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“Alan and Declan both have… had… some personal investments outside the business, but Alan has sold some off to fund his gambling. I guess he’s getting enough of a return on them still to keep Nicola in the life she wants, but not much else.”
“Do you have any idea when you can buy him out?”
“I don’t, and it’s worrying me. If he has to declare bankruptcy, it’s not going to look good on the business, even though he’s technically a minority owner. I don’t want the business, but I don’t want him to hurt it through his bad choices. Declan did work his entire life for it.”
I smiled sympathetically.
“I know,” she said, meeting my gaze. “After everything… But I loved him once, and he was still my husband, even if he was a piece of shit.”
“You don’t have to explain it to me,” I reassured her, reaching out to touch her hand. “Emotions are complicated things, and you don’t have to justify them to anyone.”
“Thank you.” She flipped her hand to quickly squeeze my fingers. “Anyway, I have to go. I have to get his name off all the things we’re on jointly. See you later.”
“Bye, Steph.” I sipped my coffee as she left, then turned around to look at the back of her head.
Did she sayallthe things they were on jointly?
Was there more than just the house and a bank account?
I really did hate to suspect her, but at every turn, she seemed to have one more motive to kill her husband.
But it still bugged me, because could she really stab someone thirteen times? Especially someone as big as Declan was?
“You know,” Heather said, coming over to pick up Steph’s dirty mug. “I can’t quite decide who I think did it.”
“Did it?” I asked. “Oh, killed Declan?”
She nodded. “Sometimes I think Alan has the biggest motive, but then she says things like that, and I can’t help but wonder if their marriage was really as bad as she says it was.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I don’t think you’re the only one.”
“I don’t mean to infer she’s lying. I think it’s quite clear now that he was horribly abusive to a great many people, especially her. I just can’t help but think that, for someone who says she was so under the financial thumb, she seems to be a joint owner on an awful lot of things, doesn’t she?” Heather smiled tightly and took the dirty mug away, stopping at another empty table to collect the tray of dirty mugs on her way to the back.
I looked back over my shoulder at the door and sighed.
I hated to think it, but Heather was right.
She really, really was.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Ididn’t know when I’d turned into a master internet researcher, but I was betting it was only because Declan Tierney was a semi-public figure so most of his life was documented in one way or another.
Especially locally.
Locally, the man was like marmite. You either loved him or you hated him, and that most definitely leant itself to a wide range of information available to me.
The internet was a wonderful thing, really.
Thanks to it, I now knew that he’d owned three personal properties in Norfolk. The house Stephanie was back living in, a luxurious flat in Great Yarmouth, and a country place somewhere near the Sandringham Estate.
Tracking them down wasn’t that difficult thanks to holiday websites. Declan had rented out both the country house and the flat, so the address was readily available. With that, I was able to go to the land registry and spend six of my hard-earnt pounds to get the deeds in my grubby little hands.
Stephanie was a co-owner on both of the properties.
Meaning she was now the sole owner of their marital home, the flat, and the country place. She had free reign to do what she wanted with them—live in them, continue to rent them out, or even sell them.
As I’d said before with the B&B, I didn’t know much about property values. Once again, the internet showed up for me, and I was able to see that he’d bought the country place eight years ago for a cool one and a half million in cash, and the Great Yarmouth flat was worth approximately one-point-two million, if a neighbouring flat for sale was anything to go by.
