A Lover's Vow

by Brenda Jackson

  A smooth smile touched his lips. “That’s easy enough to remember. I was with Sandra Timmons.”

  “Would you care to elaborate? Where were you?”

  “At a hotel in DC. We were there for two days. We heard about Sylvia’s death on the news the day we checked out of the hotel.”

  “And when did the two of you check in to the hotel?”

  “We checked in to the hotel the day before Sylvia Granger was killed.”

  “Do you have proof the two of you were together during that time?”

  “That was close to fifteen years ago, and I certainly haven’t kept receipts from that time, but if I have to prove it, then I can...and I will.”

  Jules leaned back in her chair. “I must ask some personal questions of you, Mr. Clayburn. Did you and Sandra Timmons often have romantic rendezvous?”

  He held her stare. “On occasion. After college, we went our separate ways and married other people, but then we ran into each other years later in New York. By then, she and Samuel had a son. I was in New York on a business trip, and she was there with her mother-in-law on a shopping spree. We happened to be staying at the same hotel. Sandra’s mother-in-law was a sound sleeper and, well, Sandra managed to get away once she was asleep for the night. She came to my room. The spark we felt for each other had never gone away. I can assure you that neither of us planned this. I will say that I think it was during that time that Shiloh was conceived.”

  Jules didn’t say anything for a minute, and then she asked, “When was the next time you saw Sandra Timmons again after that time in New York?”

  “Not for a long, long time. I happened to be in Charlottesville on business about fourteen years later. I looked her up. We got together.”

  Jules nodded. “And how long were you in Charlottesville at that point?”

  “Around six months.”

  “You went out to Shady Pines during that time, didn’t you?”

  He held her gaze. “Yes, and Sandra told me we had been seen together by someone. In the stables.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  He shrugged. “I only went there because I knew Samuel was out of town, and I wanted to convince Sandra to leave him. She’d confided that he’d become abusive and was becoming worse. I saw her bruises and tried persuading her to leave him. But she refused. She said he would take her children away, and she couldn’t let him do that. I got angry. Very angry.”

  And he was getting angry just talking about it. Jules could hear it in his voice. “Is that why you got involved with Sylvia Granger? Out of spite?”

  Jules thought she actually saw pain in his features. “No, not out of spite. The fact that she was refusing to leave Samuel for me, when I knew she loved me, was hard for me to accept. I was hurt. Deeply. I would have ended my marriage for Sandra, but she refused to leave an abusive husband because of her children. He had already threatened to fight her for custody if she ever tried to leave. Of course, at the time, I didn’t know one of the children was mine.”

  He didn’t say anything for a minute. “As for Sylvia Granger, she is the one who sought me out, not the other way around. I guess you can say she got to me when I was most vulnerable. She had an agenda, and she used me. She didn’t know my history with Sandra and, at the time, I didn’t know that she and Sandra were close friends.”

  He paused a moment and then said, “But it was just that one time. At the boathouse.”

  “How did you get on the estate without anyone knowing about it?”

  “We got there by boat.”

  “Boat?”

  “Yes. The boathouse is on a waterway that feeds into Mammoth Lake. Sylvia owned a small boat that she kept to go back and forth to the marina.”

  This information was critical. Jules wondered whether this was how the killer had gotten on and off the estate without being seen. She would need to investigate this location right away.

  He glanced at his watch. “Now, Ms. Bradford, I hope I’ve answered your questions satisfactorily. I do have another appointment in a few minutes.”

  “I’ll try to be quick, but I do have a few more if you don’t mind.” She knew he wanted to say that he did mind, but he probably figured if he answered all her questions now, she wouldn’t have to come back.

  “Fine, what additional questions do you have for me?”

  “Ms. Timmons indicated that Sylvia used you, and you just basically said the same thing. Could you elaborate on that?”

  “At the time, I owned one of the largest computer companies in the Silicon Valley, and she wanted to know everything about it.”

  Jules lifted a brow. “Why?”

  “She didn’t ever really say, but I found it interesting that she would take any opportunity to discuss my business.”

  “Was there anything specific she was interested in?”

  He shrugged. “Several things, but mainly my expectations regarding Y2K.”

  “Y2K? I remember reading about that when I was in college.”

  “Then you know it was the disaster that never was.”

  Jules nodded in agreement then paused a minute and asked, “Ms. Timmons is certain Sheppard Granger killed his wife. Do you share her sentiments?”

  “No, I do not.”

  She angled her head and stared at him, somewhat surprised by his answer. “Would you care to share your opinion about who did?”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Of course, no one asked me, because no one other than Sandra ever knew about my one-time affair with Sylvia, and no one knew that we had met several times prior to that so Sylvia could ‘learn’ more about computers. But, had I been asked, I would have told them the one person who had a motive for killing Sylvia was the Grangers’ housekeeper, Hannah.”

  Jules kept the surprised look from her face. “And why do you think it was Hannah?”

  “Because she and Sylvia didn’t get along. And I understand the two women had words earlier that day and that Hannah had threatened her.”

