Trinity Harbor 3 - Along Came Trouble (11 page)

Liz caught his worried expression. “What?” she asked.

“Are you going to be okay with that?” he asked. “Is there anything I need to know?”

“Are you asking if there are skeletons in my closet that are going to come tumbling out?” she asked, refusing to take offense at the question. “No, none. No affairs. No secret deals. I didn’t embezzle money from any of the charities I raised money for. Larry was the only one with secrets he wanted hidden.”

“Okay, then,” Tucker said with unmistakable relief. “Start at the beginning. When did you first discover he was cheating?”

Maybe it would be easier to get into al this in the dark interior of a car on the quiet streets of Trinity Harbor than it would be under the glare of lights in Tucker’s living room. She took a deep breath and began.

“Only a few weeks after the wedding,” she told him, determined to betray absolutely no emotion. “I don’t know how long it had been going on, probably from the beginning. At that point he was involved with his campaign manager, a woman named Cynthia Miles. She was young, blond and ambitious.”

“Was she in love with him?”

“Hard to say. She was very good at hiding her emotions. Seeing the two of them together, I would never have suspected a thing, if I hadn’t walked into his hotel suite and found them in bed.”

Tucker’s jaw clenched again. “Why the hel didn’t you leave him then?”

Liz shrugged. “The usual reasons, I suppose. He apologized and swore it would never happen again. I was stil starry-eyed and in love. I wanted to believe him. As soon as the campaign was over, he fired her because I insisted on it.”

“How did she take that?”

“Not wel , I gather. I wasn’t there.”

“Did she vow to get even?”

“If she did, it would have been with me, not Larry.”

“I’l need to talk to her. Is she in Richmond?”

“Of course, that’s where the power is in this state,” Liz said dryly. “Cynthia would never stray far from that.”

“Did you cross paths often?”

“Not if I could help it, but yes, she was often at political ral ies for various party candidates. She was good at her job. She had no difficulty finding work.”

“So she could hardly have resented Larry—or you—for ruining her career,” he said thoughtful y.

“I don’t see how,” Liz agreed.

“Were there more lovers after this Miles woman?”

She nodded, embarrassed but determined to be total y honest.

“Yet you stayed. Why?”

“I don’t know if you can possibly understand this, but here it is. I chose to play the docile, loving wife because that’s what was expected of me. It was a role, and I gave an Academy Award caliber performance for years.”

“Why?” he persisted.

She thought back on the decision she had wrestled with time and again, always coming down on the side of trying to save her marriage. There had been more to it, though. She could admit that now.

“Because I didn’t want to acknowledge, even to myself, what a terrible mistake I had made,” she said quietly. “It would have meant I’d hurt you for nothing.”

She slanted a look at Tucker across the car’s dark interior. The only light came from the dashboard, but she could tel that he was biting back a curse. She plunged on. Now that she’d started, she wanted him to know it al . “In many ways, Larry was a lot like my father, charming and immature and total y irresponsible in his personal life, but you only figured that out on close inspection. The casual observer seldom saw past the fact that he was handsome and witty and a bril iant politician. When I realized I’d made the same mistake my mother had, I did exactly what she did. I accepted it as my due. I’d made my own bed, so to speak, and just as she had, I was determined to lie in it. A Swan would do nothing less.”

“Family tradition?” Tucker asked mockingly. “Or penance?”

“Penance, probably.”

“A miserable life is a high price to pay for one mistake,” he pointed out.

“My
life
wasn’t miserable,” she insisted, determined to make him see that it wasn’t as black and white as he was trying to make it. “I had everything money could buy. I had the time—in fact, I was encouraged—to get involved with a lot of high-profile, worthwhile causes, to make a real difference in people’s lives. That can be incredibly rewarding.” She sighed. “Al that was missing was love.”

“Some would say that’s the most important thing of al ,” Tucker pointed out.

“They’d be right,” Liz agreed. “I final y realized that. That’s why Larry and I started leading total y separate lives, why I left on that trip and ultimately why I told him I wanted a divorce. I wanted more than a big house, a fancy car and a lot of acquaintances.”

“What about kids? You always talked about wanting a large family.”

