When Savannah pulled into Gia’s driveway, Cole and Cybil were just pulling up. She and Gia met them on the front lawn.
At least the rain had stopped. Gia hugged Cybil, so happy to see her and Cole had at least decided to stay together. “Hey, guys.”
Cybil turned and hugged Savannah.
Cole just nodded, since he was cradling a stack of pizza boxes high enough to feed a small army, which Gia supposed is what they’d invited.
When Trevor pulled to the curb behind Cole, Gia handed Savannah her key to the house. “Better get Cole inside before Thor decides to greet him and we all end up sharing the stale Cheerios in my pantry for dinner.”
While Savannah let Cole and Cybil in, Gia waited on the lawn.
With three dogs of his own, Trevor knew enough to wait until the front door closed before opening the back door to let Thor out.
Brandy, Trevor’s German shepherd, bounded out behind him.
“Hope it’s okay,” Trevor called. “We didn’t go home after I picked up Zoe and the boys.”
“You know Brandy’s always welcome here,” Gia yelled back.
Thor reached her first, skidding to a stop and wagging his entire body.
Gia laughed and hugged him. “I missed you too, buddy.”
Brandy stopped beside him, then turned his attention to the garage, looked up, and barked.
Thor froze mid-wag, followed Brandy’s gaze up a large tree beside the garage, and started barking. He turned in a circle, then barked some more.
Gia looked up.
Sure enough, Rocky Raccoon lounged on a low branch, one front paw tucked beneath his chin, the other three paws hanging lazily over the branch as he watched the group. Gia was pretty sure he was smirking.
A quick glance at the garbage covering the top of her pail told her they’d most likely interrupted his meal. So much for the trapper. First thing tomorrow, she was calling and demanding her six hundred dollars back.
On the bright side, there was no sign of the bear. Still . . . “Come on in. Let me just get Thor fed, and—”
“Oh, he and Brandy ate before we left the store. I wanted to get them taken care of before the storms,” Zoe said.
Pushing all thoughts of wildlife out of her mind, Gia started toward the door with her friends. At the sound of another car pulling into the driveway, she stopped and waved.
Alfie bounded out of the car and across the lawn. “Hey, Gia. Thanks for the text. I can’t wait to get back into this.”
“Sure thing.” She opened the door, then waited for them to precede her. The aroma of the pizza Cole must have put in the oven overwhelmed her the minute she stepped into the kitchen. Her stomach growled. With seven of them already there, and Hunt and Leo on their way, it didn’t make sense to try to sit in the small kitchen. Instead, she set up a buffet on the table. As long as they took Thor, Klondike, and Brandy into the living room with them, it should work.
Once everyone was settled with pizza, sodas, and a few bowls of chips Savannah set out on the coffee table, they discussed everything but murder, enjoying the moment with friends before turning to more somber subjects.
The cozy house wasn’t exactly spacious, and with her, Savannah, Cole, Cybil, Alfie, Trevor, and Zoe, plus Thor and Brandy sprawled on the floor, Klondike lounging on the back of Gia’s seat, and Hunt and Leo supposedly trying to stop by, it was definitely crowded, but in a good way.
Gia had been a loner when she was married, spending most of her home time alone, which was part of the reason she’d kept her job in the busy deli that had readied her for the café. She’d fled New York to escape—scared, alone, insecure. Though she knew she’d have Savannah, who’d already been her only close friend but had returned to Florida before Gia had married Bradley, she’d never even dreamed of a house filled with so much love, laughter, and family. And a dog! For the first time in her life, she shared her very own home with a pet. Tears threatened as she looked around the room and started to choke up.
Anticipating her thoughts, as usual, Savannah caught her gaze and smiled, then shot Gia her best “I told you so” smirk.
Gia couldn’t help but smile. Everything in her life was so perfect. Except for this murder investigation hanging over them. It was time to get it off their plates so they could move on with happier times. Needing a moment to compose herself, Gia stood and grabbed the Post-it pad Alfie had jotted down the camera notes on, then got a legal pad from her desk. With so many people present, it would be easier to jot the notes on the pad than try to pull out a laptop. She could always transfer them to a document later.
“Okay. First things first. Alfie, can you show everyone the security footage?”
“Sure thing.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, scrolled and tapped, and handed it first to Zoe beside him. “I put together clips in order of appearance, beginning with Officer Erickson at four forty-five, and emailed it to myself so everyone could take a look.”
When Zoe was finished, she passed the phone to Trevor.
Tucking her legs beneath her, Gia munched on barbeque chips and waited until everyone had seen the video. She balanced the pad on her lap, set Alfie’s list atop it, and tapped the pen. A moment later, she laughed at herself, realizing she must have picked up the tapping habit from Savannah and Hunt—a habit that drove Gia crazy—and stilled her hand. After taking the phone from Cybil and reviewing the footage once more herself, Gia handed Alfie’s phone back. “Why don’t we start with the timeline from the camera footage, then try to see who has motive, opportunity, and an alibi.”
Savannah lifted her slice of pizza, cheese oozing off onto her plate. “Why don’t we start with Amanda. She was in the forest at what time?”