  Jules’s brows bunched. “Hannah had threatened Sylvia?”

  “So Sylvia claimed. Of course, I wasn’t there to hear it myself. Sylvia was upset and said she didn’t care that Hannah had been with the Grangers for years. She had to go. It was either her or Hannah.”

  Jules didn’t say anything for a minute as she thought about what Vance Clayburn had just said.

  “Makes sense, don’t you think?”

  His question invaded her thoughts. “What makes sense?”

  “That Hannah killed Sylvia.”

  She leaned forward. “And why would that make sense, Mr. Clayburn?”

  “It would explain how Sheppard Granger’s gun came to be in the boathouse. If he didn’t take it from the Granger estate, then who did?”

  * * *

  Jules’s mind was in a complete turmoil by the time she returned to her office. Vance Clayburn’s question was still burning her ears. If he didn’t take it from the Granger estate, then who did?

  That was a good question, but the possibility that Hannah had been involved was hard to come to terms with—it was completely mind-boggling.

  But what if everything Vance Clayburn had said was true? What if Hannah had threatened Sylvia, and Sylvia had tried to get Hannah fired? That would certainly give Hannah a motive. The woman had been with the Grangers for years and was considered part of the family. And if she believed Sylvia was unfaithful to Sheppard and had confronted her about it, then...

  She grudgingly moved Hannah’s profile to the suspects’ column of her investigative wall, trying to push to the back of her mind what Dalton had just said days ago... Hannah helped my brothers and me retain our sanity through the craziness of my father’s trial. She means the world to us, and if you mess with Hannah, then you mess with all three of us.

  S
he didn’t want to think about how the Grangers would feel when they discovered their beloved Hannah was now a suspect. She’d given Manning the task of verifying Clayburn’s and Sandra Timmons’s alibis. Had they really been in DC at a hotel together when Sylvia was murdered? If anyone could confirm that, it would be Manning.

  When her buzzer went off, she moved to her desk. “Yes, Manning?”

  “You have guests.”

  She frowned. “Who is it? I’m not expecting anyone.”

  “Michael and Yolanda Greene are here.”

  Surprise lit Jules’s eyes. “No one else? Not their son, Ivan?”

  Manning said quietly into the receiver, “Not unless he’s invisible.”

  “Funny. Give me a second before sending them in.”

  Jules couldn’t help wondering what had brought the Greenes to her office. But first she had to get rid of her investigation wall. Using her remote, she turned off the screen. And, just in time. The door opened, and a couple she knew to be Michael and Yolanda Greene walked in.

  She crossed the room to greet them. “Mr. and Mrs. Greene. I’m glad you’re here.”

  “We know you came to the house to see us, but Ivan forbade you from talking to us. We decided to come to you, since we have nothing to hide.”

  Jules nodded, remembering that was the same thing Vance Clayburn had said earlier. “Then would you mind answering a few questions?”

  “Not at all,” Michael Greene said. “We told Ivan that we wanted to be open and honest, and he understood, but he thinks he has to protect us.”

  “From what?”

  “People who want to ruin his chance to be mayor.”

  “Oh, I see.” It sounded to her like Ivan was trying to protect himself...or at least his political career. “Please have a seat.”

  “So what do you want to know?” Yolanda Greene asked. She and her husband were holding hands, as if giving each other support.

  “I know about the affair between you, Mr. Greene, and Sylvia Granger. Further, my assistant was able to verify your alibi about being on a cruise at the time of the murder.” She looked over at Yolanda Greene and saw pain etch her features.

  “Were you aware that Sylvia was involved with another man at the same time?” Jules continued.

  Michael Greene’s features tightened. “No, but it doesn’t surprise me. Sylvia only wanted an affair with me to gain information.”

  “About what?”

  “My work at Granger Aeronautics.”

  “Could you tell me about what that work involved?”

  “I was manager of the information systems department. Today, most businesses refer to it as the computer technology department.”

  Jules nodded. “What did Mrs. Granger want to know?”

  “She was interested in a lot of computer stuff, which I admit I should not have shared with her...like what the company was doing to protect themselves from Y2K. What computer programming we were using. What software was out there to combat such a thing.”

  Jules didn’t say anything. So far, according to what she knew, the two lovers Sylvia Granger was reported to have had were both connected to the computer industry, and her main point of interest had been Y2K.

  “Did she say why she was interested? It seems like an odd thing for someone like her to take an interest in,” Jules remarked.

  Michael Greene shook his head. “No. I figured she had been hit with the Y2K scare like a lot of people at that time. Our affair only lasted for a few months, and then she dropped me. Then Sheppard Granger found out, and I was fired immediately.”

  “And where did you and Sylvia meet when you got together?”

  “At different hotels in the city.”

  “Never at the boathouse?” Jules asked.

  Michael Greene shook his head. “No, never at the boathouse.” He paused a minute and then added, “I made a mistake with Sylvia Granger, a terrible mistake, and I almost lost Yolanda because of it. We’ve worked hard over the past fifteen years to rebuild our marriage and have put that time behind us.”

