Charlie began to pace once more. “Run through it with me: Who did you see interact with him right before he died?”
“Joe was on bar, and Presley—as she said—had just gotten him a bourbon and brought it to him. Brett and Lacy were dancing and Anton?—”
Charlie took out a notebook and began recording names.
I thought of the appalled—and worse, sad—face Lacy would make if she knew that I’d thrown her or her boyfriend into the spotlight of an investigation. I tried to course correct. “I don’t think they had anything to do with?—”
“It’s just a list of names, Dakota. Doesn’t mean anyone is guilty.” Charlie huffed out a breath. “Who else did you notice hanging around him this evening?”
I hesitated, feeling like I was somehow betraying these people, but willing myself to trust Charlie’s method. “His camera crew was filming most of the night. Brett was dancing with Lacy when he…” I paused, my cheeks heating. “Do not write down Lacy’s name.”
Charlie looked at me, his eyebrows raised as if trying to figure out how serious I was. “I told you, this doesn’t mean anyone is guilty. Think of it as a list of witnesses, not suspects.”
That didn’t make me feel better. “Fine. Then add my name to the list since I was at a table only five yards or so from the dance floor.”
He huffed out a long breath. “Fine.”
I swallowed hard, trying to reframe my thinking and lower my blood pressure. I trusted Charlie. I did. He was a good sheriff, and he’d worked to solve Mr. Finch’s murder as well as the case of the missing 2001 pageant queen only a few months earlier.
We could do this. Together. Again.
We just needed to somehow keep from irritating each other to death, which was perhaps a poor choice of phrasing in this moment.
Charlie studied me, and then without another word he turned and walked to the edge of the curtain and poked his head out, likely consulting with his gorgeous deputy.
Fine. I have things to do too, I reminded myself. Things like finding Lacy and asking her exactly what she’d been searching for in Brett’s pockets.
FIVE
The medics took Brett’s body, and as I watched from the edge of the stage, the room quieted into a kind of solemnity. It was hard to believe that this evening had started with a football game at Aubergine High and ended with a death at The Rose.
When the last medic finally closed the double doors to the ballroom, I released a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding and lifted my phone to check in with Aunt DeeDee.
The phone only rang twice before she answered and put it on FaceTime, her preferred method of communication. “Hey, hon. You okay?”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I had all my arms and legs and pieces, as Momma would say, but emotionally, I might fall apart any minute.
Aunt DeeDee must’ve sensed as much. “Joe came down to the kitchen and told me what happened. Brett was always a handful, even as a young’un, God love him.” She dabbed at her eyes with the edge of her apron and set the phone on the edge of the counter. She was cutting onions, I realized, and there was a massive pile of greenery stacked next to the sink in a giant rinsing bowl.
“What is that?” I asked, moving the screen closer to my face.
“Rhubarb,” Aunt DeeDee answered. She picked up a bowl and started stirring.
Growing up in the South, I knew that rhubarb was used in a variety of desserts, but I hadn’t recognized the plant at first, probably because it didn’t grow naturally in the hills where Momma and I used to hike. The most important fact I recalled about the plant, though, was that to both animals and humans, the stalks were edible but the leaves were poisonous.
“Joe made a couple of desserts using rhubarb, but he accidentally over-ordered,” Aunt DeeDee told me. “He was trying to figure out what to do with the rest. He ended up using it in the signature cocktail.”
I thought of the Aubergine Thresher: grape soda, vodka, gin, and rhubarb sticking out of the top. It sounded just as disgusting as when Joe had first offered it to me.
“Why are you still in the kitchen?”
“Folks still gotta eat, especially when tragedy strikes.”
Briefly, I considered finding her, if for nothing else than a quick hug, but then I remembered Lacy.
“I’ll come see you in a bit, okay?”
“I’ll be here.” She would. Feeding people was her love language.
