LITMIR.BIZ

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I’ll be recording our conversation.”

      Natalie nodded. “Do you take cream or sugar?”

      “Both.”

      So did she. She prepared two mugs and brought them to the table, sitting opposite him. After being sick to her stomach, the coffee tasted good, the sugar reviving her. He appeared to enjoy his, too, draining most of his mug before sitting back.

      “Tell me about yourself first. I saw two women at the graveside service.”

      “You were there?” she asked in disbelief.

      “Watching from a distance. Were either of them your relatives?”

      “No. I am an only child and my mother died several years ago. My parents divorced when I was twelve. My father had an affair and married the woman. They moved to his hometown in Canada. I never saw or heard from him again.”

      “You’ve been through a lot of heartache in your life,” he observed with empathy. “Now, I’d like you to tell me about how you met your husband, and I’ll also need you to identify the people in these photos for me.” He handed her the camera and she blinked when she saw the display, astonished that he’d taken pictures at the cemetery. She swiped her finger across the screen, scrolling through the images before giving him back the camera.

      She stared into space. “My husband and I met just over two and a half years ago. It was November. A controlled-substance delivery from LifeSpan Pharmaceutical didn’t check with the head pharmacist’s order. The shipment usually comes in a brown box with tamper-proof tape. When I saw that the wrong order had been delivered, I called the plant. Several conversations took place before a man in accounting came on the line. It was Rod.

      “He said the problem would be taken care of. The next thing I knew he came to the pharmacy with the correct shipment.”

      “Where do you work?”

      “In the pharmacy at the Grand Central store on Spruce Street, about a mile from here.”

      “How long have you been a pharmacist?”

      “I received my degree seven years ago and I’ve been working there ever since. The head pharmacist, John Willard, and his wife, Marva, were two of the people at the service today.”

      “Tell me about the other woman who was there. The older one.”

      “Ellen Butterworth is a woman from the church who was good friends with my mother.”

      “I see. All right, back to your story about Rod.”

      “I thought it was unusual that someone from the accounting department would make the delivery instead of a courier, but Rod reminded me that we’d spoken on the phone once before about a separate issue. He told me he liked the sound of my voice and wondered what I was like, so he’d taken it upon himself to bring the package in person.”

      “You’d never met him in person before?”

      “No. But now that I know he was a criminal, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’d seen me somewhere and found out about me ahead of time.”

      “It wouldn’t surprise me, either. Go on.”

      “Rod came by several times after that and talked me into going out to lunch with him. I was flattered. He was very kind when I told him about my mother’s battle with MS. She’d only just died before he came into my life. I found him attractive and we started dating. I learned that he’d been in the military but had been released from service when he was wounded in the lower leg.”

      “Did you see any proof of his military service?”

      “No. I had no reason to question it. He said that during his time in the military, his folks were killed in a car crash in Houston, where he’d been born and raised. The military had helped him find a job from their outreach program and he was interviewed by LifeSpan to work in their accounting department. In time he’d moved his way up and eventually became the director of Finance. One thing led to another and he asked me to marry him.”

      Her gaze flicked to his. “After looking at that rap sheet, I can see that everything he told me was a spectacular work of fiction.” She shook her head. “His healed gunshot wound had to have come from another source that had nothing to do with fighting a war.”

      “Not the war he described to you. He was injured fleeing arrest after he escaped.”

      She groaned. “Here I’ve been living with a killer, thinking all along how horrible combat must have been for him. He fed me lie after lie and I believed him.”

      “Harold Park was a consummate sociopath who fooled everyone, including his employers.”

      The Texas Ranger was trying to make her feel better, but the fact that Harold had lied to more people than just her gave Natalie no comfort.

       Chapter Two

      “What is it they say? Truth is stranger than fiction?” Natalie’s voice quivered. “The lies...” She couldn’t believe it.

      The Ranger nodded and she saw the concern in his eyes. “A good con artist can charm his way into just about anything he wants. He must have wanted you badly. The man worked his way into LifeSpan using fraudulent documents created by a master forger. Harold was the best at what he did.”

      A shudder swept through her body. “And my mother had just passed away. I was at my most vulnerable.” Bitterness welled up inside her. “I fell into his lap like the proverbial apple dropping from the tree. He knew a good thing when he saw it...a woman all alone with her own house paid for and a good job. Exactly the right kind of person for a fugitive to marry to hide his past life of crime.”

      “Don’t go there, Mrs. Harris. He was too clever to give himself away to anyone—he’d eluded the police for years. His mistake was getting caught with another woman. When did you realize it?”

      She moistened her lips. “Amy had just turned a year old and I’d planned a little evening party for her with the idea that Rod could be there when he got home from work. But he didn’t make it. He called me and said he’d been detained in a meeting but he’d make it up to us. I’d been putting up with those kinds of excuses from the time she was born, but that was the moment it occurred to me my husband was slipping away from me.

      “About a month later I called him at work and found out he wasn’t there and hadn’t been in all day. I knew something was going on he didn’t want me to know about.”

      A grimace marred the Ranger’s rugged features. “Did you finally confront him?”

      “Yes. About two and a half months ago I was having lunch with my best friend from college. She and her husband live in Arizona, but they’d flown in to attend a friend’s wedding and we got together. She happened to mention that she’d bumped into Rod at the short-term airport parking. He’d told her he was dropping off my cousin for a flight.”

      Natalie shot Saunders a glance. “I don’t have a cousin. He’d told my friend a blatant lie. At that point I knew in my heart he’d been having an affair, maybe even several.”

      After a silence he said, “What’s your friend’s name and phone number? I’d like to speak to her.”

      “Colette Barnes. She’s in Phoenix.” Natalie opened the contacts folder in her cell phone and found him the number.

      “Did your husband admit to the affair when you confronted him?”

      She bit her lip. “Yes. He was amazingly forthright about it. He accused me of having lost interest in him after Amy was born. It was a lie. He accused me of going back to work to avoid him. That wasn’t a lie. I needed to get back to the job I knew because intuition told me our marriage wasn’t going to make it.” She took a deep breath. “It was my mother’s story all over again. An unfaithful husband

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