Chapter Four
If Eve were being honest with herself, she hadn’t spent much time in her youth imagining her future wedding, and the few bouts of fancy she had given herself as a kid had only ever gone one way.
Something small in the backyard, daisies and a sunflower or two around an arch her dad built, and some of those nice folding white chairs she had seen at Mrs. Dunphy’s garage sale pushed in between her old refrigerator and the electoral box in the wall, sitting pretty on the lawn.
There wouldn’t be a lot of people there—of her own family, all she needed was her dad anyways—but there would be enough that they would have to buy a party platter from the home-cooking restaurant on Main for the reception.
Eve would wear some pretty white dress that poofed at the bottom and maybe put her hair up some nice-looking way. She’d paint her nails blue to match her groom’s tie.
The groom, of course, would be the boy next door.
A little nervous but smiling wide like he did when they were watching movies or sneaking out to the Becker Farm’s creek or passing notes between their windows.
Eve would walk down the aisle toward Darius without an ounce of hesitation because their wedding was inevitable. She had, after all, made it very clear that he was hers for life, and wasn’t that just another way to say husband and wife?
Now, though, reality showed Eve something quite different.
She wasn’t strolling down the grass aisle of her backyard, arm looped around her father’s, with sunflowers and daisies and a few guests in attendance. There was no poof to her tight designer dress. Her nails weren’t painted a fun blue, and the groom certainly wasn’t Darius Williams.
The Seven Roads Library had suffered a fire in the early nineties, and while it been repaired since, the main room no longer resembled its former glory.
Instead of a large room filled with shelves and books and a librarian’s desk, there was an expansive space surrounded by exposed brick, laid out in refurbished hardwoods, and a partially domed ceiling of glass.
The sunlight poured through that ceiling and made a design in shadows against a wooden arch at the end of the room. One that had not been custom-made by her dad but instead bought with Keys money.
The same Keys money that had the once-big room now feeling claustrophobic. They might have been in Seven Roads, not exactly the prime spot for upscale socializing, but almost every suit and dress in attendance had made the trip without fuss.
And they weren’t there for the man in the tux Eve was walking toward.
No, they were there for the man at his side, movie-star smile warming an already-attractive face.
Scott Keys.
The White Knight.
Always wrapped in philanthropist glory, something designer and charm.
Everyone wanted him; some wanted to be him.
Eve wanted to destroy him.
And so did the man standing next to the altar.
Eve smiled at Mitchell as the wedding march ended. He met her at the one step up in the room, holding his arm out. He wasn’t unattractive, but it was hard to see what made him shine while constantly being in his brother’s shadow.
He had blue eyes that looked nice with his tan and obediently straight brown hair, while his fashion sense felt more natural than showy. When they had first met he had been wearing earrings in both ears and a bomber jacket that had felt extremely stylish. But that had felt like a lifetime ago.
Now, even at his own wedding, he wore a tuxedo that visibly paled in comparison to his brother’s.
His eyes, though, they were kind as they took her in.
“You look beautiful, Evelyn,” he whispered. She took his arm as she nodded to the compliment.
“You’re pretty snazzy too,” she returned.
A smile flashed across his face, not at all the same one he’d been wearing a moment ago. A genuine one of appreciation.
Not romantic love.
Because, even though they were both there of their own accord, neither one of them had actually planned on getting this far. Their plan had only included the ruse of dating, of getting engaged, not wedding bells and library chapels.
That had been Scott’s idea.
“Family is the most important thing in this world,” he’d told them, holding out his mother’s ring to Mitchell. “It’s the greatest wealth you can attain, so why not go ahead and become wealthier?”
Mitchell had had no choice to propose then—another part of his life taken over by his brother.
Six months later, and the memory still made Eve’s blood start to boil.
Scott Keys was a man standing on a pedestal of his own making.
And she desperately wanted to knock him off it.
Mitchell’s smile tightened as they stopped at their designated spots across from the man who had been ordained, hired and picked by Scott. He squeezed her arm once before letting go.
Eve understood that quick grip.
