After Hours

by Anina Collins

  I wasn’t sure our little table at The Grounds was big enough for all these cards we’d been holding so close to our chests.

  “I do respect you, Poppy. I wanted to apologize as soon as I said all that. And if I didn’t feel bad enough after that, the next two days without you made it abundantly clear. All the joy felt like it had been sucked out of my work, and the only thing different about it was you weren’t around to talk to.”

  For a guy I barely knew anything about and who said very little, he really had a way of saying just the right things sometimes.

  “Oh.” Every so often another human surprised me into silence. This was one of those times.

  “I found out some things about the case in the past couple days, but I don’t want to talk about them here. What do you say we go to your house?”

  He stood from his chair before I could answer, so I assumed he wanted to leave immediately. “Okay. It must be something big, right?”

  “I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what I have to say. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Alex sat down at my kitchen table and waited for me to adjust the air conditioning to cool the place off. Houses like his may have had the luxury of central air, but old houses like mine had air conditioners scattered around to keep the summer heat at bay. I’d forgotten to turn the air on this morning after being startled out of a sound sleep, so my house currently hovered at a temperature somewhere between excessively balmy and downright overbearing. A few degrees more and I would have walked into a house with the wallpaper peeling off and unlit candles melting into puddles of wax.

  Wiping my hairline of the beads of sweat that had already begun to form there, I sat down across from him and joked, “We should have stayed at The Grounds. Sorry about this. I guess I was distracted this morning and forgot to fix the daytime temperature.”

  He got a strange look on his face like I’d said something wrong and asked, “Distracted? What’s that mean?”

  On the off chance Bethany had been able to keep from calling him and spilling her guts about her feelings after she left me this morning, I chose a white lie over the truth. “Oh, nothing. Just got a call from my father before I left. So what did you find out?”

  “You were right.”

  “About what?” I asked, thrilled to hear I’d been right about something in this case.

  “Rose Walters isn’t our killer.”

  “And what brought you to this conclusion?” I didn’t want to appear to gloat, but inside, I was giving myself a nice pat on the back.

  Without even a hint of sheepishness, he said, “I checked out her story front and back, and she never drove to the Hotel Piermont that night. You were right about her.”

  “I think that’s very big of you to admit that, Alex,” I teased, enjoying that his feet were made of clay after all. “Thank you for telling me. In all fairness, I guess I should admit I was only going on my gut feeling about her.”

  He smiled. “I know, but your instincts were right and I was wrong.”

  Pleased with his mea culpa, I figured it was time to tell him all that I had learned in our time apart. “Well, I have something for you. Two somethings, actually.”

  Alex’s eyes lit up with interest. “I like how this sounds. What did you find out?”

  “I had a couple people visit me yesterday. It was definitely a day for confession.”

  He waited for me to continue, and when I didn’t, he leaned forward slightly and impatiently asked, “And?”

  “And I think you’re going to find what I learned interesting.”

  I enjoyed stringing him along like this, and he knew it. “Poppy, I know you think I deserve this whole piecemeal thing because of what I said, but can you give me the information so we can see if it helps or not?”

  Rolling my eyes, I gave in and explained about my two visitors. “Okay. You don’t have to get testy just because it’s nearly a hundred degrees in here. You really do know how to take the fun out of things.”

  He winked at me. “Someday, I’ll show you how much fun I can be. For now, we have work to do.”

  The way he looked at me with those dark eyes that seemed to see directly into my soul and said things that sounded too sexy to be coming from someone I worked with made me lose my train of thought. Fumbling for the right words to say, I knew I needed to get my head straightened out. I was sitting too close to him for that to happen any time soon, so I jumped up out of my chair and turned away toward the refrigerator.

  “I think I need a drink. Want some iced tea? I think I’m going to grab a glass for myself.”

  “Yeah, sure. About those two somethings, Poppy?”

  I took my time pouring out two glasses of tea so my brain could remember what we were supposed to be doing. I’d had that wonderful epiphany and truly believed I had found a place for whatever I felt for Alex somewhere deep inside where only I knew about it. The problem was if he kept acting like he was, it wouldn’t be my secret for very long. I didn’t want him to know the effect he had on me.

  “Okay, now at least we have some drinks to deal with the heat in here.”

  I turned around to see him waiting for me and completely confused about what had happened. Good. Maybe that meant he didn’t know what was going on with me.

  “All right. I won’t make you suffer anymore,” I said as I placed his glass in front of him. “I just thought a little theatrical pause might be good.”

  Alex took a sip of his drink and chuckled. “I promise I’ll take whatever theatrical pause you want to give me after we solve this case. For now, I’m hoping you’re going to tell me something we can use.”

  Moving my chair so I sat across the table from him, I sat down and said, “What about both Mary and Delilah coming to see me about the case?”

  “I like how this sounds already. Mary first. What did she have to say?”

  “Good choice. Mary confessed that she did know Canton Walters. They had a one night stand on Monday night and when he left her house on Tuesday, she says he was fine.”

