Trinity Harbor 3 - Along Came Trouble (23 page)

“Apparently Selena’s organizational skil s didn’t extend to the safe,” Tucker commented. “Why don’t we start at the back. I’l work my way around to the right, you go to the left.”

The search yielded incorporation papers, financial records, Security and Exchange Commission filings for the company’s initial stock offering. To Liz’s untrained eye, it seemed as if there was nothing out of the ordinary. It was when she came to the fifth stack that she realized that a thick manila envelope was sandwiched between the files. She pul ed it free, broke the seal and extracted a sheaf of letters written on pale peach vel um. She recognized the handwriting on the envelopes at once.

“Tucker,” she said, extending the letters toward him with a trembling hand. “These are from Cynthia Miles to Larry. I don’t want to read them, but they could be important.”

Tucker regarded her worriedly. “You okay?”

“It’s like bumping up against the past. Al those old feelings of hurt and disgust and anger that I’d thought were over came flooding back through me.”

“We’l take these with us and I’l look them over later. No need to do it now.” Handling them careful y by the edges, he stuffed them back in the envelope and set it aside.

“Why did you touch them that way?”

“Because there could be fingerprints we’d find helpful,” he explained. “You feeling any better now? How about some water?”

She shook her head, eyeing the envelope warily. “I’l be fine. After al , none of it matters anymore, right?”

“That’s exactly right,” he said, reaching over to give her hand a reassuring squeeze. “Neither one of them can hurt you ever again.”

She drew in a deep breath and went back to sorting through the remaining files. She found absolutely nothing that offered so much as a clue, much less anything likely to incriminate anyone.

Tucker rocked back on his heels at the same time. “That’s that. I didn’t find a damned thing.”

“Me, either,” she said. “Let’s get out of here. I need some fresh air.”

“You head on outside. I’l lock this vault and let Roland know we’re leaving.”

Liz accepted the offer and hurriedly left the building, relieved to be away from al the ghosts. She couldn’t help wondering, though, just how many more she would have to face before this investigation ended.

It was late when Tucker got back to Trinity Harbor. He’d fol owed Mary Elizabeth from Richmond to Swan Ridge, made sure that she got inside safely, then left before he risked a repeat of that kiss they’d shared just outside her Richmond house.

Since he was stil wide-awake and wound up and the contents of those letters were nagging at him, he drove on to Montross, hoping to scare up Walker. He found him behind his desk. Like Roland Morgan, Walker was surrounded by littered coffee cups. Of course, being Walker, there were also several empty food containers, probably provided by an increasingly irritated Daisy. One of these days, Tucker knew, he was destined to hear a long tirade about how he’d dumped this case on her husband.

“Any wheels turning in that brain of yours?” he inquired as he sat down and propped his feet on the desk.

“Not that I’ve noticed,” Walker conceded.

“Maybe these wil help,” Tucker suggested, tossing the envelope across to him.

“What is it?”

“A whole passel of letters from Cynthia Miles to Chandler.”

“Where’d you find them?” Walker asked suspiciously.

“In the safe at Chandler’s office,” Tucker told him. “Either the man was very sentimental and couldn’t bear to part with them or they’re blackmail attempts he wanted to hang on to.”

Walker whistled at the blackmail theory. “You haven’t read them?”

“I didn’t want to do it in front of Mary Elizabeth. Just the sight of them sent her tripping down memory lane to a very bad place.” He shrugged.

“Besides, I figured the fewer fingerprints on them the better.”

“Ah, a cop’s instincts,” Walker said, searching Tucker’s drawer for a pair of tweezers.

“First, last and always,” Tucker confirmed. “Do I get to look over your shoulder?”

“How about I read them aloud?”

“As long as you can stomach it, I can,” Tucker agreed, leaning back and closing his eyes.

“Hey, wake up. These aren’t going to be some damned bedtime story,” Walker grumbled. He extracted the first letter from its pretty envelope and laid it flat on his desk. “Okay, here goes.

“‘My dearest…

I don’t know why you’re not taking my cal s. I thought we had something real y special between us. I know that I love you and want to be with you. I wil never forgive your wife for keeping us apart. I understand why you feel you must stay with her, but real y, Larry, you and I are such an extraordinary team. There are no limits to what we could accomplish together. Think about that, and dream of me tonight, as I wil of you.

