Truly Married

by Phyllis Halldorson

  She was shaking so badly that she could hardly walk, and she knew she had to get away from there! Go someplace where she could get a grip on her runaway temper and cool off a little.

  She’d never been so flat-out furious in her whole life. Even when she’d found out that her husband was in love with another woman she hadn’t been so much angry as hurt. Fergus hadn’t deliberately set out to break up their marriage, but Vancleave had maliciously and willfully taken the necessary steps to derail her promotion for his personal satisfaction, just to exercise his power and show her that he could do it!

  The screech of tires and the blare of a horn jolted Sharon’s wandering attention, and she realized that she’d started across the street at the end of the block and had almost been hit by a car. The driver was busily cursing her out even as he drove on.

  Sheepishly, she turned back and headed for the front of the hotel and the entrance to the attached parking garage. She’d better keep her wits about her until she got home or she was apt to end up either in the hospital or in jail.

  She was all the way up to the top floor of the garage where the employees parked, when she realized that she didn’t have her purse. She’d taken it with her because she’d known she wouldn’t stay around after her confrontation with Floyd, but then she’d left it in his office!

  Obviously this was not her day, and everything that could happen would. She had to have her keys and her driver’s license, so there was nothing she could do but go back to the office and get the purse.

  But how was she going to face Floyd after that grand exit she’d made so dramatically? Damn! Damn! Damn!

  Dejectedly, she returned to the street level and decided to go back the way she’d left, through the glass door, so she wouldn’t have to face all the people in the waiting room. Maybe Floyd would be gone and she could retrieve the handbag without confronting him again.

  For the first time that day she was in luck. The door hadn’t been locked again after she’d left, and although her eyes were slow to adjust from the bright sunlight to the darker interior, she could see that the office was empty.

  Then she noticed that the desk lamp was overturned on the floor. That was odd. It had been in place when she’d walked out.

  Glancing around the room, she spotted her purse on the floor beside the door, where she vaguely remembered it sliding off her shoulder when she’d come in the first time. She started toward it, eager to get out of there before Floyd came back and found her.

  It wasn’t until she’d taken several steps that she saw the large bundle on the floor in front of the desk.

  Only it wasn’t just a bundle.

  She blinked rapidly to adjust her eyesight to the dimness of the richly paneled office, then gasped. Oh dear God, it was a man! She knelt down beside him and saw that it was Floyd Vancleave curled up on his side on the thick tan carpet, with his knees drawn up to his waist and his hands clutching his chest.

  “Floyd!” Sharon cried, and put her hand on his shoulder. He rolled limply onto his back, and it was only then that she saw the blood on his shirt and the silver handle protruding from the left side of his chest.

  This couldn’t be! When she’d left just a few minutes ago he’d been standing behind the desk, breathing fire and smoke, furious with her and apprehensive, too. Now he was lying on the floor with a knife in his chest, and he didn’t seem to be breathing at all.

  She leaned over him and put her fingers at the pulse point of his neck. It took a few seconds, but she finally felt the pulse, weak and thready.

  She had to do something! If he wasn’t dead already he would be very soon with that knife penetrating so close to his heart. She needed help immediately, but first...

  Without fully comprehending what she was doing, she wrapped her fingers around the handle and tugged. It didn’t move, and she tugged again, this time harder.

  The weapon pulled free, and when it did blood gushed onto the bodice of her dress.

  It was then that the door to the outer office opened and Beverly entered, followed by another woman. “Mr. Vancleave,” she said, “Mrs. Mitchel has been waiting—”

  Sharon lifted her head and saw the look of alarm on Beverly’s face as her gaze fastened on Sharon, her dress spattered with blood, as she crouched on the floor over a body, holding a bloody knife in her raised hand.

  The secretary’s shrill scream rent the silence, and was quickly joined by Sharon’s shriek in a crescendo of horror.