He wanted to know if they were really going to go through with the wedding. If she had managed to find the solution to their problem. If wherever she had snuck out to and gone that afternoon had borne any fruit, so to speak.
The man between them asked them to face one another.
Eve used the time to glance back down the aisle and at the double doors she had just walked through.
She didn’t want divine intervention to stop their sham marriage.
She wanted Darius Williams to bust through those doors.
Eve mentally sighed.
How dramatic would that have been? she thought. Seeing Darius bust through those doors yelling “I object!”
It would make everything seem like a movie and earn Eve a chance to escape the problem that she had, in part, created.
Darius, however, didn’t burst through the doors, and she turned around to listen to the officiant. The part where someone could object came and went without a peep. The vows came next, and Mitchell—not one given to public speaking like his brother—struggled through his.
Eve kept smiling through it all, even though the hope that Darius would show up was starting to fade.
Had she been too nostalgic? Had the request been too outrageous? Had their past stayed firmly rooted in the past?
Despite herself, Eve started to think about what happened next.
The honeymoon.
For completely different reasons, it made her blood run cold.
She resisted the urge to look over Mitchell’s shoulder. His brother would also still be, no doubt, smiling too.
Neither one of them meant it.
“Now, Evelyn, it’s time to read your vows.
” The officiant’s voice sliced through her thoughts like a machete through butter.
While there were many things that affected others, Eve had always had a way of going with the flow.
Sadness, fear, anger…they rolled off her shoulders like water, and she just kept going.
But now, there was a coldness in her stomach that was starting to spread.
She shouldn’t have let it get this far. She shouldn’t have—
A loud bang sounded through the main room. Mitchell jumped, while a flurry of gasps and mutterings sprang from the guests. Eve, though, whipped her head around to look at the double doors.
The coldness in her warmed in an instant.
The doors were closing and standing in front of them was the little boy who owed her a favor.
Darius.
He’d come, and just in time too.
Eve was wondering how he would play the next part when the door opened again.
It was a man she didn’t recognize. The star-shaped badge at his hip, however, was easy to see even from her spot at the altar.
The sheriff of McCoy County had a tight smile.
Darius wasn’t smiling at all.
“WHEN I SAID stop the wedding at all costs, this isn’t what I had in mind.”
Eve’s voice was small, but there was no shake or tremor to it. All things considered, it was impressive. Not many could see a dead body and manage some humor.
They were standing next to the mouth of a small hallway that fed from the old library’s main lobby and into the area that used to house offices and the break room. The wedding party was spread between those rooms now. Mitchell Keys was in the break room with his brother.
A man wearing a gray suit was dead on the bench seat next to the closed double doors a few feet from them.
Eve cut her gaze away from the man and back to Darius. Again, he felt impressed at her composure. Then again, maybe it wasn’t all that surprising. This was Evelyn Myers, after all. Even as a kid she’d had a habit of not blanching.
“His name is Gary Whittaker,” she said, voice back to a normal volume. “He’s the Keyses’ family lawyer. Or was, I guess.”
Darius had a pad of paper out, a pen in his other hand, but he didn’t write anything down. Like the young Eve had had a habit of not swerving at whatever game of chicken she had been forced into, the young Darius also had his own habit of remembering everything the girl said.
He suspected time hadn’t changed that ingrained skill.
Still, for appearance’s sake, he held on to both.
“Family lawyer, huh?” he said. “Pretty close, I guess, to come to an out-of-town wedding.”
Eve shrugged.
“When you have enough money, even the lawyers get close enough to become part of the family. He was at almost just as many family events as I was.”
“So you were friends?”
Darius didn’t have to look back at the body to know the details. Once he had rushed into the lobby and noticed the man, it had been hard not to take it all in.
A man who appeared to be in his late fifties, early sixties, slumped over on a worn and weathered wooden bench.
Not at all worn and weathered was his suit, charcoal gray, with a white button-up shirt beneath it.
The white was pristine in all places except where it had come untucked at his waist. It was stained crimson.
