Lance thought she might.
“Dude, I wouldn’t do that,” Lance said.
Natalie’s gun went off. The rooster cookie jar exploded a few feet to Brian’s right, sending ceramic shards and cookie bits in all directions.
Brian turned toward an open doorway to his left, but Natalie fired another shot, cutting off his path. Trapped, Brian searched the room for a way out. “You’re going to kill me.”
“Oh, please. I’ve been taking lessons for months, not that you would notice. Do you think I’d buy a gun if I didn’t know how to shoot it? If had wanted to hit you, you’d be bleeding.” She lowered the gun, pointing it at the floor. “Get out of my house.”
“It’s not—”
The gun muzzle lifted an inch.
“Brian . . .” Lance warned in a what-are-you-thinking tone.
“You have three seconds.” Natalie tapped the toe of her sensible shoe on the kitchen tile. “One.”
Brian complained, “But this is my—”
“Two,” Natalie said.
Brian slid along the wall. Natalie moved out of his way, keeping several feet of space between them, but she didn’t turn her back on him. She spun in a slow circle as he passed her.
The front door slammed. A few seconds later, a powerful engine started up, and they heard the Porsche roar away.
“He’ll be back.” Natalie stuffed her gun into her purse. “Best purchase I’ve made in years. I was just never the sort of person who could stand up for myself.”
“What changed?” Morgan asked.
“A few months ago, a friend of mine finally talked me into going to a support group. Hearing other women talk about getting out of bad marriages made me think I could do it too. I’ve been secretly planning to leave him for months. Kicking him out feels even better.”
“We should go.” Lance nudged Morgan’s arm. Someone probably called the police. Gunshots were not normal in this neighborhood.
Natalie walked across the kitchen, pieces of ceramic crunching under her shoes. She pulled a dust pan from the pantry and began to sweep up.
“Are you all right?” Morgan asked.
Natalie paused for a few seconds. “I feel better than I have in years. It makes me angry that I wasted so much of my life. I could have been happy. Why did I put up with that asshole all this time?”
The question sounded rhetorical. Lance kept his mouth shut.
Natalie swept up a pile of red-and-yellow crockery pieces. “I always hated that cookie jar. Brian bought it for me.” She nudged the decapitated rooster head with a toe and then ground it under her shoe. “Stupid cock.”
Lance didn’t wait for the police to show. He took Morgan’s elbow and steered her toward the front door. “The last thing I need right now is another run-in with the sheriff’s department.”
“True,” she agreed as they went outside. “You won’t be able to solve the case from a cell.”
“You asked Natalie about her activity the night my dad disappeared. Do you really think she could have done it?” Lance got behind the wheel. He glanced up and down the street but didn’t see any curious neighbors or police.
Morgan slid into the passenger seat. “Now that I think about it, no. I would lean toward a male killer. Strangling a young woman and putting her into the trunk of a car would take physical strength. I doubt I could lift a dead body. Hanging Crystal took some muscle too.”
“We’ll have to tell Sheriff King about Brian.” Lance drove away. “Brian lied in his police statements.”
“He lied to Sharp twenty-three years ago,” Morgan said. “The statute of limitations would have run out on making a false statement many years ago.”
“But admitting he falsified his statement means he has no alibi for Mary’s murder.”
“And he also admitted that he was with her that night,” Morgan said. “He said he dropped her at PJ’s, but who can believe a chronic liar?”
“But if Brian had an alibi for P. J. Hoolihan’s death and the attempt on my mother’s life, then he probably didn’t kill Mary.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Morgan stepped into her office. Her grandfather was studying the whiteboard from his wheelchair. He held one of Sharp’s green protein shakes in his hand. Next to him, Sharp pointed at the board with a dry erase marker.
“What have you two been up to?” She touched her grandfather’s shoulder on the way to her desk.
“Sharp made me this drink.” Her grandfather examined his glass. “It looks disgusting, but the taste isn’t bad.”
“We’ve found a couple of new leads, thanks to your grandfather,” Sharp said. “Art hasn’t forgotten anything about investigating.”
Lance came in. Four adults crowded the small room.
Sharp set down his marker. “Tell us what happened with Brian Leed.”
By the time Lance finished the story, Sharp and Grandpa were shaking their heads.
Sharp snorted. “Nice to see Karma getting payback. I can’t believe he lied all these years.”
“I’d keep Brian at the top of the suspect list for Mary’s murder.” Grandpa drained his glass. “We suspect the current murderer is the same person who killed Mary, but we don’t know that for certain. And forgive me if I don’t take his word for it that he dropped Mary back off at PJ’s that night. Or about anything else. Once a liar, always a liar.”
“His word is worthless.” Sharp drew a big fat star next to Brian’s name.
“Warren Fox is a liar too. He told us he hadn’t seen Crystal in months, but Abigail said he’d been hanging around the motel harassing her recently.” Lance pointed to the board. “We need to follow up with him.”
“Stan needs a follow-up interview too,” Morgan said. “If Brian lied about their whereabouts, then so did Stan. Was he covering for a friend, or was there another reason he lied?”
“We have more lies than truth at this point.” Lance shook his head.
“Now, what did you two discover today?” Morgan asked Sharp.
“First, your grandfather found indications that Crystal could have been murdered.” Sharp opened a laptop on Morgan’s desk.
The four gathered around the computer. Sharp pulled up a photo of Crystal. The gruesome image made Morgan flinch, even though she’d seen it before.
Grandpa pointed to the screen, where he’d zoomed in on Crystal’s hands. “Look at her fingertips.”
“Her fingernail is broken,” Morgan said. “And I see a yellow thread and a little blood under the nail.”
“Good eye.” Grandpa zoomed in even more. “She pulled at the rope. She has some scratches on her neck too, which could indicate that she was struggling against an attacker. Or once her brain figured out she was dying, her survival instincts kicked in and she tried to get the rope off her neck. Without a drop long enough to break the neck, it can take a few minutes to die by hanging.”
Morgan had a mental image of the woman’s body flailing, her feet kicking, knocking over the chair, her fingers tearing at the noose around her neck. “But at that point, she couldn’t free herself.”
“Right.” Grandpa went to another image, a close-up of the rope around her neck. “Do you see the way the rope has shifted on her throat?”