Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Late afternoon, Ace kicked back in a wooden chair in the sheriff’s one interrogation room, facing Alaska State Trooper Paige Johnson and her partner, Jeb Pontevo. They sat across a beaten wooden table from each other, and the troopers were fully dressed in their uniforms. He couldn’t believe this.
“Excuse me. Excuse me,” Daisy said as she walked inside.
Ace pulled out the chair next to him. “Daisy? What are you doing?”
“Hey there.” Daisy Bennett wore an impressive mint-green skirt suit with a white shell beneath the jacket.
Her posture was straight and her green eyes focused, although the frizz in her lighter red hair showed she’d been in a hurry.
She didn’t hesitate. “Please do not ask my client a question without my presence.”
Ace frowned. “I didn’t hire you.”
“Your business partner did,” she said calmly.
He stared at her. “When did you get back in town?”
She turned toward the troopers, her expression smoothing into polite professionalism. “It’s good to see you again, Troopers.”
“You too,” Paige said dryly. The trooper had her darker red hair pulled back into a bun. She had to be in her forties and appeared to be in good shape. Her hat sat on the table in front of her, next to a notepad and three pens, one blue, one red, and one black.
Ace had no clue what the different colors signified. He studied his lawyer. “I thought you were out of town.”
“I got back about an hour ago.” Daisy set a fancy briefcase on the table with a quiet, deliberate thump. “Swung by the bar to say hi to Amka and…well, here I am. Apparently you need a lawyer.”
Ace shifted in his chair. The bar had seemed odd all week without Daisy there.
She worked part-time as a waitress, moving easily between tables, and the other part-time had claimed a corner at the far end where she practiced law.
As soon as he and Amka finished the top two floors of the building next door, one of those rooms was probably going to be her office. “Hopefully, I don’t need a lawyer.”
“You always need a lawyer.” Daisy took the seat next to him. “Why are we here?”
As usual, Jeb appeared growly. If the two ever played at good cop, bad cop, he’d easily be the bad one.
Although, Ace had to admit the older guy was decent.
In his late sixties, probably, he had cold brown eyes and a rugged jaw.
“We’re here because your client got into an altercation over a woman who was later murdered. ”
“Oh, my.” Daisy’s brows lifted. “I heard about that.” She turned toward Ace. “Would you like to discuss this privately first?”
“No. I’d tell you the exact truth I’ll tell them right now.” Ace rubbed a hand over his jaw. “I was at Sam’s Tavern and had a couple drinks around lunchtime, and I saw this guy Tyler arguing with a cute blonde named Laura. They were both young, and I didn’t like the way he was talking to her.”
Daisy pulled a legal pad out of her briefcase to plunk on the table before scrounging around for a pencil. “What were they arguing about?”
“He was saying she was stupid. I didn’t like it. I told him to leave her alone, and she said thank you.”
“Was this Tyler threatening?” Paige asked.
Ace wouldn’t have stepped in if he’d considered the kid to be safe.
“I’d say so, or I wouldn’t have bugged them.
” He settled back and his jaw ached at the memory.
“Tyler pushed me, and I smacked him. He hit back, giving me this, and I tossed him out. Then May bandaged me up.” He prodded the bandage over his eyebrow.
“Later last night, I went back for a drink, the kid came at me again, and I threw him out of the bar.”
“Huh.” Jeb cocked his head, no notebook in front of him. “You wanted the cute blonde?”
Ace’s teeth ground together. “God, no. She was a kid.”
Paige tilted her head. “So what happened after you threw him out the second time?”
Ace exhaled. “I drank for a while longer and played two games of darts with Laura. She was harmlessly flirting with me, and kind of flirting with three guys in flannels. Then I decided to take off.”
“Did you ask Laura to leave with you?” Jeb’s gaze looked hard.
“No.” Ace shook his head. “I did offer to drive her back to camp if she wanted. She declined, saying she wanted to stay at the bar. Several of her friends were still there milling around, so I figured she was safe. I left.”
Paige took notes in a neat row. “Where did you go?”
“You know where I went,” Ace said. “I gave my statement to Dutch earlier.” He should’ve made sure that kid had gotten safely to her camping site.
Being interrogated was annoying, and he looked around the room to calm the churning in his head.
There was no comfort to be found in this room.
Oak paneling covered the walls, and Ophelia had made an effort to decorate with a plant in the corner and a painting of the Alaska mountains on the side wall.
A window was behind Ace. The overhead light buzzed faintly, steady and annoying.
Paige smiled, though the expression carried no warmth. Under the harsh light, her eyes looked even brighter, focused and assessing. “That’s okay. Why don’t you give a statement to us, too? We do like to compare those things.”
