Jeb smiled briefly, though his eyes stayed sober. “I heard. So you were at the hospital from nine o’clock until when?”
“Until a little after two when I went home.”
Jeb kept writing. “Did Osprey stay with you?”
“No. He left me at the hospital around nine-thirty because I locked the door.”
“Where did he go?”
May’s head was really starting to hurt. “I think Ace went back to the bar for a while.”
“How do you know that?”
“He came over to my house around two-ish,” May said.
Jeb angled toward her. “For how long?”
“He stayed until this morning,” she said evenly, meeting his gaze. “He dropped me off at the clinic around eight-thirty this morning.”
Jeb’s pen kept moving, the faint scratch of it loud in the space between them. “Did Ace tell you anything about Ivy?”
The breeze lifted a strand of May’s hair and blew it across her cheek. “No. Of course not. Why would he?”
The trooper looked up, giving her his full attention now. “Not a word?”
“No,” she said, frowning. “Why would he?”
Jeb hesitated. “From what we can tell, Dr. Smirnov, Ace Osprey gave Ivy a ride home from the bar last night. He was the last person to see her alive.”
The words didn’t register at first. They seemed to float between them.
May stared at him. “No,” she said automatically. The creek gurgled somewhere behind the trees. A radio crackled. Lance shifted inside the truck. “That’s not possible,” she said. Ace had come to her house around two. He hadn’t mentioned Ivy. Of course, they’d been rather busy and hadn’t talked much.
“Would Ace have given Ivy a ride home?” Jeb asked.
Slowly, May nodded. “Of course. He wasn’t drinking, and I assume he would’ve given anybody a ride home. That’s Ace. He’s a decent guy.”
“Uh huh. He usually drinks alcohol, right?” Jeb asked.
“Everyone does,” she said quickly. “But he wasn’t drinking last night.”
Jeb cracked his neck, still looking at her. “He didn’t mention giving Ivy a ride when he arrived at your house to, ah, stay the night?”
Defensiveness rose in her. “No, but that’s not something he would’ve thought to talk about. He’s a nice guy, Jeb.” If it wasn’t a big deal to Ace, he wouldn’t have brought it up.
“Right. Isn’t that what they always say about the serial killer next door?” Jeb asked.
Dread slithered through May. What the heck? “Ace Osprey is no killer.”
The bright blue sky above them felt almost cruel in its clarity. Everything looked so normal. The trees. The road. The truck. Lance watching through the windshield. Below them, Ivy lay still beside Two Trout Creek. And suddenly, May wasn’t just grieving her friend.
She was terrified for the man she was falling in love with. Hard.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The wooden chair pressed against Ace’s back as he sat, once again, beside Daisy, who today wore a light blue suit with a pink shirt beneath it. Her hair was coiled neatly into a bun, without a strand out of place. Her lawyer look was a far cry from her waitress look, and he found himself wondering if she earned more tips if she looked harried instead of polished. It was an odd thing to think about while staring down a possible murder charge, but his brain had always wandered when he felt cornered.
The room smelled faintly of stale coffee and old paper. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting everything in a flat glow that made people look harsher than they were. The scarred wooden table separated them from the troopers.
