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“Well, what are they—what are they saying? Who? Who is?”
“You know I can’t tell you who.”
Her eyes flash for a split second over my shoulder and I immediately have a guess as to who might have given her intel on me.Colleen. “I heard you two showed up to the Wilhelm propertytogether.”
“She was offering me her expertise to evaluate the crime scene. Simple as that.”
“So you just happened to hear about the illustrious Dr. Constance Chaplin and thought you’d snap her up on the way to the crime scene?”
Illustrious?That’s an interesting word. “No, it’s—” I stop. Oh, she’s good. She’s got a tangled web she weaves. Years of experience standing behind a bar, getting people to pour their hearts out to her. She knows just what buttons to push, just what to say. “Why does it matter to you?”
Bea rolls her head to the side. “Well, I don’t know, don’t want to cross any lines if you and Constance are involved.”
I jut my head forward in shock. “Involved?!No, no, you’ve got it all wrong.”
“Oh, good. I was worried I’d have to warn you all about her,” Bea says.
I lean in. “Warn?”
She grins, clasps her hands on the bar and lowers her voice to be as clandestine as possible. “She’s a total weirdo, Sheriff.”
I could have told her that.
“I mean, she’s obsessed with her work.Obsessed. And she has been since we were kids.”
“You were friends?”
Bea scoffs. “Good grief, no. Just graduated together.” Her jaw hardens. “You know, we were all getting ready to graduate, stepping up to help our family businesses or join the police academy, go to community college or state or—” She shakes her head. “And Constance Chaplin was getting ready to head off to Cambridge. Or was it Oxford?”
“Shewhat?”
“You think she became Dr. Chaplin by sticking around here? No. No way.”
I have so many questions, but I’m unsure where to start. “Why did she come home?”
“Her dad. He’s got dementia. Or is it Alzheimer’s?”
“That… sucks.”
“Well, yeah, it does, but anyway—” Bea redirects. “She’s never fit in here. Even as a kid. Just too serious and a tattletale.”
Why does the idea of little Constance pulling on the teacher’s skirt to tell on one of her schoolmatesendearme to her?
“We couldn’t even invite her to parties in high school because if you drank around her, she’d rat you out.” Bea chuckles. “We all thought she was just trying to be a jerk. But then we realized she just isn’t capable of lying.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. She can’t lie. It doesn’t matter if it’s as small as a fart or as big as confessing she let people study off her notes for a test. She’s even gone to Ed and apologized for running a stop sign.”
If Constance can’t lie, is incapable of dishonesty, then…
Could she really be telling the truth about the bones? Have I jumped to an egregious conclusion?
Bea shakes her head. “And yet she somehow seems to knoweverythingabout this place. Even more than me.”
I rub my chin. All the relaxation this night was supposed to bring has gone right out the window. “Can I close out?”
She flinches. “Oh. Sure.”
