Free SLEEPING DOGS (Animal Instincts Book 6) by Chloe Kendrick

the Gillespies. Nice house, big place.” I wondered if he was thinking of their home in comparison to where he lived now. It would have made him pensive.
    “You met them?” I asked, not sure how a cleaning lady worked. I have never had the funds to hire any help. I don’t think that she would have approved of the way I kept house anyway.
    “Yeah, a few times, when I picked her up at the end of the day. Typically she did their house last, after the Gillespies’ house.”
    “Did you ever talk to them?” I was curious to see what he might know about other clients. I hoped that he could provide me with any information on other clients that Belinda Frias might have had. It was odd that she’d switched her routine that day. I wondered if it had been a coincidence or if there had been an overt reason to change her schedule.
    “A few times. Just casual stuff. I saw them a couple of years ago, and they came up and talked to me. They offered their sympathy, but it seemed a little late for that. They could have come to the funeral if they cared so much. They still lived at the same address, which seemed odd, since I’d moved and the Gillespies had moved too. They were still at the same house.”
    “Okay, so the Wagners then. Did she say what had happen at their place? Any details about why she was running late?”
    “Eh, maybe, but honesty if she did, I didn’t pay attention. I was working on my own project, and I just jotted down the time I needed to get her, so I wouldn’t forget. The police took that paper when they started questioning me. So many times, I would only half hear her. I feel bad about that now.”
    “What project were you working on? Do you remember?” I wanted to keep him talking and I thought that perhaps some talk about himself would help.
    “Yeah, that I remember. I’d come up with a computer app. I was testing it at the time. It was great. However, by the time that the police had interviewed me twenty times and all of that, I lost the momentum on the project. I never got back to it.” He put a hand to his face and rested his palm over his brow, as if the mere thought of this gave him great pain. These projects didn’t look like any version of app development. They looked metal, real with hard materials that wouldn’t bend. I wondered if he’d changed his projects after his wife’s death.
    “So she was running late. The police said that the Gillespies found the body at 7pm. You weren’t already there to pick her up?” I was trying to play with the timetable to make this work out.
    “I was late too. There was some traffic, and it took me an extra 15 minutes to get there. So I pulled in around 7:15. When I arrived, the police had already been called. I had to wait in my car until they talked to me. They warned me that I didn’t want to see the body, and I knew that I didn’t. I loved that woman, but blood makes me pass out. I’d have been no help to anyone if I was face down on the floor.”
    I remembered the photos I’d seen and the blood splatter all over the room. My guess is that whoever had killed her had been drenched in it. His arrival in time for the police wouldn’t have mattered if Susan had seen him at the crime scene. She would have seen him nearly an hour earlier. That was plenty of time for him to drive home, work some more, and then go back at 7pm.
    “Are your projects yours alone, or do you work with other people?” I asked, trying to skirt the issue of an alibi.
    “I don’t have an alibi, if that’s what you’re asking. I work alone. I always have. The police tried to find someone who could put me at our house that evening, but they couldn’t. So I have no alibi except for my word.”
    “But you didn’t do it, right?” I’d heard this from so many people and Sheila had told me stories where people had sworn their innocence while carrying the murder weapon that the question was just to get him talking.
    “Look at where I ended up. I’m living in one of the