Trinity Harbor 3 - Along Came Trouble by Sherryl Woods Read Free Book Online Page B

asked.
    “She’s upset, not distraught,” Tucker conceded tightly. “The marriage was on the rocks.” He scowled at Walker’s immediate show of interest. “That doesn’t mean she wanted him dead.”
    “What about money? That’s always a motive for opting for murder over divorce.”
    “She had plenty of her own.”
    “You sure about that? It costs a lot to maintain a place like this.”
    “And she inherited more than enough from her grandfather. The Swans might have been relative latecomers to this area, but they were descended from English aristocracy. The first family member arrived here at the beginning of the eighteenth century, maybe a decade or two after the Spencers.
    Wil iam Swan had a head for business. So did every male descendent who came after, at least until Mary Elizabeth’s father. He was better at throwing money around than making it. He and her mother were spending the winter skiing in Switzerland when they died in an avalanche. That’s when Mary Elizabeth came here to live with her grandfather. It was the first time she’d seen him since she was a toddler. She barely even remembered him, but he took her in and devoted himself to raising her. He left her everything he had.”
    “Thanks for the history lesson, but it doesn’t have much to do with what went on here last night,” Walker pointed out.
    Tucker frowned. “Fine. Ignore the past and concentrate on the evidence. What have you got?”
    “The forensics guys are working in there now. No signs of a struggle. Nothing out of place. We’l have to ask Mrs. Chandler if anything’s missing, but it looks as if whoever did it had only one thing on his—or her—mind, kil ing Chandler and getting away.”
    “I strol ed around outside. I didn’t spot any signs of forced entry,” Tucker said. “How about you?”
    “None I could see, either.”
    “Then he let the kil er in,” Tucker concluded.
    “Or the kil er had a key,” Walker suggested with a pointed look outside where Mary Elizabeth remained, shoulders slumped and sunshine glinting on her hair.
    “She had an alibi,” Tucker reminded him.
    “You checked it out?”
    “No, but you wil , and it wil hold up. I’d bet my badge on it.”
    Walker regarded him evenly. “What hours does the alibi cover?”
    “Al day yesterday, til around eleven last night. That’s when she found him.”
    “And after that?”
    “She came straight to my place.”
    “You know that how?” Walker countered. “You were on duty.”
    “She told me,” he began, then faltered, irritated by his own gul ibility. “Damn.”
    “Exactly,” Walker said sympathetical y. “You don’t know for sure what time she got to your place. You don’t know for sure what time Chandler was shot. There’s a lot of wiggle room in there.”
    Tucker didn’t want to agree with Walker, but he was forced to concede that Mary Elizabeth’s alibi wasn’t as airtight as he’d hoped. Now that he thought about it, even her alibi of being on the river al day long meant nothing. There was a very large dock at the edge of the property. She could have brought the boat around here from the marina, slipped inside, shot her husband and gone back to Colonial Beach without anyone being the wiser. Hel and damn!
    He met Walker’s gaze. “You’re going to need to ask some questions over at the marina at the beach. She said she was out in her boat yesterday.
    Someone probably gassed it up, saw her on the docks, something that wil confirm her story.”
    Walker’s gaze shot to the dock in the distance. “Dammit, Tucker, who’s going to be able to say she didn’t make a beeline straight over here?”
    “Other boaters,” Tucker countered, thankful he’d grasped the same point in time to come up with a plausible counterargument. “This time of year the river’s crawling with them, and not just on the weekends. If you don’t want to take the time to track them down, I wil .”
    “You can’t,” Walker shot back. “Anything you