New plan. Keep on the robe. Sluggs is after you. This will confuse him. Go. I’ll meet you back at the SUV.
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I ducked out of Sluggs’s light and knew that I was in for it now. I only had to hope that the plan would actually work—that whoever was guilty (Hadley), would confront Rufus and leave me alone.
That was the point of the whole plan.
Within seconds I was out on the street, which was jammed tight with people.
Mass confusion was all around me, everywhere I looked. People weren’t sure if they were supposed to watch the parade and listen to Leola Vass hoot and howl or if they were supposed to listen to Tuney Sluggs, who was about an inch away from throwing me in the pokey.
I started to run in one direction when a hand circled my wrist. My initial reaction was to jerk it away, but the voice stopped me.
“Come on, Miss Cooke. I’ll get you someplace safe.”
Wylie was pulling me from the crowd, dragging me down an alley away from the chaos.
When we were far enough away that the voices of the festivalgoers had drowned down, Wylie rubbed a hand over his head and exhaled.
“You okay?” he asked.
It was not lost on me that I still wore the stupid monk’s robe. Sweat dotted my skin, and I had to peel the robe off.
“I’m fine,” I finally answered. “Thank you for pulling me out of there. Sluggs is about to arrest me, and I’m not the one who’s guilty.”
Wylie scratched his head, pushing his hat up. “That was some performance y’all did up there.”
I pressed a hand to my chest and felt my heart drumming against my ribs. “Well, we’re trying to catch a killer. That’s the truth of it. Someone killed Crystal Darsey, and we need them to know that they’ve been found out.”
The alley suddenly seemed very dark, blacker than night. I felt something in Wylie shift, and I knew it had shifted completely when I heard the hammer of a gun click back into place.
“So you’ve found me out,” Wylie said. “Looks like you’re the first of the five that I have to kill.”
Chapter 26
Isighed.Double dang it.Why did I have all the bad luck? Crap. And here I thought that Hadley had been the one who murdered Crystal, but it hadn’t been her at all.
“Let me guess,” I said, “why you did it.”
Wylie wiped a line of sweat from his cheek stubble. “You don’t have to guess. I’ll tell you exactly why I did it. You should know that since you figured out that it was me who killed her.”
Well, technically not correct, but I wasn’t about to argue. “Um, I hate to burst your bubble, but you’re not who I suspected.”
However, Rufus’s plan had worked and so had my original idea. Turned out that ferreting out the killer had been easier than I thought.
It had also been easier for him to get me in a position to kill me.
“Crystal,” Wylie began spitefully, “that girl thought she could wrap just about any man around her finger and we’d do whatever she wanted—all the time. She used to tease me by swinging those hips and promising that if I did things for her, that she’d pay me back.”
I pressed my spine against the rough brick as I tried to form a plan. Could I create a magical spear and throw it at Wylie?
I started to lift my hand. His gaze snapped toward my fingers. “Don’t you go working any of your magic stuff. No trying anything funny.”
“Fine,” I ground out.
“Anyway, Crystal kept promising me that she’d give me a little something something. I did whatever I could for her—gave her money or ran her errands. Finally I asked her just when was I gonna be paid back for everything that I had done. You know what she said?”
I had a pretty good guess since he had wound up killing her, but I kept quiet about that. “No idea.”
“Crystal said that she’d never give me anything, that I was as worthless as this town.”
