Colton's Killer Pursuit

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Her gaze was clear as she turned toward him. He only got a brief glimpse of those hazel eyes, because of driving, but as her pain appeared to have subsided for the moment, he felt better. “We didn’t specify,” she said. “Our mutual will, which would have been made null and void by the divorce, just states that everything that is his goes to me and everything that is mine goes to him, in the event that either of us passes before the other. We made the wills out shortly after we were married on the advice of our pastor. I figured that we’d amend them once we had kids...”

  He knew from the case files that she and Fritz had been married almost eighteen years. And wondered why there weren’t any kids. Was one or the other of them incapable? Had it just never happened? Did one of them change their mind?

  They weren’t questions that pertained to his place in her life. So why did he find himself needing the answers?

  “Can you think of anyone at the health club who’d benefit from you being gone? Or anything Fritz might have had at home, pertaining to it, that someone could need?”

  “No. The club was a failing venture. We own the building and the equipment, but Fritz was really the biggest asset. He was a great motivator, and was precise and regimented when it came to designing and monitoring individual workouts for his clients...”

  He’d done some digging and already knew the club wasn’t doing well. But... “If he was that good, why was the business faltering?”

  “Because while Fritz excelled at what he did, he didn’t spend enough time doing it. He’d rather be having a good time, I now know, with the next good-looking woman who walked in the door. And as he got older, the younger the better, apparently—as long as they were legally adults. Instead of investing money back in the business, or working the hours necessary to keep things going, he worked enough to have money to spend on lavish weekend jaunts with whatever beauty he’d happened to charm.”

  Clarke had heard some rumors about the man cheating...but nothing to that extent. And with no actual proof to back them up. He hadn’t looked for the proof and didn’t know if anyone else had done so. But, after just a few hours with Everleigh, he’d begun to doubt their truth—until now. Who’d cheat on a woman like her? One who, in spite of her wrongful incarceration, wasn’t filled with hate or bitterness. One who cared more about her grandmother’s plight than her own. One who seemed to nurture the air around her.

  “I don’t get it,” he said aloud, when it would have been more prudent to keep his mouth shut.

  “Get what?”

  “Why he’d do that to you. Did you know?”

  The force with which her head turned, shooting an icy gaze at him, made him wince. Mostly because he knew he deserved the reaction. And because she hadn’t deserved the comment.

  “I didn’t know.” She turned to face front again and spoke the words quietly seconds later. Said gently, “I realize I should have known. It happened so gradually. And sometimes I was the woman he took away with him, which was great. And also made me think our marriage was fine, as my husband kept wanting me to go away with him. The other times he left...he’d said he was going to seminars. And that he was invited as a guest artist to teach other trainers. I know sometimes that was true because I went on a few of those with him, too.

  “I didn’t see the corporate finances, either,” she continued after a short silence. “He handled all of that. I dealt with our personal finances, and it wasn’t until he was depositing so little of the business earnings in our personal account that I knew something was wrong. I asked him about it, and he said that he’d had to update the club, to buy new equipment to keep up with the technological times. What I hadn’t known was that he’d always been making a whole lot more than he shared with me. He did the business taxes separate from our personal ones we filed jointly. And he liked to keep our personal income to a minimum. Said the business could absorb the tax payment that way... I should have kept a better eye on our money.”

  She was speaking as though to a lawyer, and it dawned on him that it was because she’d done exactly that—just a month before she’d been arrested for murder. Following which, she’d had two months to think about it all. Ad nauseam, he’d guess.

  His gut jerked. What had happened to her...it so wasn’t right.

  “Last year, when I was having trouble making the mortgage payment, I got the job at Howlin’ Eddie’s and ended up having to keep it to pay the bills. That’s when our marriage really started to unravel. Fritz was crazy jealous, hated me in the skimpy barmaid’s outfit, started accusing me of nasty things, saying that I liked the chance to flirt with the male customers while they were drinking... It was crazy. He knew I’m not like that. But I know now that he was judging me by his own behavior.”

  Clarke needed the information she was giving him. But he could feel himself struggling not to hit something as he took it in. The woman had been a faithful, loving wife. Trust shouldn’t be abused that way. And, still, he had to ask the obvious question. Because he had to understand how the life she’d led could somehow be coming back to bite her in the ass.

  “Why not get a job at the grocery store?”

  “Waitressing pays a lot better, especially at a place like Howlin’ Eddie’s, or any place where there’s a good crowd and alcohol being served. And there are tips. I needed money fast. And I waited tables all through high school and during the two years I spent at community college, too, which is where I met Fritz, by the way. I was taking business classes, hoping to open my own hair salon someday, and Fritz was finishing up some advanced training class. I’d gone to the gym between classes and heading to the diner, to get a workout in, and he was there...”

  A woman at the gym he’d charmed. Probably not his first. And definitely not his last. But...

