“It might’ve been from something else! She could’ve added another poison too!” I’m reaching for straws. I didn’t expect this at all. I thought I’d find evidence, Jeff would understand, maybe even appreciate it, and justice would be served for the man whose last moments were spent on my table with a story to tell that only I could hear.

“I’m sorry, Zoey. Really, I am. And I’ll look into it. But it has to be by the book, something I can hand off to the State all nice and tidy and wrapped up in a bow. Not . . . garbage spread out on a table.”

The rebuke stings. Especially since I didn’t do it by myself. I did it with Blake, but I guess that doesn’t matter to Jeff. He assumes, like everyone else, that I’m alone.

“You promise to look into it? Jeff, she really killed him. I swear it.”

He nods earnestly. “I will. You have my word on it.”

“Do you want this?” I point at the invoice I painstakingly put together.

“Bag it up,” he says with a sigh. “Hell, tape the thing together so someone could read it. But if I come back and tell you State ain’t taking it, I want all of this shit in a box on a shelf, ignored. Now listen, in the future, if you really do have one of these feelings, come to me, okay? I don’t need Alver runnin’ into my office playin’ tattletale and acting like an old biddy at Bingo Night. You don’t want that either.” He gives me a pointed look, and I wonder how many people heard Alver’s version of the story about my trash-strewn morgue and are upstairs right now discussing whether or not Jeff is reading me the riot act.

“Okay,” I say forlornly, all the wind knocked out of my sails.

Already dug down deep in my pity party, Alver’s reappearance makes it suck even more.

It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.

He can see by the look on my face that his plan worked. Maybe not the way he wanted it to, but he’s swimming in my misery like a pig in slop.

“Here’s the coffees, Sheriff. DDG.”

Jeff holds out his hands to take them both. “Anything I should know about these, Alver?” he asks directly. Guess Jeff’s on the same thought train as I am about the coffees, at least. Alver shakes his head and Jeff’s eyes narrow. Moving one to his lips, he sniffs deeply before taking a sip. Smacking his lips, he says, “Seems okay.” Then he repeats the move on the other cup, drinking from them both as proof that they’re not laced with laxatives or Visine.

“Which one you want?” Jeff asks me.