“Sure. You want some help?”
“You can chop the onions.” She smiled sweetly before moving out of his arms.
“Gee, thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Jase sniffed and slid the onions off the chopping board into the sauté pan. The kitchen door opened, and Sprocket trotted in ahead of Denise. Denise looked in the pan.
“Stuffed chicken?”
“Yes,” Bree said.
“Sweet. And there’s tea.”
She fixed herself a glass of tea and sat at the counter next to the refrigerator. “Spill. What happened at the station?”
Bree began with getting the call at work and then finding out there had been another murder.
“Did you know her?” Denise asked.
“No. I’d never seen her before. I didn’t recognize her name either. She was a junior editor at one of the magazines Chad wrote for.”
“Shit. Was Chad screwing around with her as well?”
Bree shrugged. “I asked the investigators the same thing. They said he had said no, but I’m willing to go out on a limb that he was probably lying.”
“Is it possible Chad killed her?” Jase asked.
“Before all this happened, I would have said no.” She mixed frozen spinach in with the onions in the pan. “After the way he was when you kicked him out, I’m not sure any more. But, the police said he has a solid alibi for when this girl was killed. He was in Atlanta covering a game.”
“So, not Chad,” Denise said.
“Nope.” She split the chicken breasts to stuff with the spinach and onion mixture.
“Tim said there was another note,” Jase said.
“Yes. This one said,A woman like you should be treated better.”
“What does that even mean?” Denise asked. “Don’t get me wrong, I completely agree with it.”
“Your guess is as good as mine. I told the investigators about Chad. Steven, my old neighbor, Jaelyn’s husband? He provided them with all the information the PI got for him. They’re looking into this latest girl’s life to see if there’s a connection to Chad. Right now, they’re going on the assumption that someone has fixated on me because of Chad.”
“So it’s a guy?” Denise asked.
“They don’t know. They’re leaning that way because both the girls were stabbed, but there was no sexual trauma, so it could also be a woman. Or an impotent man. They don’t know. Or they aren’t saying.”
“What about the prints from your room? Did anything ever come back from that?”
“No. They didn’t get any hits. They did ask about my room again. What had been moved. What pieces of clothing had been messed with. I told them everything I could.” She turned on the faucet and washed her hands.
“Do they think there’s a direct threat to you?” Jase asked.
She put the chicken in the oven before she answered him. “They don’t know. They don’t think so, but they’re going to have a patrol car drive by randomly. It’s a dead-end street so it’s not exactly going to be random. If someone is creeping around, hopefully it will spook them.”
“I don’t like it,” Jase said, a fierce scowl on his face. “You’d think they’d know whether or not there’s a threat to you.”
“I agree with Jase,” Denise said.
