Page 80 of Dead to Rites

“It probably won’t,” Hazel said in her usual no-nonsense tone. “In every other way, she’s a model citizen. There were no good choices for her in this mess.”

No, there weren’t. It had come down to being the one to send her only son to prison…or being the one who chose to look the other way.

“That was nice of Jude to stay and hand out candy with you,” Hazel went on, something in her voice shifting. “He’s a good man.”

“Yes, he is,” I said. “He came to my rescue at Meg’s house.”

“Of course he did,” she responded, saying those words as if they were an absolute fact, the kind of thing that couldn’t be argued.

But I suppose she would know. She’d known Jude a lot longer than I had.

It wasn’t quite ten o’clock by then. On a normal day, I would have stayed up at least an hour longer, maybe more.

This hadn’t been a normal day, though, and I knew I was ready to collapse.

“Good night, Hazel,” I told her, and she nodded.

“Good night, Lorelei.”

I slept better that night than I had in a long time, and when I came downstairs, I found myself whistling as I put on a pot of coffee. Time to settle into a new kind of normal.

Unfortunately, that “normal” didn’t last very long. I went into the parking structure and parked the Mercedes the way I always did, and when I walked into the alley in front of Copper State Cellars, it was to find a bunch of reporters waiting for me, ready to pounce, microphones brandished like weapons.

“Lorelei, is it true that you were the one who got Wes Lindley to confess?”

“Ms. Cosgrove, can you confirm that the suspect told you exactly how he broke into your bar?”

“Lorelei, do you have any comment on the Prescott P.D.’s statement that you’ll be called in as a witness?”

I bobbed and weaved between them, calling out “No comment!” the whole time, until I was mercifully inside. None of them followed, and the reason for their reticence became clear soon enough.

Roz came out from behind the bar. “Sorry about that. I meant to call you and warn you, but I’ve been busy doing damage control. I told all of them that they couldn’t come inside, that this is a private business, and we decide who we let in and who we don’t.”

Thank God for Roz.

“I suppose that’s something,” I said. “One of them said something about the Prescott P.D. making a statement?”

She nodded. “They had a press conference earlier this morning. You didn’t see it?”

Since I always kept my mornings blissfully free of social media and news and anything else that might give me a crappy start to my day, I hadn’t.

“No,” I replied. “What did they say?”

“Not too much,” she said. “Just that Wes Lindley made a full confession and is cooperating. He should be arraigned later today.”

“What about Meg?” I asked, and Roz sent me a curious look.

“Well, I assume she and Diane are pretty broken up about all this. But Meg wasn’t at the press conference, so I don’t know what’s happening with her. I can’t believe this is doing anything good for her health.”

No, probably not.

She’d talked about confessing everything to the police, and I had no reason to believe she wouldn’t. It might have taken her far too long to get there, but she’d finally arrived at the point where it was better to reveal everything than to keep it trapped inside.

“Well,” I said, “I’m just glad it all got cleared up in the end.”

We were slammed that day, probably because a bunch of looky-loos wanted to see the infamous bar now that the murderer was safely locked up and we didn’t have to worry about him making a return visit.

Roz and Marco and I hardly stopped to take a break, although I was more or less forced to around two o’clock when my cell phone rang and I recognized the number on the screen as Detective Ruiz’s.