Eve didn’t so much frown as she pouted. In a pretty sort of way, of course. “Why, that sweet little Kaitlin told you that, didn’t she? I’ll bet that little girl just tells you all sorts of things. Sharing. It’s so important to any relationship.” She finished her riff with a lift of her shoulders. “Now, what was it we were talking about?”
“Drago Kravic.” Tyler was not amused. I could tell because a muscle twitched at the base of his jaw. “What can you tell me about him?”
“Not a thing, of course,” Eve said, at the same time I blurted out, “We saw him with Beyla, just a little while before he died.”
Eve gave me one of those looks but I wasn’t about to be put off. She might have steamrolled me into keeping quiet when Kaitlin questioned us the night Drago died, but that’s when we thought the man had died of a heart attack. Now that we knew it was murder…
Well, it was my civic duty to tell Tyler everything I knew, wasn’t it?
“You saw the deceased? With her?” Tyler’s laser gaze swiveled over to where Beyla was chopping parsley while she talked quietly to John. “She just told me she didn’t know the man.”
“Then she’s lying,” Eve interjected. And I had to admit, her theory about Beyla was growing more and more convincing. “They were fighting, her and Drago. Right before he keeled over.”
After a year of dating her and another few months of engagement, Tyler was well aware of Eve’s tendency to overstate things. He turned to me. “Is it true?”
I nodded.
“And when exactly was that?” he asked.
I thought back to everything that happened that night. “It was just after nine o’clock,” I told Tyler. “I remember because Eve left her watch here. We were already on our way home, and we turned around and came back. When we got here, we saw Drago and Beyla in the parking lot. We couldn’t hear everything they were saying, but it was pretty obvious that it wasn’t a friendly chat. A couple minutes later, we came up here and got Eve’s watch. When she slipped it on, she commented that it was exactly nine twenty-five.”
“That’s impossible, officer.” Though we’d kept our voices down, John, the accountant, had apparently been listening. He walked over and joined in the conversation. “Beyla and I went for coffee after class that night. By nine twenty-five… well, I’m certain we’d already ordered and had our lattes in front of us. There’s no way she could have been anywhere near here at that time, or even for a half hour or so before then.”
I shook my head, certain of the facts. “Eve checked her watch. It was-”
“I’m sure I have the receipt somewhere.” John patted down the pockets of his brown polyester pants and peeked in the pocket of the yellow shirt he had buttoned all the way to the neck. (After all, he is an accountant.)
“Maybe it’s at home in the jacket I wore that night,” John said. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s where I stuck it. I’d be glad to stop at the police station with it when I find it. Then you’ll see, officer. Beyla and I got to Starbucks just a couple minutes before nine. I know their receipts are stamped with the time. There’s no way these ladies could have seen Beyla arguing with that man. At nine twenty-five, Beyla was with me.”
Tyler dismissed John with an appreciative nod, then turned toward Eve and me. “You were saying?”
“We were telling you what happened!” Eve stepped toward him, her eyes snapping. “If you’d pay half the attention you need to pay, Tyler Cooper, you’d know-”
“What? That you’d like nothing better than to see me fall flat on my face when it comes to this investigation?” Tyler snorted. “Oh yeah, don’t pretend it isn’t true, Eve. Kaitlin told me how uncooperative you were the night she was here.”
“We told her everything she needed to know.” I butted in. Better fudge the truth than to watch Eve and Tyler go at each other. Even though they kept their voices low, there was no mistaking the animosity between them. The other students in class had stopped what they were doing and were watching the show. “We reported everything just as it happened.”
“Except that when you talked to Officer Sands”-Tyler turned to me, automatically making theyou plural-“you never mentioned that you saw Drago with Beyla. And Beyla says she never laid eyes on the man. Seems kind of odd, doesn’t it? Plus, in case you weren’t paying attention, Beyla has an alibi. You swear she and Drago were at each other’s throats at a time when a witness says they couldn’t have been together. You admit you didn’t bother to mention any of this to Officer Sands. And now all of a sudden, you remember? I can’t believe it, Eve.” He looked her way, and suddenly, it was personal again. “Don’t you have anything else to do but leave the scene of a man’s death and go home and concoct a crazy story just so you can make my life more difficult?”
“It’s not like that at all,” I said. “We didn’t mention Beyla to Kaitlin because-” Eve shot a dagger look in my direction, and I stopped short. I knew exactly what that look meant. I’d better not mention how jealous she was of Kaitlin, or more to the point, how jealous she was of Kaitlin’s relationship with Tyler. If I did, I’d have to start looking for a new best friend.
“There is something else we should tell you,” I said instead. “Drago mentioned somebody named Alba. Alba Stru. Right before he died.”
“Sure he did.” Tyler smiled at me the way I’d seen a mother smile at a child who was clearly making up a tall tale. “What else did he say to you?”
“Nothing.” I nodded, sure of it. “He mentioned Alba, and that was it. We thought he was having a heart attack.”
“Exactly what you were meant to think.” Tyler nodded. “The symptoms of a heart attack and foxglove poisoning are very similar.”
Foxglove. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered my mother mentioning foxglove. She was an avid gardener, and she liked to tell me stories about the flowers she grew.
“Foxglove is what’s used to make digitalis, the heart medicine,” I said.
Tyler nodded. “And too much of it… well, you saw what can happen.”
“Wedid see Beyla fight with Drago.” Eve stepped toward Tyler, her arms close to her sides, her hands curled into fists. “Just like we saw Monsieur Lavoie arguing with Drago earlier in the evening, before class even started.”
“Now you’ve got another cock-and-bull story to tell me?” Tyler rolled his eyes. “Give me a break, Eve. Why don’t you just admit that you can’t get me out of your system and you’ll do anything to make my life miserable, just so you can have a little revenge? Even if it means trying to mess with my mind by introducing all this nonsense into the investigation. Let me remind you that in this case, what you’re doing is called obstruction of justice. It’s not cute, and I’m not going to fall for it-or for you.”
Tyler’s words were as sharp as a slap. If I felt their sting, I could only imagine how much they hurt Eve.
I was just about to tell him to mind his manners when Eve stopped me, one hand on my arm. “You got me there.” The smile she turned on Tyler was sleek. “I was pulling your leg, Tyler, honey. And you had it all figured out. You always were as smart as they come. I should have known you’d see right through it. Iwas just trying to mess with your mind. We never saw Beyla and Drago together. We never saw that cute little ol’ Frenchman argue with Drago, either. Why, we’re just two little girls who are trying to add a little bit of excitement to our dull, dull lives.” She batted her eyelashes at him. “Forgive me?”
Tyler didn’t answer. He flipped his notebook closed and walked away.
“What was that all about?” I asked Eve as soon as he was out of earshot. “You know that’s not true.”
“I sure do.” Watching Tyler say something to Jim, Eve smiled. It wasn’t until he’d left the classroom that she turned back to me. “Don’t you remember when he broke up with me, Annie? I do. Like it was yesterday. He told me he couldn’t marry me because I wasn’t smart enough.”