“I know what you’re thinking, Lacy, but you’re wrong,” Stephanie piped in. “Her grandmother was in the clinic about a week ago after a bad fall. She’s not getting around much at all and said that her granddaughter would be coming to help her out for a while. From what I gathered from her grandma, Cash is going through a slight rebellion since moving out of her parents’ home.”
“Slight?” The girl looked like an evil little fairy, though the actions and manners Lacy had just witnessed were the polar opposite of what she would expect from someone sporting that look. Guess that just proved the whole thing about a book and its cover.
“She’s a good girl.” Stephanie insisted. “She brings her grandma in to the clinic whenever she needs to come, does all of her shopping and cleaning and is working on top of that. Trust me, the girl doesn’t have time for anything else.”
Lacy put her hands up in surrender. She’d warned Stephanie about the possibility of the killer being female so she’d be alert when around the shoot. After all, women were rarely seen as a threat. “All right, I believe you.”
Angela and Sarah looked between the two of them with confusion written all over their faces. It was kind of funny, but she figured they wouldn’t think so. Luckily, Gus walked into the bar, and apparently, he was looking for her, because once he spotted them, he cut a direct path to their table.
“Hello, ladies, I need to speak to Lacy for a moment, if you don’t mind?” Gus was in uniform, so he already had the attention of most of the patrons in the bar, but Lacy could see the wheels turning over in Sarah and Angela’s heads already. She needed to salvage as much of her cover as possible.
“Is there a problem, officer?” Lacy asked, though she knew if he was here to get her, there was likely a big problem somewhere. She only hoped it wasn’t a body.
“I’d like to discuss it with you in private, if you will,” he replied.
Scooting off her stool, Lacy excused herself, promising to return in a moment, and followed Gus to the back hall near the restrooms.
“Gus, you’re going to blow my cover! What’s this all about?” she whispered.
“One of the models was poisoned at the house.”
Lacy let that sink in for a minute. Jose was still staying at the hotel with the rest of the crew, though tonight, he was with Ethan, so that left Angel, Madison and Renee in the house. “Which one?”
“It was Madison. They found a bottle of antifreeze in the trashcan outside, and her drink bottle tested positive. Whoever did this had access to her drink and enough sense that the only prints we were able to lift belonged to Madison,” Gus complained. “I have to account for everyone in the house, for every minute of the day.”
“So you’re here for my alibi.” It wasn’t a question, Lacy knew the procedure, and she also knew Gus didn’t suspect her but was doing this to protect her cover instead of blowing it. “All right, are you ready?” At his nod, she rattled off her whereabouts for the day. “I was at the shoot from seven this morning to about five-thirty this evening. After that, I took a shower and got ready before Stephanie came to pick me up at seven tonight. So aside from being in the shower and dressing, I was with people the whole time. Mainly Ethan.”
“That’s good. The estimated time of ingestion was during your shoot anyway, so I won’t have any trouble validating your innocence. Not that I doubted it.” He assured her.
“I know. I’m glad you came and found me. I’ll have to really watch my back at the house now. I’ve got to let my chief know about this, too.” Lacy sighed. “He’s going to blow a gasket.”
“Why? If the killer is in the house with you, why not arrest the two remaining models and interrogate them?”
“It’s not that easy. You said yourself that the poison was administered at the shoot today. The killer could have planted the bottle in our trashcan outside to make it look like someone at the house did it. If they’re trying to throw us off the trail, it would be a damn good way to go about it.”
And now the killer was targeting the women, as well. But why break from the pattern? Lacy really needed to get in touch with Murphy and see if something had happened to one of the male models. Was the next victim now a woman?
“Listen, I’ll let you get back to your friends, but I just wanted you to have a heads up on what went down at the house tonight.”
“How bad is she?” Lacy dreaded his answer, and the way he scrubbed his hand over the back of his neck told her it was bad.
“Last I heard, she lost her vision about thirty minutes before she lapsed into a coma. They gave her an antidote, and they’re dialyzing her now to try to clean it out of her system, but it doesn’t look good. Her family is on their way. We won’t know if there’s any brain damage until she wakes up. If she even wakes up at all.” Gus looked down at Lacy, and his eyes reflected the same determination she felt to find this bastard. “I want this asshole, Lacy. My town was relatively quiet before this, and I’d like to get back to that quickly.”