Broken Bird (The Last Picks Book 4) by Gregory Ashe

Author:Gregory Ashe [Ashe, Gregory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodgkin & Blount
Published: 2024-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

The best part about Sheriff Acosta was that she didn’t yell. At least, not usually. It was also the scariest part. Because when she asked questions like “What exactly did you think you were doing?”, they were a lot more terrifying because they were delivered with a quiet, matter-of-fact rage.

“I know it got, uh, a little out of control with Pippi and—well, Ophelia running off,” I said. “But wait until you hear what we talked about.”

I ran through my conversation with Ophelia, and when I’d finished, the sheriff said, “We’re still waiting on tests from the lab, but there was a bottle of scotch in Marshall’s room, and it had some sort of residue at the bottom. Our working theory is that this was how he was poisoned.”

Which lined up with Ophelia’s statement that Marshall had started drinking at the end of their argument, and which also fit the timeline for Marshall’s death at the library. “What about fingerprints?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What? Come on, that means you have something, and you think it might mean something.”

“It means I’m not releasing sensitive information about an ongoing investigation.”

“But there was something significant about the prints. There’s something you can use.”

The sheriff touched the baby hairs gelled at her forehead, checking them without seeming to realize it, and finally she shook her head. “All I’ll say is that the bottle itself has not currently provided a valuable lead.”

Which meant—what? There were prints, but they all had some sort of other possible explanation. For example, Hayes’s prints were certainly on there, but that made sense since he’d bought the scotch and given it to Marshall. And Elodie, as Marshall’s personal assistant, might have carried the bottle for him—I remembered what she said about how he hated to carry things. And Ophelia had been in the room with him that night. She might have picked up the bottle to look at it. All sorts of casual explanations.

“What about the divorce papers?” I asked.

“There weren’t any,” the sheriff said. “Not that we’ve found, anyway.”

That felt like confirmation that Ophelia had lied to me—who else would have had a reason to get rid of those papers?

After being debriefed by the sheriff—which, to the untrained eye, might have looked a little like a dressing-down—I was free to go. The logical course of action would have been to continue the conversation by talking to Hayes. I had all sorts of great questions to ask him like: did you poison that bottle of scotch you gave Marshall? And, are you and Ophelia in cahoots, because she’s surprisingly difficult to read? But I didn’t know where Hayes was staying, and the sheriff didn’t know where Hayes was staying. Which meant that instead of going to find Hayes, I went home and ate linner, which is definitely a meal everyone should have on their schedule.

(M&M’s with cookies ’n cream ice cream. It hits three of the four major food groups: ice cream, candy, and cookies.)

For some reason, after linner I felt gross and sleepy.

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