  “You must have been different from the rest of Fritz’s girlfriends,” he said, half to himself. But not quite. From her tone, he could tell she was questioning her choices, wondering how she couldn’t have seen... “It sounds like he made a career out of finding sexual playmates in the guise of training at the gym,” he expanded, “but when he met you...he wanted more than that.”

  At least, he hoped that was what it had been. He’d known her only a few hours and could already tell she deserved far more than the creep had given her.

  When no comment was forthcoming, he asked another question. One that wasn’t on his list... “Why didn’t you ever open your salon?”

  “Fritz said that we couldn’t afford two businesses, and that we didn’t need the money, either. He was obviously wrong about that last bit, at least in recent years, with the health club. We’d both said we wanted someone at home, raising our kids, and somehow the years just kept passing by. I was doing a lot of volunteer work, mostly at the community center in the neighborhood where I grew up. We offered everything from meals, childcare, and haircuts on a volunteer basis as we could. And there were socials and sporting events, too. Fritz encouraged me to spend time there. Said we were blessed and had to give back. I’m guessing now that he liked me there because it kept me away from the west side of town and the circles that would know what he was up to. I ended up working there more hours than a full-time job. From writing grants to cooking... He’d go on and on about all the great work I did, with his parents mostly, and I only recently figured out he was using me to cushion his own reputation with them. Just like he claimed that I was cheating as a reason for our divorce, to protect his reputation with them. He didn’t want to get written out of their will.”

  There was bitterness in her tone.

  Not nearly as much bitterness as he was feeling on her behalf.

  And as he pulled into the garage beneath the high-rise building that housed his two-story condo, he vowed that he was going to do everything in his power to take away the sting Fritz Emerson had administered to his wife.

  He’d find out who was after her.

  He’d protect her fr
om them.

  And he’d see that every single cop in the state visited her salon to get their hair done if she decided she wanted to open one.

  She already owned the building. Fritz’s health club was in a more affluent area downtown and would be a perfect spot for the type of business she’d talked about. Turning a health club into a salon wouldn’t be that much of a stretch...

  Yeah, maybe he’d talk to her about the idea. Talk to his lawyer about giving her a cut rate on setting up a corporation. Maybe he’d...

  Show her to the guest room and stick to the task he’d been assigned.

  Chapter 4

  The room he showed her to was quite lovely. A surprise, to be sure, with its rose-and-brown matching decor, in a bachelor pad. The rest of the place was nice, too, just without the rose highlights. Clearly a woman’s touch.

  A girlfriend, perhaps? The man wasn’t married, had a reputation around town, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t in a serious committed monogamous relationship at the moment. Or, even more likely, more than one relationship, non-monogamous.

  And that idea had no business being a disappointment to her. She wanted nothing to do with Clarke Colton’s personal life. Didn’t want to be associated with his life once she was safe to resume her own.

  Whenever that was going to be. He’d asked her about her own life choices, her lack of a long-term career; his doing so had brought back all of the longings she’d put aside over the years. Her volunteer work was necessary and gave vital care to so many in need. She’d truly been blessed and fulfilled working at the center. And had told herself she was selfish wanting more. But she was done playing beta to Fritz’s manipulation of her thoughts.

  But with Fritz gone, she was going to have to earn a living. While his life insurance was a nice sum, and she did have the health-club building, there was no way she was going to freeload from his demise. Just didn’t seem right.

  Yet she’d been settling for so long...where did she even begin to carve out a whole new life for herself?

  She began by getting herself out of danger. Or helping others more qualified to do so. Clarke had shown her quickly through the condo in a high-rise building. He’d left her at the door of the room she’d be occupying, pointing out its own adjoining private bath, before disappearing. He’d told her that once she was settled, he’d meet her downstairs.

  She didn’t need to get settled. Wasn’t planning to stay long enough to warrant settling in. Unzipping her suitcase, she took out her toiletry bag, scrubbed her face and hands—to remove the smell and feeling of prison air—and then quickly reapplied her normal makeup. Foundation, mascara, a little eye shadow for shading, and she was done. Her fingers were the best comb for her short, sassy windblown hair.

  A style choice she’d made in spite of the fact that her hair was the only thing sassy about her.

  Or maybe because of it.

  And then she ventured downstairs. Not sure where she’d find Clarke. Hoping she didn’t have to poke into too much of his private space to find him.

  He clearly liked books. There were shelves housing them in just about every room she’d seen, including hers. Fiction, nonfiction...didn’t seem to matter.

  She wondered if he read any of them, or if, perhaps, the same decorator who’d tended to her room had added the books to soften the more austere lines of the rest of the space.

  Admonished herself for wondering. Whether he read or not was none of her business. How good he was at his job was all that mattered to her, and since he and the GGPD had been good enough to get her out of jail when her own attorney hadn’t done so, he’d more than proved his professional ability.

  She found him sitting behind an impressive solid wood desk in a large room that reached off the spacious living area. Feeling like an interloper, she passed an impressive home theater system with a lovely large TV and knocked on the opened off-white door.

