Buttoned Up by Kylie Logan Page A

of telling me to hold the thought. While I did, he took his notebook out of his pocket and scanned through the pages. “We know it wasn’t Laverne,” he said, “because she was with us when we heard the fight break out.”
    “And Richard?”
    Nev looked through a few more of the pages. “After you left the church yesterday, I asked him. He said he’d heard the argument, too, and went to try and run interference, but he never did find Forbis or see who he was fighting with.”
    “Which leaves . . .” I picked up the guest list Nev had brought along and let the four single-spaced pages drift back onto the table. “A hundred or so other people.”
    “And the church staff,” he reminded me. “Because Reverend Truman and Bob the maintenance guy and anyone else who was connected with the church isn’t on the guest list and they were all in the building, too. And what about that journalist guy . . .” He skimmed through his notes and when he found what he was looking for, he stabbed the page with one finger. “What about this Gabriel Marsh? Journalists can be annoying. I mean, if he was asking Forbis questions that were too personal, that could explain a fight.”
    “Except . . .” I thought back to my own encounter with Gabriel on the front steps of the church. Though we hadn’t been able to clearly hear the person Forbis was fighting with, I couldn’t help but think we might have picked up on the accent. “He’s English,” I told Nev.
    “And English people are too well-behaved to get into arguments?”
    It was Nev’s idea of a joke and, actually, it wasn’t a bad one. As I’d quickly learned once I started dating Nev, cops are a literal bunch. Just the fact that he was able to joke around after working more than twenty-four hours straight said something about a sense of humor I wasn’t always sure he had.
    “I was thinking more like if it was Marsh, we might have heard his accent, but I guess not.” I dismissed the possibility with a sigh. “We heard Forbis, but not the person he was fighting with. Too bad. Then we’d know if it was a man or a woman.”
    “And how do you know this Marsh guy is English?” Nev asked.
    “When I ran after Forbis . . .” I popped open the top on my can of diet soda. “I found Marsh already outside looking for him. But of course, if Forbis was up in the choir loft the whole time, that explains why we never saw him. Unless . . .” This was something I hadn’t thought about earlier. “Maybe Forbis didn’t go upstairs when he ran off. Maybe he was up there way earlier. You know, like before any of us even got there for the show. Or maybe that’s where he was when he was arguing with . . . with whoever.”
    Nev shook his head. He was a couple weeks past needing a haircut and a thick strand of his sandy-colored hair flopped over his forehead. “If Forbis was having that fight up in the choir loft, I’m pretty sure we would have known it. The acoustics in that church are really good. As for him being up there before anyone arrived at the show, after what you found up there, I did check that out. According to Richard, he and Forbis came over from the hotel together in a cab. They arrived at the church just as the doors opened for show attendees. Forbis waited in Laverne’s office so he could make his grand entrance. If he’d gone up into the loft, we would have seen him cut through the church.”
    “So that is where he went when he raced off the altar. But why? Unless there was someone waiting up there for him?”
    One corner of Nev’s mouth pulled tighter. “There were signs of other footprints in the dust. Unfortunately, some of them were yours.”
    I hadn’t thought of this, and my stomach soured. “Sorry,” I said.
    Nev finished his ginger ale and took the can over to my recycling container. “You couldn’t have known, and besides, it doesn’t really matter. We were able to eliminate yours because you were wearing heels. Obviously, Forbis wasn’t, and