Cut and Run 08 Ball & Chain (18 page)

Ty frowned hard, leaning his elbows on the bar. “So he . . . he probably left the party and then bought it. How’d his watch break at three something?”

Nick raised an eyebrow and nodded. He’d been asking himself the same thing. “I have no clue. I have two theories, though. Want to hear them?”

“Yeah.”

“A few people have said they noticed he was messing with his watch all night. It could have been broken, frozen at that time.”

“Huh. What’s the other theory?”

Nick shrugged. “Someone killed him knowing time of death would be tricky way out here, so they wound the watch to a later time and smashed it. Made it an easy TOD. Made sure someone saw them hours later for the alibi.”

Ty narrowed his eyes, cocking his head.

“That’s what I’d do, anyway. In a pinch. Hope no one would bring out the turkey thermometer.”

“You’d make a really scary serial killer, Irish.”

Nick tapped his pen on his pad of paper, staring until Ty shifted uneasily. “Okay. Walk me through the party.”

“Well. We ate. We had the meeting with Stanton. I think I left the patio twice over the course of the night to go take a piss. Then we wound up in the garden watching you smoke a joint with my brother.”

“We’ll leave that out of the notes,” Nick grumbled as he wrote the rest down. “Did you see the victim at the party?”

“Not after the meeting in the study.”

Nick added Ty to the list of people who
hadn’t
seen Milton after the time of that meeting. He’d obviously not returned to the patio that night, and that gave them roughly a ten-hour window for the crime.

“Did you see anyone leave the party after the meeting, anyone who struck you as behaving oddly?”

Ty gave it some real thought before shaking his head. “Honestly, I was more concerned with you and Doc chatting up my baby cousin than watching anyone else.”

Nick tried hard not laugh. “Where did you go after you left the party?”

“We took a walk toward the beach. I asked Zane to marry me. He turned me down. Then we headed back to the room.”

Nick stared at his best friend for a few beats before saying, “What?”

Ty slammed his hand on the bar top. “He said no! Twice!”

“Ty.” Nick sighed, rubbing his temple as he recognized the warning signs of Ty winding up.

“No, no. Three times! Three times he’s turned me down!”

Nick reached for the aspirin Ty had brought him.

“Three times!”

“Tyler, listen, I’m really sorry about the . . . three times, but you seem to be handling it pretty well this far, and this isn’t one of those instances where I need to talk you off the edge, so could we maybe save this until after I eat?”

“Look, a beautiful beach in Scotland? Nope. Castle? Nuh uh. Rug in front of a fire?”

“Oh God, stop. Ty, please,” Nick said quickly. He put his head in his hands. “That’s . . . no.”

Ty cleared his throat and nodded. “Sorry.”

Nick watched him for a few seconds, still covering half his face with one hand. Ty looked absolutely miserable. He might have seemed like he was handling the rejections well, but Nick could see underneath the mask just like he’d always been able to. “Condolences on getting shot down. Repeatedly.”

Ty didn’t even glare at him. He looked like a kicked puppy, and it made Nick want to slam his face into the wet bar. “You need to talk about it, babe?”

“Please. I’m going fucking insane trying not to give him . . . puppy eyes and beg him to rethink it.”

“Well, you can quit giving
me
puppy eyes. You’ve asked him
three
times?” Nick asked, hating himself for giving in and feeling sorry for Ty instead of feeling sorry for himself right now.

Ty nodded. “He said I hadn’t thought it through yet.”

“He’s probably right.”

“You’re supposed to be on my side, here,” Ty grunted.

“I’m on the side of the righteous, babe; means I’m
rarely
on your side.”

Ty barked a laugh.

“What kind of time span are we talking here?”

“I asked him the night we got here,” Ty said as he began to play with one of Nick’s extra pens. “Before the dinner.”

“You’ve asked him to marry you three times in thirty-six hours?”

Ty smacked his hand on the bar again. “If I had you on the balcony of a castle with the motherfucking wilds of fucking Scotland out the window and I asked you to marry me, wouldn’t you say yes?”

Nick shook his head. “No.”

“Damn it!”

“It’s not the location that’ll reel Zane in, Ty.”

Ty looked almost desperate when he realized Nick was willing to give him advice. He leaned forward. “What do I do?”

