Along Came Trouble

by Sherryl Woods

  Walker seemed to choke on that, quickly turning his head as if that would keep King from seeing his amusement.

  “You know, son, you’re beginning to annoy me,” King told his son-in-law.

  “Does that mean I can take off?” Walker inquired. The fact that he was picking up a ham sandwich as he asked suggested he didn’t hold out much hope of getting a favorable response.

  “No!” King bellowed. “Nobody leaves until we come up with a game plan.” Fortunately he spotted the last of his expected guests barreling up the driveway. “Here’s Anna-Louise now.”

  “Oh, brother,” she said when she emerged from the car. “I came out here to pray over your near-dead carcass, and instead, I can see I’m about to be asked to do something I’m not going to like.”

  “Oh, can it,” King retorted. “I listened to you bellyache about your problems earlier. You can listen to me now. We have to do something to save Tucker. This situation is getting out of hand.”

  Before he could get in another word, Jenna and Daisy were turning to Anna-Louise.

  “Is everything okay with you?” Daisy asked.

  “What sort of problems was King talking about?” Jenna asked.

  Anna-Louise shot him a triumphant look. “Nothing I care to discuss in front of everyone,” she said sweetly. “Could we go inside?”

  With that, all three women disappeared into the house. King stared after them with dismay, knowing he had no one to blame but himself for the hasty defection.

  “Nice going, Daddy,” Bobby said, not even trying to hide his amusement.

  “It could be hours before they come back out here,” Walker grumbled.

  “Probably will be,” King agreed, resigned to the situation. “Oh, well, you two will just have to do. Walker, can’t you do something to get Tucker off this investigation he’s doing for Mary Elizabeth?”

  “Beyond solving the case myself, I don’t see how, and I’m short on solid leads at the moment.”

  “Well, find some,” King demanded unreasonably.

  “Believe me, I’m trying. Nobody wants this murder solved more than I do. I love being a deputy. I do not like being the one everyone complains to when the crimes don’t get solved fast enough.”

  King frowned at the response, but accepted it for the moment. He turned to his son. “Bobby, talk to your brother,” King ordered. “Make him see the light.”

  “Since when has Tucker ever listened to anything I had to say?” Bobby retorted. “He’s just like you—stubborn as a mule once he gets an idea in his head. And he learned all about rushing to the aid of a lady in distress from you. If he thinks Mary Elizabeth needs his help, then he’s going to give it to her.”

  “No matter what it costs him?” King said, then made another attempt to dole out an assignment. “Walker, you tell Tucker how folks in town are taking his leave of absence from the department.”

  “Seems to me like most of them understand it, even if they’re not too happy to have me acting in his place,” Walker said. “In fact, all I’ve heard people say is that it’s exactly what they would expect him to do, given what an honorable man he is. He’s putting ethical considerations first.”

  “If his ethics were the only thing involved, I’d let well enough alone,” King snapped. “We all know it’s his hormones. That woman always could twist him up in knots. He stopped thinking straight around her before he even hit puberty.”

  “I don’t think he’ll let that happen again,” Bobby said. “She ripped his heart out when she married Chandler. A man doesn’t forget a thing like that.”

  “Not if he’s thinking with his head,” King agreed. “You think Tucker’s using his?”

  “Absolutely,” Walker said.

  “I agree,” Bobby added.

  “Hmm,” King murmured thoughtfully. He looked at Walker. “And I suppose you never got distracted by a kiss during all those months when you and Daisy were being all logical and sorting things out about the best thing to do about Tommy?”

  Walker muttered something indiscernible under his breath.

  “I thought so,” King said, then stared at Bobby. “You kept your head the whole time Jenna was pursuing you about developing the boardwalk?”

  Bobby frowned. “Okay, okay, you’ve made your point. What do you want us to do?”

  “I think we need to sit down and have a talk with him, one of those intervention things I keep hearing about on TV. How’s tomorrow night suit you?”

