Chapter Seven
She wasn’t a small woman, but she wasn’t big either. Eve was average. Compared to Darius? Maybe that average lost a few inches. Physically, at least. She had to tilt her chin up to meet his eye but didn’t need to put too much space between them to get a good angle to do it.
She jogged for exercise when she had the time and was toned in some places, squishier in others. The muscles Darius had built since he was a kid had even the toughest of hers beat three to zero.
He had the law hanging around his neck in a badge. Eve had Scott Keys’s personal passwords memorized.
The differences in their divide were easy to see. Where one shone, the other flickered; where one ran, the other stood. And in the years since they had last seen each other, Eve felt like she had been the one who had stood the most still.
Yet height, muscles, past, present, badge or not, Eve felt confident that there was one area that little kid Eve still reigned supreme over Darius.
She had a mouth on her.
A Southern one, to boot.
And an angry Southern mouth? It yelled faster than it thought and sounded off with a syrup that could choke you if you weren’t prepared.
Eve couldn’t tell now if Darius had expected it, but she knew Mitchell hadn’t. The moment her volume rose above her average height, she felt one of his hands at the back of her elbow.
It did nothing to calm her.
“And here I thought you were just trying to be nice to an old friend, but it turns out you were just buttering me up to lob an absolutely ridiculous accusation at my fiancé on our wedding day,” Eve started in.
“No wonder you were waiting for me at the library and offering me rides! Also, I track you down to ask you for help, and now I’m having to defend myself not even a few hours later?
The absolute gall of you, Darius Fitzgerald Williams! ”
Mitchell did a little squeeze against her skin.
Darius simply sighed out.
“I never buttered you up or lobbed anything at you, and I’m not being ridiculous,” he said. “In fact, as you just said yourself, you were the one who came to find me. Not the other way around.”
He left out the part where the reason she had come looking for him in the first place was to ask to stop the wedding she had just become defensive about. If Eve hadn’t been so hot under the collar, she would have thought nice on the kindness of not pointing that out in mixed company.
Darius leaned forward a little and kept on before she could get rolling again.
“I’m asking a question about a current homicide case.
” Darius pointed over her shoulder but kept her stare.
“And, if I say so myself, I’m being pretty polite about doing it here first and not throwing both of you into an uncomfortable interrogation room to do it.
So, if you would stop using my full name like I owe you money and take a breath and a seat, we can get this all moving somewhere other than right into a fight.
Does that sound good to you, Evelyn Rebecca Myers? ”
Eve’s nostrils flared. Her face scrunched. Both acts were like stretching before really starting to run. If she had been twelve, she would have kept going, louder than sin, but Eve the adult had picked up a little decorum in the last decade or so.
She also was starting to remember where she was and who was behind her.
If she had been solo in the same situation, she would have summoned more spitfire.
But she wasn’t by herself.
Mitchell needed her, and no murder accusation was going to make her stop protecting him.
“You don’t owe me money, you owe me you,” Eve finally muttered, pulling back the chair closest to her. Darius didn’t react to talk of their childhood promise and only watched as she settled across from him. He waited for Mitchell to do the same. Then he split his attention between both.
“While we haven’t found the location where Mr. Whittaker was killed, we’ve been able to get his time of death down to earlier today, somewhere between noon and two o’clock,” he started.
“Since he was obviously moved to the location of the ceremony, it’s hard to ignore the theory that it was a premediated event and not a crime of passion or one of opportunity.
Which is why we looked at the wedding party for any information that might point us in a solid direction to start. ”
There was something to be said about dark eyes locking in on a target. Eve suppressed a little shiver as Darius moved his attention to Mitchell.
“And several fingers pointed your way, Mr. Keys,” he said. “So now that Miss Myers is by your side, let me ask where you were today between the hours of twelve and two.”
Mitchell had never been good at hiding his emotions; he was especially bad at hiding his anxiety. Eve knew the moment the question finished that he was already stressed about his answer. His body language, the hesitation in answering…
She also knew before he said a word that he was going to lie.
“I was in my hotel room. With Eve.”
The lie was short. Its aftereffects were going to ripple far.
