winter one.

This one wouldn’t stick around. A day or two, maybe.

Something she kept to herself when Nate walked into the office, stomping his boots against the mat in the entry of the office. She could tell he was grumpy. Because of the snow or the case he’d been out working on this morning remained to be seen.

Nate Bennet had been back in her life not quite a full year, and Sam hadn’t figured out how she felt about the way he’d upended the path she’d been going down. Which she supposed was fair since she’d been the one who’d dragged him back to Montana last spring.

He put a wrapped sandwich on her desk, and she lifted her face for the casual brush of lips that had just become routine. Sometimes, she thought nothing of it. Sometimes, it struck her as just plain weird. The ways her life had opened up, braided with other people’s, after being pretty much on her own for a whole lot of it.

But if she let her mind dwell on the weird, she started to question the happy that went along with it, and nothing good lay down that road. So she set it aside.

Happy was a blessing, and if she didn’t enjoy it while it was within reach, she’d never enjoy anything.

“I take it the meeting didn’t go well this morning?”

Nate dropped into the chair at his desk, unwrapped the sandwich he’d bought for himself. “She wants pictures, but there’s a catch. She wants to be there when I take them.”

Samantha frowned. “That’s a disaster waiting to happen.” Not that she needed to tell him. Nate had developed into a hell of a private investigator since he’d gotten his license.

“Which I told her. Repeatedly. But she’s adamant.” He shook his head. “I finally told her I’d have to come back and discuss policy with you before we made any decisions. The answer is no, obviously, but there was no getting through to her. I’ve run out of ways to explain it to her.”

“And you’re wanting me to take over?”

He grinned at her—something he did more and more as time wore on. As he settled back into life in Marietta. As happy seemed to become more commonplace for the both of them.

“You’re meaner,” he said.

She didn’t want to grin back, but it was a hard-won thing. “Ha.”

“And I can take Glenda from your plate. Maybe a fresh eye will yield results.”

Sam sighed. She had spent the past month trying to get to the bottom of one of the enduring mysteries of this town and surrounding ranches.

Glenda Harrington.

In what couldn’t be a surprise at all, Sam had come up empty. Oh sure, she’d unearthed a few interesting details she hadn’t already known about the Harringtons as a whole. Like the fact that everyone thought Glenda had gone mute at a different time, that her husband had died long after most people had thought—after she’d sold off much of her ranch to the Bennets. But these things still weren’t answers. If anything, they were just more confusions and questions to add on an ever-growing list.

Whatever kept Glenda stubbornly mute, for the most part, was hidden in time.

On more than one occasion Sam had suggested to Jill—the granddaughter who’d hired her to get to the bottom of things—that Jill should just go up to the woman and demand answers. Confront her grandmother and deal with the fallout.

But Glenda Harrington was taciturn ranch stock. No demands got through.

In any other circumstances, Sam probably wouldn’t have minded switching cases with Nate, seeing if they could each shake something loose with those fresh eyes and different levels of meanness, but … this was complicated.

Harringtons. Bennets. It was all complicated.

“Jill asked me. I’m not sure she’d be all that comfortable with me handing it off. Besides, you’ve got such a way with the furious soon-to-be ex-wives of almost-caught-cheating husbands.”

Nate grunted and took a big bite of his sandwich, chewing irritably. “It’d be pretty damn open and shut if she’d just let me do the job,” he grumbled. “I take it you ran into the same number of closed doors I did today.”

She couldn’t deny it, but she couldn’t let herself get mired in the disappointments. That wasn’t the way a good PI got through a challenging case. “I’m broadening my focus. I’ve looked into Glenda and her entire family’s history, but maybe it’s time to look into her husband’s life.” She shrugged restlessly, not voicing her real theory.

That there was no one incident that had caused Glenda to stop speaking. That it was a series of internal events and traumas that no one would ever be privy to if Glenda didn’t want them to be. Which would explain all the varying and sometimes conflicting answers among those that had observed Glenda’s life.

Sometimes life didn’t make sense, no matter how many answers you got.

“Maybe you should hit up Cal when he gets back,” Nate suggested. “He tends to get through to Glenda for whatever reason.”

Sam had been considering that, but she didn’t know what kind of lines that crossed. The problem with this case was that there were delicate lines everywhere. So far, though, she hadn’t had to deal with the possibility of tangling Nate’s oldest brother up with this because Cal had been in Texas the past few weeks tying up the loose ends of his life there.

Sam still wasn’t sure Cal would stick back in Marietta, but she knew Nate was hopeful his brother really was planning to be back for good, so she allowed herself to be hopeful as well. Not because Cal Bennet was her favorite person or anything, but because…

Well, the really weird thing about being in love with someone was wanting them to be happy. Cal back for good would make Nate happy.

