A Poisoned Past and Puppermints by Aleksa Baxter

Author:Aleksa Baxter
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Aleksa Baxter

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

We settled down in the kitchen. Barb offered us both a beer even though it was only eleven in the morning. She'd clearly already had at least one herself. It was hard to tell whether it was the booze or the babies that had aged her so fast, but where Tim looked much like the kid he'd been in high school she looked like a worn-out version of someone my mother's age.

She plopped down in a chair across from us. "Tim said you're looking into Julie's murder."

"We are," I answered.

"Well, don't know what we can tell you." She took another sip of beer. "She went to that party and then disappeared and then they found her body. That's all we know."

"You were supposed to be her ride home that night, weren't you?" I asked.

"Yeah. Wasn't our fault she wasn't around when it was time to go. Probably off with that older dude she'd been flirting with." Barb slanted a glance towards Tim who'd hunched his shoulders at her bitter tone.

"I wanted to wait for her," he mumbled.

"No point when she wasn't going to have any interest in leaving. And I wasn't going to stick around while she got it on with that dude."

"Is that where she went? Are you guys sure?" I asked.

Tim nodded.

"That wasn't clear in the police report."

He stood up and grabbed himself a beer from the fridge. "We told them about the guy. They talked to him, didn't they?"

"They did. But you didn't tell them you were sure that's where she'd gone. You just said they'd talked at the party."

He took a long swig of beer.

Matt leaned forward. "Can you tell us what happened that night?"

Tim stayed standing by the fridge. "Not much to tell. Julie came to the party with us. Some guys we didn't know showed up. She started talking to one of them. They left together."

"That's not what we heard. We heard you got in a fight with her." Matt focused on Tim with a laser-like intensity that made even me squirm.

Tim took another long swig of his beer. "So I said some things to her before she left. I didn't like the look of the guy."

"You didn't like the look of him, but you let her leave with him?" I could almost feel the intense spotlight of Matt's gaze as he focused on Tim.

"It wasn't like that. It was…" Tim sat down at the table and ran his hand through his hair.

Barb sat back, arms crossed, a sneer on her face. "Go ahead. I know how you felt about her, don't I?"

He stared at a spot in the center of the table. "Julie came to the party with us. It was the first time she'd been to a party like that. First time she'd had anything to drink. And then she's all tipsy and this guy shows up and he's all into her and she's giggling and flirting back. I told him to leave. I told him I'd call the cops because he wasn't invited and it wasn't his property.

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