His Trophy Wife

by Leigh Michaels

  She said slowly, “We’ve been assuming the trap was intended for the following morning, when Sloan came to work. But it couldn’t have been.”

  The investigator raised an eyebrow. “You seem very certain.”

  “The natural gas,” Morganna said impatiently. “There would have been so much of it by morning that no one could have gotten all the way to Sloan’s office without an air tank. They’d have smelled it first—they couldn’t have missed that rotten-egg smell—and called for help.”

  “If a chance spark hadn’t set it off long before that,” Sloan agreed.

  “So there would have been no reason for the lightbulb, because nobody could have gotten far enough to set it off. That means the trap was intended to go off that night, when the factory was dark.”

  Sloan said, “I was supposed to walk into the office, smell the gas, turn on the light to check things out, and—”

  Morganna shivered. The picture was all too real, the trap all too threatening. If Joel hadn’t gone into the office, Sloan would have. If Joel hadn’t seen a man running from the building…

  But the man he said he’d seen had proved he hadn’t been anywhere near the factory that night. So the question became who Joel had seen.

  If he had seen anyone at all. Because if he hadn’t…

  She stared at the man in the bed. He couldn’t have been lying, she thought. Joel had been hurt by the booby trap, so he couldn’t have been the one who set it. Unless…

  “It went off by mistake,” she whispered.

  She turned to look at Sloan, and was startled to see that he did not look surprised. Obviously he had reached the same conclusion, even before she had made the connection. But how had he known?

  As if he’d read her mind, Sloan said, “The catalog.” He tugged it out of his pocket.

  Pieces dropped into place in Morganna’s mind. He was holding the Furnishings Unlimited catalog which he had picked up from her worktable less than an hour before. The one Jack Hamilton had given her, bearing the wrong address which had sent it all the way to the Omaha warehouse before it was delivered to him—the same wrong address that Jack had been teasing Sloan about at the restaurant the night of the fire.

  But how could a firm in direct competition with Sticks & Stones have gotten that particular, exact wrong address? In only one way that she could see—it had come from Sticks & Stones’ own records.

  The records that had been more or less destroyed in the fire. Which meant the address had been passed along before the fire happened.

  Things that aren’t supposed to be there, the fire investigator said he always looked for. And things that are supposed to be there, but aren’t.

  Sloan said, almost gently, “What else did you sell, Joel, besides the customer list?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Furnishings Unlimited had to get it somewhere. What did they promise you? Money? A job? That whole business of getting hold of their catalog early was a bluff, wasn’t it? Such a good, loyal little corporate spy you were. Then you set the fire, not only to paralyze Sticks & Stones but to cover up the fact that you’d scrambled all our records, after you made copies for the competition—”

  The fire investigator shifted from one foot to the other. “That’s a mighty big accusation, Mr. Montgomery. You wouldn’t happen to have any real evidence, I suppose?”

  Morganna stared at Joel. Even the unburned side of his face was red now, with anger. She frowned. There was something about his face—blistered and twisted on one side, with the beginnings of angry scars, while the other side was almost untouched…

  If he’d been standing by the desk, inserting a booby-trapped lightbulb into the lamp, and it accidentally went off, how could he have gotten burned on just one side of his face?

  Were they being unjust to suspect him? No, her instinct said. This had to be the answer. There were just a few pieces still missing…

  “He couldn’t have turned his head,” Morganna said under her breath. “He’d have to have been looking at the lamp while he worked. And when the bulb exploded, the gasoline would have hit him squarely across the face.”

  “But it didn’t,” the investigator said. “If it had, we’d have suspected him immediately. But a glancing blow like the one he took—” He shook his head. “The bulb couldn’t have gone off while he was working on it. He’d have been burned worse.”

  “But then why did it blow up at all? Why didn’t he just walk out and leave the trap for Sloan, as he’d intended to do?”

  “If he’d brushed any metal part of the lamp,” Sloan said, “it would have turned the lamp on.”