  Chapter Three

  Fergus Lachlan heard the phone ringing inside his high rise apartment on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive as he inserted the key in the lock, but he didn’t hurry. If he got to it in time to pick it up he would; if not, so much the better.

  Fergus refused to have an answering machine in his home. A few key people had his beeper and unlisted phone numbers, but anyone else who wanted him could contact him at the office. His home was off-limits to anyone except those he invited in.

  However, he’d recently won an acquittal for a well-known and roundly disliked basketball star accused of killing his girlfriend, and the general public as well as the news media were outraged. It didn’t seem to matter that the man had been found innocent of that crime; he was an egomaniac and a bully, and people wanted to see him punished.

  Ever since the verdict was announced Fergus had been plagued by reporters and photographers wanting to interview him. A few had even managed to get his private numbers. This was probably another one of those, but it was after nine o’clock and he’d been on the go since eight that morning, including a working lunch. He’d missed dinner altogether, and was in no mood to take abuse from a stranger wanting to cash in on another person’s misery.

  The ringing stopped just after he stepped into the foyer and shut the door behind him. Breathing a sigh of relief, he went to the bar in the living room and mixed himself a whiskey and soda. Ordinarily he didn’t drink alone. He’d known too many men who tried to drown their loneliness in alcohol, only to succumb to its addiction without solving any of their problems.

  Fergus had no desire to join their ranks, but tonight he was too weary and depressed to face the emptiness of his expensive apartment, with its impersonal, decorator-selected furnishings.

  He missed Elaine, which was only natural. Her sudden death two years ago had come as such a mind-boggling shock. One minute she’d been happily making plans to remodel the kitchen of the elegant old home they’d bought in the Oak Park community, and the next she’d crumpled to the floor and died in his arms before help could arrive.

  An aneurysm, the doctors had said. A weak spot that she didn’t know she had in the wall of the aorta had ruptured and killed her within seconds.

  His bright, vivacious wife dead at age thirty-five.

  He couldn’t live in the house after that. He’d sold it and moved into this upscale bachelor apartment, with its three large rooms and an extensive view of Lincoln Park and Lake Michigan far below.

  But Fergus was not a swinging bachelor. He was a grieving widower, and he’d have been far more content in the old, slightly rundown neighborhood where he’d grown up, but that address wasn’t prestigious enough to pass muster with the partners of his law firm, Newberry, Everingham and Jessup. Their lawyers were expected to live up to the image of the highly successful attorney who wore thousand-dollar suits, lived in the most impressive sections of town and supported all the politically correct charities. Fergus hadn’t cared enough at the time of this last move to fight for his independence.

  It really didn’t matter where he lived; he was seldom there anyway. In his grief and loneliness he’d taken on more and more cases, until he was putting in twelve-hour days six days a week and sleeping most of Sunday.

  It kept him busy, but it didn’t ease his pain.

  He leaned back on the sofa and closed his eyes. He should stick a TV dinner in the microwave, but couldn’t bring himself to make the effort. Besides, he could hardly stomach the damn things. He and Sharon had eaten so many of
them during most of their marriage when she was going to college and he was intent on becoming a partner in record time—

  Sharon. His eyes flew open as he quickly sat up. Dear God, he didn’t want to think about Sharon! He’d been trying for five years to get her out of his mind, but she was always there, in his subconscious, waiting for him to let down his guard so she could creep in and torment him.

  Only it wasn’t Sharon’s doing, it was his. Why couldn’t he let her go? It had been his fault that their marriage had broken up. She’d no doubt forgotten all about him by now. Why did it hurt so much for him to remember her?

  He’d truly loved Elaine, was shattered when she died, so why did he still feel this aching need for Sharon? Not necessarily a sexual need, but a certainty that he had lost an essential and irreplaceable part of himself.

  Abruptly he stood up and headed for the bathroom. He was going to take a warm relaxing shower and go to bed.

  Twenty minutes later Fergus turned off the water spray and heard the phone ringing. Not again, he thought impatiently as he quickly wrapped a towel around his hips and knotted it at the side. He’d better answer it or whoever it was would probably continue calling at intervals all night.

