I took a deep breath and attempted to control the panic welling within me.
“And you know this… how?” I asked.
“Nico, my guy on the inside of the department,” he said. “Mallory wanted to arrest you today, but he convinced her to gather more evidence.”
“What evidence do they have against me right now?” I asked. “That DNA must have come back as someone else.”
“It was a blonde hair and it’s yours.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror. Yup. Still had blonde hair. I shook my head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Gina, your hair was found at the crime scene!” he yelled. “How the heck did it get there if you weren’t there? You know better than to poke around like that!”
“I didn’t go into the office where Kevin was killed,” I said calmly. “I swear to you, I didn’t.”
“She didn’t, Trevor,” Daisy yelled. “I was there.”
My talking dog wouldn’t be any help whatsoever in a court of law. In fact, she would most likely be a hinderance because everyone would think I was one marble short of a set when I announced I could hear my dog speaking to me. I hadn’t even confided in Trevor that Daisy and I were having conversations!
“Then how did your hair get in there?”
We sat in silence. Pursing my lips, I tried to think of a suitable explanation. None came to mind. “I… I don’t know,” I finally whispered. “Let me call you back when I get home.”
“Where are you?”
“I’ll call you in a few.”
After setting the phone down on the passenger seat, I pulled out onto the highway again, thoroughly perplexed about how I’d ended up in the situation. I replayed my interaction with Rainy at the bar. At first, I thought she’d maybe picked up some of the water I’d spit out and placed it in the office. But no. A hair had been found.
She’d touched my shoulder. Had she gotten a loose hair caught in a ring? Or maybe she’d meant to grab it?
Once I’d recovered from my coughing fit at the bar, she’d led me to the hallway so I could see the murder scene. Maybe I’d been standing in front of an air duct and a hair had blown into the office?
“It’s time for me to talk to Rainy again,” I muttered.
As I arrived at my street, I noted a police cruiser up ahead. It turned down another street, and I appreciated the sheriff’s department patrolling my neighborhood, even if nothing ever happened. I’d like to keep it that way.
Once we were home, I took off Daisy’s vest and she immediately ran into the living room to roll around on the carpet. “This feels so good!” she yelled. “It’s getting all the scratches!”
As I watched her flip flop around, I tried to accept the fact that Rainy may have set me up to take the fall for Kevin’s murder. And if that were the case, then she was the killer.
There wasn’t another explanation.
“Can you please feed me now?” Daisy asked. Something in the carpet had caught her attention. She slowly stood, her nose to the floor.
“Yes.”
I went to the kitchen and prepared her meal. She didn’t come running, which was highly unusual. Glancing around the corner, I found her still concentrating on the carpet. “What did you find?” I asked. “If it’s a bug, please don’t eat it.”
“It’s that weird smell that I caught a few days ago. You said it was the bar.”
“Well, it could still be the bar,” I suggested.
“But it smells fresh,” she muttered. “Maybe it’s just something from the outside that you’ve stepped in more than once.”
“Maybe. Come eat.”
I didn’t’ want to think about what I’d stepped in and what was now ingrained in my carpet. Maybe I should institute a rule of no shoes on the carpet, but it would be one that even I would have trouble following. My brain was always elsewhere when I walked into the house, onto the next thing that needed to be done.
As Daisy wolfed down her food, I sat down at the table and made notes in my notebook.
Bobby: smells like hamburgers, cleaning solution and strong laundry detergent
I still had suspects to interview, but I felt like I was running out of time. Maybe I needed to see Rainy first. She seemed to be front and center in all of this, but I wanted to exhaust all my other possibilities of who the killer could be before confronting her.
My phone rang. Trevor. Dang it. I’d forgotten to call him as I said I would. Since he was so angry with me, I almost didn’t answer. Me forgetting to return his call would probably only make his temper worse.
“Hey,” I said. “I was just about to call you.”
“Right,” he grumbled. “I’m on my way home.”
“Trevor, there’s no need for that. I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. You think you are, but nothing could be further from the truth.”
“I’m being set up,” I said, sighing. “I’m pretty sure it’s Rainy.”
“How the heck did you come to that conclusion?”
“I went to see her the day after Kevin died,” I explained. “I choked, and water shot out my mouth, so I thought that may have been the source of the DNA, but then you said it was my hair. So, I was remembering that she placed her hand on my shoulder after I choked, to check on me. Maybe she got a hair tangled in her fingers then?”
He was silent for a long moment. “That’s a possibility.”
“And then I was thinking about being in the doorway to the office. Maybe the air conditioner was running and I was standing in front of one of the registers? Perhaps a hair blew inside? Because I swear to you, I didn’t step foot in there.”
“Also a good working theory,” he said. “We’ll talk about it more when I get home.”
He hung up, obviously still irritated with me. With a sigh, I set my phone down.
What to do now?
“If Trevor is coming home, then I better get some groceries in this house,” I muttered.