  “Did he know it was touch-controlled?” the investigator asked.

  “Yes,” Sloan said. “He did.”

  “But that just means he’d have been extra-careful not to touch it,” Morganna objected.

  “He was in a hurry,” Sloan pointed out. “He was surprised when I told him where I was, and that I’d be at the factory in a matter of minutes.”

  Morganna looked at the investigator. “But you said it would take time to rig the lightbulb. Unless he’d done that beforehand. Of course—that’s why there was no container for the gasoline; it was already in the bulb when he went into the factory that night. But why did it explode?”

  Morganna closed her eyes. She wanted to hit her head against something in utter frustration. Why couldn’t she think? Of course she was tired, they’d hardly slept at all last night. And she was stressed, but—

  Suddenly she saw the lamps in Sloan’s bedroom once more, glowing softly…

  “Touch sensors get confused when the electricity goes off,” she said suddenly. “And the lamps turn on when it’s restored.”

  “Not good enough,” the investigator said quietly. “There wasn’t a storm that night. The power didn’t go out.”

  Morganna sighed. “And I suppose it would have been just too strange, anyway, to have a flicker at precisely the wrong moment…. Unless he unplugged the lamp.” Triumph rang in her voice. “He knew it was controlled by touch, and he didn’t want to take a chance of bumping it wrong while he was putting in the bulb. So he pulled the plug, put in the bulb, plugged the lamp back in, and it blew up. But he wasn’t standing right by the lamp then. He was beside the wall outlet, probably leaning over—so he didn’t take the full strength of the blast. It got him from the side instead. And since he was standing by the window—”

  Joel was staring at her with hatred in his eyes. “Damn you, Morganna,” he said. “And to think I felt so sorry for you, being stuck with a man you hated, that I tried to eliminate—” He stopped abruptly.

  Morganna was stunned. “That’s why you tried to kill Sloan? Because you thought I hated him?”

  “No,” Sloan said. “It’s a noble excuse, trying to rescue the damsel in distress, but that wasn’t the reason. He destroyed the business and scrambled the records—and tried to kill me—so in the confusion nobody would notice that there was money missing.” His voice was almost gentle. “And you nearly got by with it, Joel, because even when I realized Sticks & Stones had been slowly and systematically robbed, I didn’t think it could be you who was guilty. You don’t live extravagantly, you don’t play the horses, you don’t even hang around with women who have expensive tastes. But you got greedy—and it was the pittance that Furnishings Unlimited paid you for the mailing list that finally gave you away.” He tossed the catalog onto the bed. “Where’s the money, Joel? Parked in an offshore bank till you collected enough to make a run for it?”

  The investigator said, “Well, son? We’ll find out…you might as well tell us. Let me get somebody in here to read you your rights, and then we can talk about the fire.”

  “I’m not saying another word,” Joel growled. “Not without a lawyer.”

  It’s all right, Morganna thought. Sloan is free. She leaned against him, suddenly limp with relief. “My darling—”

  Joel gave a loud, humorless laugh. “Isn’t that touching,
” he drawled. “Great job, Sloan. You married her to get even with her old man, and now she’s panting for you.”

  “Knock it off, Joel.” Sloan’s voice was low and cold.

  “What are you talking about?” Morganna asked.

  “Guess you never told her why you married her, right, Sloan? Want me to?”

  “Don’t do something I’ll make you regret, Joel.”

  “What are you going to do,” Joel jeered, “haul me out of the hospital bed and sock me in the face when I can’t even make a fist to defend myself? He didn’t propose to you so he could be your white knight, princess, if that’s what you’re thinking. It wasn’t because he felt sorry for you and your dear old mama. And it wasn’t even that he had a hankering to join high society. Did he tell you what your father did to his father, all those years ago?”

  She looked uncertainly at Sloan. I don’t want to believe him, she thought. And yet there was a note of certainty in Joel’s voice that forced her to keep listening.

