Page 46 of 2 Sisters Murder Investigations

Silence in the room. Baby was chewing her nails.

“But look.” Alex Brindle sighed. “Daisy was also just questioning her life path in general. I thought she was bored, to be honest. That can happen. He worked. She worked. They had a nice home. She tried to go digging around in his past for drama and couldn’t get anything. She needed conflict. There was no jeopardy in her life. No risk. No thrill.”

A shimmer of energy seemed to pass through the room. Baby felt it too. She nudged my Vans with the side of her designer boot.

“What do you mean bythrill?” she asked. “Like, Daisy wanted to do something dangerous?”

“She just wanted something to give her life a spark,” Brindle said miserably. “I think our affair was, you know ... the risk she was chasing. That’s what I was trying to work out with her, all those times we said we needed to talk.” She nodded at the phone in Baby’s hand. “Did she love me? Or did she love the taboo?”

“Then the money came into the equation,” I said.

“That just made her question things more.” Brindle shook her head. “And it mademequestion things more.”

“Were you thinking of running away with Daisy?” I asked.

“No,” Brindle said. “Not at all.”

“So what were you questioning?”

“What Daisy wanted to do with the money,” Brindle said. “It turned me off. It was too intense for me. Here she is, telling me that she loves me, right? That she’s thinking about leaving her husband for me. Then she tells me she wants to go to graduate school, get a degree in psychology. She runs her thesis idea past me. And guess what?” Brindle gave a sad laugh. “Her thesis topic was my area of expertise. Myexactarea.”

“Sounds like she was becoming obsessed with you,” I said.

“She was.” Brindle nodded. “And I was in too deep. I was trying to back off.”

“What’s your area of expertise?” Baby asked.

Dr. Brindle laughed, a small, embarrassed sound.

“When I started out, I didn’t do this kind of domestic stuff, couples therapy.” She gestured to the coffee table, the fluffy throw on the couch, the whole pretty but sterile setting. “But I learned after ten years of trying to change the world one monster at a time that you make a lot more money and you sleep better at night when you counsel normal people about normal problems.”

Baby and I looked at each other.

“I used to work in prisons,” Brindle said. “My doctoral dissertation was on serial killers.”

CHAPTER51

BABY WALKED NUMBLY TOthe car beside me, her face blank and her eyes on her feet. I felt the way she looked. We sat in shell-shocked silence in the sun-warmed Chevy for a good five minutes before either of us spoke.

“Daisy found a serial killer,” Baby said.

I held the steering wheel.

“She did it to impress Alex,” Baby went on. She gestured to the house we’d just come from. “She was obsessed with her lover, obsessed to the point that she would leave her husband. That she would leave her job. That she would leave herlife. She wanted to bring Alex something that was right up her alley. Maybe a project they could work on together. So she hit the internet and scratched around until she found an unsolved crime. Then she got to work on it, and — ”

“And what?” I asked.

“And she found what she was looking for.” Baby shrugged. “You stick your finger down enough spider holes, eventually you’re gonna get bit.”

I couldn’t untangle my thoughts. My phone bleeped.

“Question is, how far did she have to look?” Baby asked. “Maybe all she had to do to find a serial killer was roll over in bed.”

The message on my phone was from Dave Summerly. I opened it.

We need to talk,it said.Your place. Urgent.

CHAPTER52

---