“You gave the money to Shauna?” Mick enquired.

“Yeah,” Kami replied.

Mick turned slightly in his chair so his profile was facing the mirror behind him and he dipped his head, communicating to whoever was watching they were meant to do something.

“I got the permit and I got the gun,” Kami went on, missing Mick’s movements. “It’s never been fired. It’s never even been loaded. It’s in a shoebox in my closet.” Then she leaned forward and repeated, “Mickey, you gotta know, no matter what went down, I’d never hurt Curt, never send death threats and I’d never, not ever, hurt Bitsy.” She bit her lip as her eyes got bright and she finished, repeating, “You gotta know. You know me and you gotta know.”

“All right, Kami,” Mick said gently. “Let us check this out, yeah?”

Kami sat back and turned her face away, nodding. Mick looked at me, rose and walked out of the room.

I turned to Kami. “Are you okay?”

Her eyes came to me and I noticed that Vulnerable Kami was gone, Bitchy Kami was back.

“No, I’m not okay,” she snapped. “I’m sittin’ in a Police Station being questioned as a suspect in a double homicide!”

“Mick’s just doing his job,” I told her. “He’ll check your story and you’ll be fine.”

“I know I’ll be fine. I didn’t do jack, not to Curt, not to Bitsy, hell, I wouldn’t do that shit to anyone. But people’ll know I was questioned.”

“It’s my understanding a lot of people were questioned. Mick even asked Max for his alibi.”

Bitchy Kami escalated to Uber Bitchy Kami and she hissed, “What?”

“The morning after the murder, Mick came to Max’s house, asked for his alibi.”

“That’s not even funny.”

“No, it wasn’t,” I agreed. “But since he had one, it doesn’t matter.”

She looked away, her face tight, her mouth muttering, “That’s just whacked, totally whacked, and Mick knows it.”

I was surprised at her defense of her brother but I wasn’t surprised at her reaction to his news. Everyone felt the same way. More evidence that Curt was in some way responsible for Anna Maxwell’s death and, in being so, the fact that Macho Mountain Man Max didn’t exact retribution then meant he was unlikely to do it now.

Before I could reply, the door opened and Max and Linda walked in.

“I’ll be givin’ Mick Shaughnessy a piece of my mind for this, make no mistake,” Linda declared upon entry.

“What happened?” Max asked me.

“Since Kami explained things to me before we let Mick interview her, obviously she explained things to Mick and answered all his queries. He just needs to check their validity and we can move on,” I told him.

“Thanks, Nina, for helpin’ out,” Linda expressed the gratitude Kami not surprisingly had not.

“Not a problem,” I murmured then offered, “Maybe Max and I can go get some coffees? Would you all like a coffee while we’re waiting?”

“That’d be nice, thanks,” Linda replied.

“Knock yourself out,” Kami muttered.

Max opened his mouth, possibly to protest at leaving his sister or to give Kami a piece of his mind for her attitude but I gave him a look, got up, shrugged on my coat, grabbed my purse and moved to the door. Max read my look and followed.

I waited until we were out of the Station and on the boarded sidewalk before I spoke.

“You should know something,” I whispered, squeezing his hand as he’d taken mine when we left the Station.

“I’m guessin’ this is somethin’ I should know that I won’t like,” Max remarked and I stopped and looked up at him.

Deciding to get it out, I did. “It was Shauna who talked Kami into buying that gun and it was Shauna who needed the money Kami borrowed on the house.”

He stared at me a minute, his jaw tense, his eyes hard then he looked away and muttered, “Fuck.”

I tugged at his hand until he looked back at me then I said, “Okay, now I’m getting into possible slander here but… what if Shauna knew that Curt had made changes to his will around the time she told him she was pregnant?”

“What?”

“She didn’t know that Curt knew he didn’t father her child. What she knew was that there was a possibility he didn’t since she wasn’t exactly faithful to him. Kami said that they’ve turned off her cable and she was close to having the utilities stopped at her house. She needed money, Max, badly, especially having no insurance and a baby on the way. If she knew that he changed the will, she could speculate he changed it in her favor. She was smug before the reading, she thought she’d come out on top. But also she knew if she had the baby and he demanded a DNA test, she would lose everything she worked for. Which would mean she’d need him dead to collect before the truth came out.”

“She doesn’t have any money, Duchess, how’s she gonna pay a contract killer?”

“She had twenty-five thousand dollars of Kami’s money, Max,” I reminded him. “And anyway, men do stupid stuff for women who are good with their mouths. We have no idea who she’s been associating with.”

Max, being a man, nodded curtly to the veracity of this statement then he pointed out, “She was in the house when Curt was killed.”

“She made the call after Curt was killed saying she was in the house when he was killed and time had elapsed between the killing and the call, she even admitted that.” Max just stared at me so I went on, “There’s a break in, you hear something, even if you’re with a man and he goes to check on it, wouldn’t you call the police?”

“Not if you don’t want anyone knowin’ you’re there,” Max pointed out.

I nodded for this was true but suggested, “She could have done what she needed to do with this PI guy then gone back to Curt’s knowing what was going to happen there, made the call and said she was there when she wasn’t. Or she could have set the whole thing up to happen when she was in the house, knowing what was happening with the PI. Either way, she was giving herself an alibi.”

“So who killed the PI?” Max asked.

“Someone else she scammed?” I proposed. “Or someone in on it, a partner.”