Page 65 of What We May Be

Before she could reply, Annie disappeared into the car, Charlie’s “Love you” lost beneath the crunch of gravel and the heavy feeling that something wasn’t quite right with her sister.

* * *

An hour later, Charlie’s doubts had grown from a mole hill to a mountain, fretting over Annie, over risking her friendship with Trevor, over the truth about Alice’s death they needed to tell Sean, and most of all, the case and what she was increasingly sure was a premature victory lap.

“I don’t know.” She refilled her water glass from the pitcher on the table. “It seems too easy.”

“Easy?” Maggie scoffed from across the booth next to Rachel. “You call the past five days easy?”

“Not at all, so why should the solution be?”

“Sometimes the simplest solutions are the right ones,” Rachel said with a shrug.

Charlie didn’t think so. “I just have this feeling the case is connected to my family, but before this week, I had no idea who Beth Martin was. Trevor and Annie only knew her in passing from HU, and there’s no mention of her in Dad’s or Cal’s old files.” She’d run a check through the digitized records a third time before leaving the station.

“Your gut thinks it’s connected to your family,” Maggie corrected. “Your head just gave us all the reasons it’s likely not.”

“The roses—”

“Are sold at every supermarket, convenience store, and florist in town.”

Her friend wasn’t getting it, and she desperately needed someone else to get it. She aimed her next question at Rachel. Maybe she’d be easier to sway. “What about the connections to Trevor?”

“Trevor’s lived his whole life in Hanover,” she said. “He’s gorgeous, everyone loves him—especially after what Tracy did to him—and he’s one of HU’s most popular professors. He’s bound to have a lot of connections to people in town. It’s probably just a coincidence.” She mimicked her earlier shrug. “Simple.”

Not getting it either. Nothing about this case was a coincidence. She was sure of that, but the only person who would believe her was playing pool with Trevor and Marsh across the bar. Resisting the urge to growl in frustration, Charlie asked another pertinent question of her less-than-cooperative audience. “What’s her motive?”

Maggie threw up her hands, nearly hitting a passing waitress. “I don’t know. You’re the detective. I’m just the lady who hangs out in the dungeon with dead bodies.”

“Rules,” Rachel reprimanded, even though there was no food in sight. “No more case talk, and definitely no more dead-body talk. Your suspect will be here tomorrow. You can ask her why then. For the time being, there’s nothing more you can do.”

“Except drink.” Maggie held up her glass of whisky for a toast.

“Hear, hear,” Rachel seconded with her own.

Clinking her glass against theirs, Charlie nursed her water while mentally repeating her litany of issues with Beth Martin as their prime suspect, hoping something would click. Midway through her fourth repetition, Maggie asked the inevitable. “So about that Trevor and Tracy blowup at the station. I’ve heard differing accounts of what went down.”

Setting aside her glass, Charlie propped her elbows on the table and covered her face with her hands, mumbling behind them. “I overreacted to her accusing Trevor of cheating.”

“He never cheated.” The volume of Maggie’s voice caused Charlie to cringe.

She lowered her hands and dropped her forearms back to the table. “I’m not sure he convinced her of that today either, but it’s the truth. We made our case.”

“We?” Rachel said. “Did I interrupt something in the locker room?”

Maggie lifted a brow. “What was going on in the locker room, Henby?”

“Sean, Trevor, and I talked about giving it another try.”

Maggie’s “Woot!” had the whole bar looking their way.

And Charlie tossing back the untouched shot of whisky Maggie had bought for her too.

“So Trevor’s officially off the market?” Rachel asked, subdued compared to Maggie.

“TBD.” Charlie lowered her voice to match, aiming to bring their conversation back into their booth instead of broadcasting to all of Pearl’s. “We need to talk. Put all our cards on the table. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sure about taking a chance on Sean again, especially with Trevor’s friendship on the line too.”

“But you’re moving to DC with Trevor?” Rachel said, the sharp edge of impatience in her voice catching Charlie’s attention. “Sean’s overseas.”

---