Her Frozen Cry (Detective Amanda Steele)

“Honestly? I never saw that it mattered.”

She was starting to feel like a record on repeat. “You need to tell me everything—even if you don’t think it’s important.” She glanced at the ceiling, trying to rouse strength. “Eve Kelley died Monday morning.”

“She… she what?” His Adam’s apple bobbed heavily, and his eyes widened with panic.

“We believe she was injected with pentobarbital.”

“Oh my God,” he muttered.

“Two women are dead, Mr. Bishop. Both connected to you.” She paused there, letting that sink in. “Is there anything else we should know?”

He blinked tears and shook his head. “No, I told you everything.”

“All right, now tell me this. Where were you yesterday morning between eight and nine?” Alibis were useless when it came to Alicia’s murder, but they factored in with Eve Kelley, and as much as she didn’t want to believe it, Tony could be the mystery figure on the video.

“I was here at the house.”

“Can anyone verify that?”

He shook his head. “Rachel came down Sunday night, and she and the boys went out for breakfast yesterday. I just didn’t feel like going out in public.”

She couldn’t get words to form, and her brain was kicking them out in nonsensical order.

“So no real alibi,” Trent said firmly. “Did you kill Eve Kelley?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

Amanda stood and paced, chilled. “But you have no alibi.” She wanted to stress to him how serious that was.

“Am I really under suspicion?”

“Should you be?” she countered, took a few seconds to breathe. No alibi for Eve Kelley, access to his wife’s sleeping aid, pentobarbital roughly within reach. There were the fingerprints at the cabin, the shoeprints, the tire treads. “Remind me, when did you last see Alicia?”

“I told you, Monday morning before she left for the cabin.”

“You didn’t pop up there to see her at all, maybe share a glass of wine, talk?” She was extending him a branch to grab hold of.

“No. She wanted to be alone for a few days, and I respected that.”

Only she wasn’t alone the entire time…She tried to push that from her mind—they didn’t have a clue who the visitor had been—but it could have been Tony. Was he bald-faced lying to her? Or was it more an omission, like with the nanny. Speaking of… “Before we go, we’ll need Tina Nash’s information.”

Tony frowned.

“What is it?”

“I’ll get you her info, but there’s something you should know before you talk to her.”

What now? His forewarning had Amanda’s stomach clenching. “Tell us.”

He licked his lips. “There may have been an… incident… between us.”

“By incident, you mean what, exactly?” Amanda asked.

“I kissed her.” The confession came out on a long breath. “I’m not proud of it.”

“I wonder why,” Amanda said.

“Don’t judge me. Please. Especially not now. But Alicia could be all about the business. She was gone all hours of the day and night. She’d come home exhausted, drink some Sleep Tight, and crawl into bed. That’s if she didn’t lock herself in the home office and work.”

Amanda momentarily forgot his disloyalty. CSI Blair told them that with the amount added to the sleeping liquid, it would likely have taken days, but she’d been basing that on Alicia taking the recommended dosage. Could Alicia have been poisoned just on the night she died, not over a period of time? “What do you mean she drank some?”

“I’m quite sure she took more than the label says to.”

“So if a bottle was down about half, how many nights do you figure that would have taken her?” Trent asked, his pen hovering above his notepad.

“Two or three nights?”

Amanda glanced at Trent, her heart racing. “She took that much in one go?”

“Yeah. I tried to tell her it wasn’t good for her, but she wasn’t hearing it.”

Amanda was figuring how this revelation fit with the investigation. It opened the possibility that her bottle had been tampered with before she left home. Someone in this house? And what about the other two bottles they’d collected from here? Were they also laced with pentobarbital? She’d check with the lab first thing in the morning. But now, she had to truly consider that Tony had poisoned Alicia. “What size shoe do you wear?”

“Eleven.”

The same size as the print by the cabin window. “Two more things you can do for us.”

“If it gets you to go.” He glanced away from her after saying this. Any embers of a previous friendship were frayed, possibly never to be stitched back together.

“We need to look at your shoes and the tires on your vehicle.”

“Sure. Whatever it takes.”

“We will also need Alicia’s computer,” Trent said.

“No, I told you—”

“We received approval from a judge to take it with us,” Amanda said. “I can get him on the phone if you wish.”

Tony huffed. “I’ll be right back.”