Below Amelia’s name, she added a note.Knew about Iris’s recordings. Extent of knowledge unknown.
Below Simmons, she wrote:Wealthy. Donated to school. Daughter’s graduation possibly fraudulent. Motive to silence Iris?
Kinsley stepped back and surveyed the board. The web of connections was growing more complicated with every tape she listened to. Richard Bell’s affair and his reliance on Paul Fisher for alibis. Joey Bell’s violent temper. Principal Winters and the arrangement with the Simmons family. And at the center of it all, Iris, a girl who had understood instinctively that information was power and had spent the last year of her life accumulating as much of it as she could.
The question wasn’t whether someone had motive to kill Iris Bell. The question was how many people had motive, and which one of them had been in that house the night she died.
Kinsley had made her decision. She was going to recommend reopening the case, and she needed to inform the captain before she went any further. Thompson would, in turn, need to notify the mayor, given the Bell family’s connections, but Kinsley intended to request that he hold off on that call until she’d had a chance to speak with the Bells first. Approaching them cold, before they had time to prepare or coordinate their stories, was the only way to get honest reactions. Once the mayor made a phone call, the window for candid conversation would slam shut.
Kinsley capped her marker and set it on the whiteboard ledge.
The question that mattered most was the simplest one.
Had someone found out what Iris Bell was doing, and had they killed her to make it stop?
10
Kinsley Aspen
July
Tuesday, 8:17 am
Kinsley stood on the front path of the Bell residence, taking in the modern structure that occupied a rather spacious parcel of land at the outskirts of Fallbrook. The property wasn’t situated in a neighborhood. Instead, it sat on its own generous lot, surrounded by enough acreage to offer a balance of distance. Close enough to town for convenience, yet secluded enough to discourage casual visitors and prying eyes. The kind of location that said the Bells valued their privacy, even if everything else about their lives suggested otherwise.
The home itself spanned what Kinsley estimated to be around five thousand square feet, showcasing a clean, angular design of glass and steel that stood in sharp contrast to the Victorian grandeur of the mansion the Bells had left behind. Neat landscaping surrounded the foundation, adding to the contemporary appearance and hinting at the kind of lives livedwithin. Tasteful, controlled, and maintained by someone who was paid to keep everything precisely where it belonged.
Kinsley had spent the previous afternoon in the captain’s office, laying out her preliminary findings from the tapes. Thompson had listened with the particular stillness he reserved for situations that had the potential to become political headaches, his pen motionless on his notepad, his eyes fixed on hers without blinking. When she’d finished, he’d leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a long moment before giving her the authorization to make contact with the Bell family. He’d agreed to hold off on notifying the mayor until after this initial interview, though he’d made it clear that the window for that courtesy was narrow. “Twenty-four hours, Aspen. After that, I have to make the call.”
So here she was, standing on Richard and Eden Bell’s front path at eight in the morning, her badge on her hip and a recorder full of their dead daughter’s secrets back at the station. She continued forward until she was close enough to press the doorbell. The muted chime echoed somewhere in the depths of the house, followed by footsteps approaching from within. They were deliberate, unhurried, and heavy enough to indicate that it was Richard Bell who was making his way to the front entrance. A man who didn’t rush for doorbells, even unexpected ones.
The door swung open, and his tall frame filled the entrance. Wavy brown hair, cropped short in an expensive cut that was just long enough to suggest casual sophistication, framed a face that still carried the handsome features that had no doubt served him well throughout his career and his personal life. He wore a pressed button-down shirt, untucked over dark trousers, the kind of outfit that looked effortless but probably wasn’t. His gaze dropped immediately to her badge and the service weapon visible at her hip, and the polite expression he’d been preparing for a delivery driver recalibrated in an instant.
“Is my son alright?”
The question carried genuine concern. His gaze scanned the street behind her, perhaps expecting to see additional officers or flashing lights. It was the reaction of a parent whose mind went first to the worst possible scenario, and Kinsley filed the instinct away.
His first thought had been Joey, not himself.
“Mr. Bell, I’m Detective Kinsley Aspen with Fallbrook PD. I’m not here about Joey,” Kinsley reassured him. “Something has been brought to our attention, and I need to speak with you and your wife about your daughter, Iris.”
Something shifted in Richard’s expression. The concern didn’t vanish so much as rearrange itself, settling into a different configuration that was harder to read. It might have been curiosity, or it might have been the beginning of a careful defense assembling behind his eyes. Whatever emotion he was working to contain, it was mingled with a wariness that tightened the corners of his mouth and stiffened his shoulders by a fraction. After a moment’s hesitation, he stepped back from the door.
“Of course, Detective. Please come in.” Richard’s voice was tight. One misstep from her, and there was no doubt he’d have an attorney on the phone before Kinsley could finish her next sentence. “My wife is in the kitchen. We can speak there.”
The interior was filled with the clean scent of fresh linen blended with a light citrus aroma wafting from somewhere in the foyer, both welcoming and almost certainly curated from some hidden air freshener or diffuser tucked behind a piece of furniture. Nothing in this house seemed to exist by accident.
“We downsized a couple of years ago,” Richard explained, perhaps sensing her assessment of the space. “Our previous home was excessive for just the two of us.”
Kinsley nodded but offered no comment. She’d heard the tapes. She knew what the word “excessive” meant in the context of the Bell family, and it had nothing to do with square footage.
They rounded the corner, and the kitchen came into view. It was an abundance of stainless steel and white marble, every surface gleaming, every line precise and intentional. Most interior designers held to the idea that the kitchen was the heart of a home. If that were true here, this heart ran cold. No warmth lingered in the air. No scent of baking or coffee or the residual evidence of a shared breakfast. Just clean, bright surfaces.
Eden Bell stood at a massive island, dressed in high-end workout clothes. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a sleek ponytail, accentuating her angular features. She was in the process of arranging fruit in a blender when she lifted her gaze at their approach. Her hands stilled, and something passed across her face that was gone before Kinsley could name it.
“Eden, this is Detective Aspen,” Richard said, and his tone carried a subtle warning that Kinsley caught immediately. It wasn’t alarm, exactly. It was more like a signal, the verbal equivalent of a hand on someone’s arm before they said too much. “She’s here about Iris.”
Eden placed the strawberry she’d been holding into the blender with exaggerated care, as though the act required her full concentration. She then reached for a hand towel, wiping her fingers slowly.
