Page 61 of Sinful Fantasy

“So you knew he was having extramarital affairs,” Fletch confirms. “And you just… accepted it?”

“What else was I to do?” she challenges. “My son is seventeen this year. We werethisclose to freedom. I could hold on a little longer, and in the meantime, earn my own money. That way, when my son came of age and I was no longer at Benedict’s mercy, I could move out and go on with my life.”

“But now he’s dead,” Archer tosses back. “So you get to skip to the end—and, as his wife, you get to keep his money, the kid, and the home.” He tilts his head to the left and dares her to admit she’s a killer. “Sounds like you found a solution to your little problem.”

She snorts, but lowers her head and shakes it side to side. “I didn’t care enough to stop him from sleeping around, Detective. I was not jealous, nor possessive. One could argue that my son resulted from non-consensual sex; not that I would ever tell him that. But the facts remain the same, and my body remembers how I felt that day. So just as I can count, with a few fingers, the times I’ve traveled over the last twenty-some years, I can do the same with the number of times Benedict and I had been intimate. He didn’t want me, and I didn’t want him. But I wanted my son. What else was I to do but sit around and wait for my child to age out?”

* * *

“She’s just handed us potential motive on a fucking platter.” Fletch pinches the bridge of his nose outside the fridge on the second floor of my building, while thirty feet away, on the other side of heavy glass doors, Aubree shows Mrs. McArthur the body that belongs to her abusive late husband. “How the hell do wenotlook at this woman now?”

“She’s not the killer.” I stand on my own two feet, holding my own weight and refusing to sit down, although it’s the end of another long day. But Idolean a little to my right, so my shoulder rests against Archer’s, and his hand latches onto my hip.

No one speaks about it, and no one questions me.

“It doesn’t add up,” I tell the detectives. “Whoever killed him was physically strong, organized, had access to a van, and was smart enough to not implicate him or herself. Roberta McArthurissmart,” I acknowledge. “She’s got a brain in her head, considering her job, and she’s got that survival instinct that made it possible for her to stay in a shitty marriage for so long. But that’s just it; she’s lasted this long. Why kill him when she’s so close to the finish line?”

“The money,” both men answer at the same time.

“Money is always a motivating factor,” Archer expands. “If she’d waited to leave till after the kid turned eighteen, she’d get to walk away, but I bet Benedict would have still ridden her hard in divorce court. After twenty years of marriage, she’d have been entitled to some of that cash. But she knew he’d fight her on it and things would get nasty, so by killing him, she keeps it all.”

“She worked for her own income,” I argue. “She wanted the kid, not the wealth or the house. She wantedout—and I bet you a dollar that she has a calendar somewhere, with each day marked off as she races for the end. Killing him would have put all that at risk, and potentially landed the kid in the foster care system, if she were fingered for the crime. There’s nowhere else for him to go. No other family to be with. So she would have lost her son and her freedom. Killing Benedict is the last thing she’d want to do.”

“We can’t ignore the very real chance she’s the one who did it,” Archer presses. “You have a hard-on for cheaters, so of course you’re gonna jump on her bandwagon and take her side, but being someone’s victim doesn’t exempt you from becoming their killer.”

“In fact,” Fletch inserts, “that’s often how it goes down.”

“You’re wrong.” I push off of Archer’s shoulder just a second before Aubree and Roberta come back through the glass door.

“I’m still leaning toward organized,” I tell the guys quietly. “This wasn’t a scorned lover. This was cold and calculated, and reeks of‘you have information I want, so I’m gonna break your fingers and take your eyes till you tell me.’”

And with that, I change my expression and start toward Aubree and Roberta, whose eyes are puffier than they were when she went into the morgue.

To see your dead husband, even if you don’t like him, cuts at a person’s soul.

“Is there anything I can get you?” I come to a stop in front of both women and study Roberta’s splotchy face. “A glass of water? A seat?”

“Are you married, Doctor?”

She stuns me with her simple question, and I don’t have to see Archer to know he reacts; just like I don’t have to turn to feel his body coming closer.

I feel him in the air that surrounds me. In the way my breathing changes, due to his proximity.

“Yes.” I reach up with my good hand and loop my finger through the ring hung around my neck. “Yes, I’m married.”

“And what would you do if you were unhappy in that marriage? Would you kill your husband?” Her voice breaks. “If you had his son and knew he would take that child from you, would you make him pay for that?”

“I don’t…” I chew on my bottom lip. “I’m very happy with my spouse, Mrs. McArthur. And I don’t have a child. So I don’t know what I would do in that situation.”

“What about you, then?” She looks over my shoulder, and though I assume she’s speaking to Archer, I’m taken aback when she says a different name. “Are you married, Detective Fletcher? Are you happy?”

“I used to be,” he confesses solemnly. “Both married and happy.”

“Do you have kids?”

“One.” He wanders forward slowly, coming to a stop on my right. “And my child is my everything.”

“You strike me as very protective,” she sniffles. “If their mother posed a threat to your child, would you kill her?”

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