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“Fine.” The legs of my chair squeaked as I pushed it back to stand up.
Noah recited something else into the recording machine, and everyone else followed suit. Jamie shook Melissa’s hand, then offered me his.
Reluctantly, I shook it. After all, he was only doing his job, and I didn’t hold a grudge against him.
Noah turned to me and held out his hand.
I folded my arms across my chest.
Like Jamie, Noah might have only been doing his job, but unlike Jamie, I very much held a grudge against him.
He dropped his hand and walked to the door, pulling it open. “We’ll be in touch.”
“I hope not,” I quipped, passing him and heading back down the corridor to the where the front desk was.
I wanted my stuff back, and I absolutely wanted to get the hell away from Detective Inspector Noah George.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Well, bollocks,” Ash said, leaning over and pouring wine into my glass. “You didn’t do it, did you?”
I glared at her. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.” She grinned. “Come off it. I know you didn’t do it. Noah probably does, too.”
“I couldn’t give a flying fuck what he thinks,” I retorted hotly. “He’s been top of my shit list for a decade, and as far as I’m concerned, he can bloody well stay there.”
“That’s fair. I still hold a grudge from the time he kicked me in the head in the womb, so ten years is reasonable in comparison.” She grabbed her glass and leant back on the sofa. “What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, cradling my glass in my lap. I looked down into it and sighed. “There’s not a lot I can do until I get the bed and breakfast back, I guess.”
“No, what are you going todoabout this? You’re on the hook for his murder right now, Lottie. The Fox Point police force are ten shades of incompetent.”
“That’s your brother you’re talking about.”
“Exactly. Why do you think I can say it so confidently?”
I eyed her sceptically for a moment. “Really?”
“All right, fine, he’s a good cop. The problem is that more than half the force has been there for, like, ever, and are stuck in their ways. They only thing they’ve solved is the riddle of how efficiently to use their lunch breaks,” Ash said. “All they care about is getting the case solved as quickly as possible, and you have all the things they need you to have. You have the means—you own the place.” She ticked it off on her fingers as she went.” You have the motive—he was harassing you. And you don’t have the one thing you need to write both of those things off, which is an alibi.”
“I know, but what am I supposed to do about that? They have no evidence. It’s all circumstantial theorising. I didn’t do it. I have to trust that they’ll come to the right conclusion.”
She stared at me. Unlike Noah’s dark green gaze, her eyes were a deep blue, but they were just as expressive as his were. That meant she had the innate ability to tell you exactly what she was thinking without using any words at all.
I was an idiot.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I muttered. “I know what you’re thinking. I watch those TV shows, too, but they’re all American.”
“And the UK ones aren’t any better. I’ve watched some newer ones where they go for the easiest option over the right one initially. And right now, Lottie, you’re the easy option. There are loads of witnesses to the fact you had a disagreement with Declan last night, and while it wasn’t that bad, it was stressful enough that you raised your voice. Plus, there’s going to be video footage from the promenade of you driving along there to the bed and breakfast and back.”
“Good. Then they’ll know I wasn’t there nearly long enough to kill anyone.”
“Will they? You have a valid reason for being there, and they can probably back it up, but you were still there.”
“I was taking cameras there! I felt threatened by him. I was only trying to protect my property, even if I am a technological prat.”
Ash smiled at me with a heavy dose of pity. “You were still there. There’s nobody to corroborate your story. The biggest thing you can hope for is that his time of death doesn’t fall in that window.”
