Page 100 of Last Seen Alive
“But you did.” There was satisfaction in pointing that out.
“You might have gotten away with it if you hadn’t left the Glock from the Lawson heist,” Trent said, looking up from his notepad.
Nick bunched up his face and shook his head, disgusted by his slipup. Amanda could piece together what his grand plan had been. The short of it was he’d intended to pin Claire’s murder on Logan and Martin’s on Claire. A win-win. Only Nick hadn’t been able to let it go there. He had become obsessed with the progress of the investigation.
“You staged everything for us to believe that Logan killed Claire. So well, in fact, that it nearly worked,” Amanda said.
Nick wasn’t looking at her or Trent, but twisting the top hem of the bedsheet.
“Why did you want to frame Logan?” This question struck personal and was hard to swallow.
“It seemed perfect. Claire had left him, broke his heart years ago. You don’t think I didn’t notice the guy running around town asking anyone who would listen if they’d seen Claire?”
“And the lingerie?”
“A nice touch, don’t you think? Spouses reunited, but then things go deadly wrong.”
This guy had a big ego considering he was caught, but she could work that to their advantage. “It was pretty smart. What we can’t figure out is how you got Claire into Logan’s house.” Benji’s Taxi had responded to Trent’s request, but it hadn’t led them anywhere. They were still awaiting responses from the other cab companies.
“That part fell together. I followed her there Friday evening. She took a cab, got dropped off a few blocks away and walked. She waited until he left and let herself inside. I kept at a distance, got the idea, bought the lingerie, and returned. By that time, Logan was gone and Claire was in his house. It was perfect timing.”
The way Nick spoke so lightly about killing Claire, a person who had been his former partner in crime, was nauseating. His head wasn’t screwed on right, and might not have been for a long time. Now, she and Trent had theorized that Claire went into Logan’s by herself. But that raised the question of what had her going into his house in the first place. “Why was she there?”
“How should I know?”
“How did you know Logan would have a gun and ammo?” Further to that, the fact Logan’s weapon would accept 9-millimetre bullets like the Glock.
Nick smiled. “Just got lucky.”
Spoken as if the gods approved. “And if he hadn’t had a gun?”
“I would have shot her with a gun I’d brought, wiped the prints, left it behind. It still would have made Logan suspect.”
Amanda would have expected Nick to be charming, but he was just annoying. “You could have used him to lure Claire out.” Her mind was on the “accident” Logan had in Nebraska.
“She never would have fallen for that. Besides, she had cut him out of her life when she left Nebraska.”
Amanda smirked. “So, you knew she went to Nebraska.”
Nick drew a deep breath, winced, glanced over at the morphine drip. “I figured it out.”
“How?” Trent asked.
“Claire wanted out, no more heists. But it doesn’t work like that. I had my eye on her and followed her to the airport, found out she was headed to Nebraska.”
“She could have gone there, then hopped on another plane,” Amanda pointed out.
“She could have, but she didn’t.”
“You followed her to Nebraska, eventually found her. Then you tried to kill Logan.”
Nick stared through her. “I never intended to kill him; I wanted to send a message to Claire.”
“It seemed to work because Claire hightailed it out of there,” Amanda said. “She was on the run for the last four years.”
“She never should have come back to Dumfries.”
“How did you even know she was in town?” Amanda paced the end of the bed, keeping her attention on Nick.
