And I realize I’m angry. I’m so damned angry. I don’t want to cut Diana any slack. I don’t want to say she was drunk and didn’t mean what she said. Of course she meant it. Alcohol doesn’t transform us into a different person—it just lowers inhibitions. In vino veritas. Pour enough alcohol down someone’s throat and they’ll start sharing opinions and beliefs they never would otherwise.

Diana’s tirade was nasty and downright cruel. She may have aimed some of that invective at Anders and Dalton, but that was collateral damage. The venom was for me. Insulting them was just a fast route to humiliating me.

I think of all the other times she’s lashed out. When she ran off to join the cool girls in high school, I tried to warn her, and she accused me of being jealous, made it very clear she’d only befriended me because I was the one who stepped up. Afterward, she begged and cried and swore she hadn’t meant any of it, and I’d let her back because I felt bad for her. Then, when I warned her about Graham, she said I was a jealous, selfish bitch who—post-attack—had lost most of my friends so I clung to her. When she ran back to me again, I let her, because I owed her for keeping the secret about Blaine. And from there? From there it became like a long-running marriage. We’d fight. She’d needle and insult me, but by that point I just didn’t give a shit. Like my ex said, there was nothing anyone could say about me that was worse than what I said about myself.

And now this. I came here for her, and she was acting like I was a puppy who’d followed her home. No, worse—like I was her babysitter, spoiling her fun and stealing her lovers.

Well, fuck that. Really. Fuck that.

I wasn’t ready to cut her loose. I didn’t have the headspace for that—I had murders to solve. But those murders would keep me properly busy, and so I would step back. Skip the ugly confrontation and hope that this was what Diana needed—what we both needed. A truly fresh start for both of us.

Eleven

I start my day with more interviews. Dalton joins me again. He’s calm today, his edges muffled until an interviewee gives me grief, and then all he needs to do is rock forward, his jaw setting, and she falls in line so fast it’s like having a Rottweiler at my side, dozing until he smells a threat and then rising with a growl and a lip curl that douses that threat in a heartbeat. Very handy.

My first interview is with the last person to see Powys alive. It’s a woman, perhaps not surprisingly, given that he disappeared in the middle of the night. From her bed, apparently. She’s convinced he was kidnapped on his way to the bathroom. According to Dalton, there was absolutely no evidence of a break-in, but she’s not going to admit Powys screwed her and then snuck off in the night. Which means pretty much everything about her story is suspect. Including the part, I’m guessing, where they had sex four times that evening. Which was, as Dalton snorted, “irrelevant,” though the fact she kept repeating it suggested this was highly relevant to her.

The second interview is Irene’s co-worker, who’d been the last to see her alive. Irene had worked in the greenhouses, having a background in horticulture. Her co-worker is also a gardener, and I remember her from Dalton’s little brown book. She is in Rockton hiding from charges of poisoning her abusive husband and burying him in the garden. In researching her online, Dalton had uncovered a story about a very wealthy woman whose abusive husband had been found fertilizing her prize roses. She’d disappeared while out on bail. The article included her photo, which apparently matched the sixty-year-old-woman now telling me what a sweet girl Irene had been. As for why she’d needed to buy her way into Rockton, that had less to do with her killing an abusive husband and more to do with the body found beside his—that of their twenty-three-year-old maid, pregnant with his child.

All that means I have a second witness I can’t trust. Which I’m beginning to suspect is par for the course in Rockton. Even many who haven’t bought their way in have something to hide, like me. A town full of liars. Cases here will depend more on evidence than interviews.

Speaking of evidence, I want to talk to Beth, but she has clinic hours until noon. Dalton says we’ll go by after lunch.

He walks me to my last interview of the morning and then leaves. He has rounds to make, which is mostly about just being seen, reminding people he’s there, to make them feel safer or to warn them … or a little of both.

This particular interview is all mine because he trusts the interviewee to co-operate, given that he’s a former cop. I meet Mick in the Roc. It’s closed for another hour, but he’s there, cleaning up and waiting for me. There’s no sign of Isabel, which is a relief.

When I walk in, Mick’s polishing the bar, and that stops me in my tracks, my mind slipping back to another time, another bartender. I indulge the stab of grief and regret for two seconds before walking over and taking a seat at the bar.

Mick sets the rag aside and puts a steaming mug of coffee beside me, along with sugar and goat’s milk from under the counter. He doesn’t say a word, as if this is no grand gesture but just common hospitality.

I pour in the milk.

“So,” he says. “Abbygail.”

“I hear you two were involved.”

He nods and begins folding the rag, meticulously.

“I’d ask if you want a lawyer present,” I say. “I know cops realize that’s wise for any interview. But I’m not sure where we’d find one.”

He gives a short laugh at that. “Oh, there are plenty here. I think it’s the most common former occupation.” His lips quirk. “Surprisingly.”