Beauty & The Beast (Book 1)

5. It wasn't the husband

The next morning, Catherine was still reeling over what happened while she was busy with Ashley Webster's case.

"There you are," Tess says as she walks in to find Catherine standing with a notebook. "I've been calling and calling you." She looks Catherine over and grins. "Were you with Zeke?"

Catherine pulls her nose up. "What?"

"That glow."

"What glow?" She puts the notepad down and looks at Tess.

"Sex glow," Tess waves her hand around Catherine's face. "It's all over your face."

"I don't have a glow," Catherine scoffs. "I'm just excited." She leans in. "I found the murder weapon."

"Evan said he went through everything."

"It's what's not here that's important."
Catherine pushes off her desk and walks to the board. "Look, sign out sheet," she points to it. "Ashley signed out four products the day before she died, our guys only found three." She looks at Tess. "Killer probably took the fourth."

Tess nods. "So someone put poison in Ashley's True To Color Blonde," she reads the product name off the sheet.

Catherine smiles and then she tells Tess to follow her. They walk down to the medical examiner's office and enter, seeing Evan busy with a microscope.

"Hey Evan, any way to tell if that nicotine was absorbed through her scalp?"

"I'll check her hair follicles," Evan says as he stands up straight and turns to look at Catherine with narrowed eyes. "You do realize I waited for you for hours and hours last night?" At Tess's confused face he says, "This one stood me up."

Catherine sighed and gave him an apologetic look. "Oh my God, the premiere."

Evan shakes it off quickly, proving he just wanted to mess with her, saying, "Movie was lousy, good swag bag," he turns away. "Then I got called into here. My guys found these in our power couple's bed." He holds out a tube with bugs in it. They look closer.

"Bed bugs?" Tess asks, grossed out.

"That rash I showed you was actually bites. Since these things are little blood suckers," he looks at the tube then at Catherine. "They carry the DNA of whoever's been rolling around in those sheets. Your vic wasn't pregnant, it was the hubby that was stepping out."

Catherine was impressed. She nods to the tube. "Can those mini vampires tell us who with?"

************

"Sorry ladies, we're not open yet."
The dark skinned woman smiles at the two when they step into the restaurant after getting what they needed from Evan thirty minutes later.

"Actually, I'm detective Chandler, and this is detective Vargas."

Tess smiles at the now worried looking hostess. "Alex's proofs from the night his wife died, that was you."

"You were having an affair with him."

The woman closed her eyes, and since they clearly knew everything already, she sighed. "Alex told me not to say anything, he said it would just make me look guilty. Especially because of the pre-nup." She touches the side of her head.

"What pre-nup?" Tess asks.

"If he cheats, he loses everything." She shakes her head. "But I didn't kill her. I swear."

The two detectives wondered if they could believe her, but said they'd be in touch. They needed to talk to Alex again about the pre-nup and find out more about it.
They went back to the station and did some research. They found out from Evan that it was not just to her though. There were four others.
They went straight to Joe to tell him what they found, and he was sufficiently grossed out about it as he was eating while they told him.
Joe told them there was no pre-nup, and that Alex had lied to every woman he's been sleeping with. He just needed to file for divorce if he wanted out of the relationship.