Al my love,

Cynthia’”

“Now isn’t that pretty?” Tucker said. “I’m al misty over it.”

Walker rol ed his eyes at the dripping sarcasm. “It’s dated November twelfth, six years ago.”

“Right after Chandler won his first election,” Tucker said. “That matches Mary Elizabeth’s story that she had Chandler fire the Miles woman right after the election.”

“Seems to,” Walker agreed.

The next three letters, dated for the next few weeks, were more of the same, appeals to Chandler to ditch Mary Elizabeth and team up with his former campaign manager for endless matrimonial bliss and the achievement of his ambitious political goals. Tucker also thought he detected an increasingly impatient edge to them. It was the fifth letter, though, in which the tone changed. Written a year later, it had a note of desperate hysteria to it.

Why won’t you even take my cal s? I feel as if my whole world, my entire reason for being has col apsed. I have nowhere to turn. You’re the only man for me, yet clearly I am not the only woman for you. I saw you, Larry. I saw you with her. How could you do that to me? How could you take her to our special place? I can forgive you for many things, but not that. I wil never forgive you for that.

“She didn’t sign this one,” Walker noted. “I wonder what his response was?”

“If he was half as smart as he was reported to be, he didn’t respond at al ,” Tucker said. “He’d have been fueling her obvious obsession.”

“Let’s see,” Walker suggested, opening another letter dated only a few days later. In it, too, Cynthia berated Chandler for not contacting her.

“Looks like you were right. He decided to stay the hel away from her.”

There were six more letters, some dated months apart, some only days, each one increasingly desperate. The last two were fil ed with more accusations about unnamed other women and with threats to get even.

“Isn’t this a nice, tidy package providing motive?” Tucker said when Walker had read them al .

“Just one problem,” Walker pointed out. “The last one was written two years ago. Why would she wait this long to make good on the threat?”

“Only one reason I can think of,” Tucker said, meeting Walker’s gaze.

“Chandler went back to her,” Walker guessed.

“Seems like the only logical answer to me,” Tucker agreed. “Clearly, ignoring her hadn’t worked. She was unstable and he needed to keep her quiet. The only way to accomplish that would be to throw her a bone, spend a little time with her.”

“I’l talk to the county attorney tomorrow and see if these give us cause to search the Miles woman’s home to look for a weapon,” Walker said. “If not, at the very least, I can set up an interview. I have a whole slew of questions I’d like to ask her. You have any angles you’d like me to explore beyond the obvious?”

Tucker thought back over the contents of al the letters, then nodded slowly. “Just one. Ask her to name some of the other women. Did you notice she was very careful to omit their names in every letter? Seems to me like she’d caught him with a whole slew of them, but maybe not. Maybe there was one in particular who pushed her over the edge because she thought it was serious.”

Walker raised an eyebrow at the suggestion. “More serious than his wife? Liz didn’t seem to make her too hysterical.”

“She’d already won against Mary Elizabeth,” Tucker said, recal ing his conversation with Cynthia Miles. “Chandler was having his affair with Cynthia even after the wedding. She probably considered the marriage just a little bump in the road, a political strategy that would pay off with a win in November, which it did. The only thing she hadn’t counted on was being fired right afterward.”

“So, she did lose to Liz,” Walker pointed out.

“Only temporarily,” Tucker countered. “She believes to this day that the marriage was only a political maneuver, that Mary Elizabeth never real y mattered to Chandler. The other women fol owed, proving once more that the marriage meant nothing to Chandler.”

“What I don’t understand is why the hel Liz didn’t dump him right after she found out about his first affair,” Walker said. “If I ever cheated on your sister, she’d be out the door in a flash, right after taking a strip out of my hide, more than likely.”

“That was my reaction, too,” Tucker said.

“And? I assume she told you why.”

“Because she didn’t want to admit having made a mistake, especial y after she’d walked out on me to be with him. Her pride kicked in. She decided to suck it up and stay, because she thought she deserved it as punishment for hurting me. It took her five years to realize that there was nothing to be gained by that except misery.”

