Page 14 of Outlaw Ridge: Hayes

“Well, it wasn’t me,” Cordelia insisted. “I mean, Jemma and I have clearly had our differences, and she refuses to accept that her mother’s cancer was responsible for her death—”

“Someone gave her an overdose of pain meds,” Jemma interrupted, and then she silently cursed because of the images that caused to flash in her mind.

Images of her mother’s cancer-ravaged body three years ago. So pale, so thin. Dying. But someone had sped up the process with an extra boost of morphine. Since Cordelia had been her mother’s so-called friend and was at the house that day, she was the most likely candidate.

It didn’t help that Cordelia had started putting the moves on Jemma’s grief-stricken father less than a month after he’d lost his wife. Her father hadn’t acted on those moves.

Not right away.

But Cordelia and he had married shortly after the two-year anniversary of her mother’s death. That’d been nearly twelve months ago. Jemma didn’t know if those somewhat hasty nuptials were because her father actually loved Cordelia or if he’d simply needed to fill the void of losing his wife of nearly three decades.

Jemma felt Hayes’ arm press lightly against hers. Just a touch. But it was enough to snap her back to the reason she was here. And that reason wasn’t to take a trip down nightmare lane. Especially since she had a current nightmare to deal with.

“Where were you last night between nine pm and midnight?” Jemma asked Cordelia.

Not that she expected Cordelia to have done the actual shooting. No, she would have hired someone for that. Or used her scummy son, Brooks Winslow. But it was possible the attacks would have required Cordelia to have some phone contact with the person doing the actual killing.

Her stepmother made a sound of outrage and looked on the verge of imploding. “I was here,” she managed to say through clenched teeth.

“Can anyone verify that?” Jemma pressed.

Again, Cordelia looked at her husband, but he just shrugged. “I had one of my migraines, and I went to bed early,” he said.

“But I came to bed after you were asleep,” Cordelia insisted. “I was there when you got the call about someone shooting at Jemma.”

“When did you get that call?” Hayes asked.

“About one AM,” her father answered. “One of my employees heard about the murders and the attack. And, yes, Cordelia was in bed with me then.”

“One o’clock,” Jemma repeated.

The gunman had shot at Hayes and her about an hour before that so it was possible that Cordelia had concluded her business with the killer by then and gone to bed. Jemma knew that her father’s migraine meds usually knocked him out.

“I’ll be getting a warrant for your phone records,” Jemma continued, glancing at both her father and Cordelia.

Her father took out his phone and handed it to her. With anI’ve-got-nothing-to-hidesmirk on her face, Cordelia did the same.

Jemma took out two small plastic evidence bags from her pocket and dropped the phones into them. She also filled in theinfo on the form printed on the outsides of the bags. Preserving the chain of evidence.

“Do you use landlines or burners?” Hayes asking, glancing at both Stefano and Cordelia.

“There are three landlines in the house,” her father readily answered, and a slight smile tugged at his mouth. “But, no, I haven’t used burners in a while.”

“How about you?” Hayes asked, turning to Cordelia.

That wiped the smirk off her face. “No burners.”

Jemma wished she had the woman hooked up to a lie detector. Since she didn’t, she went with another ploy. An outright lie, something the police were allowed to do during an interview.

“There’s now a way to check the cell towers to see if calls have come from a specific location,” Jemma stated. “It’s very accurate as far as providing the exact time and origin. I’ll be able to find out if someone made a call with a burner here at the estate last night. Heck, the techs can probably pinpoint the exact room where one was in use.”

Cordelia’s eyes went to slits. “It’s possible Brooks used one while he was in the guest suite,” she snapped.

“Oh?” Jemma doled out a smirk of her own. “Where is he? I need to talk to him and ask him about that.”

And she needed to have that conversation with him before Cordelia could give him a warning. Jemma didn’t want Brooks to have time to come up with a lie.

“He’s in San Antonio,” Cordelia snapped. “Or at least he should be soon. He left about a half hour ago. Business meeting,” she tacked onto that.

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