Gia squinted to make out Alfie’s chicken scratch. “Seven twenty-eight.”
“So, about a half hour before Rusty was killed.” Savannah set her plate on the coffee table and sipped her Diet Coke. “That would have been plenty of time to get from—which camera picked her up?”
“The grocery store.”
She closed her eyes, traced an imaginary map in the air with one glitter-tipped blue nail. “More than enough time to get from point A, where the camera picked her up, into the parking lot, then walk to where Rusty was found.”
“I don’t know.” Moving on the forest floor, even on the well-beaten trails, was not the same as walking down the sidewalk. It was slightly rougher terrain, and roots stuck up in places, not to mention the critters you had to watch out for—or maybe that was just Gia. “I think that would be cutting it kind of close.”
“Nah.” Savannah’s eyes popped open, and she returned to her pizza. “A brisk pace would be enough. And if she was headed there to kill her husband, chances are her stride would have been determined. My money’s on her.”
“Yeah?” Gia wasn’t convinced. “Even if you’re right, and the woman was cheating on her husband, there’s a huge leap from infidelity to murder. Especially killing someone you’d been intimate with—that would take a special kind of cold.”
“Or the heat of passion.” Setting her plate back in her lap, Savannah ticked points off on her fingers. “One, she had opportunity, because she was in the forest with a reasonable amount of time to have committed the crime, even if she had to run to get to him on time. Two, she had motive. Of course, anyone who’d ever met that man probably had motive, but still, she had to live with him. And if she divorced him, or he divorced her, as Ariyah suggested, she risked having to pay him alimony or share part of her vast fortune with a man she admittedly despised.”
“I can’t argue that.” Gia tried to envision the woman she’d met hightailing it through the forest, gun in hand, stalking her husband with the intention of killing him. It wasn’t a pretty picture, but not one she could completely discount either.
But Savannah wouldn’t be deterred. “And three, she may or may not have an alibi, because even if Caleb Ryan was her lover, and even if he vouched for her, what’s to say he’s telling the truth when he stands to gain at least one business that he obviously wanted and perhaps Rusty’s wife as well?”
Good point. “Okay, that brings us to suspect number two. Caleb Ryan. You just established he had motive, we know he went into the forest five minutes after Amanda, so were the two meeting for a lovers’ tryst, and just so happened to choose the spot Amanda’s husband was about to be murdered in?”
Trevor shook his head. “No way. That’s just too coincidental.”
Zoe nodded her agreement. “What are the chances of that happening?”
“Probably no more than one in a million,” Gia said.
“At best,” Alfie added around a bit of pizza. “Probably much slimmer.”
“But you have to admit, he has motive and opportunity, and his alibi is flimsy at best.” Cybil glanced at Cole before continuing, then winced as she forged on. “Maybe Caleb and Amanda conspired to kill him together and frame Cole for it. Amanda told you she blamed Cole for leaving her to that monster. What better way to get revenge? Because in addition to motive and opportunity, you are probably looking for someone who harbored enough animosity toward Cole to frame him for murder and ruin the rest of his life.”
Even the mouthful she took of her Diet Coke couldn’t wash down the lump in Gia’s throat. What if it did turn out to be Amanda? Would Cole be able to get past that? She glanced at him, his fingers entwined with Cybil’s. It might not be easy, but together they’d make it. He’d have to.
Gia wrote down Amanda and Caleb’s names, then drew columns and added their motives and opportunities. Under each of their alibi columns she put the other’s name with a question mark. Flimsy was right. “How do you feel about Caleb and Brynleigh Colton as our Bonnie and Clyde?”
“The woman from the zoning commission?” Zoe asked. “I remember working with her when I got the permits for the doggy daycare. She seemed competent enough. Why do you suspect her?”
“I guess I don’t really.” Gia jotted down her name anyway. “But she did appear to be arguing with Caleb today, and I just can’t imagine why the business license for the bakery was issued the day after Rusty was killed, and the contract selling the shop to Caleb was signed on the day of his murder. Especially when Rusty supposedly bribed her to squash Caleb’s permits, allowing Rusty to sweep in and grab the building.”
“Which Amanda would have had to been involved in,” Savannah argued.
“True.” She jotted down the names together with a question mark. She’d need more to go on than she had if she wanted to put Brynleigh on the list. Right now, she barely had any kind of motive, and no opportunity, since Brynleigh wasn’t seen on any of the security camera footage—which didn’t mean she hadn’t found another way in, but still . . . And as far as an alibi, for all they knew she could have been in a roomful of people at the time. But someone else did have opportunity. On the next line, she wrote Ariyah O’Neil. “I think I’m leaning toward Ariyah.”
Savannah frowned and scooted closer to the edge of her seat on the love seat. “Why Ariyah?”
Gia shrugged. She wasn’t really sure what made her lean that way, but the woman just didn’t strike her as genuine. She glanced at the time Ariyah had passed the bar camera—two minutes after Rusty—and froze. She lurched up straighter. “Because she lied.”
Cole leaned forward too. “Lied about what?”
“When she came to see me in the café, which I found odd to begin with, she said she saw Amanda leave the hotel ten minutes after Rusty did, but she couldn’t have.”
