Page 9 of Last Seen Alive

He lowered his bottle, licked his lips. “How good of a look did you get at the scene?”

“Not a very good one. Guess you could say I was in a bit of shock at the time.” The confession pained her to admit. She’d been a cop her entire adult life, and she was thirty-seven now. She should have compartmentalizing down pat.

“Understandable.”

“Yeah. Tell me what you saw. Your thoughts?”

“The scene was intimate.” He stopped there as if considering her feelings.

“She was in lingerie. I know.”

“I’m not saying this is the case, but was Logan back together with her?”

She hated how yet again she didn’t have the answer. She shrugged and put her bottle to her lips.

He was watching her like he wanted to speak—his mouth slightly twitching. She’d save him from saying something they might both regret.

“We hadn’t even seen each other for months.” She leaned back in her chair, her focus once again on the sky, and there was the hope that she could just go to a galaxy far, far away, like inStar Wars.“Graves said that maybe Logan used me, you know to be there, when her body was found.”

“To suggest his innocence?”

“Yeah.”

Again, his mouth twitched.

“Go ahead. We both know what you’re thinking.”

“I know. You can only guess.”

“Logan wouldn’t use me like that.”

“If”—he held up a hand—“and I’m not saying he killed that woman. Butifhe did, would he be concerned about your feelings in all this? He’d want to protect his own ass. That’s all he’d be thinking about. And from the looks of things—from the surface—the murder wasn’t planned. Likely more in the moment.”

She was getting warmer by the second, and it wasn’t because of the weather. She felt affronted by the scenario he’d just painted. “We bumped into each other at the Tipsy Moose. He couldn’t have known I’d be there. And with him there, how could he have killed her?” Such a weak defense. It all depended on when Claire had died and where Logan had been atthattime. “Let’s say Logan killed her, why leave her in his bedroom in the first place? Why kill her there? Why not someplace else and/or hide her body?”

“All good questions. But then it raises another one. If Logan didn’t do this, who had reason to make it look like he did?”

“You mean, why frame him?” She looked over at him, and he was facing her.

“Exactly.”

She didn’t have an answer for that and the only person who might was Logan, but she doubted she was going to get near him any time soon.

“I don’t know exactly how to tell you this, just that I should.”

“What is it?” Whatever he had to say couldn’t be good, being served with that caveat. But she’d been through so much in life, it emboldened her. What news could be worse than what she’d faced years ago?

“She was still wearing a diamond on her ring finger.”

“Claire was…” That had her speechless for a few seconds, but there could be an innocent explanation. Logan had made it sound like Claire left him, but maybe there was a good reason—something large at stake—and it had her ending things even though she loved him. “It doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”Like they were reunited and getting back together…

“It might not, but I wanted you to know.”

She wasn’t about to thank him, but she appreciated he was considering her feelings.

“Also, there was a gun on the dresser. Graves asked me to leave not long after they took Logan in, but I was around to hear that it was a SIG Sauer P320, one bullet missing from the magazine.”

Amanda had nothing she wanted to say to that. Things were looking damning for Logan. But if the SIG Sauer was the murder weapon, why would the killer—Logan or someone else—leave it behind?