  “What’s wrong with tonight?” Bobby asked. “I thought you were in a hurry. I’d just as soon get this over with.”

  “I have my own plans for tonight,” King said.

  “More important than getting all this off your chest?”

  “Yes,” King said defensively. “Not everything in my life revolves around my children.”

  Walker chuckled. “He’s got a date with Frances. Want to bet?” he asked Bobby.

  “Nah,” Bobby said, grinning. “That’s a no-brainer. It’s definitely something to do with Frances. And since I’ve seen firsthand how much trouble he’s in with her, I think he’s pretty smart not to stand her up tonight.”

  “Okay, that’s enough. Let’s not get sidetracked,” King said, pounding his fist on the arm of the rocker. “We’re agreed then. We’ll all meet at Tucker’s tomorrow night. You’ll see to it that Daisy and Jenna are there?”

  “We’ll be there,” Walker said. “Bobby?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I’m sure it will be the highlight of my week, maybe even the entire month.”

  “There’s no need for sarcasm,” King told him. “Now go in there, retrieve your wives and get on out of here. I’ve got things to do.”

  Walker and Bobby rolled their eyes, but did as King had ordered. Filled with satisfaction at a job well-done, he watched the whole lot of them head for their cars. He was about to duck into the house and get ready for his big evening, when Bobby leaned out the window of his car and hollered at him.

  “Hey, King, I recommend some of that fancy aftershave for tonight. The women go wild for it.”

  “Boy, it’s not too late for me to disinherit you,” King shouted back.

  Bobby merely grinned. “I thought you did that years ago.”

  King sighed as he watched them drive off. He was going to have to come up with a better threat than that. It was evident to him that not a one of them really gave two hoots about inheriting Cedar Hill or anything else he’d worked his whole life to accumulate. Nobody could ever accuse his kids of being nothing but greedy parasites the way some offspring were.

  Which, of course, meant that they came around because, despite all the wisecracks, they loved him.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he muttered with a hoot. A man couldn’t get much richer than that.

  Tucker was having trouble concentrating. Every time Mary Elizabeth handed him another file, every time she reached across in front of him to pick up another stack of papers, he caught a faint whiff of the exotic, seductive scent she wore. Her perfectly sedate blouse stretched tight across her breasts, which were encased in a thoroughly provocative scrap of lace that was enough to drive a man to drink. He was beginning to regret his decision to skip the wine and stick with soda. Then, again, he’d probably been really, really smart not to do anything to lower his inhibitions.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, studying him intently. “You look a little flushed. If it’s too hot in here, I can turn up the air-conditioning.”

  Unless she set it on freezing, it wouldn’t help, Tucker concluded. “I’m fine,” he said tersely. “Are you making a list of all these names we’re finding?”

  She gave him an inscrutable look, then nodded. “Of course. You asked me to, didn’t you? It’s right here.” She waved a legal pad under his nose. “I’ve got the business associates on one. Political cronies on another. And there’s a third list with all the women I suspected him of having affairs with.”

  “Okay, then, how many more files are th
ere?”

  “Just one drawer left and whatever’s in the safe,” she told him.

  Tucker groaned. “There’s a safe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you say so? Anything he’s trying to keep secret would be much more likely to be kept in there.”

  “I didn’t say so because you asked for his files,” she retorted with exaggerated patience. “Besides, I had access to the safe, so how secret could anything in there be?”

  “What about safety deposit boxes?”

  “None I know about.”

  “Did he have a safe in his office?”

  “Probably.”

  “Who at his company would have access to that?”

  Liz hesitated. “I’m not sure. I didn’t have the combination, but someone must have it. Maybe Roland Morgan.”

  “Remind me again. Roland is?”

  “His partner at Chandler Technologies.”

  “Right.” His head was spinning from all the names that had been accumulating since they’d started a few hours earlier. He wondered if he’d ever get them sorted out, much less manage to prioritize the ones most likely to want Chandler dead. This Roland fellow seemed like a good place to start, though.

