Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 67432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
But I wasn’t in the closet anymore, which meant there’d be no protecting myself if I caught feelings during our professional arrangement. And Colton seemed to have moved on from our fiery flings, having mentioned he was already seeing someone.
Why did that bother me so much?
I washed up the last of the dishes that were in the sink and went over to the fridge, where I grabbed a beer and popped it open. With the chores done and the house clean, all I had to do now was wait an hour or two for the first people to show up. That gave me some time to go over the book we were starting today called A Family Affair, about a dead body being found on a cruise ship, where a family reunion was being held for a woman’s eightieth birthday party.
I slumped down on the couch and reached for the book on the coffee table but grabbed my laptop instead. I kicked my feet up on the mint-green stool and took a swig of my IPA before clicking into my internet browser and setting the cursor on the address bar.
That’s where I typed in Amelia Cooper.
An image of Colton’s mother popped up on the screen, attached to a Wikipedia page. She wore a violet business suit as she stood in front of the blurred-out logo of her company. Her smile was sharp and her eyes even sharper, a sapphire blue that seemed to cut through the screen and drill right through me. I remembered that intensity, but I remembered her warmth and kindness much more.
If I couldn’t make it to Colton’s family trip, then maybe I could still help from afar. If I kept him an arm’s length away, then maybe I could keep my feelings protected and solve this case all at the same time.
News articles about Amelia’s death were some of the first links to pop up under the search. None of the articles were particularly lengthy or illuminating. They all said the same thing: multimillion-dollar media mogul found dead in her home after a botched robbery. There were mentions of her businesses and business partners, along with talk of how her wealth would be split up amongst her large family. A couple of articles pointed to her charitable work and painted a picture of a woman who gave as much as she received. It was all benign information that didn’t give anything to the suspicions that this was a possible murder.
Until I landed on one particular website that looked as if it had been created during the first dot-com boom. It was called Who’s Eating the Rich, advertised by a bold red-and-white banner that flashed every time my mouse scrolled over it. The black and sparkling background with the pixelated header and brightly colored links was giving very much Angelfire vibes.
But I wasn’t there for the website designer’s information. It was the brief but juicy article filling my screen that interested me.
The header read Amelia Cooper, killed in cold blood for massive inheritance.
I skimmed through it at first, trying to extract the things that jumped out at me most based off instinct alone. Words like disowned, furious, prostitute, thief all screamed out at me. It looked like Colton’s family was as tangled a web as any, with Colton’s estranged brother landing in jail for aggravated assault and robbery, only to come out with his record somehow expunged and a cushy new job at his mother’s company. Except this article was insinuating that the brother—Archie was his name—still wasn’t happy with the handouts his mother gave him. He wanted more, which was proven by a series of slightly unhinged tweets shot off at three thirty in the morning where Archie went on a rant about how little he was being paid and how he needed to start a GoFundMe if he wanted to make his rent for the month.
A quick search showed me that those tweets were nowhere to be found, which meant they were either deleted or fabricated. I’d have to ask Colton about them when he came over for the book club—
Not that I was working his case. It wasn’t the smart thing to do. I had five other cases I was working through and had zero mental or emotional capacity to take on a possible relationship, regardless of how fake or real it was meant to be. And especially not with Colton.
A knock on my door drew my attention. I shut the laptop and set my beer on the glass coffee table with a clink. I walked past my air freshener just as it sprayed a fresh mist of lavender and honey. The first of the Reading Under the Rainbow crew smiled at me under a mane of freshly done curly hair, her book and a notebook held to her chest.