“I thought you said that we didn’t have to be there at any specific time,” she reminded Morgan.
“We don’t,” he agreed. “However, the later we get there, the harder it is to find someplace to park—unless you don’t mind taking a tour of Uncle Andrew’s development—from the other end of it—and it is a very long development.”
Krys nodded. “Okay, you’ve talked me into it,” she told him. Glancing down at herself one final time, she said, “I guess I’m ready.”
He gestured for her to walk ahead of him.
Krys did, then turned around to lock her front door. Getting into his car, she said, “By the way, who were you talking to?”
The question came out of the blue and caught him off guard for a moment. He had already made up his mind to put off telling her about the person who killed Claire until they got back from the party. “When?”
“Just now, before I came out of my room,” she told him.
“I didn’t think you heard me. You must have ears like a bat,” Morgan commented.
Krys laughed. “One of the requirements of being a freelance journalist is to be able to hear people talking to one another practically a mile away.”
Morgan nodded. “Apparently.” Okay, here went nothing. “Well, I was going to wait until today was over to tell you because I wasn’t sure how you were going to take this.”
That definitely aroused her curiosity, not to mention that it sent a chill down her spine. “Okay, now you have to tell me,” she said, repeating and stressing the word “now.” She looked at him expectantly, waiting.
“Claire Williams wasn’t killed by someone that Lawrence Jacobs hired to do her in,” Morgan told her.
“How do you know that?”
“Simple,” he said. “Because it turns out she was killed by her jealous, possessive ex-boyfriend.”
Stunned, she stared at Morgan. She hadn’t even known that there was a jealous ex-boyfriend in the picture. Claire hadn’t said anything to lead her to believe that, but now that she thought about it, it would explain the very faint purple bruise on the woman’s neck. Claire had almost succeeded in covering it up with makeup.
Still, Krys pressed, “Are you sure?” She was having trouble wrapping her head around the scenario. Claire had seemed so calm, so self-possessed. “Who told you there was a jealous boyfriend?”
“My partner, Fredericks, of all people, and yes, he’s sure,” he told her before she could ask. “Turns out the guy, Jason Thompson, didn’t even try to hide it. According to Fredericks, he confessed. He even boasted about the fact.” Morgan slanted a glance in Krys’s direction as he turned down another street. “You do know what this means, don’t you?”
Krys’s shoulders all but slumped. She knew damn well what this meant. It blew up her theory as well as her hard work. “That Jacobs didn’t have her killed. And, extrapolating on that, in all probability he might not be the one trying to have me killed.” She sighed, then looked at Morgan. “But someone certainly is,” she insisted, adding, “I didn’t just imagine those attempts.”
“You don’t have to convince me,” Morgan told her, even though initially he had had to be convinced. “I was there to witness the second attempt on your life and before that, I saw what someone did to your car window.”
She rolled the events over in her mind. “You know, suddenly I don’t feel very festive.” She shifted in her seat, looking at Morgan. “I won’t be any good at your family’s gathering. Why don’t you just drop me off somewhere and I’ll get a ride home?”
Was she kidding? “Right, like that’s going to happen,” Morgan scoffed. “And you’re wrong about not fitting in at the family gathering. This is exactly the right time for you to be there. Trust me, my family is perfect when it comes to getting your mind off this whole thing. In addition to that, you will be totally surrounded by your very own blue wall,” he pointed out. “More than half the people at Uncle Andrew’s gathering are on the Aurora police force—and absolutely none of the people attending would allow anything to happen to you, I guarantee it,” he told her. “You would be safer there than you would probably be any other place in the entire universe.”
Krys shook her head, surrendering. Her wide, grateful smile was a sight to see. “I bet you were on the debate team when you were in high school.”
Morgan shook his head. “No.” When she seemed surprised by his answer, he said, “College.”
She laughed. “You also have a very perverse sense of humor.”
“Guilty as charged,” he acknowledged. “So,” he looked at her for a moment, “did I manage to talk you into attending?”
“If I said no, you’d probably handcuff me to the inside of your car and take me over there anyway.”
Morgan merely smiled, but didn’t say anything one way or another.
She dropped the subject. Instead, she had another question she wanted answered. “So, did Fredericks give you any more details? Tell me everything.”
He told her what he knew. “The ex-boyfriend took lessons on the rifle range. From what I gathered, he wanted to be letter-perfect because he didn’t want to miss his ‘target’ and take a chance on her running away. I guess that when he gave her one last chance to get back with him and she turned him down, she wound up signing her own death warrant.”
Krys sighed as she shook her head. “Dating certainly has gotten much more complicated in this supposedly ‘enlightened’ age,” she murmured under her breath.
Morgan laughed. “Yes, it was so much simpler when fathers got to hold out for horses, trading their eligible daughters for fine specimens of horse flesh.”
Krys looked at him. “What’s so funny?”
“My dad could have gotten rich on my sisters,” Morgan answered her.
“I’m sure that they would love to hear that,” she told him. She gave him an innocent smile. “You’ll
