(CNN) — Gem Mutlu paused to gather himself as he described Ana Walshe running from her Massachusetts home into the cold night to greet him before he could even park his car.

They embraced. It was New Year’s Eve 2022, and Mutlu had been invited to celebrate with Ana and her husband, he said Wednesday, growing visibly emotional as he testified in Brian Walshe’s murder trial about the last time he saw Ana alive.

A few days later, around mid-morning on January 4, 2023, Mutlu was walking on the beach when Brian Walshe called to ask if he had heard from Ana, he said.

“His tone was not panicked,” Mutlu said in court Wednesday, remembering Walshe told him Ana had been missing since she left their Massachusetts home early on New Year’s Day to return to Washington, DC, for an emergency at work. Mutlu would have left their home just a few hours before Ana, he said, after ringing in the new year.

“I was incredulous,” Mutlu said. “I said, ‘What work emergency could there have been on New Year’s Eve?’”

“I said, ‘Listen, did you have guys have an argument or something? Did you have a fight?’”

To this day, Mutlu said, he “vividly” remembers Walshe’s response.

“No,” Walshe said, per Mutlu. “Did it look like we had an argument? You were there.”

The testimony of Mutlu – a close friend of Ana Walshe’s who said he considered her family his own – came hours before prosecutors on Wednesday rested their case in the trial of Brian Walshe, who is accused of killing his wife on or around January 1, 2023.

Unbeknownst to the jury, Walshe has pleaded guilty to illegally disposing of her body and misleading police. Still, he insists he did not kill the real estate manager and mother of three, but instead found her inexplicably dead in their bed hours after Mutlu left them.