“Well, you know more than me,” he said in a dry tone.

“What do you know?”

“That she was seeing him after I was arrested.”

“From what I learned, it might have started before that.”

He didn’t respond.

“You said you knew about him. What can you tell me?”

“Like you said, I’m pretty sure she met him at work. I figured he was a client at the salon.”

“Do you have a name?”

“No.”

I tried to rein in my frustration. “Look, Wyatt, if you want me to do this, you have to be more forthcoming. I shouldn’t have to drag every damn answer out of you.”

“I knew she was unhappy,” he snapped, but then his tone softened. “She wanted me to propose at Christmas, but I wasn’t sure I loved her. I just couldn’t seem to pull the trigger. I think deep down I knew she was wrong for me.”

“So you didn’t follow through, and she found a boyfriend on the side?”

“I didn’t know the timing overlapped, but I’m not surprised.”

“What do you remember about the night you were arrested?”

“Really? We’ve already covered this, Carly.”

“No. Not completely. You said your father had you followed and arrested to drag you back into the fold. Did he tell you that?”

“No, but we weren’t exactly speakin’ at that point. I knew the sheriff got an anonymous tip. It stands to reason it was Dad.”

“What if it was someone else?”

“Who else would do it?” he asked, sounding unconvinced.

“Heather’s boyfriend. What if he had you arrested so Heather could coerce your parents into paying her not to testify against you?”

Silence hung over the line for a moment. Then he asked, “Do you have any proof of that? Because my parents did pay her off to leave, but I’m pretty sure they offered, not the other way around.”

“But only five thousand dollars. That’s not much in the scheme of things. You know she was banking on so much more.”

He didn’t respond.

“I need to know what happened at her going-away party.” I steeled my back, preparing to put up an argument if he tried shooting me down. “Were you invited?”

“No,” he scoffed.

“What made you decide to go?”

He was silent for several seconds. “I heard she was pregnant.”

My stomach dropped. I hadn’t been prepared for that.

“I went to confront her,” he said. “To make sure it was mine.”

“What did she say?”

“She laughed at me. Told me she’d lied about takin’ the pill for the last six months of our relationship, tryin’ to get pregnant so I’d have to marry her, but it didn’t happen because I had bad sperm.”

“She tested your sperm?” I asked in disbelief.

He snorted. “No, but Heather couldn’t take responsibility for anything. Not even failing to get pregnant, so of course it had to be my fault.”

“I heard you were in a room with her for half an hour. What did you do in there all that time?”

“There was no way in hell I was there for that long. More like ten minutes. Fifteen minutes tops. And we were in the room because I didn’t feel like discussing her possible pregnancy in a room full of people.”

“You discussed the fact she wasn’t pregnant for fifteen minutes?” I asked.

“There was a lot of rehashin’ about how I’d screwed her over and wasted her life. But she told me she was leavin’ Drum in her dust, and she’d never give me a second thought after she left.”

“Did you know she was going to Tulsa?”

“No. She never said anything about it to me, but I tried to pay her as little attention as possible after we broke up.”

“If you weren’t paying attention to her, then who told you she was pregnant?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What does that mean?”

“I found a note in my mailbox that said Heather was pregnant.”

“How long did you have the letter before you confronted her?”

“The same day. I don’t know how long it was in my mailbox. I hadn’t checked it in days.”

“Did it look like a man or a woman had written the letter?”

“A woman, I guess,” he said. “It had swirly handwriting.”

“Were you drunk when you confronted her?”

“What?”

“A witness said you were drunk.”

“I wasn’t drunk,” he said in disgust. “I’d had a beer before I found the letter, but I sat with it for a good hour before I went to the party.”

“Did someone drive you?”

“No, I drove myself.” Then he added, “I wouldn’t drink and drive, Carly. Not after my arrest.”

“What did you do after that? Where did you go?”

“Home,” he said. “And no, I don’t have an alibi for the rest of the night.”

I should have asked sooner, but it stood to reason he didn’t given the fact he had me trying to find the real murderer. “The night you were arrested, what time did you break into the garage?”

“Carly…”

“Answer the question, Wyatt,” I snapped.

“Around midnight. Maybe later.”

“You went and confronted your father and came home and started drinking. What made you decide to get your baseball?”

“I don’t know,” he said, getting angry. “I was furious with my father.”

“But whose idea was it to go? Did Heather plant the seed?”

He hesitated. “Maybe.”

“And you drove? She let you drive knowing you were drunk?”

“Yeah.”

“She didn’t try to stop you. She let you drive. She probably planted the idea in your head.” I paused. “She set you up, Wyatt.”

“Well, congratulations, Carly,” he said in a wry tone. “You can call up the sheriff and tell him I had motive to kill her.”

I pushed out a sigh. “Look, the key is finding out who helped her, because she didn’t orchestrate your setup alone. Someone had to make that call.”

“Unless she prearranged it with the sheriff’s department. But she still would have needed an accomplice.”

Then a new thought hit me—what if her boyfriend worked for the sheriff’s department?

“Who was at the going-away party?” I asked.

“I didn’t pay much attention. I went there to talk to her. I let her berate me, then I left.”

“Whose house was it at?”

“Mitzi’s. She was furious when I showed up.”

I really needed to talk to Mitzi.

“You’re in hiding now, right?” I asked. “You’re not trying to hide in the shadows and follow me around, are you?”

“It’s shortly after noon,” he said in a teasing tone. “There aren’t many shadows.”

“You know what I meant.”

“I went to Lula like you suggested.”

“How are you getting along with Bingham?”