The bullet wound that had most likely killed him was hidden beneath his coat.
For Eve, not much had changed about her appearance since Darius had seen her at County 22.
Her coat was gone, and her hair had been pinned up.
Another quick look down at her dress, and Darius couldn’t help but think that the Eve of their younger years would have disliked such an uncomfortably tight thing.
He buttoned that line of thought as Eve sighed out long.
“I wouldn’t call us friends, but we were familiar,” she said. “As Scott Keys’s personal assistant, I had more cause to run into him than most. Especially since he helped out with the philanthropy side of things.”
She shook her head—not even a strand of hair moved.
“I don’t know why anyone would want to kill him, though. Or why they would kill him and then put him here.”
She motioned toward the late Gary Whittaker.
“And before you ask how I know he was killed somewhere else and then moved after, it’s because there’s not more blood,” she added. “If anyone other than you had found him, they might not even have noticed he’d been shot at all.”
She was right.
There was no blood around the victim. Not even a drop.
He had been shot elsewhere and moved.
But why?
“When’s the last time you talked to or saw Mr. Whittaker?” Darius asked.
He had to raise his voice a little to compensate for the chatter taking place across the room from them.
The county coroner, Martin Blues, a newly hired crime scene investigator, and Deputy Gavin were professional when it came to their jobs.
They were also social about it too. Darius had already had to skirt Martin on two other cases after the younger man had tried talking sports over a dead body.
He understood trying to bring brevity into a heavy situation, but even the less-than-social Darius knew there was a time and a place.
Eve didn’t seem to mind the new distraction. Her brow furrowed, and her frown deepened.
“The last time I saw Gary was back at the company.”
“In Atlanta?”
She nodded.
“Scott had a meeting with a Green Suit and asked Gary to sit in. I didn’t sit with them but ended up walking Gary to his car in the parking garage. He talked about the upcoming wedding and his wedding to his now ex-wife, but it was all just small talk.”
Darius tilted his head to the side a little.
“Green Suit?” he asked. “Is that some kind of business term I’m not familiar with?”
Darius had the distinct impression that Eve almost rolled her eyes at that but held it in.
“Green Suits are what I secretly call the businessmen who don’t mind donating or investing big money to the Keys Foundation but, for whatever reason, don’t like a little ol’ assistant like me being in the room.
” She already had her arms crossed over her chest, but Darius noticed she tightened the stance.
“It’s the only time I’m okay with being a little passive-aggressive. ”
One of the office doors behind them opened. Darius kept his spot next to Eve but angled around to see whose heavy footsteps were headed their way.
It wasn’t long before the sheriff’s long face was staring right at him.
“Miss Myers, if you would excuse us for a moment, I need to have a talk with Detective Williams.”
Sheriff Liam Weaver was a large, solid man of muscle and steel, but when he needed to cut his ingrained intimidation down, the smile his wife had helped him find over the years did the trick.
His long face softened with the small upturn of his lips as he told Eve she could return to the wedding party.
Eve glanced at Darius but nodded and left without another word.
No sooner than he heard one of the doors shut behind them than the sheriff’s smile all but disappeared.
“The talk with Scott Keys went that well?” Darius asked.
Liam’s jaw tightened for a moment.
“He’s not the Keys brother I’m worried about,” he said after a moment. His already-low voice grumbled lower. “What all do you know about Mitchell Keys?”
That surprised Darius.
He answered with honesty.
“Only what the kids told me earlier. He’s the younger, unpopular one of the two.”
And Eve’s future husband.
“Why?” Darius added.
Liam glanced across the room. Martin seemed to be done with his initial pass. Darius would talk to him next, then go from there. Starting with retracing the man’s steps and hopefully finding where he’d been killed. Then he would—
“I think Mitchell Keys might be our killer,” Liam said, halting all of Darius’s future plans in an instant.
“What?”
The sheriff sighed. He wasn’t looking at Darius when he explained. Which was good, because Darius’s usual composure momentarily cracked at what he said next.
“And I think there’s a good possibility that the bride-to-be might have helped him do it.”