“I just realized I hardly know anything about the man,” I said, hoping that would explain my curiosity if Bodie didn’t already know that Wyatt Investigations—meaning me and only me—was on the case.
“Probably for the best,” he said. “The guy was a bit of a sleazebag.”
Don’t I know it?I thought.
I glanced at Bodie and silently cursed myself for the next thought that ran through my head. Should I consider everyone who knew Freddie as a suspect, including Bodie? He struck me as too genuine and kind to be a murderer, but then how well did I really know him? He hadn’t lived at the Mirage all that long.
“Were you in the building around the time of the murder?” I asked, hoping I sounded casual. “Did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary?”
“I wish I could say I knew something that would help the cops find the killer,” he said with a slight frown, “but I was at work.”
“In the morning?” That struck me as odd. The bar where he worked wouldn’t have been open at that hour.
“I was helping the assistant manager with inventory,” he explained. “I take whatever overtime I can get.” He straightened up. “And I’m really glad I took on that shift, because the cops didn’t waste time looking at me as a suspect once they confirmed my alibi.”
“They thought you were a suspect?” I said with surprise. Even though I’d wanted to eliminate him from my list of suspects, I’d never considered him a real possibility and therefore hadn’t expected the police to either. “Why would you kill Freddie?”
“I wouldn’t, but I was arrested a couple of years ago after I tried to break up a fight at a nightclub. The charges were dropped, but as soon as the detective in charge of the murder case found out about the incident, he was knocking on my door. I hope he’s got some real suspects now.”
I hoped so too, for Mr. Nagy’s sake.
Bodie’s blue eyes focused on something over my shoulder. “Huh. I didn’t know Freddie would have any friends like that.”
I turned around and froze, my champagne flute at my lips.
Wyatt had just entered the apartment.
Chapter
Seventeen
“What are you doing here?” I demanded after steamrolling my way over to Wyatt.
“You really cut to the chase, don’t you?” he said. “Never waste any time with greetings or small talk.”
My parents had drilled politeness into me as a little girl, but sometimes my brain overrode that setting. Wyatt’s words, however, racked my inner child with guilt.
“Hi. How are you? And how did you even find out about the cocktail party?” I said it all in a rush, hoping to assuage the guilt that was quickly getting overridden by curiosity.
Wyatt’s slow grin awakened the butterflies that had been slumbering in my stomach. His dimple appeared as he looked at me with amusement. “Zita mentioned it.”
So now he was on a first-name basis with Mrs. Nagy?
I narrowed my eyes. “You’ve seen her since yesterday?”
Even I hadn’t seen her since I’d made my foolhardy promise to her, and I lived right next door to the woman.
“She called me.” Wyatt slid his hands into the pockets of his tailored suit pants. He wore a cobalt blue suit with a white dress shirt, but no tie. He’d left the top two buttons of his shirt undone, and his dark hair was artfully tousled. “Agnes gave her mynumber,” he continued, looking perfectly relaxed and at ease. “Zita called to thank me for taking on Zoltán’s case with you.”
“And you’re here because?” I couldn’t seem to stop myself from acting prickly around him.
He glanced at all the people present, several of whom were not-so-subtly watching him out of the corner of their eye. “A room full of potential suspects and sources of valuable information. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“But why do you care about suspects? You don’t live at the Mirage, and you’ve never met Mr. Nagy. You’d never even met his wife until a couple of days ago.”
“True,” he conceded. “But she reminds me of my late grandmother, and did you see the look in her eyes when she asked for our help?”
The impossible-to-ignore pleading. I’d seen it all right. Just the memory of it tugged at my heartstrings.
