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I bolted after him, despite not being able to move very fast in the tight dress. This would never have happened if Nan let me wear my own clothes, I thought bitterly. Meanwhile hoping and praying he didn’t have a gun concealed in that pocket.

He couldn’t pull a weapon on me without attracting the attention of the policemen out front. With any luck, Doug would run right into Officer Bouchard’s path. I would have called for police assistance, but the guests would definitely hear if I shouted. Doug had to know he couldn’t hurt me without others noticing, and right now he was running away from me.

Nothing threatening about that.

Yet.

He darted around the side of the house heading toward the woods. I was just about to declare it a lost cause when someone stepped out from between the trees and body-slammed him to the ground with a sparkling red rush of strength.

“Bonnie,” I exclaimed, still unable to believe my eyes. Her dress was even tighter than mine, but that hadn’t stopped her from bringing our suspect to a halt.

“When a lady asks you to stop, you stop,” she growled as she ground a spiky stiletto heel into Doug’s back.

“Oh, I like her.” The one-eyed Jinx’s voice rose from nearby. Charles was right. She had found the escaped rescue cat, and she must have dropped or set him aside before tackling our man.

“Well,” Bonnie demanded, drawing my attention back to her. It was impossible to see the bony black cat in the dark woods, anyway.“What do you need from him?”

“Show me what’s in your pocket,” I told Doug, not used to taking such a hard-line approach but also kind of liking how powerful it made me feel. Hard times called for hard measures and all that, and I had definite reason to assume Doug’s guilt. He’d had an altercation with the victim onlymoments before the murder and had lied about leaving the party early. Then there were the small facts that he had run from me and was clearly hiding something in that pocket.

“Let me go,” he growled, struggling on the ground but unable to escape Bonnie’s heel.

She dug it deeper into the small of his back, and he cried out in pain.“Go on and take whatever’s in there,” she encouraged me.

I swallowed down a fresh lump of anxiety and reached into his pocket. I immediately found what he’d been trying to hide and pulled it out.

A switchblade.Oh my gosh!

“What’s this for, tough guy?” Bonnie demanded with a menacing rasp. “For killing people?”

“What? No!” Doug cried, struggled, then gave up. “Please let me go.”

“Not until you explain the knife,” I said, finding my voice at last. “I heard you and Max had a bit of a fight earlier, but was it really bad enough to kill him?”

“Kill him? Are you crazy?” he shouted.

“Quiet,” I warned. Bonnie bent down and shoved Doug’s face into the grass.

“You’ve got it seriously wrong,” he mumbled into the ground. “I’m not going to spend my life in jail over some loser like Max.”

“But you’re acting pretty sneaky,” I pointed out, drawing closer. “And you have a knife. I’m sure Officer Bouchard will find that suspicious enough to take you in for questioning. Maybe even keep you overnight.” I knew the murder weapon hadn’t been a knife, but Doug having one still seemed pretty suspicious to me.

Bonnie straightened back to her full height, and Doug pushed his face to the side, taking a deep breath before wincing and explaining,“I just slashed his tires, okay? He needed to learn a lesson about messing with Scarlett.”

“Slashed his tiresand then killed him?” I ground out, unwilling to let it go.

“No. Why would I kill him?” All the color drained from his face and he widened his eyes with fright. “Wait, is Max dead? Is that why the police are out front?”

Bonnie lifted her heel and took a step back, allowing Doug to scramble to his feet and flee into the woods.“He didn’t do it,” she told me with a shrug. “I can spot a liar from a mile away, and that thing about slashing tires is true.”

“I still think the police would have liked to talk to him,” I said, eyeing her wearily. Why would she let him go when he was clearly dangerous?

She shook her head and sucked air through her teeth, as if in answer to my unasked question.“No need to waste their time. I know who did it.”

I raised one eyebrow.“Oh, yeah? Who?”

Bonnie took a few steps into the woods, bent, straightened again, and turned toward me holding the one-eyed black cat in her arms. Glancing up to meet my eyes, she scratched Jinx behind his ears and whispered a single world that sent a bolt of shock tearing straight through me.

“Me,” she whispered. “It was me.”

Chapter Ten

I flipped the switchblade open and gripped the handle with both hands, holding it straight out in front of me for protection.“Don’t c-c-come any closer!” I sputtered at Bonnie. We both knew I didn’t have a chance of stopping her if she decided to tackle me the way she’d taken down Doug. Even if she rushed at me now, I knew I wouldn’t be able to use the knife on her. My only hope was that she hadn’t figured that part out yet.