Slay it with Flowers by Kate Collins Page A

course it did. I U-turned and went back to the group.
    Several more cops joined the party, along with two park rangers, a coroner, and a two-person crime scene investigative team. After receiving orders from Reilly, the cops began doing interviews, taking each one of us some distance away so we couldn’t hear what anyone else was saying, although I did catch the sounds of Sabina’s noisy sobs.
    Reilly conducted my interview, and behind him I could see the bright flash of cameras as the investigators did their work. I wasn’t much help with personal information about Punch, but I did give him good time references. Reilly seemed most interested in what I knew about the three absentees, especially Flip, since his camera appeared to be the instrument of death. Other than providing information about Pryce, I wasn’t much help in that area. Although I would have loved nothing more than to see my ex-fiancé put under a hot lamp and grilled like a leg of mutton, I did concede that he was a busy lawyer, and it was very likely that his excuse for not joining us was legitimate.
    In truth, I told Reilly, Pryce wasn’t really a part of their inner circle, and had only been included in the wedding party because he and Claymore shared the same dysfunctional but highly elite gene pool. Reilly didn’t think that last line was funny, which was fine because I hadn’t meant it to be.
    He tapped the end of his pencil on his notepad as he glanced through his scribbles. “Who among those here would you say the victim was closest to?”
    I paused to look back at the group. Certainly not Jillian, or Sabina. Ursula didn’t seem particularly close to any of them. Bertie hadn’t exactly sung Punch’s praises. Claymore had apparently only asked him out of duty, and Pryce didn’t know him that well, since he’d graduated two years before. That left Onora and Flip, I told Reilly. I didn’t dish the dirt about Onora because what I knew about her being angry with Punch for dumping her was pure hearsay. But I did start to wonder what her alibi would be.
    “You’ll be able to get prints off the camera, right?” I asked. “That should tell you a lot.”
    “Depends on how many people used it. Right now that and the film are our best shots.”
    “What about footprints?”
    “Since all of you trampled the sand around the body I doubt we’ll find much there.”
    “Sorry. If I’d known I was going to find a body I would have been more careful. One thing I forgot to mention, and I don’t know if it’s significant or not, but Jillian noticed that Punch’s gold earring is missing. Apparently he wears it—wore it—all the time.”
    Reilly wrote it down, though he didn’t seem very impressed.
    “And one other thing,” I said, catching him before he walked away, “I know it looks bad right now, but I truly don’t believe Flip—Phillip—is your murderer.”
    “And yet you told me,” he paused to check his notes,
    “you don’t know him. In fact, you’ve never met him.”
    I bent to scratch the top of my sandaled foot, which had started to itch ferociously. “I don’t understand it myself, but it’s this strong gut feeling I get about things. I mean, look at the evidence—a bloody camera owned by a missing groomsman—it’s just a bit too obvious, don’t you think? Like those TV shows where you think it’s the first guy—the jealous co-worker—and then it turns out to be the victim’s barber who’d been stiffed a tip one time too many?”
    Reilly put his notebook and pencil away. “But this isn’t TV, remember? When we find strong evidence pointing to one perp, as a rule we’ve got our man.”
    “Okay, you said as a rule,” I countered, “which means it could be that—”
    “Thank you, Ms. Knight,” Reilly said. “That will be all for now.”
    A flashbulb went off near our faces, temporarily blinding me. I glanced around to find a seedy-looking man with two cameras hanging around his neck getting ready to shoot a