“There are other ways to kill someone,” Presley shot back.
As I inched past Presley toward the camera, I noticed that her eyes were dilated, indicating that she’d had more than one drink from the bar.
Charlie didn’t respond directly to Presley, saying instead, “We’ll need an accounting of everyone before we let you head back home or to your hotels, so most of you will likely be staying here overnight. Savilla Finch has been kind enough to allow all of you free accommodations. If we haven’t already spoken to you, we’ll call your name soon, and if we have, please sit tight. We may have further questions.”
A murmur spread across the room and a couple of people asked follow-up questions, but I was no longer paying attention to the details because I’d reached Lee and the steady red light of his camera. I tapped the cameraman on the shoulder, startling him.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s Lee, right?”
The man took his eye away from the viewfinder but didn’t answer or turn off the camera.
“Why are you still filming?” I asked, moving in front of the lens so Charlie would be blocked.
“Presley told us to keep filming, said she could use it. Just following orders.”
I tried to think whether or not Presley Lombardi currently had her own reality show, but came up with nothing. I wasn’t exactly a TV aficionado. Presley could be airing herself nude every night on cable, and I, stuck in the lab with a dissected cat’s heart, would have no idea. Regardless, it didn’t really matter because the point was that Presley Lombardi was asking Lee to film something that certainly required consent from law enforcement.
She was also using the moments after her boyfriend’s death as a kind of entertainment.
Brett was dead and she was the single star. Camera gold.
I stuck out a hand and lowered the camera. “You can turn it off for now, okay?”
“I don’t think you have the authority to make that kind of decision,” Lee said, standing to his full height, which was a few inches taller than me.
I started to tell him exactly what he could do with his camera when Mina intervened. “You’re primarily the lighting guy anyway, Lee,” Mina said, her voice easy as she took the camera from his shoulder. “And it’s probably a good idea if you tell Dakota what you told me.”
Lee’s eyes shot from Mina to me, and he stuck out his bottom lip.
“She’s good people, just trying to help,” Mina said about me. “Go ahead.”
Lee cleared his throat, suddenly seeming nervous. “We… Mina and I… we…” His voice was so low it was almost a whisper. “We filmed Brett’s death. Accidentally.”
I froze. The crime—or at least the end result—had been caught on film. That was the real camera gold, at least for investigators.
“We didn’t mean to film it,” Lee said. “We were just doing our job.”
“Lee was getting a pan of the room,” Mina added.
“I was checking the lighting so we could get different angles after the party was in full swing. Then Brett started…” Lee’s words were coming rapidly. Maybe he was anxious about reliving the memory or perhaps he was more concerned about being seen as withholding evidence. “I dropped the camera when Mina ran over to help with CPR, but it was still filming.”
That was odd. Why would he drop the camera if he wasn’t the one hurrying to help with CPR?
“Where did you go during all of this?” I asked Lee, trying not to sound judgmental.
“I was…” He blinked several times as if trying to recall. “I was here, in the ballroom. I just… I was so flustered, I don’t really remember…” He couldn’t finish his sentence, couldn’t come up with a reasonable answer, which made him seem guiltier than he might be.
“We need to give the footage to the sheriff,” Mina said, her words firm as if she were finishing a conversation she’d already been having with Lee. “Maybe it has something that can help the investigation.”
“I don’t know.” Lee frowned, looking at her with concern. “Although… it could clear things up.” He rubbed at his jaw. “Especially because it makes one person in particular seem pretty guilty.”
The hair on the back of my neck rose. “Presley?” I asked.
Lee shook his head. “Some Black girl dancing with Brett.”
My eyebrows rose to my hairline and my mouth went dry at the way he’d thrown out the generic description with derision.Some Black girl.Not for the first time that night, I had the urge to slap a person.
I knew that Lee was talking about Lacy, one of three Black students in our graduating class. Aubergine High wasn’t exactly a melting pot, and she was also the only person of color at the reunion who’d been dancing with Brett.
