“Surely it’s not as bad as that?” I asked.
He glanced at me and back to Miles and then seemed to accept that I was part of this too. He said, “Oh, it’s worse.”
“Is it because Pamela phoned you during dinner?” I asked.
He shook his head. “She sent a text. She told me to meet her at our usual spot.”
“What time was this?”
I got the feeling he’d asked and answered these questions so many times that he didn’t even have to think. He simply pulled out his cell phone, clicked a couple of buttons and pushed it toward me.
Unlike fuzzy human memories, the cell phone let me know exactly what time he’d received that text. It had come in at nine thirty-seven, and it simply said, “Babes. Meet me at the usual spot.” And a couple of kissy emojis.
“Where did you meet her?”
“The stables. There’s a flat there that no one ever uses. We’d been there a few times. I went there to meet her, but she never showed up.”
Or so he claimed. We all knew that she’d been killed around that time. What if she had shown up?
“Dad’s hiring me a criminal defense attorney,” Alex said. He said it with a sort of angry bravado, but I could see the fear behind his pose.
“Blimey,” Miles said. “Do you think you need one?”
Alex shrugged. But he wasn’t fooling anyone. He was scared stiff. “How do I know? The police definitely want to stitch me up for it.”
I still thought that he was the most likely murderer, but I was determined to keep an open mind. “When she didn’t show up, what did you do?”
He glared at me. “I waited for her. Why would she text me to meet her if she didn’t want to meet? What kind of a stupid prank is that?” He looked annoyed that Pamela had somehow dragged him into her murder. In that moment, he reminded me a lot of his mother.
“How long did you wait for her?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Fifteen minutes? Maybe twenty?”
I remembered again how wasted they’d all been. Time probably didn’t mean a lot. “Did you see anything? If you didn’t kill her, somebody must have.”
He looked a bit embarrassed. “I might have fallen asleep for a few minutes.”
I was about to press him further when there was a most unwelcome interruption. Rafe walked in.
Chapter 14
I glanced up at him and could see that he didn’t look to be in a very friendly mood. He looked cold, forbidding, and to someone who knew him as well as I did, furious. Great.
“Lucy.” Oh, his voice was so pleasant and smooth. Only I could hear the bite. “Do you have a minute?”
Of course, I wanted to be childish and chicken and tell him I didn’t. I was far too busy hanging out with Miles and Alex, but I knew it was pointless. He’d find a way to get me out of here, so I said, as brightly as I could, “Sure.”
I excused myself and followed Rafe out of the room. As soon as they couldn’t see us, he grabbed my hand and pulled me down the hall and into the office that Alex used. He shut the door. “What are you doing here?” He really did sound furious. But I knew Rafe. He got like that when he was worried about me. Still, as I had told him about a hundred times before, I could handle myself. “I came with Miles. Pamela was my—okay, she wasn’t my friend, but it was my fault that she was even here that night. I’m trying to find out what happened to her.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean you don’t think so?”
“Never mind that now. You need to leave. You are socializing with the main suspect in a murder investigation. Might I remind you that a man who would kill one single female from Boston might well kill another one.”
I glared at him. “I really don’t think Pamela was killed because of her relationship status or where she was from.”
“Why do you think she was killed?”
And wasn’t this the question we’d been poking at for days now. “I don’t know. That’s one of the reasons why I’m here. And why are you here?”
He looked down his nose at me. He could do cold disapproval better than anyone I knew. “I was invited.”
“Lucky you.”
“Hugo asked me to come today and provide moral support, I suppose. The police are still going over the crime scene.”
“I know. I saw the police vehicles outside. What do we know?”
Rafe had connections all over the place, and one of my favorites was some inside source he had who could get him copies of autopsy reports, sometimes before the detectives had them. Usually he was most happy to share, but because he was annoyed with me, I could see him struggling with himself. Then finally he said, “She died of asphyxiation.”
“So she was strangled?”
“Yes. And that belt was the murder weapon.”
He looked at me, and I knew there was something he wasn’t telling me. I’d known him long enough that I knew not to push. I stood there in silence and waited. Finally, he said, “Come with me.”
He didn’t give me any explanation, just opened the door and headed down the hall. Obviously, he assumed I would follow. I was tempted not to, but usually it was better if I did follow him. We’d been talking about the autopsy report, after all. What did he know? Teasing me like that was as good as putting a leash around my neck and hauling me behind him. He knew I’d follow him. And I did. I followed him all the way to the billiard room.
“Why are we here?”
“The forensics people finished in here about half an hour ago.”
“You mean we can go in?”
He nodded. Then he opened