  “That’s why he was keeping an eye on the Ashworths. Not because he was fascinated with you, but because he was waiting for his chance to get even with your father. That’s why he engineered meeting you at that charity thing. And that’s why he had me investigating the family. Then Burke died, and he was out of Sloan’s reach. But you were still there.”

  “Come on, Morganna,” Sloan said. “We don’t have to listen to this.”

  She couldn’t move; she stood frozen by the bedside.

  Joel went on, his voice inexorable. “I was curious, you see. So I kept looking. I know all about the deal that went bad because Sloan’s father didn’t realize that Burke Ashworth’s word wasn’t worth the hot air that went into it. Did Sloan tell you that was what forced his father into bankruptcy? That’s why Sloan had to drag himself up every rung of the ladder—and with every step, he remembered your father and what he had done to the Montgomerys.”

  She was staring at Sloan. Give me a reason not to believe him, she begged.

  “Sweetheart,” Joel said almost gently, “whatever he told you, the truth is that he married you so he could take his revenge. And a primo kind of revenge he’s made it, too.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  SLOAN’S face had gone pale. But it wasn’t shock he was feeling, Morganna realized. It was fury. He hadn’t been taken off guard, stunned by a whopper of a lie. He was enraged that Joel had dared to tell the truth.

  I have wanted you for so long, Sloan had told her last night. Morganna had thought he meant the six months he had patiently waited for her to truly become his wife. But now the words took on another, more sinister meaning.

  Exactly how long had he waited for his revenge? How many years?

  Revenge…Nasty as the word was, Morganna thought, it was a pale description of what he had actually accomplished. Owning her—displaying her as the trophy wife she was—apparently hadn’t been enough to satisfy him. Sloan had wanted even more. So he’d lulled her into falling in love with him, and only when he’d possessed not only her body but her soul had he been content.

  He had boasted once that he didn’t need to coerce her because she would come to him of her own free will. And she had. How that must have delighted him!

  No wonder last night had seemed so special for him. It had represented his final triumph over the family that had destroyed his father.

  She smiled up at him. “I don’t think the inspector needs us here any longer, darling.” She watched relief flood his eyes and felt ill. Without a glance at Joel, she put her hand on Sloan’s arm and let him guide her out of the room.

  In the hallway, he stopped and turned her toward him. “You didn’t believe him.”

  He hadn’t really asked a question, she realized, and his voice held an odd note of strain—as if he was trying to convince himself that she had dismissed Joel as nothing but a troublemaker. It might be interesting, if she only had the patience, to see whether Sloan would admit the truth eventually. But she had no time for games.

  She pulled her hand away as if touching him had scorched her. “Oh, I believe him all right.”

  He reached for her. “Morganna—”

  She ducked, and his hands closed on empty air instead of coming to rest on her shoulders. “I simply wasn’t going to give Joel the satisfaction of making a scene for his enjoyment. And please don’t insult me by saying you can explain—because there’s no justifying this one, Sloan.”

  She was turning away when the investigator came out of Joel’s room. “I want to thank you both. You handed me the last piece I needed.”

  “The last piece?” Morganna said in disbelief. “We handed you the whole thing!”

  Sloan said, “I hope you don’t expect us to believe that you were onto Joel all along.”

  “Not from the very beginning, no. If it makes you feel better, I never seriously thought it was you, Mr. Montgomery, because this fire didn’t fit your personality.”

  “You could have fooled me.” Sloan’s voice was dry.

  The investigator grinned, and then sobered. “I’m sorry about putting you through all this—both of you. I’ve been pretty sure for days that it was Joel, but I couldn’t find the motive—you’re right, Montgomery, he hasn’t spent beyond his income and he doesn’t appear to gamble. And I also couldn’t explain exactly how that explosion could have gotten him by accident.” He smiled at Morganna. “Thanks for helping out there.”

  “My pleasure,” she said dryly.

