Page 98 of The Midnight Club

“We look atallthe evidence, Kate. Which meansallof us need to be looked at.Iknow I didn’t stab Ori or kill Viola, but we look at everything. For your own peace of mind, if nothing else.”

Kate smiled, her eyes filling with tears. She touched his face. “Iknow you didn’t do this. Iknowit in my bones. But, you’re right. Let’s do this properly.”

“Start with me. Hopefully, counselor, you can rule me out pretty quickly,” Lisander grinned, but a few minutes later his smile had faded.

The night Ori had been stabbed, he had been with a designer at a small gathering at the designer’s studio but had left and decided to take a stroll through the streets of Venice. He’d gotten lost and ended up a long way out of the city.

“Still, there’s no way you could have gotten a car, driven all that way just to stab Ori, and then made it back to me,.” Kate shrugged it off, but Lisander sighed.

“But you didn’t notice I was back until the next morning.”

“Did none of the hotel staff see you come back?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Okay, so that’s something to check. The hotel’s security cameras would have picked you up and provided a time stamp.”

“What about Viola?”

“When was she killed?”

“September fifth, last year.”

“Where were you?”

Lisander nodded, sure of himself this time. “Paris Fashion Week. Viola was apparently murdered during the daytime in New York; there are myriad photos of me that day in Paris.”

Kate wrote this down and pinned it under his name. “See? We’re making progress already. Now, when you were in Paris, did you see Benoit?”

Lisander shook his head. “No. Benoit at a fashion show? He was working, but I don’t know where. We didn’t meet that time; we’d just come back from a boys’ trip to Crete, so we didn’t bother arranging anything.”

“Boys’ trip,” Kate scoffed, and he grinned at her.

“You betcha.”

“Well,” Kate stuck her last notes up. “That’s you. Plus, the whole you have no motive’ etc. Who shall we do next?”

Lisander’s brow furrowed. “Maceo. It makes me feel nauseous even to consider him, but he’d feel the same as me. Get the whole picture.”

Kate nodded. “Well, we know for sure he didn’t stab Ori. God, can you imagine? The gas station’s security cameras show him talking to the owner when the masked man attacked Ori. But, yeah, he had a fling with Viola.”

Lisander sighed. “Which gives him the motive to keep her quiet. But, like when he was accused of killing Janek, Maceo just doesn’t have it in him.”

“Hey, remember, no hunches,’ Kate reminded him. “Where was Maceo when Viola was killed?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, so that’s another thing to check. There’s another theory. Maybe he hired someone to kill Ori?”

Lisander rubbed his eyes. “But why? He adores her. Absolutely worships her.”

“To the point of obsession?” Kate wondered, then shook her head. “No, if that were the case, he would have stabbed her himself. No, I tend to agree. Maceo would never hurt Ori. But what if someone was seeking revenge on Maceo for Viola? Eye for an eye?”

“Which brings us back to …”

“Alex.”

They stared at each other and then Lisander groaned. “I don’t want to think what I’m thinking.”