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“Did you see his car?”
“Um … it was silver. A sedan. I didn’t notice the make.”
“Did he go inside?”
She thought about it for a moment. “Not really. He was walking toward the side door, but I didn’t actually see him go inside.”
“Did you go straight from the reception hall to Claire’s?”
“Yes. Mom had some time before she had to be at the wedding we had scheduled tonight.” Automatically Jaclyn checked the time, vaguely noticing how nice it was to look at something other than Garvey. “The reception should be over soon; she might check in to tell me how things went.”
“What did you do after you left Claire’s?”
“I came home. I had a pile of laundry to do.”
“Did you see anyone, talk to anyone?”
“No, not until Bishop called to tell me someone had been murdered at the reception hall.”
“Did you go back to the reception hall?”
“No, why would I?” she asked blankly.
“Your briefcase was found on the floor. Maybe you went back to retrieve it, found that Ms. Edwards was still there, and the two of you had another altercation.”
“My br—” Jaclyn stopped, blinking in astonishment. How could she have forgotten her briefcase? Why hadn’t she noticed it before now? Having it in her hand was as natural as having on clothes. She looked around, as if it might magically appear, but he was right: no briefcase.
She stared into the middle distance as she mentally reconstructed what had happened. “I’d put my briefcase on the table, but Carrie must have moved it. I’d taken my appointment book out, though, because I’d had a couple of calls from my assistant about scheduling, and it was on the table. When Carrie threw her temper tantrum and knocked everything off the table, Melissa picked up my appointment book and handed it to me before she went to her office. I had it in my hand when I left, so I never missed the briefcase.”
Oh, God, the briefcase was bad news. It gave her a reason for going back, and she had no witnesses otherwise.
“What clothes were you wearing today?”
The question seemed to come out of nowhere. Surprised, Jaclyn almost looked at him before catching herself and instead focusing on the coffee table. It took her a minute to remember what she’d had on, and in that minute she realized that they already knew what she’d been wearing, that they had already interviewed Melissa and probably gotten a description of her clothes. A chill ran down her spine.
“Black capri pants, and a black top.”
“May we see them?”
This wasn’t good either. She bit her lip. “They’re in the laundry.”
“Laundry? You washed them?”
Suddenly she’d had enough, temper flaring and pushing out the shock and hurt. “That’s what one does with dirty clothes,” she said curtly. “Though maybe you don’t know that.” The instant the words left her mouth she knew she shouldn’t have said them, shouldn’t have made the conversation personal. She made an abrupt gesture. “Sorry, that was uncalled-for. The clothes are still in the washer, I haven’t dried them yet.”
“May we see them?”
“Sure. Knock yourself out.”
She went with them to the small laundry room, watched as they removed her wet clothing and sorted out the capri pants and top. “Did you use bleach?” Eric asked.
“On black clothes? That would ruin them.” He was asking her about laundry? He was a bachelor, so surely he did some laundry; he had to know about bleach.
“So you didn’t use bleach?”
“No, of course not! Do they look gray now?”
“No, they don’t.” Was that amusement she heard in his voice? Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but she wanted to kick him anyway. “I’d like to take these clothes, if you don’t mind. If you do mind, I can always get a warrant.”
