Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 67432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
“This is bullshit,” Matthew said, grabbing Krystine around the waist and walking them toward the exit. “Email me with whatever I get in the will. I’m out of here.”
“Matthew, sit.” William’s eyes captured the intensity of a thousand burning suns. Matt looked like he was going to argue but swallowed his words and moved to the couch in silence. Tensions were clearly high, but that was fine. I found that dropping my suspects into a stressful pressure cooker of a situation usually extracted the truth from them. “What did you find?” Colton’s dad asked, those fiery orbs turning to me and nearly reducing me to a pile of ash right where I stood.
“I found that one of your sons has all the reason in the world to benefit from a large sum of money landing in his lap.”
All eyes in the room turned to Matt before some jumped to Archie. No one suspected Colton.
“This is sooo much bullshit,” Wendy said, chiming in. “You’re full of bullshit, just like the relationship between you and Colton. I had a feeling there was something going on, something weird. I decided to check it out myself, finding your wallet, googling your last name—see, I can be a detective, too. I found out you have your own private-eye agency in Atlanta, so of course I knew you were a fraud.” She was clearly drunk with the way some of her words slurred, the glass of champagne in her hand likely her fifth by now.
“You found my wallet, or you dug around my room for it?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said, looking indignant. “What matters is that you’re a phony and a fraud, and you shouldn’t even be on this trip.”
“Let him speak,” William shouted, his “dad” voice in full effect. Everyone in the room seemed to shrink down by a couple of inches. Except for me. I took center stage, feeling a familiar rush of adrenaline that followed the successful closing of every case.
“At first, Amelia’s death was described as a botched robbery, but there were a few big question marks that kept me thinking there was something else to it: first off, only a few pieces of jewelry were stolen. Yes, someone can argue that the burglar got scared after her death and only took a couple of things, but this person had to have known Amelia would be home because this person knew to go exactly when the cameras would be down.
“But not all the cameras were recovered from the scene of the crime. There was a nanny cam that had been taken. A nanny cam that was installed by a familiar tech company: AC Tech and Security.”
Archie’s eyes opened wide, Wendy’s jaw dropping. Archie stood, shaking his head, getting paler by the second. “No, I didn’t do it. I didn’t install any nanny cams in Mom’s house.”
“It was a good thing you installed them,” I continued on, ignoring Archie. “Since you desperately needed the job. Now that your gambling addiction has kicked back in and you owe the bank something close to two hundred thousand dollars.”
Archie sputtered some incoherent words. Colton stood next to me, his face expressionless to anyone who didn’t know him like I did. But I’d spent hours and hours staring at that face, admiring every tiny move, every blink, every twitch. I could see he was in pain, and a lot of that pain was being inflicted by the revelations I was dropping. Should I have debriefed him before? If I knew this would be how the night went, I would have sat him down and told him everything I discovered—but there was no time.
“You’d go to your wife for help, but she’s been distracted lately, hasn’t she? It seems like your own CFO is the one distracting her, too. But you already knew that, didn’t you? You already felt like life broke you down once before; you weren’t going to let it do it to you again.” I took a step forward, keeping unwavering eye contact with Archie as I spoke my next words. “That’s why you killed Amelia.”
Wendy gave a shrill shout, and the glass of champagne she’d been holding twirled to the floor and shattered against the polished marble, bubbly gold spreading over the veiny white. Silence followed as everyone in the room absorbed the accusation, shock spreading like sarin gas through the air.
Archie spoke first, his voice hoarse, a hand against his throat as if he was having trouble breathing. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill my mother.”
His denial sounded sincere, but the evidence sounded more convincing. I looked to William, his eyes drilling a hole through his son. He had taken off his suit and unbuttoned the first three buttons on his shirt, as if his clothes were becoming too tight. I understood the signs of a panic attack. I had to end this as quickly as I could. I needed to get Archie to confess.