to ponder and perfect the right word choices. That wasn’t true of this situation. The detective had thrown her right into the fire. Now she was trying to get out without being burnt. It wouldn’t be easy.
The detective went on the offensive again. “Is that all?”
“That’s all you need to know,” Chloe said.
“I’m afraid that’s not nearly going to cut it. The fact is, you had a killer motive.”
Chloe was confused. “What do you mean?”
“You spent all those years trying to get your work published, racking up huge amounts of rejections, before finally getting your book picked up. Then, at your book launch, the exact moment you should have been the happiest, Hank Hammond single-handedly ruins everything,” Detective Stern explained.
“Why don’t you leave the hyperbole to the fiction author? Hank didn’t ruin everything,” Chloe insisted.
Detective Stern stared hard into Chloe’s eyes. “I’d like to believe you, but your eyes are telling one story while your mouth is telling another. You wouldn’t be trying to rewrite history, would you?”
Chloe revised her story. “Ok. So last night could have gone far better, but just because Hank Hammond went around stirring up trouble, doesn’t mean I killed him.”
“So you say. The question is, where were you at the time of the murder?” Detective Stern asked.
“I was at home,” Chloe replied.
Detective Stern followed up. “Alone?”
Chloe reluctantly answered. “Yeah.”
“Which means you have no one to corroborate your story?” Detective Stern said.
Chloe began fumbling for words. She knew the truth. Unfortunately, she just didn’t have verifiable facts to back it up with.
She stammered as she answered. “I was at home. You have to believe me.”
“The only thing I believe is that you have a motive and a shaky alibi,” Detective Stern replied.
Daisy was tired of standing on the sidelines. She spoke up again.
“There were plenty of other people at that party that wanted Hank dead.”
“I know, and I’m going to get to them. Right now, I’m focused on Chloe.” Detective Stern turned back to Chloe. “Based on everything you’ve told me, I have no reason to rule you out as a suspect.”
Daisy and Chloe both opened their mouths to disagree.
Just then, Deputy Adams approached and addressed Stern. “Detective, all the other suspects have arrived.”
“Good.” He then turned back to Daisy and Chloe. “Don’t you go anywhere. Either of you.”
Chapter Fifteen
Detective Stern addressed the lineup of suspects, each of whom was looking tenser than the last. If the detective thought Chloe looked far from innocent, the other suspects looked stone cold guilty. As a matter of fact, they were so drenched in motive that it was hard to tell who looked the guiltiest.
Detective Stern was eager to find out. “It was no secret that Hank Hammond had a number of enemies. As I look around, all I see is people that hated his guts. You all wanted him dead, but someone in this parking lot took their hatred one step further and actually killed him. That’s right, I know the killer is right here among us right now.”
Hanks’s widow, Amelia, spoke up from the lineup. “How do you know that?”
Detective Stern held up an evidence bag with a ripped yellow, paper wristband inside it.
“The killer left something behind last night. Does this look familiar to any of you?” Detective Stern asked.
The suspects looked as stiff as boards now.
Detective Stern continued. “It should. It’s one of the wristbands you were issued to get into the launch party last night. We found it right next to the body. And, seeing as Hank’s wristband is still on, this one must belong to the killer. Now, given how empty the launch party was last night, finding this wristband at the scene of the crime
Jennifer Teege, Nikola Sellmair