“Five years? I thought they’d been married six.”

Tucker nodded. “She decided the marriage was over a year ago. She’d moved out, but she didn’t make the break final until she got back from her trip to Europe the day before Chandler was kil ed.”

“Not exactly the storybook marriage everyone thought it was, was it?” Walker shook his head and stood up. “I’m going home.”

“Good. You look like you could use about two days’ worth of sleep.”

“Forget sleeping,” Walker retorted with a grin. “I’m going to wake up my wife and show her how grateful I am that we have a very uncomplicated marriage. We both understand al the rules and live by them.”

Tucker groaned. “Could you not tel me things like that? You’re talking about my sister.”

“We’ve been married almost two years now. You do know we sleep together, don’t you?” Walker taunted.

“Go away. Get out,” Tucker ordered.

“You’re just jealous because there’s no one waiting at home in your bed,” Walker accused.

But there could be, Tucker thought, his memory seizing on the passion behind that kiss he and Mary Elizabeth had shared earlier. There definitely could be.

But only if he lost every last grain of sense he possessed, he concluded with a heavy sigh.

“You could be right, Walker. Maybe I am jealous as hel .”

“Then do something about it,” Walker advised.

How could he? Tucker wondered. Especial y when the only woman who could erase the loneliness gnawing at him was Mary Elizabeth?

15

A
n entire week went by with nothing more than an occasional phone cal from Tucker asking Liz if she was doing okay. Because she knew it was what he wanted to hear, she dutiful y said yes each and every time. She asked none of the questions that were on the tip of her tongue, because the one time she had, he’d been abrupt to the point of being rude. He wouldn’t even say if he was stil making trips to Richmond, working unofficial y with Walker right here in town or off on the river fishing with Bobby.

While Tucker was doing who-knew-what, Liz was going stir-crazy at the house. After years of maintaining a jam-packed schedule, she didn’t have nearly enough to keep her mind occupied. She’d made so many cal s to Frances just to see how things were progressing with King that Frances had final y come to see if she was truly al right.

Two days ago Mrs. Gilman had come back to work ful -time as housekeeper at Swan Ridge, and between them, they had cleaned the place until every piece of glass sparkled, every surface shone and al traces of the violence in her grandfather’s study had been erased. There was only a certain amount of satisfaction to be derived from a spotless home that hardly anyone ever visited.

Thoroughly frustrated, Liz final y broke down and did what she’d sworn she wouldn’t—she cal ed Tucker, determined to find out exactly what was going on and to insist on participating. Even during her lousy marriage, she had never passively sat back and done nothing. She’d devised her own life and lived it to the ful est. She refused to do any less now.

“Hel o, Mary Elizabeth,” Tucker said, his tone resigned.

Blast cal er ID, she thought, wishing she’d been able to take him by surprise. “Hi,” she said with forced gaiety. “Just thought I’d check in and see what’s happening with the investigation. Any news?”

“None I can share,” he said, stil sounding distant.

The last of her patience snapped. “Tucker, what’s going on?” she demanded.

“I just told you—”

“I meant with us,” she said impatiently. “Why are you acting like this? Is it because of the kiss?”

His heavy sigh was answer enough.

“It is, isn’t it?” She had to choke back the desire to laugh. “That kiss scared you. And ever since we got back from Richmond, you’ve been stewing over it, blaming yourself for letting down your guard, haven’t you? You’ve probably even told yourself you were taking advantage of me.”

“Wasn’t I?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Wel , it should have scared the tar out of you, too,” he said, sounding embarrassed and disgruntled by her ability to read him so wel .

“Sorry, it didn’t,” she said mildly. “But if you’re that uncomfortable with it, we can make sure it doesn’t happen again. We’re not a couple of randy teenagers anymore. We can control our hormones.”

He muttered something that sounded like “speak for yourself.”

This time she did chuckle. “Oh, Tucker, I never thought of you being a coward.”

“I’m being sensible,” he corrected.

“Doesn’t seem that way to me. May I remind you that I am paying you to conduct an investigation? You owe it to me to report in occasional y.”

“You’re not paying me,” he corrected.