“Really?”
“Yeah. She was super paranoid that Ryan was cheating on her like he did Julia.”
“Mal!” Penny hisses.
“Something to tell me?” I stare at Penny.
“He was,” she whispers. “We slept together. Once. Before they got married,” she adds hurriedly.
Another motive?
“Just once?” I clarify.
“Yeah. It was a drunken mistake.”
“Aren’t they always?” Devin mutters.
I flick my fingers against his hand to shut him up. “When did it happen?”
“Maybe a couple weeks before they got married. I can’t remember exactly.”
“Mhmm.” I glance down at her burgeoning stomach. “And that would be…”
Her silence tells me everything I need to know.
“Thanks, girls. I can see you’re upset, so I’ll leave you to it. But like with Detective Nash, y’all think of anythin’, you call me.” I hand them two cards from the holder in my purse and grab Devin’s arm.
We leave the store to two hushed goodbyes, and I open the cruiser door.
“Did you know that?” I ask my brother.
“Not a clue. And I don’t think Drake does, either.”
“Hm.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking they both have motives. And that I need a cupcake to process this.”
Three cupcakes and a measure of Jack Daniel’s later and all I’ve done is make more suspects for myself. Which is a good thing—kind of. Dean and Marshall have been wiped off the board, but Mike and Grecia are still very much up there, now accompanied with Penny, Ryan, and Mallory.
If Ryan knew that Penny was pregnant with his baby, he may have wanted Lena out of the way, and the same for Penny. She may not have wanted Lena around in case she found out, because I’m assuming she hadn’t. Both of them have strong motives and weak alibis. They were both alone at the time of the murder—unless they were together, which could be a possibility. Penny said that they’d only been together once, but then again, she’d slept with her best friend’s husband, so she’s not exactly a reliable source.
I rub my temples. A continuing relationship would be the strongest reason for a motive. Both of them could have wanted her out of the way.
Mallory has a motive, too, though. Albeit a weak one. Maybe she got mad and came back after she left. But she’s tiny. How would she get Lena to take the poison? The autopsy said that it had been in her dinner, so maybe she snuck in, laced her takeout with hemlock leaves, and hid again.
Or maybe Penny did that and Ryan did all the leg work.
After all, the husband is always the most suspicious, and I certainly have reason to be suspicious of him.
Baking a bun in another woman’s oven is a big-ass secret to keep from a woman you’re paying several thousand dollars.
Of course, that raises another question.
Why would he pay me if he were the killer?
“Brody. My favorite brother.” I lean against the frame of his front door. My smile is so sweet that I’m in danger of rotting my teeth.
“What do you want?”
“I have two questions.” I hold my fingers up.
“No. I can’t answer them.”
“Oh, come on. They’re yes-or-no questions. I’ll swap you.”
He narrows his eyes. “Trent and Drake already fell for that.”
“Fine. I’ll go first, and if you already know it, I’ll go.”
He sighs. “Shut the door and spit it out.”
I hurriedly close the door and skip into the front room. “Penny Prescott is pregnant.”
“Oh, really? The rapidly inflatin’ beach ball on her front didn’t clue me into that,” he says dryly.
“With Ryan Perkins’s baby.”
“Fuck off.” Brody turns lightning quick, dropping all traces of sarcasm from his tone. “Where’d you find that out?”
Aha! “From her, yesterday. When I went to Lena’s store. And neither of them has an alibi for the time she was killed. They were alone, supposedly.”
“You’re not saying it to fuck with Drake?”
“No. If I were, I wouldn’t have told you, would I? I get how much this could change the investigation, so I’m being the bigger person.”
“Because you want information.”
“Yes.” I grin.
“Spit it out,” he sighs.
“Do you know where Lena was killed?”
“No, but a salad inside a kebab containing Lena’s DNA and suspected traces of hemlock leaves were retrieved from the store. We’re currently assuming that she was taken to an unknown location, tortured, then kept there until she could be transferred to your Dumpster.”
“Great. So it was one hundred percent premeditated.”
“That’s the theory, sis. Yeah.”
I sigh. “Great. Random killing?”
“Can’t say. It originally appeared that way, but like you say, Ryan and Penny have one hell of a fuckin’ motive to get rid of Lena.” He pulls his phone out. “Detective Nash? Yeah, this is Detective Brody Bond… I’m bringing Noelle in to talk to you. She found out some very interesting information while talking to Penny and Mallory yesterday… No, trust me, they didn’t tell you this… All right.” He pockets it. “He said if your ass isn’t in his office in five minutes, then he’s definitely arresting you.”
It just doesn’t sound as sexy when the message comes from my baby brother.
“You’re kidding me,” I hiss, grabbing Brody. “Hide me and get me out of there!”
“You have-a Italian cops?”
“Brody,” I hiss again, hitting him. “You cannot let me go in there!”
“Why-a not?” Nonna yells.
“Nonna?” Trent’s voice breaks through Nonna’s go-to Italian obscenities. “What are you doin’ here?”
“Trying to get-a Noella a husband!”
“Kill me,” I groan. “Just do it. Right here.” I point to my forehead. “You have your gun. Please.”
Brody laughs hard and opens the door to the station.
“Noella!” Nonna exclaims. “They have-a no Italian cop-a!”
“Nonna.” I fake a bright smile. “What a surprise. What are you doin’ here?”
“I try to get-a you a husband!”
“No. I don’t believe you,” I reply flatly, sarcasm hitting my words hard. I meet Trent’s eyes. “Please take her home, Trent. No one needs to be subjected to her husband-finding efforts.”
“My granddaughter will be-a no zitella!”
“She’s not thirty yet, Nonna. Come back to this next year when the matter is slightly more pressin’,” Trent intervenes, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. “Let’s go get you one of those pies you like from the bakery and take you home.”
“No husbands here!” she mutters, trotting past. “I want-a the paper! Lonely hearts section-a!”
“Sure, Nonna. Whatever,” Trent responds to her.
“You just lost all babysitting privileges!” I yell after him.
No, no, no. I cannot believe she did this. Dammit, I have, like, eight years before my ovaries send my eggs to the grave, maybe even ten years. This is not a pressing manner. I could even freeze them, right? That’s a thing now? This is not serious.
She is not serious, coming into the local PD and searching for a husband for me.
God, she is. She damn well is.
I want a new grandmother.
I turn around and bury my head in my arms on the reception. Charlotte pats my shoulder with a, “There, there, hon,” and I take deep breaths. Honestly, the woman knows no bounds. Devin is older than I am and she’s not pressing him to marry Amelia. No, she’s happy he’s found a good Catholic girl. Hell, Brody is single and she’s not getting on his back, and he’s only a year younger than I am.
But God forbid I should be twenty-eight and not married. God forbid I should be twenty-eight without even the prospect of a husband.