  “Interesting. Do you believe her?”

  I thought about how forthright Mary had been. “I do. I know I’ve said from the very beginning that I couldn’t see her killing anyone, but I believe her. She said Delilah came over that night to hang out with them too before they…”

  My sentence trailed off, and I smiled. Alex caught on immediately and nodded, but then he asked, “Didn’t Delilah know our victim because he danced at one of her parties? Not that we have anyone but Mary who says it happened.”

  “She told me she lied about that. From what she said, she met Canton at Diamanti’s that night.”

  Alex folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair. His body language told me Mary’s confession had produced more questions than answers for him.

  “So what was our victim doing in Sunset Ridge if he wasn’t here for a job as a dancer and didn’t have a long-term affair going on with Mary?”

  I hadn’t thought about that, but now that he mentioned it, I didn’t know.

  “Are you thinking Mary lied again?”

  He sighed and nodded his head. “Something’s not right. Every time one of these women says something, it makes the reason we thought he was in town disappear. First, he was a Naughty and Spice salesman. Then we found out that wasn’t the case. Next, we hear he was a dancer at one of Delilah’s parties. Now that’s not true either. So what the hell was this guy from Virginia with a wife and kids doing at the one place in Sunset Ridge where cheaters spend their time? Who was this guy sharing his extracurricular time with?”

  I was beginning to share Alex’s frustration. Not only hadn’t my surprise helped us, but now it felt like we’d taken two steps back without even getting that first step forward.

  “Maybe his staying at the Hotel Piermont was just a coincidence. He might not have been there because he was having an affair.”

  The look Alex gave me was the definition of skeptical. “So i
nstead of staying at any of the major chain hotels just a few miles down the road, this guy chose to stay at some hotel people stay at for hours instead of days. It still leaves us with the question of why he was in Sunset Ridge at all.”

  “He loves quaint small towns?” I said in a feeble attempt to lighten the mood.

  “I guess he came to the right place then,” Alex said with a frown.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll figure this out.”

  “Yeah, but we’re no better off than we were before Mary decided to confess, and to be honest, I’m not exactly sure whatever she told you could be used to build the case since no officer was there.”

  “Well, I guess you better stick close to me then from now on since these people love to talk to me.”

  And then, as if he’d just heard the best news ever, he smiled in that way that made it all the way up to his eyes and he was happy again.

  “What was the second something you wanted to tell me?”

  “Delilah found me at my father’s bar to talk to me about how her husband wasn’t as bad as he may have seemed when we talked to them the other day.”

  With a sneer, Alex discounted Delilah’s claim. “Dr. Alan Roberts is a piece of work. Something tells me in private he’s even worse to her if he didn’t mind acting that way in front of two strangers.”

  “I asked her directly if she’d ever met our victim, and she got very flustered and told me repeatedly that she hadn’t. Then she bolted out of the bar and our visit was over.”

  “I’m not even going to ask if you believe her. I can see by the look on your face that you don’t, which is good because I don’t either since we know she met him that Monday night with her sister-in-law. I think she knew Canton Walters, though. I don’t know how, but I’d bet a week’s pay on it.”

  This was all very interesting, but it wasn’t something he couldn’t have whispered to me at the coffee shop. “So what’s your news about the case since mine has just made things more confusing. Was it that you figured out Rose Walters isn’t our killer?”

  Shaking his head, he pulled his cell phone out and swiped the screen. “No. I just thought I’d say that first. What I didn’t want to talk about in front of all those people at The Grounds was the coroner’s report that just came in this morning. Donny sent me a copy during the night, and I wanted you to see it.”

  I scooted my chair closer to his to see the report on his phone. Excited, I asked, “Did you look at it already? Is there something in it that points us to one of our suspects?”

  Scrolling through documents on his phone, he got to Donny’s report and answered, “No, I wanted to wait for my partner, although to be honest, if you had still refused to answer my texts and phone calls this morning, I was going to look at it without you.”

  I turned to look at him and saw that way-too-sexy grin he sometimes wore when he said something cute and he knew it. I didn’t know what other people thought of that smile, but it had a way of making me melt in ways I wasn’t sure he should ever know about.

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing I texted you,” I said with a smile in response to his.

  We read through the report noting the angle of the knife when it was inserted into Canton Walters’ back. Donny found it interesting that there were no drugs in his system and no alcohol either. After the report, he’d included a note about the knife wound, which Alex read out loud.

  “The length of the knife and the angle in which it was driven into the victim’s back indicates the killer is right-handed. It also indicates he or she is at least five feet eight inches tall.”

  Quickly, I looked at Alex and saw he was doing the same thing I was—mentally running through our list of suspects to figure out who was that tall. Elizabeth Freely was nowhere close to being that tall, so she couldn’t have done it.

  “I think we can safely say our favorite hotel desk clerk can be ruled out,” Alex said with a chuckle.

  “I was just thinking the same thing, although I think she might be your favorite desk clerk. I’m a much bigger fan of the strange but nice Joe, the night desk clerk.”

