“That goes for us too,” Truman whispered. “I’m not the biggest fan of Christmas parties.”
“You’re not? I was the one who caught a bullet at the last Christmas party we went to.” Carson shot Truman a dirty look.
“Yeah, but I ended up with your blood on my shoes and an eternal guilt trip.” Truman rubbed Carson’s left shoulder. “Remember the time I took a bullet for you, Truman,” he said in a near perfect imitation of Carson.
“That’s it! I want a divorce.” Carson laughed while the rest of the room broke into applause.
Ten had been half-listening to his friends and Lisa. She’d just vowed that Jennifer’s Place would continue in her friend’s name.
“Before we all get back to eating, drinking, and being merry, I’d like to give a shout out to the members of the Salem Police Department here with us tonight. Former Boston police captains, Ronan O’Mara and Kevin Fitzgibbon, are leading a renewed effort to solve the thirty-five-year-old murder of another of my and Jennifer’s best friends, Skye Washington. I’d like to thank them for their efforts.” Lisa began to applaud.
“Don’t you dare say her name!” a male voice shouted from the back of the ballroom.
Lisa jumped back from the microphone as if it bit her. A hand fluttered to her shocked face.
Ronan couldn’t see who had shouted, but he’d guess from the look on Lisa’s face that it was Kyle Danner. He was on the guest list for tonight, but so far, Ronan hadn’t been able to find him. “Kevin, you and Jude work your way to the back of the room, Ten and I will try to get to the front.”
Both men nodded and began to push their way through the crowd.
“Security!” Lisa shouted. Her frantic eyes scanned the room for someone to help her.
“Security! Now that’s a laugh!” Kyle Danner shouted. Partygoers scattered out of his way as he approached the stage.
Ronan grabbed Tennyson’s hand and moved swiftly through the crowd. Some people were trying to scatter while others stood stone still, like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck.
“Wouldn’t it have been nice if Skye had some security with her the night she died?” Kyle laughed. There was no warmth or humor in it, only decades of bitterness and hate.
“You should know!” Lisa shot back. “You’re the one who killed her!”
“Me?” Kyle roared, sending the crystals of the large chandelier above his head clinking against each other. “You’re the one who killed her!” Pulling out a handgun, Kyle leveled it at Lisa. His hand was steady.
Lisa froze on the stage. Her eyes darted around the room in an obvious attempt to find something or someone. “Detective O’Mara! Are you just going to stand there and let this nutjob pull a gun on me?” Lisa shrieked.
“You know what? I am.” Ronan had reached Kyle’s side. He hadn’t known what was going to come out of his mouth until he saw Kyle’s demeanor up close. The man was calm, wasn’t sweating, and didn’t appear to be intoxicated. “Why do you think Lisa killed Skye?” Ronan asked calmly, never taking his eyes off the gun. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Fitzgibbon and Jude, both with their weapons drawn but pointing to the floor.
“Because I didn’t, Detective O’Mara. I loved Skye. We were going to run away together. Our hearts were set on San Francisco. We planned to dip our toes in the Pacific Ocean and figure things out as we went. Our parents thought we were just dreamers, but Lisa knew we were serious. They all knew.”
“You mean Jennifer and Heidi too?” Ronan didn’t like where this conversation was heading.
“The three of them hated that Skye had someone who loved her as much as I did. They tried to break us up at every turn. Jennifer claimed I slept with her. Heidi said she’d seen me out with other girls. Lisa plied me with booze and stuck her hands down my pants.” Kyle shivered at the memory, but his gun hand remained steady.
“Is that true, Lisa?” Ronan asked. She’d done everything but stick her hands down his pants as she pulled him away from Tennyson earlier. The bitch had known damn well that he was a married man.
“Are you fucking crazy, Detective? He’s pointing a gun at me, and you’re accusing me of being a criminal?” Lisa clutched her wristlet to her chest as if it could protect her if Kyle pulled the trigger.
“I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do, Kyle,” Ronan said softly, “but we’re not going to be able to do that until you put the gun down. Can you do that for me?”
“She’s gotten away with this for thirty-five years. Isn’t that enough?” Kyle gritted out from behind clenched teeth.
“More than enough. But if you get a confession out of her at gunpoint, it’s useless in court because it was coerced.” Ronan took a step closer to Kyle. He raised a hand and set it on Kyle’s wrist, lowering his hand and the gun to the floor. “That’s it. Now let me take the gun.”
With a heartbroken cry, Kyle did what Ronan asked. “I didn’t kill Skye, Ronan. I swear to you.”
Taking the gun, Ronan breathed a sigh of relief. Now they could get down to business. “I know you didn’t, Kyle.” He turned to Lisa in time to see her pull a gun out of her small purse and point it at Kyle.
“I’ve waited thirty-five years for this! All you had to do was love me and no one had to die!” Lisa screamed. Her hand shook as she pointed the gun at Kyle.
“Who had to die, Lisa?” Ronan asked, trying to angle his body in front of Kyle. This wasn’t good. Half the gala crowd was still in the room, not to mention his husband, while this stone-cold woman held a gun on him.
“All of them!” Lisa started to laugh. She sounded as if she were having a break with reality, but the gun stayed pointed at Kyle.
“Tell me about it.” Ronan was holding Kyle’s gun by the barrel and trying to maneuver it into the proper position without drawing Lisa’s attention to the movement.
“I’d loved him for years, but he only had eyes for Skye! That fucking slut! She knew how I felt and went out with him anyway.” Lisa’s eyes blazed with anger and decades-old bitterness.
“You’re right, Lisa, Skye was a bitch for treating a lifelong friend like that.” The last thing Ronan wanted to do was make Lisa angrier than she already was. “What about the other girls? Whose side were they on?” Jennifer and Heidi played a role in this thing somewhere. Ronan wasn’t convinced Heidi’s death letter was one hundred percent truthful. He assumed she was taking the fall, but Lisa was the only one who could prove him right.
“They all were!” Lisa hissed triumphantly. “Skye never had time for us anymore. She spent every free minute she had with him!”
“What happened that night, Lisa?” Ronan was so close to the end of the case he could taste it. All Lisa had to do was confess, and this would all be over. With the amount of people who’d seen the guns, he was sure multiple calls had gone out to 911. Cisco and the cavalry would arrive soon.
“Kyle was grounded. That was the only reason Skye agreed to come out with us that night. I wanted her to sleep over at my house, but she had some plans with her mother the next day. Skye was always doing shit with her mother.” Lisa rolled her eyes. She looked and sounded like that long ago wounded fifteen-year-old girl. “We were going to do it at the sleepover, but there was no sleepover.”