“Well . . . he said you hadn’t thought it through. So think it the fuck through for him. Let him know you’re serious and you’re thinking about life instead of just wearing a ring. You know him. I mean, think about it, how would you propose to me?”

Ty waited a beat, then said, “Season tickets at Fenway and a ring in your beer during the seventh inning.”

Nick waved a hand. “And I’m yours.” They both laughed. Nick was still smiling when he dropped his voice to a more serious note. “What are
Zane’s
season tickets? What’s the thing that will tell him you’re in it for the long haul and you want him there with you? It’s sure as hell not a beach in Scotland.”

Ty nodded, his gaze losing focus. Nick let him ruminate for a few seconds, until Ty finally snapped out of it. “Thanks, Irish.”

“He’ll say yes eventually.” Nick looked back down at his notes, trying to remember where they’d been in the interview. “Okay, so you were on the beach getting shot down by the love of your life.”

Ty grumbled wordlessly.

Nick smirked and fought to recover a straight face. “Did you see anyone else while you were out there?”

“Yeah, there were two people walking. Guy and a girl. We passed them.”

Nick frowned at his notes. He paged through them. “What time was this?”

“Maybe . . . half past midnight.”

Nick pulled out every page of interview notes with a woman. No one, man or woman, had mentioned being out on the beach for a walk. “What’d they look like?”

“I don’t know.”

Nick glanced up, eyes going wider. “You don’t know?”

“I didn’t . . . look at them. I don’t know. The girl was wearing a dress.”

“Ty, every woman on the island was wearing a dress last night.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t pay attention to them.”

“Were they young, old? Flustered, composed? Hair color, height? Were they hot, not? Were they bloody and carrying a very large rock?”

“I don’t know!”

“Tyler!” Nick dropped his pen and rubbed his hands over his face. “Do you realize you may have seen the killers and you can’t even tell me what fucking color their hair was?”

“I’m sorry! I guess I don’t check people out like I used to.”

Nick groaned. “I’ll be sure to inform Garrett that your eyes don’t wander. Did he see them as well?”

“Yeah.”

Nick shook his head in disgust, glaring at Ty. “You’re the worst witness ever.”

“I know.”

Nick grunted and picked up his pen again. “Anything else you
didn’t
see?”

“No, but you don’t have to be snippy about it.”

Nick fumed for a second. “What time did you return to your room?”

“One, maybe.”

“And who was with you?”

Ty sighed.

“Ty, just answer the fucking questions, okay?”

Ty rolled his eyes. “Zane was with me.”

“And you remained there?”

“Yes. I got tied up in the curtains.”

Nick squeezed his eyes closed. “Why would you tell me that?”

“No, I mean I literally got tied up in the curtains. I got stuck. Zane left me there.”

Nick glanced up, frowning.

Ty rolled his eyes, blushing a little. “I got tangled in the curtains and I couldn’t stop laughing, so Zane left me there and I fell asleep.”

“You mean you passed out drunk.”

“If that’s what they call ‘sleeping’ in Boston, sure.”

“So . . . could Zane have left the room at any point?”

Ty frowned, shifting on his stool. “I guess.”

Nick gave a curt nod and jotted it down.

“Did you just write that down?” Ty asked with an accusatory point.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m writing everything down, Ty.”

“You didn’t write down that you and Deacon were getting high in the garden!”

“Because it wasn’t pertinent to the murder.”

“Neither is Zane leaving me passed out drunk in the curtains!”

“I thought you said you weren’t drunk.”

“Don’t try to confuse me to get a confession, damn you!”

“Tyler, come on!”

“This is police brutality!”

“I swear to God, Beaumont . . .”

Ty glowered for a moment. “Okay, so is that all?”

“Yeah.”

“Your turn?”

Nick’s stomach tangled up, but he nodded and slid the pad across the bar top. “Go for it.”

Ty ran through the same questions Nick had been asking all morning. With every answer, Nick got more and more nervous. He’d probably fail a fucking lie detector test at this point.

“What time did you return to your room?” Ty asked.

“Just after midnight.”

“And you were there the remainder of the night?”

“I was.” Nick watched as Ty’s pen moved across the pad. He swiped his palms across his knees, trying to steel himself for what was coming.