As though discussing him conjured him from out of the blue, she happened to glance up at the big storefront window and saw Cal striding down the sidewalk outside. “Speak of the devil.”

“I don’t think we should be invoking any devil talk,” Nate replied, but his gaze drifted to the window. “Things have been too calm.”

“Oh, don’t say that. You jinxed it.”

“You’re the one who brought the devil into it.”

The bell to the door tinkled and Cal stepped in. “Good, you’re both here,” he said by way of greeting.

He was dressed in one of his slick lawyer suits, and he pulled the no-doubt expensive sunglasses off his face as he stepped inside. He might be back, but he certainly wasn’t looking the part of anything but well-paid, big-city lawyer.

“Welcome back,” Nate replied dryly.

“Back with a plan. A plan that involves both of you. Well, mostly you, Sam.”

She couldn’t stop herself from exchanging a look with Nate, who shrugged, clearly as in the dark about this plan as she was.

So she went with a joke. “I’m not hiring unless you’re looking to do custodial work.”

“I am not interested in either of those things. You haven’t rented out the apartment upstairs.”

“No. No takers,” Sam agreed. “People aren’t loving the idea of living over a private investigation business. But the realtor thinks spring will—”

“I’ll rent it.”

“Like, instead of living up at the ranch?” Nate asked.

Cal didn’t glance back at Nate. He kept his gaze on Sam. “Yes, exactly like that.”

Nate studied his brother’s back. Cal with a plan was better than a Cal falling apart in plain sight, but it still left a restless feeling in Nate’s chest. Like Cal was bulldozing ahead on a not-quite-sturdy foundation.

Physically, Cal had recovered from the gunshot wound he’d suffered last year. Emotionally? Well, Nate wondered if a man ever recovered from witnessing his mother’s murder by his father and then suffering from dissociative amnesia most his adult life. That gunshot wound was really the least of Cal’s legion of problems.

“You think Aly and Landon are going to go for that?” Nate asked, even though Cal was clearly focused on getting Sam on his side.

Cal shrugged, finally glancing over his shoulder at him. “Doesn’t matter if they do.”

Nate flicked a glance at Sam. Saw most of his own concerns reflected in her dark eyes. They weren’t on the same page about everything in this world, but Cal was one of the things they tended to agree on.

Cal sighed irritably. “No need for the not-so-subtle concerned-about-my-sanity looks, guys. I know the whole traumatic amnesia was a little off-putting, but I am nearly forty years old. I don’t need keepers or deciders. You don’t have to rent the place to me, Sam, but I’ll only rent somewhere else on Main Street. I’m not living in that house.”

Sam hesitated, and Nate knew it was for his benefit as much as Cal’s. “You don’t even know how much I’m going to charge for rent.”

“Sounds like you can’t afford to overcharge me since you don’t have any takers.”

“Actually, business is booming, Cal,” Sam replied, folding her arms behind her head and offering Cal a smug smile. “That apartment can stay empty for a long time.”

Nate was torn between the desire to laugh, because hell if Sam didn’t amuse him when she was being smug on purpose, and just a bone-deep worry for his brother.

That worry was the norm these days, but it didn’t make it any easier.

Then there was the uncomfortable fact that he didn’t love Sam having the escape hatch of that empty apartment upstairs. Sure, living together in his house was going great, but that didn’t mean Nate knew how to depend on great lasting.

But it probably wasn’t a healthy feeling to want her stuck with him because she had a renter either.

“Have you decided what you’re going to do?” Nate asked.

Because Cal might have said he was moving home, but no one quite knew what that entailed. Surely if he was back from Texas, talking about renting apartments, he had a better handle on it now.

Cal shrugged. “I’ve got a decent nest egg and time to figure it out. First step, passing the Montana bar. And having my own space.”

Nate sighed. Cal wouldn’t be Cal without that dogged stubbornness. “When are you going to tell them?”

“Once I sign on the dotted line. So, what do you say, Sam?”

Excerpt. ©Nicole Helm. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 
 

Giveaway: An ebook copy of MURDER NEVER FORGETS + one additional Tule ebook of the winner’s choice

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Meet the Author:

Nicole Helm is a national bestselling author of over 100 books including fast-paced romantic suspense for Harlequin Intrigue, complicated, small town mysteries, and down-to-earth contemporary romances. She also writes Harlequin Presents under the name Lorraine Hall and with Megan Crane/Caitlin Crews as USA Today Bestselling paranormal author Hazel Beck. Nicole lives in Missouri with her husband and two sports-obsessed sons.

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