Betrayal of Innocence (A New Adventure Begins - Star Elite 1)

“People are worried about her,” Justin replied patiently. “We understand from people who truly know her that it is completely out of character for her to disappear at all, ever.”

“Well, I can’t help you. We don’t spend much time together, see?” The maid smirked as though she would enjoy corrupting the innocence of someone like Jemima.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Justin mumbled lifting his brows at Oliver.

In that moment, Jasper and Callum appeared at the end of the hallway. Both men shook their heads.

“Where is Geraldine?” Justin asked, turning his attention back to the young woman before him. To his disgust, she had sidled closer while he had been distracted. Oliver quickly side-stepped to block any route out of the front door and lifted his brows at her when she scowled at him.

“How should I know? I don’t care if she leaves her husband.”

“Were they arguing before she disappeared?” Oliver asked smoothly.

Lisa shrugged. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“We are asking if you heard them arguing?” Justin replied.

“They don’t get on very well. He did his thing and she liked to do hers. He had no interest in those silly paintings of hers. She would spend hours doing them and put them up on the blasted walls. He was always grumbling about them,” Lisa replied with the confidence of someone who knew what they were talking about.

“Were badly did they argue?” Oliver asked.

“How should I know?”

Niall snorted. “Well, you seem to have access to the house. You don’t seem to miss much. Besides, you seem to know where to look for whatever it is you are after.”

The maid sighed and glared at him balefully for a moment.

“What were you looking for?” Justin asked.

“It’s nothing,” she replied dismissively. “It isn’t there anyway. Curtis must have moved it.”

“Curtis? That’s an awfully familiar way to speak about your boss, isn’t it?” Niall chided.

“I have known Curtis all of my life,” Lisa retorted.

“How well?” Justin shot back.

Lisa smirked unashamedly. “It’s a small village,” she replied nonchalantly.

“Recently?” Justin asked.

Silence followed.

Justin shook his head. “Did Geraldine know you were servicing her husband?”

Lisa shrugged.

“Permit me, if I may, to say that it looks odd to me that you are rummaging around in a house that has been stripped bare of all trace of the owner’s things, the owner who has only recently vanished. Not only that, but you have admitted to having an affair with her husband. Now if I was a suspicious man, I would be inclined to believe that you and Curtis had something to do with Geraldine’s disappearance, and you have both stripped this house of any trace of her knowing she wasn’t able to ever come back,” Justin murmured. “Seeing as I am a suspicious person, I am afraid we are going to have to warn you that you are will now be arrested on suspicion of having murdered Geraldine Bennion nee Clarkson.”

The maid blinked and glared at Justin as though he had lost his mind. “I haven’t done anything like that. We had a tryst, that’s all, and only a few times when she was out doing her stupid paintings. That’s all.”

“What are you looking for?” Justin demanded with a nod to the drawer she had just slammed closed. He knew it contained nothing more than masculine paraphernalia women would usually be uninterested in.

Lisa fell silent.

“Well, seeing as there is nothing of Geraldine’s here, and you haven’t found anything in there of any use to you, I think we should consider that you are after money,” Oliver warned. “So we can add stealing to trespassing, breaking and entering, and murder, together with attempted theft.”

He knew it was a tall order to get any of that to stick but needed to worry the maid into telling them everything she knew, if only so they could rule her out as having murdered her lover’s wife.