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Finley stared at the name Jarrod Grady written across the page and then underlined.
Like her, Winthrop had never been married or engaged before.
Why the sudden marriage? At fifty it wasn’t likely that she was rushing to start procreating. With all her accomplishments it didn’t seem plausible that she’d wanted to impress anyone or to attain a particular personal milestone by getting married. Her life was one milestone after another according to Google.
Whatever the reason for the marriage—love, bucket list, whim—once it was done, it was an agreement. A contract. Agreements and contracts involved trust. It was possible Winthrop had learned of his deception and lost it. Killed him without really meaning to. It happened.
Finley tried to imagine how she would have felt if she’d learned of Derrick’s lies while he was still alive. What would she have done? Walked out? Waged a major fight? Kickedhimout? She couldn’t see herself doing him bodily harm.
That said, she was only human. One never knew what one would do until tested by an event. Winthrop would be no exception.
There were times when even the best human could be pushed too far.
5
The Widow
Midnight
Pettit Residence
Penrose Drive, Brentwood
Jarrod was dead.
After the initial turmoil of emotions, Ellen felt oddly numb about his death.
She supposed that was normal ... under the circumstances. Worse, she couldn’t think ... couldn’t seem to grasp what she should do next. She’d been standing here, unmoving, in her dear friend’s guest bedroom for half an hour.
Deep breath.Pull yourself together, Ellen.
Laney, her lifelong friend and considerate host, had offered Ellen wine or a cocktail, water or coffee ... whatever she needed. Ellen wasn’t at all sure what she needed.
Jarrod is dead.
She had explained to the police how her husband was not the man she’d thought he was. He had tricked her. Used her. Despite great andoddly unexpected emotional difficulty, she had provided all the necessary details.
The detective had displayed some amount of sympathy as she’d explained that she had felt entirely foolish about arriving at fifty and still having the kind of needs that ultimately rendered her vulnerable to this sort of betrayal. What was worse, she had unfortunately allowed her deep, desperate feelings of loneliness to blind her to the truth for far too long.
The stoic detective had said nothing. He’d only nodded and waited for her to go on with her story. But some degree of understanding remained in his eyes. The man had a mother. Of course he understood. Any good and kind man would. Even Jack Finnegan had seemed to soften as she told her story the second time, but whether his visible concern was real or for the detective’s benefit, she couldn’t say. Finnegan and his investigator, Finley O’Sullivan, were the best criminal defense team in the Nashville area. Ellen had chosen them precisely for that reason—despite her own attorney’s reservations.
The step had been necessary to navigate what was to come.
Ellen’s story wasn’t a new one. Age, loneliness—no amount of power or money made one immune to those all-too-human weaknesses. She had first seen Jarrod the night of her ridiculously grand half-century birthday celebration. Her friends had thrown her a huge party at the Bridge Building. Jarrod had served as a member of the waitstaff. That alone made what had happened in the end all the more preposterous. No doubt people would wonder what she had been thinking.
Obviously, they would imagine, she had not been at all.
She smiled. She supposed she could live with that.
Ellen had presented the facts in the official interview at the precinct, and how could anyone doubt her? The uncomfortable questioning that followed was nothing more than a necessary step of the investigation.
Ellen had not one thing to fear.
She walked to the bed, where her overnight bag sat. Jack had driven her back to her home, where she had been allowed to gather a few things under the close watch of a uniformed officer. She flinched at the memory of yellow crime scene tape and all those markers where evidence had been flagged. The blood. She shuddered. The people still milling about in their protective gear, gathering prints and fibers. The images had been more challenging than she’d anticipated.
She wished the nightmare had not happened in her home. She’d built the house twenty years ago, when she’d closed her first multimillion-dollar deal. She’d personally selected each light fixture, every paint color ... every single thing that went into the making of her dream home.
Now it would never be the same.