  Stepping out of the shower stall, he headed for the phone in the bedroom and wrenched it from its cradle. “Lachlan,” he said, making no effort to screen out the annoyance in his tone.

  “Mr. Lachlan, this is Anna Grieg,” said a woman’s voice from the other end. “I’m sorry to bother you so late and at home, but you have an unlisted number and it’s taken me hours to track you down—”

  “Ms. Grieg, if you’re a reporter I don’t appreciate you bothering me at home in the middle of the night—”

  “No, Mr. Lachlan,” gasped the woman. “I’m not a reporter. I’m a friend of Sharon Sawyer’s, and I’m calling from St. Louis.”

  Fergus wasn’t buying it. Some of these people would go to any length to get an interview with him. He was good copy.

  “Then call my office tomorrow and set up an appointment,” he said angrily, “and just who is Sharon Sawyer—”

  It wasn’t until he said it that the name clicked, and when it did it knocked the breath out of him. “Sharon Sawyer!” he yelped. “Are you talking about my wife...um...ex-wife, Sharon Sawyer Lachlan?”

  He’d forgotten that Sharon had taken back her maiden name after the divorce.

  “Yes,” Anna Grieg confirmed. “But she’s known as Sharon Sawyer now.”

  Fergus attempted to pull himself together. He knew Sharon would never contact him unless something awful had happened.

  “What about Sharon?” he asked anxiously. “Is she all right? Good Lord, woman, speak up. Has anything happened to her?”

  His stomach muscles clenched, and the hand that held the phone shook. No, not Sharon. He couldn’t lose Sharon, too!

  “She...she’s in jail,” Anna blurted.

  Fergus nearly dropped the phone. “She’s what?”

  This had to be a crank call. Somebody had found out about his ex-wife and where she lived and was playing a monstrous hoax. Lawyers were an easy target, and there were a lot of people out there who would like to see him squirm.

  “I’m warning you, lady, if this is your idea of a joke it’s not funny.” Fergus was deadly serious. “I can and will have you arrested for harassment....”

  “No! Mr. Lachlan. Believe me, it’s no joke. Sharon’s been arrested on a charge of murder!”

  Fergus could distinguish the edge of desperation in the woman’s voice, and his fear escalated. Taking a deep breath, he made a supreme effort to calm down and think straight. “Tell me about it.”

  “I don’t know very much,” Anna said. “The police won’t talk to me, and Sharon’s lawyer isn’t having much better luck. All I know is that sometime this afternoon she quarreled with her supervisor, and a few minutes later was found leaning over his body, with a bloody letter opener in her hand. He was dead of a stab wound in the chest.”

  Fergus muttered an obscenity. Sharon was the kindest, most compassionate woman he’d ever known. She couldn’t even kill an insect. There was no way she could murder a man no matter what he’d done to her.

  That last thought set him off again. “What did the bastard do to her?” he growled, then listened as Anna told him how his sweet, trusting Sharon had been sexually harassed by the vermin who was the victim.

  “Where is she now?” was all he could trust himself to say.

  “The police arrested her and took her to the St. Louis City Jail, where she’s being held—”

  “What do you mean she’s being held?” he demanded, and silently chided himself to stop acting like an outraged husband and start thinking like an attorney. “Doesn’t she have enough money to post bail? I’ll wire it—”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Anna admonished. “Sharon’s attorney couldn’t get the judge to release her on bail. The district attorney thinks she’s dangerous.”

  Son-of-a-bitch! Fergus thought, but managed not to say. “Did Sharon ask you to call me?”

  “No.” He heard the sob in her voice. “She didn’t even mention you. She used her one phone call to ring me and ask me to get her a lawyer. I did, but he couldn’t persuade the judge to set bail. Mr. Lachlan, I’ve got to get her out of there. I thought maybe you—”

  Fergus’s heart was hammering, and it was all he could do not to shout. “Ms. Grieg...Anna...listen to me. I’ll leave here as soon as I can arrange for use of the company plane. I should be there in a few hours. Give me your address and phone number and I’ll be in touch with you as soon as I arrive.”

