I met Sheriff Magee in the short hallway behind the front desk. He led me around a corner and down a hallway toward a bull pen. We skirted past empty desks, going straight for a small room along the back wall.
As I stepped inside, I realized it was an interrogation room. The overhead fluorescent lights were bright, but without windows, the room was gloomy. The beige walls were dull and the wooden table in the middle of the room had seen better days.
There wasn’t a two-way mirror, but there was a camera in the upper corner of the room. Its blinking red light made me even more nervous than I already was.
I took the chair on one side of the table, sitting on my shaking hands. Sheriff Magee sat across from me, slapping down the yellow legal pad and pen he’d been carrying. Then he pulled a small black recorder from the breast pocket of his brown shirt. He clicked it on and set it down, its red light intimidating me too.
“Sheriff Xavier Magee questioning Willa Doon on December eighth.” He wrote down my name and the date on the paper, then looked up.
I held my breath, waiting for his first question as I sweated underneath my coat.
“Willa, could you state your relationship to Jackson Page?”
I swallowed hard, clearing the lump in my throat. “I’m his girlfriend.”
“And how long have you been dating?”
“A little over three months.”
He scratched something on the paper. I didn’t try to read it upside down, focusing instead on trying to calm my racing heart. What if I said something wrong? What if I made this worse for Jackson?
Maybe I should have waited for the lawyer. I wasn’t equipped to deal with this kind of pressure. I was a good girl. Good girls didn’t know how to act when being questioned about a murder.
“Do you recall where you were on the night of November sixteenth of this year?”
“I’m not sure,” I answered honestly. “I’d have to look at a calendar. But I was probably either at home or at Jackson’s.” That was three weeks ago. I would need a calendar to see the exact day of the week, but I had a feeling I already knew which night that was.
“Do you stay the night there often?”
I nodded.
Sheriff Magee smiled and looked at the recorder. “If you could say yes or no, Willa. Thanks.”
“Sorry,” I muttered, taking another breath. “Yes, I stay there often. Especially since he has Ryder now.”
“And did you ever meet their mother?” he asked.
“Twice.”
“When was that?”
“Um, the first day she came to Lark Cove. I was in the bar when she came in.”
“And what happened that day?”
“Uh . . .” I searched my memory, trying to remember all that had happened that afternoon. “She came in and said she was looking for Jackson. Thea was there too. We didn’t know who she was and when Jackson came out from the kitchen, she didn’t recognize him. He told her to leave.”
“He told her to leave? Or did he physically remove her from the bar?”
“He, um, escorted her out.”
Sheriff Magee didn’t need to write anything down. He already knew things had gotten heated that afternoon. But the only person who could have told him was Jackson since Thea had been with me in the lobby all day. Where was he going with this?
“And what happened next?” he asked.
“Nothing. I spent the evening at the bar with Jackson and then went home.” There was no way in hell I was going to tell him anything about the fight we’d gotten into that night.
“You went home alone?”
“Yes.”
“But you normally spend the nights together.”
Why did I feel like this was a trap? “Yes.”
“So you don’t know what else happened that night after you left.”
“Nothing else happened. I stayed until Jackson closed down the bar. Then I drove home and went to bed.”
“And when did you see Jackson again?”
“The next morning.”
He hummed and wrote down another note on the paper. He tilted it back, resting it at an angle to hide his notes.
“When was the second time you met Melissa Page?”
“The next day. I went with Jackson to visit her at her motel room.”
“And what happened?”
I took a deep breath, though it didn’t help soothe my hammering heartbeat. “Melissa introduced Ryder and Jackson. Then she told Jackson he needed to take Ryder for a while.”
That was the CliffsNotes version of our visit to the motel, but I was starting to feel like the less I shared, the better. If Sheriff Magee wanted details, he could drag them out of me one question at a time.
“Then what?”
“That’s it. We loaded up Ryder and his stuff, then left. We went to the bar for pizza.”
He set down the paper and pen, then steepled his hands by his chin. “And did you ever see or talk to Melissa again?”
“No.”
“Did she ever call to talk to Jackson or Ryder?” he asked.
“Not that I know of.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.” I locked my eyes with his. “I’m sure. If she called, Jackson didn’t tell me. Ryder doesn’t have a phone.”
“Okay. Let’s go back to the night of November sixteenth. You’re sure you don’t remember where you were that night?”
I shook my head. “Not really. Nothing specific stands out from that date. But can I check my phone? I might have something in my calendar.”
“Go ahead.” Sheriff Magee waved me on.
I dug my phone from my coat pocket and opened up the calendar, swiping to November. I kept everything in my calendar, mostly because I didn’t ever want to forget a birthday, special occasion or dinner with the girls.
I noted everything, including my lunch dates.
And November sixteenth was the day I’d had a lunch date with my dad at the school.
That was the day that Jackson had been in to discuss Ryder’s grades. It was the day he’d gotten that late-night phone call and disappeared for three hours and seven minutes, only to come home smelling like tequila and women’s perfume.
“I spent the night at Jackson’s house,” I told Sheriff Magee.
“And was he there all night?”
I looked up, wanting to cry.
Sheriff Magee’s eyes were waiting, his gaze gentle and understanding. He knew the answer already and he knew it was going to hurt to say it.
He knew that with one word, I’d be turning against the love of my life.
“No.”
My fucking mother. Even in death she was ruining my life.
I was sitting in an interrogation room at the sheriff’s station. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been here, but my ass was sore from sitting in this metal chair for so long. My head was pounding and my back ached.
“Fuck.” I dropped my head into my hands and closed my eyes.
This was not how I’d planned on spending my day.
I’d stopped at the bar this morning to say hello to Thea, who’d been working on payroll. I needed some ideas on what to get Charlie for Christmas since I was going to do some shopping in Kalispell after I got Willa’s car cleaned.
When Sheriff Magee came through the door, I assumed it was just to say hello. He came in every now and again to make sure we knew he and his team were always available if there was trouble.
I certainly didn’t expect the sheriff to “invite” me down to the station for questioning—and request that I ride in the back of his cruiser.
At least he didn’t put me in cuffs or throw me in a jail cell. He just brought me into this room and explained that my mother had been found murdered. Then he told me that, at the moment, I was their number one suspect.
I was a murder suspect.
That was not a concept I could grasp. What I did know for certain was that I never should have answered Mom’s phone call three weeks ago.
My skull felt like it was going to split in two at any moment, so I rubbed the back of my neck, hoping to work out some of the kinks and get my headache to disappear. The pain was just beginning to let up when the door to the interrogation room opened and Sheriff Magee stepped inside.
He looked as tired as I felt.
We’d spent most of the day in here. He’d ask me questions and I’d answer into the recorder. Then I’d ask questions and he’d tell me what he could.