  Jules nodded. “I can respect that, but at the same time, an innocent man has been in jail for over fifteen years and—”

  “He’s not innocent,” Michael Greene said.

  “You don’t think so?”

  “No. He knew about my affair with his wife, and that angered him. If she had had another lover besides me, that would make him even more angry, angry enough to kill her.”

  Jules was quiet for a minute. “I watched the video this past weekend of the grand opening of Shiloh’s wine boutique and saw both of you behave very rudely to Caden Granger. Why was that? Caden and his brothers were just children when their father went to jail. What are you holding against them?”

  “I think I can best answer that.”

  Jules’s gaze moved from the Greenes to the doorway. Ivan Greene stood there with an angry Manning holding him back.

  Forty-One

  “Do you want me to throw him out, Jules?” Manning asked seriously.

  She shook her head. “No, let him come in, especially if he can give me an answer to my question.”

  When Manning released Ivan, he rushed into the room. “Mom. Dad. I told the two of you that I would handle things.”

  “And we told you that we didn’t mind talking to her. We have nothing to hide.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  Jules crossed her arms over her chest. “Then what is the point, Mr. Greene? Why don’t you tell me why you and your parents treated Caden so shabbily that night at Shiloh’s open house? And, while you’re at it, how about telling me why you were so interested in Marshall Imerson’s report on the Sylvia Granger murder?”

  He glared at her. “Why are you so interested in that report?” Ivan fired back.

  “Because that report probably contained information proving that Sheppard Granger did not kill his wife,” Jules responded.

  “And I believed it contained information proving otherwise, and that Marshall was killed before he could prove it.”

  Jules lifted her brow. “Marshall? Sounds like you knew Imerson personally since the two of you were on a first-name basis.”

  “I did. Fresh out of law school, I was a court-appointed attorney. My first case was defending a woman who’d been arrested for killing her boyfriend. Marshall was a detective on the case, and with his help, I was able to prove the woman had been abused and was defending herself. She was cleared of all charges, and Marshall and I had been friends since. He was older, and I considered him something of a mentor. With his help, I understood how law enforcement worked, and I got to know a lot of the guys around the precinct. They were invaluable whenever I worked a case.”

  He paused a minute and then said, “Marshall and I stayed in touch over the years, even after he went into business for himself as a private investigator. Imagine my surprise when he came to me and told me he had been hired by Richard Granger to find out who had killed his daughter-in-law and that my parents were the primary suspects.”

  He paused again. “I couldn’t believe it. I had just finished law school a few months after Sheppard Granger’s trial and had no idea my father had been involved with Sylvia Granger. I assumed the reason he’d left Granger Aeronautics was of his own choosing, not that he’d been fired. I also didn’t know about my parents’ marital problems even though my sisters did.

  “After Marshall dropped this bombshell on me, I asked my parents about it, and they told me the truth. Mom told me about the PI she’d hired and the pictures she’d sent to Sheppard Granger showing Dad and Mrs. Granger together. She also told me that she’d told Sheppard Granger that she and Dad had a solid alibi proving neither of them had anything to do with his wife’s death. I think Sheppard believed their story, but Richard Granger did not. He was
determined to find a scapegoat for his son and decided my parents would fill the role.”

  “That might not have been the case, Mr. Greene,” Jules said. “Are you sure this isn’t circumstantial evidence?”

  “I had no reason to think otherwise. No one knew about my father’s affair with Mrs. Granger, but to get his son out of jail, Richard Granger was determined to make it public information. When I heard that Marshall had been killed in a questionable accident...especially when it was well-known that he didn’t drink...I knew someone was behind it. Someone didn’t want Marshall’s information to be made public. I’m sure Marshall discovered some incriminating information on Sheppard Granger, and Richard Granger arranged his accidental death.”

  Jules just stared at Ivan, and it was easy to tell by his expression that he truly believed what he said. “Mr. Greene, have you ever considered that perhaps the information Marshall Imerson discovered proved just the opposite? That Sheppard Granger did not kill his wife? And just to go back to Caden Granger for a moment, you still haven’t explained why you and your family were so hostile to him.”

  Ivan hesitated a minute and then said, “When Richard died, I assumed my parents’ secret was safe again. Then Richard’s grandsons came to town, and rumors quickly began flying around that they, like Richard, intended to prove that Sheppard Granger was innocent. All I could see was them reopening the case and using my parents again as a scapegoat for what their father had done. We have no reason to be friends with people who want to ruin our family name.”

  Especially when the scandal could hurt your chances of becoming mayor, Jules thought. “Well, I happen to think that Sheppard Granger is innocent, and I have the information to prove it.”

  * * *

  The intercom on Dalton’s desk buzzed. “Yes, Ms. Pecorino?”

  “Mr. Granger, Bruce Townsend is here to see you.”

  Dalton threw aside the papers he was reading. “Please send him in.” He stood when Bruce walked in. “Bruce, what’s going on? You here to search my office for one of those headphones?” he joked.