Just like he surely knew that Fritz’s body had been found in his small den at their home, having been bashed over the head with a heavy stained-glass paperweight. What he wouldn’t know was that she hadn’t even been in that room since Fritz had moved out the month before. Not even to clean. That there’d been no way her hair and fibers from her apron could have been found on the murder weapon, which he kept in the den.
She’d told more than one Colton at the time of her arrest
—though, from what she’d gathered since, that part of her statement wasn’t going to make it into court. And then her attorney had told her not to say any more. Her lawyer’s inexperience had nearly cost her the rest of her life.
Until Clarke Colton had helped prove that Randall Bowe had tampered with the evidence, planting her hair and fibers on the weapon. She still could hardly believe it all.
Wondered if she’d always be in shock over it...
“So, who would want Fritz dead?” Clarke asked. “Can you think of anyone who might have something to gain from this?”
“Some woman was paid to say that she’d seen me near my house at the time of the murder, when, in fact, I’d been walking in the park downtown, on my dinner break from work. Maybe she has something to do with all of this,” she suggested.
He shook his head. “She’s already been questioned extensively. She doesn’t even know who, ultimately, paid to have her testify. She was approached, needed the money and didn’t ask questions...”
Everleigh wondered how little it had taken for the woman to ruin an innocent person’s life. A hundred dollars? Two?
And she wondered what might have happened to the woman, to get her to sell her soul in such a way. Nothing good, she was sure.
Life was a lot harder on some than others. Having grown up in the neighborhood she had, she knew that firsthand. Desperation drove people to do unsavory things. She’d seen it again and again in her own volunteer work.
And thanked God every day that she’d been spared. Glancing out his office window, directly beneath the room she’d been allotted, looking out over downtown Grave Gulch, she tried to focus without undue emotion attached to her thoughts. Her memories.
At the time of the murder, she’d been pretty much in shock, dealing with the divorce, and with the fact that Fritz had been spreading rumors about her moral character, labeling her a cheater. And then she’d been arrested. It was just so hard to comprehend it all...and to do so without a feeling of helplessness that...
Wait.
“Fritz lied about me, blaming me for infidelities that didn’t happen... What if he did the same to someone else? What if one of his girlfriends was putting pressure on him to leave me, maybe threatening to tell me or someone else about their affair, and he started telling lies about her to protect his reputation?”
It made sense.
Good sense.
And was exactly the kind of thinking she needed to be doing to help herself...
Clarke sat forward, a look of interest on his suddenly businesslike face. “That would establish a motive, for sure,” he said, and then turned back to the desktop computer, typing and reading. She was left wondering if she should clear out, head back up to the room that was a much nicer cell than the one she’d left, but pretty much still a cell.
She’d packed in such a hurry, she hadn’t brought much with her to do, but she loved to read. And could possibly lose herself in one of the books in her room.
Or she could think about her future. What she wanted to do with it—if she lived to get to it. She needed to find a financial adviser she could trust to help her deal with Fritz’s insurance money. And with the sale of the building.
And to call someone to clean up the mess in her house after the crime scene was released. She needed to go through things and get rid of a lot of it. Everything of Fritz’s, or anything that reminded her of him, had to go. To his parents. And to the community center...
“There’s nothing in here about any of the girlfriends in particular.” Clarke’s words carried on as though there hadn’t been a few minutes’ lapse in their conversation.
“I didn’t know about them,” she told him. “Neither did his family. It stands to reason that he was good at keeping them a secret. Out-of-town weekends tend to help with that.” She hadn’t meant to be snarky.
This man was helping her. Not holding her hostage. He wasn’t making a prisoner out of her. Her own life choices had done that.
Because she’d been charmed by a charmer.
And now she was sitting across from another one. Her stomach jolted when he turned his compassionate blue eyes on her.
“Word is that you’ve had a lot of girlfriends,” she said. “The guard who was talking to me while we waited for my ride home from prison mentioned it when she told me that it was you who found the evidence that got me exonerated...”
Skin turning red, she knew she couldn’t leave it at that. “Because I’d asked her,” she admitted, rather than lay the impropriety solely on the guard who’d been only too willing to dish on a Colton. Even though Everleigh knew it was inappropriate, she was genuinely curious.
“You asked her about the number of girlfriends I’ve had?” He sounded...surprised...but not affronted. More...curious, at least.