Read The Bad Always Die Twice for Free Online Page B

wouldn’t have released you, right? I mean, they would have arrested you if they really thought you did it.”
    “Oh, they think I did it, all right. That or they’re just too lazy to get off their asses, get out there, and find out who did. Apparently, because they found no murder weapon in the apartment, no evidence I killed him, they couldn’t arrest me. You know, it’s all circumstantial bullshit. But they said it was only a matter of time before they had what they needed. I can’t leave the state.”
    “So what about the fact that Rex was already dead? How did that play into the whole questioning thing?”
    “Not at all. I mean, obviously, he wasn’t dead. Even those boneheads figured that out.” She looked at Nikki. “I need a cigarette. Can we stop and get a pack?”
    “Sorry.” Nikki made a face. “You can’t smoke in my car. You know that. Or my house.”
    Jessica wiggled in the car seat, pulling down her fitted navy skirt. After a night of interrogation, she looked a hell of a lot better and far less wrinkly than Nikki. “There are cigarettes in my car. And some other things. Can we run by?”
    Nikki hesitated. Obviously, she wanted to help Jessica any way she could, but as her friend, she felt as if she had to keep Jessica from doing anything that might rile the cops even more. “I don’t know that you should be near your apartment. It might seem suspicious.”
    “I don’t want to go inside.” Jessica shuddered. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to sleep in that bed again. I just can’t get that picture out of my mind, of Rex dead on my St. Geneve silk sheets.” She gripped the sides of the leather seat as if she was holding on for dear life. “Please. I just want to get into my car and get my cigarettes and my bags. I went shopping at lunch yesterday. I bought the cutest Raquel Allegra tunic. I can put it on after I shower.”
    “The police might have already impounded your car,” Nikki argued. But she was already hitting her turn signal to head back toward Jess’s, on Hancock.
    “If they can find it.”
    Nikki cut her eyes at Jessica. “It’s not in your apartment garage?”
    “On the street, a block down.”
    “Why?”
    “This weirdo was following me yesterday on the way home. I parked and cut through the alley. I didn’t want him to know where I lived. Why would the police want my car?”
    “There could potentially be evidence.”
    “Evidence of what? I didn’t kill him, Nikki!” Her last words came out in a sob.
    Nikki broke the rules and gave Jessica’s manicured hand a quick squeeze. “I’m telling you how the cops might be thinking, not me.”
    “I can’t believe the police think I did this.” Jessica sniffed and pressed the heel of her hand under her nose. “To . . . to Rex.”
    “When he was already dead,” Nikki added.
    “Exactly. Oh, Nikki.” Jessica, breaking her own rules, wrapped her fingers around Nikki’s wrist. “What am I going to do? What if they railroad me? What if they say I killed him and they put me away for the next twenty years?” She sounded as if she was going to burst into tears.
    Nikki gripped the wheel, staring at the bumper ahead of her. “Here’s what you’re going to do. We’re going to grab your bags from your car, you’re going to take a shower at my place, and you’re going to lie down for a couple of hours and then you’re going to go to work. You’re going to go about your day as if this is all a misunderstanding, you’re innocent of all charges, and someone is trying to frame you, which obviously they are.”
    “Okay, okay.” Jessica nodded, as if seeing the plan now. She looked up. “But what are you going to do?”
    Nikki turned onto Jessica’s street and spotted her green BMW. “I’m going to prove your innocence.”
    “How are you going to do that?”
    “I’m going to find out who killed Rex . . . this time.”

Chapter 5
    N ikki hesitated at the apartment next to Jessica’s, finger poised over