Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 105868 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105868 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Ivy lay below.
“It really is.” Jeb patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Can you tell me the last time you saw the victim?”
“Yes. It was last night at Sam’s Tavern. I had dinner with Ace Osprey, and then Nate Busby showed up, and his wife was in labor.”
Jeb pulled a small notebook from his back pocket and started scratching notes out with an old Bic pen. “What time was this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe about nine?” She closed her eyes briefly, forcing herself to rewind the night. “We had a late dinner. Yeah, it was about nine.”
“Okay. So did you drive to the hospital?”
Had that just been last night? May rubbed her temple. “No. Ace and I walked.”
“Then what?”
“Annie was in labor for five hours and had a baby girl.”
Jeb smiled briefly, though his eyes stayed sober. “I heard. So you were at the hospital from nine o’clock until when?”
“Until a little after two when I went home.”
Jeb kept writing. “Did Osprey stay with you?”
“No. He left me at the hospital around nine-thirty because I locked the door.”
“Where did he go?”
May’s head was really starting to hurt. “I think Ace went back to the bar for a while.”
“How do you know that?”
“He came over to my house around two-ish,” May said.
Jeb angled toward her. “For how long?”
“He stayed until this morning,” she said evenly, meeting his gaze. “He dropped me off at the clinic around eight-thirty this morning.”
Jeb’s pen kept moving, the faint scratch of it loud in the space between them. “Did Ace tell you anything about Ivy?”
The breeze lifted a strand of May’s hair and blew it across her cheek. “No. Of course not. Why would he?”
The trooper looked up, giving her his full attention now. “Not a word?”
“No,” she said, frowning. “Why would he?”
Jeb hesitated. “From what we can tell, Dr. Smirnov, Ace Osprey gave Ivy a ride home from the bar last night. He was the last person to see her alive.”
The words didn’t register at first. They seemed to float between them.
May stared at him. “No,” she said automatically. The creek gurgled somewhere behind the trees. A radio crackled. Lance shifted inside the truck. “That’s not possible,” she said. Ace had come to her house around two. He hadn’t mentioned Ivy. Of course, they’d been rather busy and hadn’t talked much.
“Would Ace have given Ivy a ride home?” Jeb asked.
Slowly, May nodded. “Of course. He wasn’t drinking, and I assume he would’ve given anybody a ride home. That’s Ace. He’s a decent guy.”
“Uh huh. He usually drinks alcohol, right?” Jeb asked.
“Everyone does,” she said quickly. “But he wasn’t drinking last night.”
Jeb cracked his neck, still looking at her. “He didn’t mention giving Ivy a ride when he arrived at your house to, ah, stay the night?”
Defensiveness rose in her. “No, but that’s not something he would’ve thought to talk about. He’s a nice guy, Jeb.” If it wasn’t a big deal to Ace, he wouldn’t have brought it up.
“Right. Isn’t that what they always say about the serial killer next door?” Jeb asked.
Dread slithered through May. What the heck? “Ace Osprey is no killer.”
The bright blue sky above them felt almost cruel in its clarity. Everything looked so normal. The trees. The road. The truck. Lance watching through the windshield. Below them, Ivy lay still beside Two Trout Creek. And suddenly, May wasn’t just grieving her friend.
She was terrified for the man she was falling in love with. Hard.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The wooden chair pressed against Ace’s back as he sat, once again, beside Daisy, who today wore a light blue suit with a pink shirt beneath it. Her hair was coiled neatly into a bun, without a strand out of place. Her lawyer look was a far cry from her waitress look, and he found himself wondering if she earned more tips if she looked harried instead of polished. It was an odd thing to think about while staring down a possible murder charge, but his brain had always wandered when he felt cornered.
The room smelled faintly of stale coffee and old paper. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting everything in a flat glow that made people look harsher than they were. The scarred wooden table separated them from the troopers.
He’d been sitting in a cell for hours waiting for the troopers to get back, and not even Brock could spring him. That had been a new experience. His brother had tried. Ace had seen it in the tight set of Brock’s jaw before they’d shut the bars again.
Troopers Jeb and Paige sat across from him once more, this time even less friendly than before.
“All right, so give us the scoop of exactly what happened last night,” Paige said. Her multiple pens were lined up in front of her. She was writing with a blue one at the moment, her handwriting small and controlled.