Billy & The Beast (Ever After, New York #3) - Eli Easton Page 0,60
I can tell you that made me pay attention, even though my mind was still caught on the fact that there wasn’t a second car. “That’s all you’re allowed to tell me, Detective Simmons? Or that’s all you know?”
The waitress came to refill his coffee, allowing him to ignore my question. While he chatted with her, and then doctored his coffee with cream and sugar, I thought about what I’d learned. Someone was fucking with Aaron. Of course, I had one obvious guess. But there had to be other people in Seb’s life I didn’t know. And there was that single, overriding question. Why would anyone do that to him?
I looked up to find a man near the register staring at me. He wore sunglasses and had a tough, unfriendly face. I wiped my mouth, wondering if I had something there, but the man just turned away.
“Listen,” Simmons said. “You don’t have to tell me where Seb is.” He took out a business card and pushed it across the Formica tabletop. “But would you pass that along for me, and tell him I’d like to speak to him? I wanted to interview him at the time, because there were things that didn’t add up, but he was in a coma. Then we closed the case. The lab report was hard to argue with.”
“I’ll tell him when I see him.” I took the card. Not that I was going to see Aaron anytime soon. The thought hurt.
“Did you find out what he doing in Benedict Canyon that night?” I asked.
“Yes.” Simmons sipped his coffee. “He was visiting someone who lived there. A work associate.”
My heart did a double thump in my chest. “Emmanuel Clark,” I whispered.
Simmons gave me a curious look. “I can’t confirm that.” He blew on his cup. His steady gaze was all the confirmation I needed. “Do you know Mr. Clark?”
“Yeah,” I huffed bitterly. “I know him.”
Simmons put down his cup. He leaned forward, his gaze boring into me. “Who are you really?”
I had a feeling this was a test. Like, if I answered the right way, maybe he’d tell me something more. But I didn’t know what he wanted to hear, so I decided to just be honest.
“I live in the, um, town where Seb is staying now. He’s still in recovery. Very reclusive. I started gardening for him, and we became friends. More than friends.”
I waited to see his reaction, but he didn’t so much as blink.
“Everything was going well. Aaron was getting better. Less depressed. Then Emmanuel Clark threatened to sue me and take everything my mom and I have if I ever saw Aaron again. Emmanuel doesn’t want Aaron to have friends. He doesn’t want him to get better. He’s up to something. I know it! But I don’t know what.”
“That son of a bitch,” Simmons muttered.
“Do you see where I’m going with this? Something’s really, really shitty in kitty city!” I cried.
Simmons studied me a moment longer, then seemed to make up his mind. He reached down and opened a briefcase. He laid a plain manila folder on the table. The line of his mouth was grim. “Look, I’m going to tell you something that goes no further. If you tell anyone I said this, I’ll deny it. Do you understand me?”
I nodded. Yes, please. I needed anything he could tell me. I was all ears.
“Say it out loud, Billy.”
“I won’t tell anyone what you tell me. Unless, of course, Aaron really needs to hear it. But no one else.”
He huffed in exasperation but nodded. “I guess that’s fair enough.” He sat back and tapped the folder with one finger. “As I told you, the case seemed pretty straightforward. Seb was intoxicated. We know that from the blood report and from the statements of the people who were with him that night—” He raised one eyebrow at me. He must mean Emmanuel and anyone else who’d been at his house. “In fact, they claim they told him not to drive, but he managed to get away and get into his car anyway.”
He tapped the folder again. “Straightforward, like I said. Except for a few small details.”
“Like?”
He shifted the folder slightly on the table. “I spoke with a few of his friends. They swore he never took meth. Apparently, he’d once experimented with harder stuff, but the past few years before his accident, he pretty much stuck to alcohol and ‘a little’ weed. And they swear he never drove intoxicated.”