Paige didn’t want to believe the crime scene clean-up people could get the place looking like new in such a short time, but when she showed up to start her shift the afternoon after Austin’s murder, the serving room looked like it had never seen a cop before. The alley outside still had crime scene tape around it, along with a uniformed officer pretending to be discrete about guarding it, but the bar’s interior looked like it did on any other day.
Well, except for the black-draped stool where Austin used to sit.
Somehow the little mourning signal made everything a little bit better. Paige didn’t know why the pristine clean-up job bothered her so much until she saw that black-draped stool. She blinked back tears as she prepped garnishes. “I get why we couldn’t have fingerprint dust and al
