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“I’ll talk to my uncle. Find out what he knows. The fact that they’re holding you here means they must have something on you. Though it could be just like you said: being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” She fixed him with a stern look. “But you’ll have to come clean, Joshua. You’re going to have to tell them everything—every last detail.”

“Also about Melanie?”

“Also about Melanie.”

“Oh, God,” he said, and rubbed his haggard features. “She’ll be so angry with me.”

“Well, that can’t be helped,” she said. “If you don’t want to be charged with triple homicide you’re going to have to come clean, and that means telling my uncle and my husband exactly what you just told me.”

“All right, if you say so. What a mess.”

“You can say that again.”

Chapter 14

“Dooley, keep your head down!” I whispered when Dooley raised his head to look through the Chief’s window.

Lately Uncle Alec had expressed his resentment with us cats spying on him. He didn’t seem to enjoy the experience as much as I’d thought he would. In my view only people who are trying to hide something resent being spied upon, so what was he hiding?

At any rate, it probably behooved us to keep our noses down.

“So all three victims had Rohypnol in their systems?” the Chief was asking.

“Yep. All three of them were knocked out with the same drug. And what’s interesting is that we found the exact glass used in the process.”

“But with only two sets of fingerprints,” said Uncle Alec. “The killer’s, and one of the victims.”

“Yeah, that’s the strange thing. Though it’s possible the killer used different glasses to accomplish his purpose. At any rate, we’ve got Joshua Curtis’s fingerprints on the glass with the remnants of the drug, and Franklin Harrison’s prints on that same glass, which proves that Joshua was the one who handed Harrison that drink, and knocked him out. We couldn’t lift Harrison’s prints from the body, as his hands were too badly burned, but we had his prints on file.”

“No doubt it’s Franklin Harrison?”

“No doubt. His relatives have already identified him.”

“So what about motive?”

“Now listen to this, Chief,” said Chase, clearly very happy with himself. “It’s a doozy. So Franklin Harrison was having an affair, okay? We found plenty of pictures of one Melanie Myers on his phone, and flirty texts back and forth. Real hot stuff, okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So get this. This guy Joshua Curtis is Melanie’s husband’s best buddy. And not just that, the guy’s been in love with Melanie for years and years and years. I mean, to the point of obsession, okay? I’m talking pictures and videos of the woman on his phone.”

“Of Melanie Myers?”

“Sure! The guy’s phone is like a private throne on which he worships the woman’s likeness. And what’s more, the two of them used to be an item, before the husband entered the picture. We know this because we found a diary at the guy’s office, hidden at the bottom of his desk drawer, wherehe talks about the affair, and about his feelings for her. Turns out they briefly dated in college, before she fell for his best friend.”

“Jason Myers,” the Chief supplied.

“Exactly.”

“And the guy never stopped carrying a torch for the woman.”

“Looks like he’s in love with her to this day, Chief. And I’m sure that once we go through his house with a fine-tooth comb we’ll find plenty more to corroborate this.”

“So what’s your theory?”

Chase took a deep breath.“Okay, so my theory is that Curtis found out that Melanie was cheating on her husband with Harrison and got mad, then decided to get even. So he devised a plan to make sure Harrison never crossed paths with Melanie ever again.”

“And what about the two other victims?”

“Pretty sure they weren’t the intended target, Chief. What I think happened was that he figured that if he killed all three of them we’d think we were dealing with a serial killer, when in fact his intended target was Harrison all along.”

“He must have seen too many movies.”

“Exactly. Only that’s the problem, isn’t it: Joshua Curtis isn’t a crafty killer. He made so many mistakes that we got to him even before the bodies of his victims were cold. He left the glass with his fingerprints and the Rohypnol at the scene. He set the room on fire by dousing it in gasoline, probably hoping to make it look like an accident but failing miserably, and he was seen by two witnesses exiting the place and getting into his car.”

“Look, one thing, Chase,” said Uncle Alec. “You know that this Joshua character asked Odelia to follow Melanie around, right? Supposedly to figure out if she was having an affair and who with.”

“Yeah, I know. She told me.”

“Well, I’m not sure she isn’t still in the guy’s corner, so to speak.”

“But surely if she learns the truth…”

“That’s exactly it. I don’t think it’s a good idea to involve her this time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I have the impression she’s willing to go to bat for the guy. She’s in here right now, you know talking to him.”

“She is?”