“You were in your hotel room,” Darius repeated, tone impassive. “With Eve.”
Mitchell nodded.
“I-I’m not big into crowds like my brother is. I was nervous and needed someone to help me calm down.”
“So you asked to see the bride before the wedding. That’s bad luck, you know.”
Mitchell nodded again. The movement was stiff.
“I know, but seeing her always makes me feel better.”
Like the lie, this truth was also short, but Eve knew it was genuine. She would have felt the warmth from it, had a coldness not started to spread throughout her body.
The fact of the matter was she hadn’t been with Mitchell from noon until two. She hadn’t seen him in person until she had been walking down the aisle toward him.
But could Darius prove that? Was there evidence he already had that Mitchell was lying? Had someone seen him or her out and about without the other during that time?
Instead of immediately agreeing, Eve tried to steer the conversation in a different direction.
“Mitchell had over two hundred people who can put him at the altar around the time when Gary was moved to the lobby,” she pointed out. “He couldn’t have done that. At least one of us would have noticed if he had stepped out mid vows.”
Darius was quick.
“Just because he didn’t move the body doesn’t mean he didn’t have anything to do with Mr. Whittaker’s death.”
“So you’re saying you think he killed Gary and then—what?” she said. “Then, he had someone place poor Gary in the lobby after the ceremony started? Why? That makes no sense.”
“I’m not saying anything at the moment,” Darius shot back. “I was asking where Mr. Keys here was during the hours between twelve and two today. And now I’m asking you the same question.”
Darius’s expression remained impassive. His tone, however, had hardened.
Eve matched his energy.
“Mitchell already answered that,” she replied.
“But you didn’t.” Darius leaned forward, those dark eyes on a new target. “So let me be clear in what I’m asking now so you can be just as clear with your answer. Where were you, Eve, during the hours of twelve and two today?”
Eve could picture the house in front of her.
She could feel the grass under her bare feet.
She could smell smoke coming from somewhere in the neighborhood, probably someone grilling in their backyard.
She remembered shivering at the cold but not as bad as she would later, since she hadn’t yet changed into her wedding dress yet.
Her childhood home.
That’s where she had been earlier that day, still undecided about what to do next to get out of the wedding. To stop from being legally tied to the Keyses. To instead use the change in their crumbling plan to her and Mitchell’s advantage.
She had just been staring and thinking about the present and future. Then, without realizing it, nostalgia from the past had swept her worries away for a while. Only a glance at her watch later had pulled her from her quiet recollection.
Whatever plan she would make would have to come after she donned her wedding dress.
So at 1:42 p.m., she had left the front lawn of her childhood home and hurried over to the bridal party’s dressing room at the old library to get ready. No thoughts of using Darius had crept in until she had taken off her engagement ring and caught sight of the scar on her hand.
Before that?
She hadn’t seen or talked to Mitchell at all during those two hours.
It was one thing to not correct Darius about Mitchell’s lie.
It was another to lie directly to his face.
But Eve wasn’t back in town to reminisce about the boy she had once promised to take care of for the rest of their lives. She was there to stop a man filled with greed, malice and power.
Eve took in a deep breath. She released it as she spoke clearly.
“I was with Mitchell Keys in his hotel room.”
And, just like that, Eve lied to become a murder suspect’s alibi.
However, the worst part?
She knew that Darius knew it too.
HE WASN’T ONE to pitch a fit but there he was—pitching it.
Darius threw his bag down against the couch.
Like the rest of the furniture in his house, it wasn’t new, but it definitely wasn’t worn either.
He rarely spent time lounging around, and that went double for lounging around in his home.
If there was any one spot in all of Seven Roads that was worn because of him, it was his desk chair at the office or the strip of carpet that ran in front of his desk at home.
He was a man who was used to living in his work, pacing in his home, and only using his off time to do the necessities in life.
It was how he had been living between the walls of his childhood home since he had been the last one left.
Pitching a fit? Throwing a tantrum? Being annoyed enough to throw his bag and then start cussing?
That was the part of his work and life routine that was abnormal.
As was the fact of someone already inside of the house, answering back.