Ace barely held onto his temper. He wanted a drink. “I went to see Dr. May Smirnov.”
Jeb crossed his muscled arms. His square jaw hadn’t softened with age, and the lines around his mouth deepened as he spoke. “Really? At ten o’clock at night?”
“Yeah.” Ace met his stare evenly.
“Were you injured in the fight?” Paige asked.
Wouldn’t that be convenient? “Not really.” Ace figured a split lip didn’t count.
“Okay. So why did you go see the doctor?” Jeb asked.
“I had a question for her. It’s personal. I’m not going to tell you what it’s about. Doctor-patient privilege and all of that,” Ace retorted.
“You weren’t at her clinic,” Paige said. “You were at her house.”
Ace lifted one shoulder. “A doctor’s a doctor. A patient’s a patient.” Of course he hadn’t gone to see her because of doctor-patient privilege. The memory of that soft kiss still burned in his bloodstream, unwanted and distracting at the moment. The doctor had sweet lips.
“Did you stay the night with the doctor?” Paige asked.
“No.” Ace said. “I left probably half an hour later.”
Jeb studied him. “Can anybody confirm that?”
“Well… the doctor can.” Ace didn’t like involving her.
Paige looked up from her notes. “Are you in a relationship with Dr. Smirnov?”
Heat flashed through his veins. “I wish, but no. I’ve asked her out. She said no. So there is no personal relationship between us.” He couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss. About the way she’d looked at him afterward. He sure as hell wasn’t sharing that.
“So then what?” Paige asked.
Ace kept his face placid. “That was the end of my night.” There was no need to tell them where he’d really gone. It was none of their business.
“You went right home, according to your statement to AWT Dutch Reddick.” Paige tugged a sheet of paper from the back of her notebook and looked it over.
“Yes,” Ace agreed. “I went right home.”
Jeb craned his neck to read the paper. “You’d say you got home about ten-thirty?”
“That sounds about right.” Ace frowned. “I wasn’t really paying attention. Maybe eleven.”
Paige zeroed in on the details. “Ten-thirty or eleven?”
Ace exhaled. “About eleven, maybe. Or even eleven-thirty. I wasn’t watching the clock.”
“Did you drive?” Jeb asked.
“Yes.”
Jeb tapped a pen lightly against the table. “How much had you had to drink?”
“Not much. A couple of beers.” Which was actually true. He’d been sticking to beer lately. Amka had noticed. Nobody else had.
“What did you do when you got back to your place at…what was it…eleven-ish?” Paige asked.
Warning ticked through Ace from her tone. “I went to bed.”
“Really?” Jeb asked.
Ace stared at him, holding the lie. “Yes. Really.”
“Did you see Laura Jordan after you left the bar?” Paige asked.
“Nope.” Ace glanced at Daisy. This was getting tedious.
Jeb leaned forward. “Did you talk to Laura? At all?”
“Nope.”
Paige started taking notes again. “How about Tyler?”
Ace rolled his neck. “No. I didn’t see him after I tossed him out.”
“Would you say he appeared violent?” Jeb asked.
Ace’s jaw flexed. “Well, the asshole hit me a couple of times, so I’d have to say yes to that question. That’s why I stepped between them. If something happened to her, I’d definitely look at him.”
Paige scrutinized him for a long moment, gaze steady, measuring. “You hit him, too. Does that mean you’re violent?” The room felt heavier with every second, and an odd weight of suspicion hung thick in the air.
Ace shrugged. “Can be, I guess. Not with women, however.”
“Tell us about the three guys in flannels.” Paige smoothly switched topics.
Ace thought back. “Three guys, on vacation, they talked about fishing the next day. Their guide had told them about the storm rolling in and to prepare to wait it out until the afternoon. One of them seemed irritated. The other two seemed fine. They did buy Laura a drink when we were playing darts.”
Paige rolled a pen between her fingers, showing light pink nail polish. “Did she take the drink?”
Ace looked at her. “Yeah. It was a margarita. She was drinking them all night.”
Paige switched from the blue pen to the red one. “Did that make you angry?”
Ace tried to follow her line of thought. “Did what make me angry?”
Paige exhaled slowly, clearly working to keep her patience. “Did the fact that the woman you were playing darts with, the one you defended from a possible bully earlier, was accepting drinks from other men bother you?”
Ace didn’t hesitate. “No. Didn’t bother me at all. Why would it?”
Jeb just stared at him, cold brown eyes unblinking. “Come on, Ace. You’ve been taking tourist bunnies home all summer. We all know it. Don’t tell me you didn’t try to take this one home too.”