  He took his notepad out of his pocket and flipped to a new page. Writing Elizabeth’s name, he noted next to it she was too short. “Who’s next?”

  “Rose Walters isn’t tall enough either, so I think that seals it with her.”

  After Rose’s name, he wrote Poppy was right. Looking up at me, he gave me that sweet smile again and returned his attention to his list to write Mary Jessick’s name.

  “Mary’s definitely too short. I know you had a soft spot for her, so I’m happy to say she’s off the list now too.”

  “Who does that leave? Are we saying Delilah Roberts did it?” I asked, still unable to believe she could kill anyone. Delilah wasn’t violent. She was needy, but those kind of people didn’t kill others, not as long as they got the attention they craved.

  “She’s definitely tall enough,” he said as I remembered her towering over me and looking nearly the same height as her husband, who had to go at least six foot. She was wearing high heels, so maybe she was tall enough like Alex thought.

  He scrolled back through his documents as I tried to imagine Delilah Roberts ever being angry enough to kill someone. Finally, after a minute, he read off his phone.

  Turning to look at me, he asked, “Do you remember that single diamond earring we found in Canton’s suit pocket hanging in the closet?”

  “I do. I’d wondered if we were ever going to find out about that.”

  “I sent it to be dusted for prints and they found a thumbprint on the post. Guess whose it was?”

  Alex held his phone up for me to read what was written in the report. There in black and white was the name Delilah Roberts.

  “How did you get hers to compare it to? I doubt she has a criminal record.”

  He slid his phone back into his pocket and wrote Delilah’s name in his notepad. “You think too highly of the doctor’s wife. We did have her prints in the system.”

  Was it possible I’d completely misread her innocence and had been fooled by an act? Curious, I asked, “What did she do?”

  He chuckled at how serious I’d become. “It wasn’t anything terrible. Your faith in her is still warranted, at least until we find out she’s Canton’s killer. She was arrested in an underage drinking party incident back when she was seventeen. That’s why we had her prints on file.”

  “Wow. Talk about a permanent record. So the earring was hers. What’s the theory on why she did it?”

  Alex sat back and looked up at my kitchen ceiling. “I don’t know.” He lowered his head and continued, “Maybe she was having an affair with Canton and wanted more but he wouldn’t leave his wife. Maybe he was blackmailing her and threatened to tell her husband, so she killed him. Either way, if he knew her because they were sleeping together, he would have happily let her into his hotel room.”

  “That still doesn’t account for how she got past the night desk clerk, Alex. Unless we’re wholly discounting his ability to see anyone that night, we have a problem with that.”

  “Then she found a way.”

  “And what about how someone her size drove that knife into a grown man’s back? From what the coroner’s report said, Canton Walters was standing up when he was stabbed. So we’re to believe she stabbed him with enough force to drive that knife far enough in to kill him and then moved his body to the chair? He wasn’t a huge man, but he would have been dead weight.”

  Alex thought about these contradictions and shrugged. “I can’t explain it yet, but crazier things have happened. People have been known to lift cars off their children and after it’s over, all experts can say is the adrenaline was pumping through them so they could do impossible feats. Maybe he enraged her to the point that she had the same feeling and with the adrenaline pumping, she killed him.”

  “That report said the only blood found in the room was like ten feet away from the desk. That’s pretty far for her to carry a dead man. She’d h
ave to still be under the influence of that adrenaline to do that, don’t you think?”

  He took a deep breath in. Letting it out slowly, he nodded. “I admit the theory has some holes. I think I know someone who might be able to help us plug up some of those holes, though.”

  I was intrigued. Was there someone in town who had some knowledge of dead bodies other than Donny? “Someone here in Sunset Ridge?”

  Grabbing his phone, he slid his finger down the screen and tapped on Contacts. “No, it’s someone from back in Baltimore. His name is Ken Bryer. He’s a pathologist and an expert on knives and knife wounds. I guess you’d call it his specialty. More like an obsession.”

  “Interesting fixation to have.”

  “I think we should give him a call and see if he can shine some light on these problems we’re having.”

  I waited as Alex called his friend and hoped he’d be able to help us finally get a real break in this case. He seemed to believe in him, so it couldn’t hurt.

  “Ken? It’s Alex Montero. Do you have a few minutes for me to pick your brain?”

  The man said something to make Alex smile and he answered, “Let me put you on speakerphone. I want my partner to hear what you have to say.”

  He set the phone in the middle of the table and said, “Ken, let me introduce you to my partner, Poppy McGuire. Poppy, Ken Bryer.”

  A deep voice came through the phone, and I instantly understood this person wasn’t just some old colleague of Alex’s. “Poppy McGuire? That’s an Irish girl’s name if I’ve ever heard one. I’m happy to finally hear that my friend there has jumped back into the dating pool.”

  I looked over at Alex and shook my head. Together, we both protested, “No, no. It’s not like that.”

  “You sound like twin souls there answering together,” Ken said with a chuckle, making me blush.