“Did you eat this morning?”
“I had eggs.”
“Eggs are good.” Sharp set the bag on the counter. “I’ll make you lunch.”
“I’m not very hungry,” she protested.
He gave her a look.
She gave up. “What am I having?”
“You like salads, right?”
“Yes.” Morgan hesitated, picturing the last meal she’d watched him eat. “But I don’t like those sprouty things you’ve been eating.”
Sharp rolled his eyes. “I bought free-range chicken, avocado, spinach, and berries.”
“I like those.”
“I know. I’m trying to balance food that will help your brain heal with what you’ll agree to eat. It isn’t easy. Except for your coffee addiction, you have the taste buds of a toddler.”
Morgan smiled. “Thank you.”
“Get out of the kitchen.” Sharp shooed her from the room with a package of chicken. “Go lie on the couch in my office while I cook.”
“I’ve only gotten through a portion of the evidence the DA sent over.”
“And a break will help you focus to get through the rest.” Sharp used his bossiest, know-it-all voice. “Where’s Lance?”
“In his office, reviewing social media accounts and phone records.”
“OK. Go rest,” Sharp ordered.
“I don’t have time for a nap.” Still grumbling, Morgan dragged herself into Sharp’s office and stretched out on the couch.
She closed her eyes. When she opened them, it felt as if a few seconds had passed, but a glance at the clock told her she’d slept for forty-five minutes. Her head felt clearer, her nausea had faded, and her stomach rumbled with hunger.
Following the sound of voices, she went to her office. Sharp was behind her desk, reviewing papers. Lance was writing on the whiteboard.
Sharp scanned her face and nodded. “You slept.”
“Yes. Now what did I miss?” Morgan surveyed the board. They’d been busy. Lance had written notes from their interviews under each subject’s picture. He’d also added a photo of Kieran Hart to the board. He’d labeled Isaac, Chase, and Justin’s pictures with at Beats Friday night and hiding something about Noah?
“You need lunch.” Sharp got up and passed her on his way out of the office. “Sit.”
Morgan sat behind her desk, and he brought her a salad. “Did you find anything interesting?”
“I dug through social media accounts,” Lance said. “Their pages are all pretty boring. Occasional party pics. Family. Pets. Nothing outrageous, but I did spot Noah’s ex-girlfriend Callie on his page.”
“I can track her down.” Sharp perched on the corner of Morgan’s desk. “No one dishes dirt like an ex. If Noah behaved badly, she will talk.”
Lance pointed toward Kieran Hart’s photo on the whiteboard. “Kieran Hart follows Haley on social media. But he’s never posted or interacted with her.”
“Interesting. I called Kieran this morning to request an interview. I’m meeting him at his house later today.” Morgan speared a blueberry and pointed toward the board with it. “What did Haley’s phone records show about their breakup?”
“He texted her daily for six weeks.” Lance indicated the photo of Kieran on the board. “At night, he called instead of texting.”
“When he knew she’d be home from work,” Sharp added.
“Right,” Lance agreed. “But Haley stopped answering his calls. After a couple of weeks, she blocked him.”
“Were the messages threatening?” Morgan asked.
“No.” Lance shook his head. “But he constantly wanted to know where she was and who she was with, even before they broke up, and he completely ignored her requests for him to stop contacting her.”
“Haley’s claim that he was controlling is true.” Morgan chewed a piece of chicken. “And we don’t know if he has an alibi. The sheriff didn’t interview him. In fact, I found no mention of him in the prosecutor’s files.”
Lance tapped on Kieran’s photo. “Why didn’t he interact with her on social media? In fact, it doesn’t appear that he uses his account at all. His profile is mostly blank.”
“He probably uses his account the same way I use mine and you use yours—to see what other people are up to.” Morgan had accounts on all the main social media platforms. She never added personal information or posted, but she needed to be able to keep tabs on what her clients and witnesses posted.
She pushed the last piece of chicken around the bottom of the bowl, gathering up the remaining dressing. She stopped and looked up at Lance. “He didn’t want her to know he was watching her. He didn’t want her to block him. What a creeper. I assume Haley posted about going to Beats.”
Lance sighed. “She did.”
“That explains how he knew she was going to be there.” She ate the chicken and pushed the plate away. “Thank you, Sharp. I do feel better.”
“I’m glad,” Sharp said.
Morgan glanced at her coffee machine.
“Don’t even think about it.” Sharp stood. “I’ll make green tea, and before you go digging through your desk for candy, I bought organic oatmeal cookies.” Sharp collected her salad bowl and carried it from the room, muttering, “Sugar addict.”
“What about the background checks?” Morgan asked Lance.
“Haley and Noah are both clean, so is Piper. Mom didn’t find any dirt on Noah’s employer either,” Lance said. “She’s still working on Noah’s friends, and I just gave her Kieran Hart’s name last night.”
“We still have a big mess.” Morgan flattened a hand on her forehead.
“Sharp and I are trying to focus the case.” Lance pointed at the board with a dry-erase marker. “We have two main options. One: Haley killed Noah, in which case, she is either lying to us or suffering from a mental illness.”
“She meets with the psychiatrist tomorrow,” Morgan said.
Sharp carried a mug into the room and set it on Morgan’s desk. “But she has no history of mental illness.”
“Can we make a case for self-defense?” Morgan picked up the cup of green tea and tasted it. Sharp had added sugar. He really was babying her. Normally, he equated sugar with the devil.
“Not yet,” Lance said. “If she was defending herself, why wouldn’t she remember?”
“Trauma?” Morgan suggested. “Maybe she blocked it out.”
Lance turned to face her. “She had none of the typical defensive injuries I would expect to see. No torn fingernails, no skin under her nails, no bruises on her forearms, no signs of being restrained. The prosecutor is going to point to all the evidence that shows she went home with Noah and slept with him willingly. He even used a condom and tossed it in the trash. He didn’t try to hide their sexual activity.”
“Unless the psychiatrist works some serious magic, self-defense isn’t going to fly with any jury without physical evidence,” Morgan agreed.
“Option number two: Haley didn’t kill Noah,” Lance said, “which means someone else did. Ideally, we want to prove her innocence. But our backup plan is to provide additional suspects with means and motive and poke as many holes in the DA’s case as possible.”
“The physical evidence is strong,” Morgan said, worried. “If we can discredit any of it, we’ll be in a better position. We need to review the forensics and DNA reports line by line and look for a chain of evidence lapses. The sheriff expedited the DNA test of the blood on Haley. Let’s find out if the lab has made any mistakes in the past.”
“We haven’t ruled out the possibility that she was drugged.” Sharp paced in front of the board. “What if someone slipped something in her drink at Beats? She went home with Noah and had sex with him, which she doesn’t remember. While she was passed out, someone else killed Noah and framed Haley for the crime. We make the overwhelming amount of physical evidence work for us. Haley had no reason to kill Noah. But if she did, why would she not make any attempt to clean up or at least cover her own tracks?”