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“Well, there’s just no other way around it. I’m going to have to step up my part-time job into a full-time one,” he said, leaning over to his desk to gather up the papers he’d been working on. “You have a spare table in that trailer of yours, right?”
“What?” She stared at the papers he was shoving into his briefcase, then at his face. “What are you talking about?”
He shrugged and explained. “Well, if you’re spending all your days on the set ofKilling Time in a Small Town, so am I.”
MS. WINCHESTER, WILL please tell us where you were at the time of Hester Tomlinson’s shooting?”
Sophie had, of course, anticipated the question and wished she had the kind of answer that could put this whole ridiculous investigation to rest. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t.
“You don’t have to do this,” Daniel murmured, casting a quick glance at the investigator from the Illinois Department of Law Enforcement. “You told her that, right?”
Detective Willis offered a stiff nod. “Of course. She hasn’t been charged with anything. We’re just asking questions here.”
“I know, and I want to be as forthcoming as possible,” Sophie said, giving Daniel’s hand a reassuring squeeze.
She knew she was lucky they’d allowed him to stay. But since she’d refused to talk to them if he couldn’t, they’d really had no choice. She hadn’t been charged with anything, hadn’t been taken into custody. They were sitting at the kitchen table in Daniel’s own house, for heaven’s sake. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“As I said earlier, I had ripped my costume. Some graceless dancer stepped on my hem.”
Daniel didn’t even crack a smile though she’d been trying to lighten the moment.
Willis wrote a note on his pad, tapped his pencil, then looked up. The pause was long and deliberate, straight out of mystery novel writing101. “And you were looking for your cousin’s wife to see if she had a needle and thread.”
“Exactly,” Sophie replied. “Someone told me she was in the kitchen, so I went looking for her. A few people were milling around, but no Gwen.”
“Then what happened?”
“I went upstairs to look for her.”
“Alone?”
She nodded, wishing she’d just taken off the stupid costume and returned to the party. If she’d been in Daniel’s arms when the shot was fired, they wouldn’t be asking her these questions. It was like something she’d have written in one of her books—the wrong person being investigated for the crime because he or she was unlucky enough to have no alibi.
“What next?” Willis asked.
She lifted her hand to her face and rubbed her eyes, trying to remember every moment of Sunday night. “I’m thinking.”
“You couldn’t find your cousin’s wife in the kitchen….” Willis prompted.
“Right. So I went to her room, knocked, but no one was there.” She cast a quick look at Daniel and winked. “Did you know Gwen and Jared have a huge mirrored headboard?”
His lips barely twitched.
Willis gave a nearly inaudible sigh of irritation. “Did you go into their room?”
She shook her head. “Just peeked inside, saw it was empty, then decided to go upstairs to one of the guest rooms. Gwen once said they keep sewing kits in the bedside tables of all the rooms.”
“You went up the main stairs?”
She shook her head. “No, there’s a back stairway off the hall behind the kitchen.”
Something sparkled in the investigator’s eyes. He shifted his gaze away and exchanged a look with his partner, whose name was Lyons. He hadn’t said a word since the questioning had begun.
Willis continued. “Was anyone else on the stairs?”
Sophie shook her head. “Very few people use them. They’re tucked out of the way. I only know about them because I’m friendly with Gwen.”
Willis nodded, exchanging one more look with his partner. Sophie didn’t have time to wonder about that before he moved on with the questioning. “And then?”