“Wait! Trevor is coming home?” Daisy yelled. She stared at me with perked ears, her tail straight out behind her.
“Yes, he is.”
“My Trevor! Trevor who loves me and I’m his favorite!”
As she zoomed around the living room, I smiled. I loved seeing her happy and excited.
“When will he be here?” she asked.
“A couple of hours.”
“What do we do until then? I think I should wait right here. He’ll want to pet me and tell me how pretty I am.”
“I’m sure he will,” I replied. “But I need to go to the grocery store.”
“Okay, I’ll stay here on the couch and watch the house and wait for Trevor. You go do things.”
As she curled up on the sofa facing the front door, I gathered my purse and keys. “I’ll be back shortly.”
“Okay, Gina. Bye! I’ll watch out for Trevor!”
I took my time in the grocery store, picking up Trevor’s preferred beer and potato chips. I hoped to soothe his anger with a steak and baked potato for dinner, as well as his favorite ice cream. The way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, or so I’d been told.
After loading my purchases into the trunk, I glanced up the street toward Roses in Bloom. To my utter shock, Rose Cox was standing at the door, unlocking it. As she pushed her way inside, I slammed my trunk closed and debated what to do.
I wanted to ask her about her relationship with Bobby, but I also didn’t want to ruin the dinner I’d just purchased. It felt as if the temperatures were hovering close to the mid-nineties. It wouldn’t take long for the food to spoil and ice cream to melt all over the trunk of my car.
Should I run home and dump the groceries and collect Daisy? She could sniff around Rose and catch her scent. Did I think Rose was involved in the murder? Earlier, I was certain she had nothing to do with it. Now that I’d uncovered her lie, I wasn’t so sure. I just didn’t understand how it would all fit together.
However, I had a feeling Daisy wouldn’t budge from the couch until Trevor made his appearance, no matter how much bacon I promised her. Besides, Rose may be gone by the time I returned.
A quick conversation between Rose and me would only take a few minutes.
“Five minutes,” I muttered. “That’s it.”
I slammed the trunk closed and jogged down the street to the florist, stuffing my car keys in my shorts pocket and throwing my purse over my shoulder. After wiping sweat from my brow, I cursed, swung the door open and immediately began to sneeze.
Pretty arrangements sat on the glass countertop. Festive helium balloons floated near the ceiling in a corner. Rose was nowhere to be seen. “Rose?” I called.
Sounds wafted from the back room hidden by a floral curtain. “Be right there!” she replied.
A moment later, she emerged. Her brow furrowed, as if she weren’t quite sure who I was. I sneezed again, then said, “Gina Dunner. We met at On The River.”
She snapped her fingers. “Right! Of course! The true crime investigator!”
With a smile, I nodded. “I was wondering if you had a few minutes to answer some other questions I have.”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about your affair with Bobby Marshall?”
The color drained from her cheeks. “W-what?”
“Bobby Marshall,” I repeated. “When I spoke with you at On The River, you made it seem like Kevin was the bad guy in your relationship, but you never mentioned you were also having an affair. Why is that?”
She blinked three times then squared her shoulders. “Who told you?”
“Does it matter?”
“It’s not relevant to Kevin’s death.”
“Everything is relevant in a murder investigation, Rose. That’s a pretty important piece of information to keep to yourself.”
I reached over and pulled a yellow rose from one of the arrangements. As I brought it to my nose, my eyes began to water and another sneeze tickled my sinuses. I quickly put it back.
“How is it relevant?” she asked. “It does nothing to give me motive to kill Kevin.”
“No, it doesn’t. You already had that motive. Cold, hard revenge. Kevin never put you on the ownership of the bar, he had an affair, and he took you out of his will, then he announced all of that to you in the middle of a restaurant. Trust me, I’d be angry too. But what I’m wondering is if you had the guts to pull the trigger yourself. Or, maybe Bobby gave you a hand with that?”
“Absolutely not,” she spat, then pointed toward the door. “You come in here with your nose so far into my personal business, you can’t even breathe. I didn’t kill Kevin, and neither did Bobby. Please leave now.”
I stood my ground and crossed my arms over my chest. “Not until you tell me why you lied about your affair with Bobby.”
“It’s none of your business!” she shrieked. “I had nothing to do with Kevin’s death!”
“You tried to stab him in the middle of a restaurant!” I shouted, then took a deep breath and tried to regain my composure. “Did you go from that to pulling the trigger? What he did to you was wrong, Rose. Did Bobby help you get your revenge?”
She met my gaze, then it slid to over my shoulder. Her eyes widened and she took a step back. “Oh, no,” she whispered, bringing her hand to her heart.
I turned to find a huge man at the door. Bald White guy with green eyes, but the thing that stuck out to me the most was his crooked nose. How did he breathe out of that thing?
He swung open the door and smiled, then flipped the lock and turned the open sign to closed. Raising his hands to his sides hulk-like style, he yelled, “Stevie wants his money, Rose!”
Dang it. I should’ve left when she told me to.