  “Yeah.” He looked up from an array of computer screens of varying sizes. “Everleigh, come on in. I’ve just been searching some databases to compare registered employees at the health club over the past five years with criminal records...”

  Good. Okay, then. Relaxing some, she walked slowly across the room to a dark leather armchair and little table with a lamp set.

  Settling into the chair, her pose as prim as a schoolgirl’s, she asked, “Did you find anything suspicious there?”

  His raised brow, as he glanced from the screen to her, seemed to hold amusement. He said, “I’ve only had about ten minutes to look.” He grinned.

  She almost grinned back. Almost, but not quite. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” Pushing a laptop aside, putting them in direct line of vision with each other, he asked if her room was okay.

  And for some reason, she replied with, “It’s really nice, actually. Comfortable, but calming and peaceful, too. Who decorated it for you?”

  “How do you know I didn’t do it myself?”

  The first thing she noticed was that he didn’t deny her assumption. And the second was that he appeared to be baiting her. The third, that she’d kind of liked the way his grin made her stomach flip-flop, kept her from smiling back. “You’re right. I apologize,” she said, instead of holding tight to her assumption.

  “No, you’re right. I didn’t put that room together. I told you the room is there specifically for guests, free for the use of my siblings in the event of overload, and my sister took over in there.”

  In there. “So...you did the rest of the place?” Including the books?

  His single nod spoke volumes. Looking around her, picturing what she’d seen of his home, she was impressed. And didn’t have room for that in her current sphere.

  Didn’t have room for a flirt in her life ever again.

  “So far, I’m finding nothing with your ex-husband’s club that would be a motive for killing him. From what I can see so far, and from what I’ve seen from case files, witness testimonies indicate that he didn’t cheat with married women.”

  She hadn’t known that. Wasn’t sure it made a difference, though. He’d cheated. She was glad, though, that the man she’d vowed herself to had at least seemed to have some standards...

  “So, no angry husbands...and no one who stood to gain by his being dead, in terms of the company’s future. As you said, he ran it into the ground. From last year’s business registration, it appears that he only had a couple of employees left, and they’ve both since found other positions.”

  She hadn’t known that, either, being tied up in prison as she’d been. But she was glad to hear it. Relieved that no one else was suffering because of Fritz’s self-focused choices.

  “Good news is, after a quick look at a financial record also in his file, while he has credit-card debt, it’s not substantial, and there’s no debt or spending that would point to creditors of a shadier variety.”

  “Fritz would go to his dad for a loan, if he needed one,” she said. “Ron would give him a lecture first, but he’d give Fritz the money. It happened a time or two when he was first starting the gym. No way Fritz would risk dealing with some shady shark. He’d lose his inheritance. The one thing his father expected of him was to uphold the family name.”

  “Which you don’t do by cheating on your wife.”

  She acknowledged the comment with a nod, accompanied by a sick feeling inside her that he couldn’t see. “Hence, his lies about me cheating.”

  Just like he surely knew that Fritz’s body had been found in his small den at their home, having been bashed over the head with a heavy stained-glass paperweight. What he wouldn’t know was that she hadn’t even been in that room since Fritz had moved out the month before. Not even to clean. That there’d been no way her hair and fibers from her apron could have been found on the murder weapon, which he kept in the den.

  She’d told more than one Colton at the time of her arrest
—though, from what she’d gathered since, that part of her statement wasn’t going to make it into court. And then her attorney had told her not to say any more. Her lawyer’s inexperience had nearly cost her the rest of her life.

  Until Clarke Colton had helped prove that Randall Bowe had tampered with the evidence, planting her hair and fibers on the weapon. She still could hardly believe it all.

  Wondered if she’d always be in shock over it...

  “So, who would want Fritz dead?” Clarke asked. “Can you think of anyone who might have something to gain from this?”

  “Some woman was paid to say that she’d seen me near my house at the time of the murder, when, in fact, I’d been walking in the park downtown, on my dinner break from work. Maybe she has something to do with all of this,” she suggested.

  He shook his head. “She’s already been questioned extensively. She doesn’t even know who, ultimately, paid to have her testify. She was approached, needed the money and didn’t ask questions...”

  Everleigh wondered how little it had taken for the woman to ruin an innocent person’s life. A hundred dollars? Two?

  And she wondered what might have happened to the woman, to get her to sell her soul in such a way. Nothing good, she was sure.

  Life was a lot harder on some than others. Having grown up in the neighborhood she had, she knew that firsthand. Desperation drove people to do unsavory things. She’d seen it again and again in her own volunteer work.

  And thanked God every day that she’d been spared. Glancing out his office window, directly beneath the room she’d been allotted, looking out over downtown Grave Gulch, she tried to focus without undue emotion attached to her thoughts. Her memories.

  At the time of the murder, she’d been pretty much in shock, dealing with the divorce, and with the fact that Fritz had been spreading rumors about her moral character, labeling her a cheater. And then she’d been arrested. It was just so hard to comprehend it all...and to do so without a feeling of helplessness that...