She sighed at the reminder. “Before the wedding we had talked about having kids and I desperately wanted them, but after I discovered Larry was cheating, I thought it would be wrong to bring a child into the mess we’d made of our marriage. Besides, despite his promises before the ceremony, Larry flatly refused to even consider starting a family because he thought it would interfere with my devotion to his needs.”

“So, he got everything he wanted and you got what?” Tucker asked.

When the question was phrased like that, Liz couldn’t come up with an answer that made any sense.

“What you deserved?” Tucker prodded.

“Yes,” she said, realizing now that her acceptance of that had been no one’s fault but her own. “I wil never al ow that to happen again. When
—if—
I ever marry again, it wil be because someone genuinely wants to be with me, to share my life.”

She felt his gaze burning into her.

She felt his gaze burning into her.

“I can’t be that someone, Mary Elizabeth.”

She shivered at the certainty in his voice. “I know that,” she acknowledged, though she couldn’t help the twinge of regret it made her feel. King was right about one thing. A part of her did want Tucker in her life for more than his help in solving Larry’s murder. She just didn’t know if she deserved him.

“Do you?” Tucker asked, slowing the car to look directly into her eyes. “Because if my father was right, if you came to me because you wanted more than my help, then taking you back to my place is a lousy idea. Things between us can never go back to the way they were.”

“Can you at least be my friend?” she asked, unable to hide the wistful note in her voice.

He hesitated so long, she was sure he was going to say no to that, too.

“I already am,” he said final y. “I suppose I never stopped.”

Being Mary Elizabeth’s friend and nothing more was going to take some getting used to. Tucker handed her sheets and towels for the guest room and left her at the door. No way in hel was he stepping across that threshold and straight into temptation.

His declaration in the car that there could be nothing more than friendship between them had been a warning to himself, as much as to her.

Despite al claims to the contrary, she was a suspect in her husband’s death. She had a funeral to plan, a role that she had to continue to play until the moment they put Larry Chandler into the ground, until they found his kil er and brought him or her to trial.

Whatever her differences with the man, she wasn’t going to sul y his reputation now by airing them in public unless circumstances forced her to. At the very least, Larry Chandler would go to his grave as a fair-haired rising star of politics, not as a philandering husband. As badly as he wanted to, Tucker couldn’t fault her for permitting that il usion to continue.

There was going to come a time, though, when she would have to face some hard truths, if only to save herself. She was going to have to permit Tucker to delve into al the dark nooks and crannies of Chandler’s life looking for other suspects who might have had a motive to want him dead. Clearly Cynthia Miles was only the tip of the iceberg.

Tucker spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, blaming his restlessness on al the unanswered questions taunting him when the blame belonged right down the hal with the woman who was as out of reach now as she had been when she’d first married Chandler.

He must have fal en asleep eventual y, because he awoke to the scent of coffee drifting from the kitchen and something else, something with cinnamon in it. Since he doubted he even owned that particular spice, that meant someone had come cal ing—Daisy, most likely. And that meant an explosion was likely to erupt in his kitchen any second now.

Tucker shot out of bed and dragged on his pants. He was haphazardly yanking a wrinkled polo shirt over his head when he bolted into the kitchen to find Mary Elizabeth sitting at the table with Anna-Louise Walton, his pastor and Daisy’s best friend. It was a marginal improvement over finding his sister there.

“Look what Anna-Louise brought,” Mary Elizabeth said happily, biting into a gooey cinnamon rol .

“Courtesy of Daisy,” Anna-Louise said.

“Have you checked them for arsenic?” Tucker inquired. He met Anna-Louise’s disapproving gaze. “Sorry, but she’s not exactly happy about Mary Elizabeth’s presence here.”

“So I gathered,” the pastor said wryly. “We’ve discussed her feelings at length.”

“Did you come over here to share them?” he asked testily. “If so, you’l have to wait til I’ve had my coffee.”

“Actual y I came to see if there was anything I could do,” Anna-Louise retorted, completely unintimidated by his lousy mood.

“We were discussing the funeral,” Mary Elizabeth told him. “I asked her to conduct the service, and she’s agreed.”

