Ashes to Ashes, Crust to Crust by Mindy Quigley

Author:Mindy Quigley
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

CHAPTER 17

I sat on one of the built-in benches in the brewery’s main room, across from a very tired-looking Calvin Capone. He’d finished taking Sonya and Renee’s statements, saving my interview for last. We’d gone through the timeline backward and forward—the last times I’d seen Renee, Ulrich, and Sonya prior to that night, Sonya’s previous relationship with Renee, Renee’s phone call summoning me to the scene. Capone was noticeably less relaxed than he’d been in the aftermath of Ronnie Wong’s death. I supposed this time the situation was clearly serious right from the get-go. Not much chance that Ulrich accidentally bumped his head and sealed himself into a cardboard box.

“You let Renee and Sonya go,” I observed, when I’d finished describing again the events that led up to calling the police. “Does that mean you think they’re innocent?”

He reached into his briefcase and held up a U.K. passport. “Renee’s,” he said. “To be sure she stays where we can reach her. And I know where to find Sonya.”

“I can’t believe you’d suspect Sonya.”

“You told me yourself that her last words to you before she left were that if she ran into Ulrich and he tried to mess with her, he would ‘get what’s coming to him.’”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “But she obviously didn’t mean killing him. This is Sonya we’re talking about. I can’t even count the number of times she’s kept me from murdering someone I was mad at. She’s a lover, not a fighter. I guess I should know by now that you always suspect everyone.” I couldn’t control the pinch of bitterness in my voice. I’d just about managed to forget what it was like being in the crosshairs of one of Capone’s investigations. With the Juice Revolution case, I’d almost come to feel like he and I were on the same team, that maybe we were growing closer. Now here I was, across the table from him, physically and metaphorically.

“Another word for ‘suspicion’ is ‘keeping an open mind,’” he said.

“That’s four words.”

He glared at me. “Delilah, are you trying to tell me you don’t suspect Renee? She had motive, means, opportunity. She could easily have engineered a scenario where Sonya was with her when she ‘discovered’ her husband’s body to help with her alibi. You said yourself she didn’t seem especially distraught that Ulrich was dead. I’m not the only suspicious one.” He pointed to himself. “Kettle.” He pointed to me. “Pot.”

“Graham Ulrich had a million enemies,” I said. “You just had a run-in with him the other night. Are you a suspect?”

“You’re pretty good at this, you know,” he said, pressing his index fingers into the inner corners of his eyes.

“Police investigations?”

“No, making my life hell. Because I let myself get drawn into your feud with Graham Ulrich, I’ll have to have an unpleasant conversation with the chief about all of that. He could take me off the case if he thinks it’s a conflict of interest.”

“You didn’t have a choice,” I said.

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