“Ask them here.” Ethan’s back was up. I could tell from his body language, legs wide apart, hands moving through the air.
“The station would be better.” In contrast to Ethan, Marcus’s voice was steady and quiet.
“It doesn’t matter,” Derek said. “I don’t mind going.” The pinched lines on his face told me that might not be the truth.
Ethan made a gesture with one hand like he was swatting a bug away. “No, it’s not fine. They think you did this.”
Marcus shook his head. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to,” Ethan retorted. “It’s pretty obvious.”
I stepped between them. “It’s because of what happened at the bar, isn’t it?” I searched Marcus’s blue eyes for some clue to what he was thinking.
“And the altercation in front of Eric’s. Yes.”
Derek’s face reddened and he glanced down at his feet.
Marcus looked at Derek. “I just have to hear your side of things,” he said. “On the record. That’s all.”
Derek looked up. “Really, it’s fine,” he repeated. He glanced at Ethan then shifted his attention to Marcus. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Thank you,” Marcus said.
Ethan pushed past me, blocking Derek’s way. “Don’t do this,” he said between clenched teeth.
Derek shook his head. “It’s okay. It’s not like I wanted the guy dead.” He reached for his jacket, which was hanging on the back of a chair.
I looked at Marcus. “Brady,” he mouthed.
I gave an almost imperceptible nod and the two men left.
Ethan swore, turned away from the door and folded both arms up over his head. “Derek didn’t do this,” he said. “He wouldn’t hurt anyone, even an asshole like that Wallace guy.” He looked at me. “Go after Marcus. Talk to him. Do something!”
I reached for my phone, punched in a number and waited. “I am doing something,” I said.
When Maggie answered I asked if Brady was with her, mentally crossing my fingers that he was.
“He’s right here,” she said. “Would you like to talk to him?”
“Please,” I said.
Maggie handed over the phone to Brady and I gave him the highlights of what had just happened. “I know I’m interrupting your Sunday, and I’m putting you on the spot.”
Brady laughed. “I wouldn’t have gone to law school if I didn’t want to be put on the spot. And you’ve met my father. Shy and quiet is not in our DNA. I’m on my way.”
I thanked him and ended the call.
Ethan had been watching me. “That was Maggie’s boyfriend or whatever the heck he is; Brady, right?”
“Yes, that was Brady; yes, he and Maggie are friends,” I snapped. And yes, you should stop mooning over her like some smitten teenage boy, I added silently. “He’s on his way to the station.”
“You don’t have to bite my head off.”
“And you don’t have to act like a child when Marcus is just doing his job,” I said. I admired Ethan’s loyalty to his friend but I also had the urge to shake him at the moment. His behavior hadn’t helped anyone.
He pulled out his phone. “I need to let Milo know what’s going on.” There was a petulant set to his jaw.
I nodded, set my own phone on the table and decided I needed a bit of fresh air. “I’m just going outside for a minute.”
Ethan’s focus was on his phone. He lifted one hand to let me know he’d heard me but he didn’t say anything.
“Ethan,” I said.
He looked up at me then.
“For the record, Marcus is one of the good guys.” I didn’t wait for a response.
Hercules was sitting in his usual place by the window in the porch. I sat down next to him and explained what was going on. He made sympathetic noises. “You know what this means, don’t you?” I said. “Whatever happened to Lewis Wallace wasn’t an accident.”
A bit more than an hour later Brady brought Derek back. Milo had arrived by then. Everyone had questions and they were all asking them at once. Brady stood in the middle of the kitchen and gave a piercing two-fingered whistle. The room went silent.
“All Marcus wanted was to ask some questions about the times Derek had encountered Lewis Wallace,” Brady said. “He hasn’t been charged with anything. He’s not in any trouble.”
“So does this mean that Wallace guy was murdered?” Milo asked.
“For now, all the police are saying is that he died under suspicious circumstances. They won’t know anything for certain until the medical examiner does the autopsy.”
“This could all turn out to be nothing, then,” Ethan said.
“Yes,” Derek said. “It’s not a big deal. A man died. The police aren’t sure what happened yet. They’re just trying to piece together his last couple of days. That’s it.” He turned to Brady and offered his hand. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” Brady said.
They shook hands and I walked Brady out.
“Are things really okay?” I asked as we stood next to his truck in the driveway.
He nodded. “For the moment. Marcus did ask Derek to stay in town for now.”
I felt a little frisson of anxiety and I rubbed the back of my neck. “He doesn’t have an alibi, does he?”
The lines around Brady’s mouth tightened. “What are you getting at?”
I folded my arms over my midsection. I was suddenly cold. “I checked Lewis Wallace to see if he was still alive. His body was stiff but still warm. That means he’d been dead for more than a couple of hours—probably closer to seven or eight.” I hated that I knew that.
Brady sighed. “Derek says he couldn’t sleep so he went out for a walk.”
“Yeah, Ethan says Derek does that when he’s working on a song and he gets stuck.”
“In a bigger place someone probably would have seen him, but here . . .” He held up a hand and let it drop.
“Brady, did Marcus say anything about how Lewis Wallace died?” I thought about the quick glimpse of the meeting room I’d had. There was something I’d noticed: what I’d thought was an orange-capped pen on the floor on the far side of the room. Now I realized that it was more likely an EpiPen.
Brady shook his head. “He didn’t. I really don’t think he knows yet and if he has any suspicions he’s keeping his cards close to his vest, as my dad would say.” He smiled then. “Speaking of Dad, when are you coming out to the house to wax him again at pinball?”
I smiled. “Is he still making noise about a rematch?”
Brady’s smile stretched from ear to ear. “Oh yeah.” He was a pretty good player himself but not quite as good as I was. I’d spent a lot of time unsupervised as a kid.
“He still claiming the floor was uneven?”
“That, too.”
Brady had bought a pinball machine at the weekend market several months ago. It was out at his father’s house. Both Marcus and Burtis Chapman had bragged about their prowess on the machine. I’d told them I was pretty good as well. They hadn’t taken me at my word. “Once this case is wrapped up I’ll be out,” I said.
“I’m holding you to that,” Brady said, pointing a finger at me.
“Thanks for bailing me out, again, figuratively speaking,” I said.
“Anytime,” he said.
I went back inside and found Ethan waiting for me in the porch; Hercules was sitting beside him on the bench. They both looked up at me.
Ethan got right to the point. “Derek couldn’t kill anybody.”
Hercules meowed his agreement.
I rubbed my neck again. The knot in my shoulders was working its way up the back of my head. “No one said he did. Marcus is just doing his job. He’s asking questions and gathering information. I told you. He’s one of the good guys.”
“Yeah, well, Derek is one of the good guys, too.”
“I never said he wasn’t.”
Ethan exhaled loudly. “That’s good, because Derek didn’t do anything and you need to find out who did.”
chapter 5