  “Besides, every bit of evidence I had was circumstantial, and it could all point at least two ways. Nothing about the way the fire started, or the way Joel was burned, ruled out the possibility that he was innocent. For instance, strolling across an office full of leaking natural gas is certainly stupid, but it isn’t a crime. He could say he heard something from the factory floor and walked over to the window to check it out—and how could we prove he didn’t? People do stupid things when they’re under stress.”

  “Why did he turn the gas on first?” Sloan asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  The investigator shrugged. “The original plan was probably to install the trick lightbulb, then flip on the gas as he left. But it’s possible that turning on the gas was an afterthought—maybe he had doubts at the last minute of how effective his gasoline bomb would be. By the way, we checked the ceiling light from your office and found that the bulbs were all loose. Again, there’s no proving it—I suppose if the bulbs weren’t put in tightly in the first place, the blast could have vibrated the fixture and loosened them. But I’m betting Joel unscrewed the bulbs just enough so the wall switch wouldn’t work, so you’d have likely walked over to the desk and turned on the lamp.”

  Morganna shivered.

  “But if I’d gone into court with that kind of evidence,” the investigator said, “the attorneys would have blown all kinds of holes in it and Joel would have walked out a free man. Take the homeless guy who lives in the empty lot across the street. He saw Joel going in and out that night—but he didn’t see him moving the furniture, and without that his testimony would be practically useless. We might have proved that the signature on the receipt from the storage unit was Joel’s handwriting, but it was too small a sample to be definitive, and that’s the sort of thing that expert witnesses can argue about for months at a time. The only way I could see to break Joel down was to make him feel so secure that he’d start to point fingers, and then he’d almost certainly incriminate himself. He was doing it beautifully, by the way—conveniently remembering things like the little furniture—even before you and Mrs. Montgomery started working out the puzzle.”

  “Happy to be of service,” Sloan said ironically.

  The investigator grinned. “I’m sure—but thanks anyway. Well, I’ll let you two go on about your business. As soon as we’ve filed charges, I’ll notify the insurance people, and that should speed up the process considerably.” The investigator went back into Joel’s room.

  The silence was thick. “Morganna—”

>   “I don’t want to hear it, Sloan. I’m going home. I don’t care what you do, or where you go.” She zipped her coat and walked down the long hall. Without looking back, she knew that he watched her until she reached the first bend in the corridor. It was as much as she could do to hold her head high and not run, in her eagerness to get away from him to some quiet place where she could think.

  The unseasonable snow had snarled traffic, and she was happy to finally reach the peaceful side streets of Pemberton Place. The neighbors next door were outside with their twins, building a snow family. The picture wrenched Morganna’s heart.

  That could be Sloan and me playing with our kids, in a few years, she thought. If only Joel hadn’t…

  She caught herself up short. Joel hadn’t created this problem, he’d only exposed it. Surely she wasn’t so foolish that she would rather it had remained hidden!

  A secret like that couldn’t have remained entirely concealed, anyway. Even if it had never exactly come into the open, the poison of Sloan’s hidden motives would have seeped through every aspect of their marriage, ruining any hope of happiness. Refusing to face things didn’t make them go away; it only made them more explosive in the long run.

  She turned her back on the happy family, now engaged in a snowball fight, and went inside.

  Abigail came hastily out of the drawing room. “Is it true, Morganna?”

  For an instant, Morganna wasn’t sure what she was asking about.

  “Sloan called Selby, so he could pass the word to the staff. Was it really Joel who set the fire?”

  Morganna nodded.

  Abigail closed her eyes for an instant in what looked like a prayer of relief and thankfulness. “And I wasted all that effort feeling sorry for him,” she mused. “Well, if that’s under control, too…I think I’ll go see if I can get a ticket on this afternoon’s plane.”

  Morganna was taken aback. “Where are you going?”

  “Home, of course. Now that you and Sloan have everything settled between you, you don’t need me hanging around and getting in the way of what promises to be a delightful honeymoon.”