  “Was he at the funeral? Did I meet him?”

  “He was there, but he scurried out right after the service. Roland is not a social creature,” Mary Elizabeth said, smiling. “You’ll see.”

  “You suppose he’s still at the office?” he asked. “It’s after five.”

  “I’ll call,” she said. “Should I ask him to stick around until we can get there?”

  Tucker gauged how long it would take to skim the remaining files, check the safe and drive to the company offices, which he’d seen on the way to the house. “Tell him we’ll be there about six-thirty.”

  “What if he says he has plans?”

  “Tell him to cancel them.”

  Mary Elizabeth nodded and picked up the phone. He heard some of what she was saying as he continued scanning papers. Apparently Roland wasn’t giving her a hard time.

  “He’ll be there. He says anything he can do to help us find out who killed Larry, he’s happy to do.”

  Tucker was relieved by the eagerness to help, though he’d seen plenty of guilty people try to divert suspicion by making a pretense of cooperation.

  “Okay, I’ve made notes of the names from these files. Check the safe, and we can get over there.”

  Mary Elizabeth returned with a copy of Chandler’s will, a few stacks of cash that amounted to a couple thousand dollars and several jewelry boxes.

  “That’s it?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Have you read the will? Do you know what’s in it?”

  “Like I told Foley, unless he changed it recently, he’s left the business and its assets to Roland and his personal money to the charitable foundation he and I started a few years ago.” She regarded Tucker with a hint of disappointment. “I was telling the truth when I said that I had nothing to gain from either divorcing him or killing him.”

  “Sorry.”

  She sighed. “I suppose I can’t blame you for being suspicious. Despite all the downturns in the market, Larry was still a relatively wealthy man. But whether you believe me or not, it was never about the money with us. We both took great precautions to make sure that we each understood that. Larry loved Swan Ridge, but he accepted that it was my inheritance. I had my own money. I didn’t need his.”

  Tucker wasn’t sure how he felt about knowing that Mary Elizabeth hadn’t been bowled over by Chandler’s wealth. That meant there had been something more between them, something deeper and more personal. He’d been able to accept the idea that she’d chosen a rich man over him, but knowing that he’d fallen short in some other way rankled. At the time he hadn’t thought her reasons for choosing Chandler were important, but apparently they’d been eating at him for years now.

  “Okay, let’s get out of here,” he said, unable to hide his suddenly foul temper.

  Before he could rise, she put a hand on his arm. He felt the muscle twitch beneath her touch.

  “Tucker, I know it hurts you to hear all this, but I did love him at the beginning. I got caught up in the idea that together the two of us could make a real difference in people’s lives. When we first met, we talked about all of his plans and ideals. We were on the same wavelength. I didn’t even realize it was more than that for a long time. Ironically, it was Daisy who saw it. What I saw as intellectual compatibility, she realized covered a deeper passion. I think that was why she was so furious with me. She thought I was deliberately cheating on you, when in my mind that was far from true. Only after she told me what she suspected did I take a good hard look at what I was feeling and realize that I had deep feelings for Larry. I swear to you that I broke it off with you before I acted on those feelings. We were never sneaking around behind your back.”

  He knew she thought he would find comfort in that, but it still hurt. He clung to the bitterness because it kept the other, more dangerous, feelings at bay.

  “And you could be much more important as the wife of a big-time politician, right? You could do good works on a much grander scale than you could being the wife of a small-town sheriff,” he said angrily. “Even if he was a Spencer.”

  “Yes,” she said, regarding him with an unflinching look. “I thought I could. I know now how wrong that was on so many levels it would take the rest of the night to get into all of them, but at the time, yes, that was my thinking. I’m sorry.”

  Tucker withdrew from her touch. “Yeah. So am I.”

