LITMIR.BIZ

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that she’d done. Each and every time Tucker had believed with everything in him that Mary Elizabeth was the innocent victim. Even after she’d turned her back on him years ago, he believed in her now.

      How stupid was that? he wondered cynically. But breaking off a relationship was a far cry from murder. Things would have to be beyond desperate for a strong, deeply moral person to cross that kind of line.

      Walker found him where he remained standing at the window, the glass of water still clutched in his hand, continuing to ponder whether things had gotten that desperate for Mary Elizabeth.

      “You okay?” his brother-in-law asked.

      “I’ve been better.”

      “How’s she doing?”

      “She’s a strong woman,” Tucker said.

      “No hysterics? No grief?” Walker asked.

      “She’s upset, not distraught,” Tucker conceded tightly. “The marriage was on the rocks.” He scowled at Walker’s immediate show of interest. “That doesn’t mean she wanted him dead.”

      “What about money? That’s always a motive for opting for murder over divorce.”

      “She had plenty of her own.”

      “You sure about that? It costs a lot to maintain a place like this.”

      “And she inherited more than enough from her grandfather. The Swans might have been relative latecomers to this area, but they were descended from English aristocracy. The first family member arrived here at the beginning of the eighteenth century, maybe a decade or two after the Spencers. William Swan had a head for business. So did every male descendent who came after, at least until Mary Elizabeth’s father. He was better at throwing money around than making it. He and her mother were spending the winter skiing in Switzerland when they died in an avalanche. That’s when Mary Elizabeth came here to live with her grandfather. It was the first time she’d seen him since she was a toddler. She barely even remembered him, but he took her in and devoted himself to raising her. He left her everything he had.”

      “Thanks for the history lesson, but it doesn’t have much to do with what went on here last night,” Walker pointed out.

      Tucker frowned. “Fine. Ignore the past and concentrate on the evidence. What have you got?”

      “The forensics guys are working in there now. No signs of a struggle. Nothing out of place. We’ll have to ask Mrs. Chandler if anything’s missing, but it looks as if whoever did it had only one thing on his—or her—mind, killing Chandler and getting away.”

      “I strolled around outside. I didn’t spot any signs of forced entry,” Tucker said. “How about you?”

      “None I could see, either.”

      “Then he let the killer in,” Tucker concluded.

      “Or the killer had a key,” Walker suggested with a pointed look outside where Mary Elizabeth remained, shoulders slumped and sunshine glinting on her hair.

      “She had an alibi,” Tucker reminded him.

      “You checked it out?”

      “No, but you will, and it will hold up. I’d bet my badge on it.”

      Walker regarded him evenly. “What hours does the alibi cover?”

      “All day yesterday, till around eleven last night. That’s when she found him.”

      “And after that?”

      “She came straight to my place.”

      “You know that how?” Walker countered. “You were on duty.”

      “She told me,” he began, then faltered, irritated by his own gullibility. “Damn.”

      “Exactly,” Walker said sympathetically. “You don’t know for sure what time she got to your place. You don’t know for sure what time Chandler was shot. There’s a lot of wiggle room in there.”

      Tucker didn’t want to agree with Walker, but he was forced to concede that Mary Elizabeth’s alibi wasn’t as airtight as he’d hoped. Now that he thought about it, even her alibi of being on the river all day long meant nothing. There was a very large dock at the edge of the property. She could have brought the boat around here from the marina, slipped inside, shot her husband and gone back to Colonial Beach without anyone being the wiser. Hell and damn!

      He met Walker’s gaze. “You’re going to need to ask some questions over at the marina at the beach. She said she was out in her boat yesterday. Someone probably gassed it up, saw her on the docks, something that will confirm her story.”

      Walker’s gaze shot to the dock in the distance. “Dammit, Tucker, who’s going to be able to say she didn’t make a beeline straight over here?”

      “Other boaters,” Tucker countered, thankful he’d grasped the same point in time to come up with a plausible counterargument. “This time of year the river’s crawling with them, and not just on the weekends. If you don’t want to take the time to track them down, I will.”

      “You can’t,” Walker shot back. “Anything you come up with will be suspect, and you know it.”

      “Why? She and I have a lot of past history, that’s true, but a lot of it’s bad. Most people around here would believe I have more reasons to want to find her guilty than innocent.”

      “Maybe if you were a different kind of man,” Walker agreed. “But you’re a decent guy, and your feelings for people run deep. If you loved her once, that hasn’t just disappeared.” He leveled a penetrating look straight into Tucker’s eyes. “Has it?”

      “My feelings don’t have a damn thing to do with anything,” he said tightly. “You handle this case by the book. That’s all I’m asking. If Mary Elizabeth is guilty, if the evidence points to her, I won’t stand in your way. But if there’s evidence that exonerates her, I expect you to find that, too.”

      “And you believe she is innocent, don’t you?”

      Tucker hated his slight and very telling hesitation. “I believe in her, yes.”

      “Why? Because you want to?”

      “Partly that,” he conceded, forcing himself to be honest with Walker and with himself. “But mostly because she came to me. Why would she do that if she were guilty?”

      “Who better to have in your corner than the sheriff?” Walker said bluntly.

      Tucker started to argue, but the words died on his lips. Not once since he’d joined the sheriff’s department had anyone had any reason to doubt his credibility or his integrity. Now, in a matter of hours, anything coming out of his mouth regarding this case was going to be considered suspect. Once again, Mary Elizabeth had managed to twist his life inside out.

      “I’m going outside,” he said curtly. “Let me know what’s happening.”

      “I’m going to have to talk to her sooner or later,” Walker reminded him.

      Tucker nodded. “She’ll be here whenever you’re ready.”

      “She got a lawyer?”

      “He’s on his way,” Tucker said, grateful that she’d insisted that Powell drive straight up from Richmond, rather than waiting. On that score, she’d been thinking more clearly than he had. He’d thought it would be enough to have Powell on standby. Tucker hadn’t seriously believed that Mary Elizabeth would be a suspect for much more than a minute, because his own feelings had gotten in the way. He’d wanted to believe that the real murderer would be so obvious that she’d be cleared at once. Was that the first of many errors in judgment he was likely to make? Or was the first not tossing her out on her lovely backside when he’d first found her in his bed?

      Walker nodded. “We’ll talk when he gets

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