  * * *

  Sharon sat huddled on the lower bunk of her jail cell and shuddered as the sound of another inmate retching violently made her own stomach churn. Would this night ever end? It seemed that she’d been in this hellhole forever, but a glance at her watch told her it was only a little past midnight.

  In another part of the vast lockup an intermittent moan became a continuous wail, a mournful keening that set Sharon’s nerves on edge. Even so, it was better than the screams that had bounced off the walls an hour earlier. That prisoner had finally been taken away. Sharon hoped it was to the dispensary and not an isolation cell.

  Sharon had thought nothing could be worse than the degrading body search she’d been subjected to when she was booked, but now she knew there were more horrors in a jail than she’d ever imagined.

  How many of the people in there besides her were innocent? She’d never really thought about that before, even when she was married to a defense attorney. Fergus had seldom discussed his cases with her, but she’d just assumed that all his clients were free on bail.

  A sudden shout made her jump. It was followed by a maniacal laugh that went on and on, until she covered her ears with her hands and burrowed her face against the wall in an effort to shut out the spine-chilling sound.

  Dear God, was she going to have to stay there until her trial was over and she’d finally proven that she hadn’t killed Floyd? But that could take months! Maybe even years. And she’d be stark raving mad by then.

  Her efforts to shut out the sound didn’t dim the crazy laughter much, but it did keep her from hearing the guard until he’d unlocked the door to her cell, then come in and touched her on the shoulder.

  She let out a frightened shriek and dropped her hands as she turned around to find him standing over her, a big burly man.

  “Sorry, lady,” he said gruffly. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Are you okay?”

  She swallowed and nodded. “Is it... Is it always this noisy in here?” Her voice shook with the fright he’d given her.

  He grinned. “This is tame,” he said. “Wait a few more hours, when the druggies start coming down off their highs. That’s when it gets rowdy.”

  She groaned, but he continued talking.

  “You are Sharon Sawyer, aren’t you?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Come with me,” he said. “Your
lawyer’s here and wants to talk to you.”

  Ray Quinlan? What was he doing here in the middle of the night? She’d talked to him twice earlier, during the first interview and again at the hearing to set bail, which had been denied.

  Still, she wasn’t going to argue. She’d do anything to get out of this place, even if only for a few minutes.

  * * *

  In one of the private rooms where attorneys conferred with their clients Fergus paced restlessly as he waited for Sharon to be brought to him.

  Brought to him. She’d hate that phrase. The last time he’d seen her she’d been coolly polite, but had let him know that she wanted absolutely nothing from him. Not his love, not his money, not even the community property she was entitled to, although her lawyer had finally insisted that she accept what the law mandated.

  Not that he could blame her. He’d not only hurt her badly, but had shattered her trust and respect for him. He couldn’t expect her to understand how he could still love and want her when he’d admitted that he had strong feelings for Elaine, too.

  His short marriage to Sharon had been a turbulent one. She’d been young and immature, and she’d accused him of being too bossy and overbearing. She was probably right, but he hadn’t been able to stand by and let her make obvious mistakes that he could prevent because of his more mature outlook.

  They’d always seemed to be either quarreling or making love. There’d been no real depth to their union, and he’d worked closely with Elaine during that time. She’d been so levelheaded and easy to please. Such a pleasure to work with. The exact opposite of Sharon.

  It had been a potentially dangerous situation, but he hadn’t realized it until it was too late. When their lives had been unalterably changed.

  That had been five years ago, and he hadn’t seen or heard from her since, although he’d kept track of her through mutual friends. He’d known of the important changes in her life since then as soon as they happened: when she moved to St. Louis, when she took the position with the hotel, when she was promoted to assistant manager, but if she was involved with another man no one was willing to tell him.