  “I just keep on hurting you, don’t I?” she asked, regarding him with what appeared to be genuine misery. “Do you want to drop this investigation? If that would be easier for you, I’ll understand.”

  Tucker bristled at the suggestion that he couldn’t take being around her. “I started it, I’ll finish it,” he said tightly. “Let’s get out of here. This place is starting to give me hives.”

  Mary Elizabeth chuckled at that. “It has that effect on me sometimes, too.”

  After a beat, Tucker laughed, too, and just like that the tension was broken.

  Outside the soft, sultry air was refreshing compared to the air-conditioned sterility inside. He took a deep breath, as much to clear his head as cleanse his lungs. He could do this. He could be around Mary Elizabeth for however long this investigation took without going crazy and hauling her into his arms.

  Just then, though, he glanced down into those petal-soft violet eyes of hers and completely lost his train of thought…and his common sense.

  “Tucker—”

  Before she could finish whatever she was about to say, he leaned down and covered her mouth with his, catching her gasp of surprise. Fire licked through his blood with the speed and power of lightning. Desire and need rocketed along right behind.

  He had wanted this for so long, dreamed about it. The taste of her was always with him, as unforgettable as his name, as sweet as ripe watermelon.

  His breathing was ragged, his body hard, by the time his brain finally kicked back in. When he forced himself to release her, to take a step back, her little moan of protest was almost enough to ruin his resolve.

  “We’re not going to do this,” he said, half to himself.

  “We just did,” she pointed out reasonably.

  “I mean again.”

  “Ever?”

  “Ever,” he replied emphatically.

  Hurt flickered in her eyes. “Your call,” she said mildly. “But, Tucker, it really would be too bad if we didn’t.”

  And, Tucker thought, it would be devastating if they did.

  14

  Roland Morgan had a brilliant mind for technology, but little business acumen. Liz recalled Larry’s opinion as she and Tucker walked into Roland’s office and found him totally absorbed by something on his computer screen, his desk littered with empty foam coffee cups, his hair disheveled and his eyes bleary behi
nd his thick-lensed glasses. He was dressed for comfort rather than success in jeans and a rumpled T-shirt it looked as if he’d slept in.

  Roland blinked hard when Liz spoke to him, then greeted her with a distracted smile. “You’re here already?”

  “It’s been over an hour,” she pointed out with amusement. “Obviously you lost track of time. You must be working on something new.”

  “Just trying to get a bug out of a program that we thought we were ready to start marketing for Christmas.” He gazed around as if he hadn’t noticed the state of his office before. “Sorry about the mess. I came straight back here after the funeral, and I’ve been up for more than twenty-four hours. If I can’t get this cleaned up, we’ll never get it into production. Marketing’s having a cow. They’ve bought hundreds of thousands of dollars in magazine space and TV spots to push this for the holidays.”

  “How about Larry? Was he having a cow?” Tucker asked, drawing a startled look from Roland.

  “Roland, this is Tucker Spencer,” Liz explained. “He’s investigating Larry’s death for me.”

  Roland stood and held out his hand. Liz noticed then that he was wearing socks but no shoes. She spotted a pair of well-worn running shoes across the room. She had to bite back a grin at the contrast he made to her designer clad, perfectionist husband, who seldom had a hair out of place even after hours on the campaign trail.

  “Good to meet you,” Roland said to Tucker. “Anything I can do to help, I’ll try, but Larry and I pretty much went our separate ways around here. He left the tech stuff to me, and I left all the rest to him.”

  “Mind if we sit over here?” Tucker asked, gesturing to a sofa and chairs. “We’ll try not to keep you from your work for too long.”

  “The break will probably do me good,” Roland acknowledged. “My brain’s pretty much fried right now. Anybody want coffee?”

  “How about bottled water and some food?” Liz suggested instead. “I’ll check the fridge in Larry’s office. There’s usually some fruit and cheese in there. You look as if you could use some nourishment, as well, Roland.”

  “Sure. That would be great.”