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Seeing these girls with their hair skimmed back and their demure black dresses just makes me uncomfortable, remembering the dead woman dressed in the exact outfit not long ago. Same woman we found swinging from the chandelier of this very room.
My frown becomes a scowl.
No one looks like they’re over the age of forty-five here except for one wrinkled little man in breeches. Montero identified him as the stableman—how weird is having a stableman in the twenty-first century?—but when you have the money...
I sweep them all with hard looks, thumbs hooked in the belt loops of my uniform pants, then turn my head over my shoulder to Montero.
“And this is everyone?” I ask skeptically. “No one’s called in today?”
“Not one,” he announces in his deep, rolling voice. His charming confidence doesn’t work on me any more than this invasion of my personal space. I just eye him. “They’re all live-in staff, Captain Faircross. If someone else was missing, I’d escort you to their quarters personally myself.”
“Uh-huh.”
I turn my gaze back to the staff.
Every last one of them stares at the ground, averting their eyes. Nobody meets my gaze except for a few halfhearted glances and quick smiles.
Wonder what the hell they’d tell me if Montero wasn’t in the room.
The men’s outfits are dead ringers for our stalker.
My memory wasn’t failing me when I made that connection.
Exact same cut, same colors, same fit as the man who’s been trailing Ophelia like a demented ghost.
Yeah, something ain’t right here.
Montero claps his hands together.
“All right, everyone, please return to work. You’ll be compensated with an hour of overtime for the inconvenience.” He says it pleasantly, but there’s an undertone there—you’ve inconvenienced my staff and inconvenienced me by having to compensate them for it, you stupid cop. And that nastiness lingers as he steps forward to look at me. “Captain, could you kindly be a tad more clear what this is about?”
It’s a question, but he frames it like an order.
I sigh, taking my time before answering.
“You had any thefts here lately, Mr. Arrendell? Even petty stuff? People raiding the linen closet or anything? Stealing uniforms?”
His aristocratic black brows draw together. “Well, I don’t exactly monitor inventory in the linen supply closet myself.”
“Somebody should,” I growl. “You’re swearing no one on staff meets this guy’s description, but maybe someone stole some of their duds.”
“Forwhat, Captain Faircross? What possible motive?” An edge of cultured exasperation enters Montero’s voice. “What is this man accused of, that you come storming up to my doorstep—as if we’re somehow to blame?”
I don’t get a chance to answer.
He wouldn’t like what I’d have to say, anyway, ’cause right now I’m not telling himshit.Nothing he can use to deflect if he is somehow involved.
And I’ll be damned if he isn’t.
I’ve seen Lucas’ folder.
All those newspaper clippings showing Montero back in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, gliding through high society and hundreds of women like a Grim fucking Reaper, always trailing death in his wake.
No evidence, of course.
But nobody stacks up that many coincidences.
Wherever this man goes, tragedy follows.