“What did you do in your room the remainder of the night?”

Nick swallowed hard. “I was in bed.”

Ty raised his head. “You were
in bed
or you were sleeping?”

Nick stared at him, holding his breath. “I was in bed.”

Ty’s eyebrows shot up, and he straightened. He almost looked like he’d been expecting the answer, like maybe he’d heard enough through the wall last night to know Nick hadn’t been sleeping, but he still seemed perturbed by it. “I gather you weren’t alone.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Nick answered. He took a deep, shaky breath. “Look, Ty, this is not the way I wanted to tell you about this. We were waiting until after the wedding stuff died down so you wouldn’t freak out and go nuclear when you’re already under stress.”

Ty narrowed his eyes. He placed the pen on his pad of paper, the movement briefly drawing Nick’s eyes. “Who?” Ty asked, his voice going low and dangerous.

“Oh, Ty, don’t freak out.”

“Who were you with, O’Flaherty?”

Nick couldn’t get enough air to take a breath to steady himself, much less extract a promise from Ty to remain calm. “I was with Kelly,” he said in a rush.

Ty stared, his brow furrowing and the tension seeping out of his shoulders. “Kelly who?”

Nick frowned. “Kelly. Our Kelly. Doc.”

Ty was still staring like he didn’t understand, his head cocked like a puppy hearing a new sound. He glanced at the door, then at Nick again. “You were fucking Kelly?”

“Yes.”

Ty was silent for several more seconds, then barked out a laugh. “I thought you were talking about Emma!”

Nick sighed in relief. This was not the reaction he’d expected, but he’d take it.

Ty laughed harder, but soon he wound down and then stood up. “Wait, you were boning
Kelly
? How fucking high were you two last night?”

“That’s not . . . it’s not just last night.”

“What does that mean?” Ty demanded.

“I mean it wasn’t the first time. I didn’t just bring him because he has a gun.”

“What the fuck, man, how did that happen?”

“It’s a really long story.”

“I have time,” Ty growled. “How long has it been going on?”

“It started after New Orleans, when we got to Colorado.”

“That was . . . that was months ago! Why the hell am I just finding this out now?”

Nick stood so he would be on the same level as Ty. He was glad the wet bar was between them. “It kind of caught us both by surprise. Then I got deployed before we could figure anything out. Ty, we didn’t even know what the hell there was between us. We kept it quiet because we wanted to know it was serious before we said anything.”

“Bullshit, you could have told me any— Wait, what do you mean
serious
?”

Nick found himself snickering again. He couldn’t seem to stop, and the more he laughed the more agitated Ty got. He put out a hand to try to calm Ty. “It’s serious.”

“How serious?” Ty asked, still looking scandalized. Nick half expected him to hold his hand to his heart any second now, maybe clutch a string of pearls. Nick howled, doubling over and holding his stomach as Ty glared at him.

“What is so funny?” Ty shouted. “I feel like I need bleach for my ear holes!”

“You,” Nick gasped. He pointed at Ty and shook his head, trying for enough breath to speak. He finally got himself under control and straightened his shoulders to meet Ty’s eyes. He smiled almost serenely. “I love him.”

Ty blinked at that, his mouth falling open.

“I love him, Ty.”

Ty stared at him, then looked down at the bar top for a long few seconds, then back up at Nick with narrowed eyes. “Are we talking with the heart love or with the dick love?” he asked, echoing Nick’s words from so long ago.

Nick merely grinned.

“Good,” Ty said softly.

“What?”

“Good,” Ty repeated. He came around the end of the wet bar, beginning to smile, then pulled Nick into a hug, holding him and patting him on the back. “He’ll treat you right and you deserve that. That’s good.”

Nick gasped as the relief hit him. He squeezed Ty tightly. “You’re not pissed?”

Ty shook his head. He stepped back, meeting Nick’s eyes. “Not pissed. Maybe a little confused, but . . . it kind of makes sense, the two of you. You fit. And to be honest, I’m relieved.”

“Relieved?”

“I thought you were mad at me, man. You didn’t call, you didn’t write.” He patted Nick hard on the cheek before turning away. “You dog, you.”

Nick found himself gaping as Ty strolled to the door.

Ty said over his shoulder, “I’ll send Zane in so he can tell you what those people looked like.”