Free Crash and Burn by Allison Brennan, Laura Griffin

sprawling apartment complex near the campus that catered predominately to college students.
    The police would have already taken Valerie’s statement, and there was no reason Scarlet couldn’t talk to her about the events last night.
    She knocked on Valerie’s door. At first, there was no answer, but her car was in the carport, so Scarlet knocked again. And waited. She heard movement inside.
    A full minute later, a hung-over Valerie came to the door. Her dark hair was stringy from being washed and then left to dry without brushing. Her face was splotchy from crying, and she wore over-sized clothes that were too warm for the ninety-plus-degree day. She had victim written all over her.
    “Valerie? I’m Scarlet Moreno, a private investigator.” She held out her card. Valerie took it without looking.
    “I’m really tired.”
    “I won’t keep you long.”
    Valerie sighed and walked away from the open door.
    Scarlet entered and closed the door behind her. “Are you alone?”
    “So?”
    “You might want to have a friend with you today.”
    Valerie collapsed on the couch as if she didn’t have any bones, resting her head on the back. The apartment was sparsely furnished, relatively tidy, with posters of the beach and baby animals all over the walls. Her lone floor-to-ceiling bookshelf was crammed with romance paperbacks and textbooks on marine biology.
    “I don’t want to talk to anyone.”
    Common reaction. Scarlet pushed a stack of magazines aside—on odd mix of fashion and conservation—and sat on the unfinished oak coffee table directly across from Valerie. “I’m not going to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do,” she began, “but there are a lot of people and groups who will do everything in their power to help you deal with all that has happened.”
    She closed her eyes. “There was so much blood. It just spread all over the place. I didn’t know what to do.”
    “Did you see what happened to Richie Sanders?”
    She shook her head and finally focused on Scarlet. Her eyes were still bloodshot, but her pupils weren’t dilated or wild, and Scarlet though Valerie looked tired and hung-over, not under the influence of anything except emotional pain. “I don’t remember anything. I was upstairs. I think. Then I heard yelling and a gun went off. I came downstairs and saw him lying there, with all the blood.”
    “Okay, that’s good.”
    Her bottom lip quivered. “Good? What’s good about any of this?”
    “I meant you’re doing good, talking about it.” Scarlet considered her options. Valerie had been traumatized, but her memory was fuzzy. She needed to be walked through what happened yesterday, because open-ended questions weren’t going to get them anywhere.
    Scarlet knew the group of seven had come into the bar around six. She started there. “You and your friends came to the bar, Diego’s, about six yesterday, correct?”
    She shrugged and hugged a throw pillow to her chest. “I guess.”
    “Whose idea was it to go to the bar?”
    She thought on that a minute. “Tessa and I went to the movies with Chase, Juan and Parker, then went to eat on the pier. Tessa and Parker are kind of going out. She really likes him, and he likes her, but they’d never been available at the same time.” She smiled, a genuine grin. “I hooked them up finally. I’ve been friends with them for so long, when they were both free, I made sure they knew it.” Then confusion replaced her expression. “Parker—” She stopped herself.
    “Parker what?”
    “You don’t think he could have hurt us, do you?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “You tell me.”
    “I don’t remember anything. Not until I saw Richie lying there on the floor bleeding. He looked at me, but couldn’t talk.”
    Scarlet had to get her away from that scene or she was going to lose Valerie. People who didn’t see violence up close and personal had a multitude of different reactions, and blocking it out was one. She didn’t want