“Because she would have had to leave a minute or two after him to have been so close on his tail when he passed the camera.” Savannah jumped up and rounded the table to sit beside Gia on the couch so she could look over her shoulder at the paper. “So, she had opportunity. But what was her motive?”
“She also said Rusty was cheating with Brynleigh Colton, claimed she was okay with it and loved him anyway, but maybe she got tired of sharing.” Gia jotted down the information. “But why come into the café and say anything if she’s guilty?”
Trevor shot to his feet. “To establish an alibi.”
“Huh? How could I be her alibi that far after the killing?”
He started to pace, stepping over Brandy then Thor with each circuit. “Think about it. You just happen to be engaged to the investigator in charge of the case and best friends with his partner’s wife, which wouldn’t be difficult to find out, not if you were in Boggy Creek for more than five minutes.”
She couldn’t argue that, and it wouldn’t be the first time she’d ended up in a jam over being close with Hunt, Savannah, and Leo.
“Plus, she stepped forward of her own accord to let you know she was still at the hotel ten minutes after Rusty left, which she wasn’t, and for the icing on the cake, she cast blame on someone else, Amanda, for committing the crime.” In his excitement, he missed stepping over Brandy, tripped, and sprawled face-first onto the rug. Without missing a beat, he held up a finger. “My bet’s on her.”
Gia set the pad aside to help him up, since she was the closest. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” He petted Brandy’s head. “Sorry, girl. I guess I got a little overzealous.”
Gia laughed and returned to her seat, the moment of levity needed but too short.
Cole cleared his throat. “As much as it absolutely pains me to say this, what about Jim Kirkman?”
Gia had thought of that earlier. “He definitely had motive, though he’s waited an awfully long time to seek revenge if that was the case.”
“But no one has spoken to him. For all we know, Rusty could have recently contacted him, just to rub it in his face and gloat.” Cole clenched his fist, and Cybil yanked her hand back. “Oh, sorry, babe. You okay?”
She held her hand back out to him, and he took it. “I’m fine.”
“That would have been just like Rusty.” Cole shook his head, clearly pained by the possibility. “So we have to at least consider he had motive.”
“As far as opportunity, though, we have no idea. Just because Savannah and I couldn’t find him doesn’t mean he wasn’t in Orlando at the time of the murder,” Gia argued. No way did she want to believe it was him, to see him spend the rest of his life in prison after all he’d already been through.
“And who’s to say he doesn’t have an alibi for the time in question?” It seemed Savannah agreed with Gia it was a long shot. Or maybe they both just really wanted a happily ever after for him and Rhonda when this was all said and done. “Okay, so I feel like we need to talk to Amanda and Ariyah again and then find Jim.”
“I’ll tell you what, Gia.” Cole lifted Cybil’s hand, kissed her knuckles. “I’ll open in the morning, and you can go to the hotel and question Amanda and Ariyah, then you can take over after lunch, and I’ll go see if I can find Jim.”
“You sure, Cole?”
“I am.” He nodded, his face red, whether from anger or embarrassment, she couldn’t tell. “I was planning to look for him anyway, and if there’s any chance he’s the killer, I don’t want you or Savannah anywhere near him.”
“Okay.” Not wanting to upset him any further, Gia let it go. “So, what questions does that leave us with?”
Savannah tapped Alfie’s list. “We still don’t know who drove the rental car that passed the camera that morning, or if it had anything to do with Rusty’s death.”
“Huh.” Gia scribbled rental car at the bottom of the list, followed by passenger and a question mark. “We also weren’t able to say for certain whether or not Rusty was alone in the car when he passed by the bar. Did anyone happen to notice if either of the women in the videos was wearing a hat?”
They all shook their heads, and Alfie pulled up the footage and watched again. “Nope. Neither has a hat on. Why?”
“Harley said he saw a lady wearing a hat in the forest that morning while he was washing the poison ivy off his arms.”
“I’ll tell you what . . .” Alfie tucked the phone back into his pocket. “I’ll run a search later, see if I can find any other security cameras in the area I might be able to tap into, then let you know.”
“Great, thanks.” Gia made notes of everything they had to follow up on—the rental car, Rusty’s possible passenger, Jim’s whereabouts, and a lady in a hat.
“There’s something else bothering me.” Cybil had been mostly quiet until then, but she turned to Cole and addressed him directly. “If someone was trying to frame you, and I’m assuming that’s the case between the receipt with the meeting time found with Rusty and the weapon found at the café, how did whoever set it up know you’d be in the forest that morning? Seems like an awfully big risk to leave that to chance.”
His eyes widened, and he lurched to his feet. “Son of a—” Then he yanked his phone from his pocket as he stalked toward the kitchen.
Cybil caught her bottom lip between her teeth and looked around the room at everyone staring at her for answers. “We’ve been meeting early in the mornings and walking in that same general area for about a month now, since it’s close to my house and Cole can’t go too far if he’s going to make it to work on time.”
“But the only way someone could know that . . .” Gia’s blood ran cold.
Savannah finished, “Is if the killer had been following you, or more likely, Cole.”