Page 84 of Reckless Chance
The acrobats comply and both are immediately restrained by the officers. That’s confusing.
I watch as panic crosses both their faces, and they writhe, trying to free themselves from their captors. Which one is being arrested? Are they both involved?
Hearing the click of metal, my gaze goes to the steel handcuffs clinching around Amelia’s delicate wrists. As she screams in horror, an officer begins reciting her rights. “You are being arrested for the murder of Mr. Brentwood. You have the right to remain silent …”
“I didn’t kill anyone. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me go,” she pleads as her anger turns to tears.
In a separate conversation, the officer holding Reese releases him. “Sorry to hold you, sir. We couldn’t risk you getting in the way of us arresting her.”
Reese looks shell-shocked as he shakes his head and mutters, “No problem. I’m not feeling well. This is too much.”
“You’re free to go. Grab your stuff and exit via the main entrance to the theater, if you don’t mind,” the officer says.
“Yeah. Okay,” Reese says and hurries away.
Detective Fielder joins Sean and me as Amelia is hauled away.
“Where are they taking her?” I ask.
“We want to question her while she is still shaken by the arrest. Can Daniel arrange for us to do an initial interview in one of your security offices? Then we can transport her to the station.”
“Of course, provided that you don’t object to Lowri, Daniel, and me listening.”
“As Ms. Upton reminded me, it is your hotel,” he says with a slight smile before continuing, “And Mr. Cartwright, please forgive me for not sharing that it was Amelia we were here to arrest. We had tried to corner Amelia at her apartment this morning, but she slipped out a back way. We were surprised she made a stop here on her way out of town. We couldn’t risk her avoiding us again,” Fielder says.
“Why would she come here if she was making a run for it?” I ask.
“We don’t know. My officers saw her fill her trunk with bags. That led us to believe she planned to leave Vegas today.”
“I get it, but we’ve worked well together in the past. You could have trusted us,” Sean says.
“Yes, but we couldn’t afford to lose time while I explained everything to you.”
“Are you going to tell us why you think she did it?” I ask.
“I don’tthinkshe did it. Iknowshe’s responsible. It turns out she had been dating Mr. Brentwood, and they had a major breakup when she found out he was also dating someone else.”
“That must have been Mr. Galanis.”
“We don’t have a name, but we know he was dating a man.”
“Amelia turned up in some photos with Galanis on social media. They must have met through Brentwood. Why was Brentwood at the show if he and Amelia had broken up?”
“We believe she had already given him the ticket and decided to use the opportunity to put an end to him.”
“Do you think she was the one in the baseball cap, causing all the accidents?”
“We do. She has the right build, and the blonde strands of hair that show from under the cap look like hers. When she was backstage between scenes, she would’ve had plenty of time to loosen the screws in the tree’s platform. We believe she’s the oneon video with the screwdriver. She knew Mr. Brentwood would end up on stage. It made it easy to exact revenge.”
“What about the earlier accidents? Why would she have hurt all the other performers?”
“Overall, those incidents resulted in minor injuries. We believe she staged those, hoping that when Brentwood was killed, it would look like another of many accidents that were occurring in an unsafe environment.”
“She couldn’t be sure he would die. If his necktie hadn’t caught, he would have fallen about ten feet and likely only ended up hurt, not dead,” Sean says.
“It’s quite possible that she only wanted to injure him as punishment for what he had done to her. Instead, it went sideways, and he died from the intendedaccident. Regardless, the result was murder.”
“It’s hard to believe she would do this. When I interviewed her, she appeared open and honest in her answers,” I say.
