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She was starting to sweat a bit when she caught up with Brit at the Buzz, where she had already ordered a tall coffee drink and was seated at a tall café table in the front courtyard while scrolling on her phone.
“Hi! So glad to finally connect,” Nikki said, taking the stool across from her.
“Yeah.” She looked up from the screen. In her late thirties, Brit was petite and trim, wearing running clothes that suggested she kept fit by logging in miles jogging. Her thick black hair was pulled into a ponytail, a few silver hairs catching in the morning light. “Don’t you want to grab something to drink?”
“I’m fine,” Nikki assured her as she pulled out her phone and iPad. She didn’t want Brit to have a chance to second-guess herself. “As I said, I just wanted to ask you some questions about the Duval family.”
“You and a million others,” she said, taking a sip from her cup.
“Other reporters?” That worried her and she considered Norm Metzger—God, he was a pain in her side.
“Oh, yeah. Like tons. But not the cops. Well, at least not yet. Anyway, I didn’t know what to do, but I wanted to help since I was a friend of Holly’s, you know. Maxie said you were cool, so”—she shrugged—“ask away.” She licked off a remaining bit of foam from the rim of her drink.
Nikki decided to get right to the heart of it, what had been nagging at her. “Tell me about Ashley McDonnell and Owen Duval, how close they were.”
“They weren’t.” Brit leaned forward, the tall table wobbling slightly on the cobblestones. “That—the two of them—was definitely not a thing. At least not that kind of thing.”
“But she’s his alibi. She swore she was with him that night.”
“I know. I know,” Brit said. “But I’m telling you, Ashley McDonnell was out of Owen Duval’s league. Like waaay out!” Brit’s eyebrows lifted as she took a long sip from her latte. “I really never understood why Ashley hung out with him, you know. He was so quiet and aloof, kind of kept to himself.”
“Maybe that appealed to her.”
Another long swallow of her latte. “I guess, but Ashley was always a girl who had her eyes on the prize.”
“Meaning?”
Brit cocked her head and stared at Nikki as if she couldn’t believe she had to explain the obvious. “Ashley was only interested in running with the ‘it’ crowd, the popular kids. Cheerleaders, jocks, especially the ones who had money. Even at fourteen or fifteen, she knew what she wanted.”
“Which was?”
“A rich husband, obviously. And she got one, didn’t she?”
“In Ryan Jefferson?”
“Right!” Brit rubbed her thumb over the tips of her fingers to indicate cold, hard cash. “Ryan developed some kind of medical software—for heart patients, I think, but I could be wrong and it doesn’t matter. Anyway, he built up his own company, made a fortune, then sold it before he was forty for, like, millions of dollars, probably tens of millions, but I don’t really know.”
“And Owen didn’t have any?”
“Nah, he was more of a bad boy.” She drained her drink and squinted, thinking. “The thing that really doesn’t make sense to me is that Ryan is a nerd. Always was, always will be.”
“A ‘nerd’?”
“Okay, I know that’s not PC, but it’s true. He’s a computer geek, still. With all his money, he drives an old minivan, you know, so he can haul stuff. Ashley—who drives a Bentley, by the way—tried to talk him into a Range Rover or Lexus SUV or Tesla or whatever, but he runs around in beat-up jeans and not the expensive ones, but real old jeans and T-shirts.” She rolled her eyes. “Drives Ashley crazy. It’s not like he wears glasses duct-taped together, but he really doesn’t give a crap about anything fancy. She’s the one who talked him into moving into a gated community out on Tybee. On the water, of course. Nothing but the best for Ashley. That’s what I mean. And they have a country club membership, ma
ybe more than one, but that’s for her and maybe his business contacts. Not him. She golfs and plays tennis and he . . . he has a ‘garage’ that’s really a huge office filled with all kinds of computers and technical stuff. Like I said, ‘a nerd.’ ”
“She met him in high school?”
“Well, she probably knew him then. He’s older by a couple of years, but they got together later, after he went to college and had his business going, I think.”
“So she dated Owen in high school?”
“Not really ‘dated.’ Not seriously. They weren’t, like, going together or anything like that. They weren’t a couple.”
“So why, then, would she protect Owen Duval?”
“You tell me? It didn’t make any sense. Still doesn’t. Back in the day he was sorta cute, I guess.” She squinched up her face as if she didn’t believe what she was saying. “But in kind of a mysterious way, I guess. And he could be funny—real sharp sense of humor. Sarcastic. But really, he was a dirtbag. Right. He shoulda been there for his sisters!” She tossed her empty cup into a nearby wastebasket. “I don’t get it. As I said, Ashley always had her eyes on the prize, and she liked keeping her options open, so she dated a lot of guys.”