Tucker bit back a sarcastic query about whether Anna-Louise’s church would be large enough to hold al the politicians who’d want to be seen at the occasion, given the likely media circus. He merely nodded. This was not a conversation he wanted to participate in. Given what he’d learned about Lawrence Chandler the night before, it would be the height of hypocrisy to pretend that he cared about the man’s passing.

“I’l leave you to it, then,” he said, downing the remainder of his cup of coffee even though it scalded his throat. “I want to get over to the station and run some checks on the computer there.”

“About Larry?” Mary Elizabeth asked.

“Yes.”

“You are investigating his death, then?” Anna-Louise asked. “Richard told me Walker was doing it.”

“He’s doing the formal investigation. I’m acting on my own. And before you start questioning my ethics, you should also know that I’ve taken a two-week leave of absence from the department.”

“Tucker, I would never question your integrity. Neither would anyone else around here,” Anna-Louise declared fiercely.

“I hope you stil feel that way when this is over. Something tel s me it’s going to get ugly. Not everyone wil like what I find when I start turning over rocks,” he said, his gaze on Mary Elizabeth.

She paled, but said nothing.

“Wil you talk to Richard if you come up with anything?” Anna-Louise asked. “The
Weekly
is the local paper. He ought to get a scoop, don’t you think?”

“That’l be up to Mary Elizabeth and Walker. They get first crack at whatever I find.”

Anna-Louise opened her mouth, then clamped it shut again.

“What?” Tucker demanded. “Go ahead and spit it out. It’s not like you to keep your opinions to yourself. You’re likely to bust a gut.”

“Okay, forget the integrity issue for the moment. There’s more at stake. Do you real y think this is wise?” she asked.

“Not the point,” Tucker retorted. “Mary Elizabeth asked me to help, and that’s that.”

“I admire your loyalty,” Anna-Louise said. “But how are your constituents going to feel about you running around second-guessing your own deputy?”

“I’m not second-guessing anybody,” Tucker countered. “I’m just conducting an independent investigation to make sure that no stone is left unturned.”

Mary Elizabeth winced. “Even to me that sounds like second-guessing.” She looked at Anna-Louise. “Wil people real y get upset if he does this?”

“They could. I’ve already heard some gossip about you and Tucker being out to dinner last night. It was the hot topic at Earlene’s this morning.”

“We should have been more discreet.” She looked at Tucker. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. Dinner was my idea. I can live with the fal out.”

“And this?” Anna-Louise asked with an al -encompassing sweep of the room. “If they were upset about dinner in public, how do you think they’l feel when they discover that Liz is staying here, sharing a cozy little breakfast in your kitchen?”

Mary Elizabeth looked appal ed at the implication. “I’m sharing breakfast with you,” she reminded the minister.

“Anyone driving by and spotting your car out front won’t know that.” She gave Mary Elizabeth’s hand a squeeze. “Appearances are important. You know that. And this doesn’t look good. Why not come and stay with Richard and me for a while, at least until after the funeral and things settle down again?”

“I don’t know,” Mary Elizabeth said. “Maybe it would be best.”

“Hey, you two,” Tucker said, drawing their attention back to him. “I invited Mary Elizabeth to stay here. This is my cal . I’m not worried, so there’s no reason for either of you to be.”

“But I would never forgive myself if my staying here—if having you do this investigation—cost you votes next time you run for sheriff,” Mary Elizabeth said, regarding him with concern.

“And I could never forgive myself if I walked away from this, so there you have it,” Tucker retorted, putting an end to the discussion, or at least trying to.

“I can fire you,” Mary Elizabeth said.

“Doesn’t mean I’l stop working,” he shot back. “I never walk away from a case until it’s over. As for the rest, it’s up to you. I’m comfortable with you staying here, but if you’re not, move to Anna-Louise’s. Of course, you’l be having a journalist watching your every move if you do that.”

Anna-Louise scowled at him. “Would that be any worse than having a cop watch her every move?” she inquired tartly.

“Probably not,” he conceded.

“I’l think about it,” Mary Elizabeth told the pastor. “May I cal you later?”

“Of course,” she said.