A Dead And Stormy Night: A Bed And Breakfast Cozy Mystery by A.R. Winters

Author:A.R. Winters [Winters, A.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-01-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Kenneth’s words hung in the air, swirling as thick and heavy as the Florida humidity. For a second, my brain couldn’t quite process them. Or maybe I couldn’t accept a stranger giving voice to the thought I’d be having for the last two days.

Either way, it took me long enough to respond that a look of concern crossed Kenneth’s chiseled face.

“Sorry. Guess I spoke a bit too freely.” He moved beneath the awning next to Granny.

“You’re jokin’… right, honey?” she asked, scooting over just enough to make room for him.

Kenneth swiped his forearm across his forehead to wipe the sweat away. “Afraid not, Mrs. Fisher. Hal was a hard man to be around. Turnover at FI is off the charts. I wasn’t the only employee who wanted to get away. Just the only one Hal wanted to stay bad enough to threaten.”

“But this is his family we’re talking about,” I said. “Not employees. It’s different.”

“From what I saw, he ran the family and FI the same way. But employees. get to walk away.” He shrugged. “Jeremy and Tabitha share his blood. They’d have never been rid of him unless it was on his terms. And Catherine? She’s the poor sucker who married him. No way he didn’t secure his position on that deal.”

I furrowed my brow. “You spoke to Catherine?”

“Didn’t have to. Men like Hal know they’ll get married and divorced more than once. Catherine’s an amazing woman, but Hal earned the money, and to him, that made it all his. He’d never let her walk away with anything more than crumbs.”

“If he’s as awful as you say he was, maybe she was just waiting for her younger daughters to grow up more.” I went back to stuffing sandbags. “Crumbs is a lot when it comes with a side helping of self-respect.”

“That’s a nice thought, but I doubt it,” he said. “Do you have any idea how expensive a divorce gets when you’re fighting a prenuptial agreement?”

I shook my head. “Never been married.”

“Never been divorced,” Granny said.

“My sister is a divorce attorney out in the Bay Area,” he said. “When she gets a client who’s fighting a prenup, her billable hours go through the roof and I get a great Christmas present. Her clients don’t have near the kind of money the Jepsens do. Whatever the prenup gave Catherine, Hal would have made her burn through that and more if she tried to put up a fight.”

My heart sank a little as I tied the bag off near the top then held it out to him with both hands. “So she was stuck.”

For not having spoken to Catherine Jepsen, Kenneth had sure accurately called the state of their relationship when he died.

“The only one well and truly stuck. Jeremy had his own house and now his own family. Eventually the girls would all have grown up, moved away, and had families of their own.” Kenneth added the bag to the pile.

“How can you be so sure Melody and Alexis would have? Odds are one of them is a daddy’s girl.

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