cut out for this kind of work,” he said, causing her to stop. “I wish Colin hadn’t gone off and left me with this detective job. I liked just being a plain ol’ cop in this town. We hadn’t had a murder in more than twenty years, and now we’ve had three in the last twelve months. I can’t wait ’til Colin gets himself back here. I sure miss that boy.”
“Not more than me, Ernie. Not more than me.” Emily smiled at him as she turned and went to collect Maggie.
As Emily helped Maggie out the front door of the building, the medical examiner and the equipment-laden crime scene investigators trudged in. She wished she could stay to observe, find out the truth of what happened, but she needed to get Maggie home before she had a complete meltdown.
~*~
Maggie didn’t say a word the whole way home. Emily left her to her thoughts, having a few serious ones of her own. After having witnessed the clash between Josh and Lucas at the party, she couldn’t help but wonder if he had been involved in Lucas’s death in some way.
Emily helped her friend into her house and waited while she showered, storing Maggie’s blood-stained clothes in an untouched plastic zippered bag, just as she had promised Ernie she would.
She asked Maggie if she wanted anything to eat, but Maggie said no, that what she wanted was to go to bed and wake up in the morning to find this was all just a bad dream.
Emily tucked her in and sat in the dark by her bed until she fell asleep.
Once she was certain Maggie was out, she tiptoed out of the room and gently closed the bedroom door. She grabbed her purse and started to reach for the front door handle when the door opened and Josh walked in.
He had a black eye and cut lip. Emily glared into his face, waiting for an explanation.
“Where’s my mom?” He glanced around the house. “Mom!”
“Quiet,” she admonished. “She went to bed.”
“Before you left? What’s up with that?”
“Where have you been, Josh?”
“Out.”
She stared at him, evaluating. “Out where?”
“Just out.”
“What’s with the black eye and the cut lip?”
“You should see the other guy,” he smirked, showing her his bloody knuckles.
“I have seen the other guy—he’s dead.”
CHAPTER 13
“Dead? I didn’t do it, Emily—I swear.” Josh proclaimed his innocence over and over again, as he paced the living room floor. “I beat the crap out of him, I’ll admit that, but he was alive when I left.”
“Why, Josh?” Emily was perched on the edge of the couch, keeping her voice down. “What could have possessed you to attack him?”
Josh looked her in the eye. “He was fooling around with his assistant, okay? I saw them.”
“What do you mean you saw them?”
“At the engagement party. They were in the den giggling and probably making out. I walked in on them and they looked surprised.”
“You said they were probably making out? You didn’t see them actually doing anything?”
“Well, I think she was wiping lipstick off his lip. Besides, I stopped by his office yesterday afternoon. When I walked in on them, I thought they were a little too cozy then too. And now this. He tried to tell me they were talking business, but they looked pretty guilty.”
“Why didn’t you tell your mom last night?”
“I confronted Lucas right then and I told him I’d give him twenty-four hours to tell her, or I would. I warned him to break off the engagement, but I knew he hadn’t done it yet when I talked to you on the phone. That’s why I asked if the wedding was still on.”
Emily remembered him asking that.
“So I went to see him, to make him pay for hurting my mom. Then I was going to tell her.”
“Why didn’t you come home after your fight with him?”
“I wanted to. That’s what I had planned to do. It’s just that I was having trouble working up the courage to break her heart.”
He slumped into a chair and leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees. “I thought a few beers would give me the courage,” he said, hanging his head down, “but that didn’t work.”
Josh shook his head and raised his eyes to Emily. “Funny, I can find the courage to kill our enemies, but I couldn’t find the courage to rip my mom’s heart in two.”
“Nothing funny about that,” she assured him. “I hope this whole mess doesn’t reflect badly in your military record.”