Page 2 of The Sweetest Obsession

I don’t want to think how many tries it took her to toss the end until it caught just right on the chandelier and let the rest swing back to her.

From that point on, it would’ve been easy.

Undo the knot.

Tie the end into a noose.

Jump.

Leaving her life behind with a damning question.

Why?

According to the Lord and Lady of the house, one of the younger girls on the live-in housekeeping staff woke up early to get started on her chores. She came into the ballroom, saw the woman hanging, and screamed—sending the entire house scrambling to call into town.

To the Redhaven PD, namely.

To me.

“Oh, my, this is dreadful,” Lucia Arrendell hisses at my other side, wringing her thin hands.

Her aristocratic face twists, a caricature of dramatic distress. Even this early in the morning, she’s in a deep wine silk robe with perfect makeup, her white-streaked icy-blonde bob so stiff it barely moves with all her fluttering.

I just stare at her as she sniffs loudly.

“To think, the poor dear was so unhappy that she’d turn tothis.God. But we alwaysinclude mental health coverage as part of our employee insurance policy. I don’t understand, I just wish—”

“Quiet,” I mutter. “I’m trying to think.”

The air goes cold.

Well, colder.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Lucia Arrendell never heard those words in her pampered life. Definitely not from the offended gasp she gives back, but before she can do more than open her red-painted mouth, her husband—standing at her back in a burgundy velvet smoking jacket and black silk pajama pants—silences her with a hand against the small of her back.

“Now, now, dear,” Montero Arrendell drawls in his exaggerated Clark Gable accent. “I know you’re distressed, but do let the detectives focus on their work, yes?”

He meets my eyes over the top of his wife’s head like he’s doing me a big fucking favor.

No matter how conciliatory and smooth he sounds, I see what’s behind those impenetrable green eyes.

They’re empty.

Stone-cold.

Measuring me.

Probably asking about my price, assessing whether or not I can be bought to keep this out of the press. The Arrendells have a little bit of a reputation problem to deal with right now.

It’s been a few months since their son turned out to be a prolific serial killer and my lieutenant’s new wife almost ended up as his latest victim. Ulysses and his accomplice, Culver Jacobin, died in police custody in an apparent suicide.

But the whispers are alive and well.

Two suicides connected to the same rich family in just a few months?

People start to wonder.

Including me.

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