Blackmoore Sisters 01-Dead Wrong by Leighann Dobbs Page B

of East Frazier Pasture Road. Jake was already there leaning casually against a beat up gold and black Suburban. Fiona tried not to notice that his tee-shirt was just a bit tight against his muscular chest. She gulped down her latte and got out of the car.
    “You guys ready?” He pushed himself off the car starting toward them.
    “Ready as we’ll ever be.” Morgan said.
    The three fell in line walking the short distance to an opening in the woods.  
    “It’s through here.” Jake gestured to a barely visible path.
    As they walked further into the woods, the trees became more dense and Fiona felt the temperature drop a few degrees. They had walked about a quarter mile when they came to an area still marked with yellow crime scene tape. Inside the tape, a large area of leaves and pine needles were disturbed where an obvious struggle had gone on.
    Fiona looked around to get her bearings. They were in the deepest part of the woods with no houses visible.  
    “So Prudence’s house is in that direction.” She pointed to the North.
    Jake nodded. “And the cafe is in that direction,” he said pointing West.
    Morgan turned in a circle inside the taped off area. “Where did the killer come from?”
    Jake shrugged.  
    “Well, Sticks and Stones must be over there,” Morgan said pointing to the South. “But that morning I was coming from the cafe, so if I killed her, I would have had to walk up the same path Prudence did, strangle her, then run off that way.”
    “You wouldn’t have had enough time to do that.” Jake said, “I mean, if the time you say you got to Sticks and Stones is right.”
    Fiona glared at Jake. “Of course, it is. We know the exact time she got there. Plus my latte was warm.”
    Jake held up his hands. “I know, Red, just saying what a prosecuting lawyer might say.”
    Fiona pursed her lips together. Did he just call her Red, again? But instead of getting angry, she just smiled. He was right, of course. They had to consider what a prosecutor might use against them.
    “I don’t know how any of that will help us now.” Morgan pushed some of the leaves aside with her foot. “We need to be looking for clues the police might have missed.”
    “Speaking of which, I took the box of Prudence’s effects to Ed yesterday and a couple of things were missing. We don’t have them down at the station, so we should be on the lookout for them here. If they aren’t here, then the killer likely has them.”
    “What are they?” Fiona looked up at Jake who had his head down, scanning the ground.
    “A gold necklace with the letter ‘P’, and a scarf with sunflowers on it.”
    Fiona’s heart clenched. She looked over at Morgan. Should they tell him about the scarf? Morgan widened her eyes and nodded her head toward Jake. Fiona knew exactly what she meant. They had to tell him.
    Fiona cleared her throat and Jake narrowed his eyes at her.
    “What?”
    “We know where one of those is.”  
    He raised his eyebrows looking from Morgan to Fiona.
    “The scarf … it really was buried in the garden.”
    “So the tip was real?”
    “I guess so. It just so happened I found it earlier that day, so when you guys came to dig up the garden I had already removed it.”
    Jake sighed. “So you tampered with evidence.”  
    Fiona bit her bottom lip. “Well, technically. But I didn’t know it was evidence when I dug it up … sort of.”
    “Sort of?” Jake looked at her incredulously.
    “What she means is that she knew it was Prudence’s scarf, but didn’t realize that was what she had been strangled with.”
    Jake ran his hands through his short cropped hair. “Do you know how it got there?”
    “No idea.”
    “I’m going to need to see it. There could be evidence on there.”
    “Okay.” Fiona felt her stomach sinking. She hoped she hadn’t done anything to harm Morgan’s case.
    “The only problem is that now we can’t really turn it in to the police.”  
    “Maybe we shouldn’t have told