Page 45 of 2 Sisters Murder Investigations

“You said you killed her,” I pressed. Baby came into the room and sat beside me. “What did you mean by that?”

“I told her to leave him.” Brindle swiped at her eyes, leaving a streak of mascara across her right temple. “It was him, wasn’t it? Troy?”

I glanced at Baby. Her eyes were narrowed, suspicious. “We’re not sure yet.”

“This is all my fault. I told her to — ”

“You told Daisy quite a few things that you shouldn’t have told her over the course of your relationship,” Baby interrupted, taking out her phone.

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Baby smirked. “Like her ass reminded you of polished stone? Like the smell of her shampoo on your pillow turned you on? Like that you held whole sessions with clients here while your mind was completely tangled up with her?”

“My messages.” Brindle put her hand over her mouth. “You ... you’ve read those? Did you ... oh God.”

Baby powered on. My heart was in my throat. Brindle seemed to be assuming Baby and I were cops. She was probably too upset to notice how young my sister was. Well, we needed to keep her not thinking about it too much for as long as possible.

“Let’s see what else we have here,” Baby said, scrolling on her phone.

Alex Brindle looked like she was about to be sick.

“Two weeks ago,” Baby said, “you texted, ‘We need to talk.’ It was in response to Daisy telling you in a text message that she loved you. You called her. The two of you spoke for an hour and forty-seven minutes.”

Brindle sat back in her chair. The color had drained from her cheeks, and sweat was beading at her hairline.

“In fact, Daisy said she loved you several times across your message history.” Baby flicked the phone screen with her thumb. “You never said it back.”

“I feel sick,” Brindle said. “Just ... just give me a second.”

“This is all very — ” Baby started, but I hushed her. My sister had gone in hard, and she’d done a good job. But she was still learning when to ease off the accelerator. I’d had enough practice with clients to know that a physically incapacitated suspect couldn’t provide a solid story, whether that story was fact or fiction.

Brindle put her head in her hands.

“I loved her too,” she said. “But I had so much more to lose than Daisy did.”

“Like what?”

“Like my license and my practice.” Brindle wiped sweat from her brow. “I was Daisy’s psychologist. She started coming to me about a year ago, wanting to talk about her marriage to Troy. She’d tried getting Troy into couples counseling but was having a hard time convincing him that there was a problem. And apparently he’s not much of a talker. So Daisy and I would meet alone. We grew close during the sessions. She was bright and funny, and that’s a bit of a rarity around here. Most of the people who walk in that door are struggling to find some peace in their lives. I counsel trauma victims. Rape victims. I specialize in broken marriages.”

“You’re a hero.” Baby rolled her eyes. “We get it.”

“There’s a phenomenon that occurs sometimes between patients and therapists.” Brindle tore a tissue from an ornate silver box on the coffee table. “It’s called transference. You come in here, you open up, you form an emotional connection. Sometimes a patient confuses that connection with romantic feelings. When Daisy told me she was thinking about me outside the sessions ... ” Alex Brindle shook her head. “I should have stopped things then.”

“Yes, you should have,” Baby said. “You’re looking at the loss of your psychologist’s license and up to six months of jail time. California Business and Professions Code, division two, chapter one.” My sister leaned toward me and whispered, “I looked it up in the car.”

“Less vinegar, more honey,” I murmured, then turned back to Brindle.

“I should have told the police as soon as I heard that Daisy was missing.” Brindle rubbed her eyes. For a moment, she gripped her head as though trying to squeeze out the fear. “I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to put myself in the public eye like that. I’ve been sitting here for days now, just hoping that Daisy kept our relationship secret, that she’d be found safe and everything would blow over.”

“Well, it didn’t,” Baby said.

“When did you and Daisy become intimate, Alex?” I gave Baby a warning look.

“It’s been about five or six months.” Brindle twisted the corners of her tissue into little points. “Troy blew up at a neighbor kid when he and Daisy were at her parents’ house at Christmas. Daisy didn’t like that. She came in wanting to discuss it. She wasn’t talking about leaving him then. She was just ... questioning her choices with Troy. The truth was that she didn’t know him that well. That there were things from his past, his childhood, that worried her. There were a lot of closed doors.”

“What do you mean, closed doors?” I asked.

“Things he wouldn’t talk about,” Brindle said. “Whenever Daisy tried to deepen the connection, you know, be vulnerable, he’d shut down. Say the past was the past. Daisy was worried about what kind of past that was.”

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