White lies by Jayne Ann Krentz

Author:Jayne Ann Krentz [Krentz, Jayne Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary Romance
ISBN: 9780399153730
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2007-01-16T21:44:31.794000+00:00

“Brad didn’t fight the divorce?”

“He made a few attempts to convince everyone that he loved Elizabeth and didn’t want the divorce but he must have realized that there was no chance of salvaging the marriage.” She paused. “At least not as long as I was in the picture. He had to know that if the situation changed in any way, I’d come back to Arizona in a flash.”

“Did you ever meet McAllister in person?”

“Yes. Once. I went with Elizabeth on the one occasion when she and Brad met with the lawyers together. She wanted me there in case Brad tried anything. But everyone was very nice and polite and civilized. I swear, there was something about McAllister that was colder than ice, though.”

“Was that the first time you met Archer?”

“No, he flew up to San Francisco as soon as he found out I had spirited Elizabeth away.”

“Did he try to talk you out of encouraging Elizabeth’s divorce?”

She tipped her head to one side, thinking. “No, he didn’t, as a matter of fact. Elizabeth was very firm about the decision. And Archer and I were both stepping very cautiously around each other at that point.”

“Go on with your story.”

“A couple of weeks after that, Elizabeth invited me down for a long weekend. I was due to arrive Friday evening. But that afternoon Elizabeth got an e-mail telling her that something had come up on my end and I wouldn’t be able to get to Stone Canyon until the following morning. She attended a reception for the Stone Canyon Arts Academy with her parents, instead.”

“The e-mail changing your arrival time was not from you, I take it?”

“No,” Clare said. “I arrived on schedule Friday evening, picked up a car, drove to the house and found Brad’s body.”

“What about the e-mail message you supposedly sent?”

“It looked perfectly legitimate. The return address was mine.”

He contemplated her across the table. “You think Brad sent that fake e-mail, don’t you?”

“It isn’t that difficult to use a phony e-mail address. Spammers do it all the time.”

“You think he wanted to lure you to the house that night in order to murder you because you were ruining his scheme.” Jake’s voice was disturbingly cool and very, very neutral.

She gripped the tea mug tightly. Maybe he wasn’t going to believe her after all. Well, she could hardly blame him.

“Yes,” she said.

“But someone else got to him first?”

“Yes.”

“Sort of a large coincidence, isn’t it?” Jake asked.

“Not if you go with the possibility that Brad’s murder was deliberately timed to take place while I was here in town,” she said.

“You think someone wanted to throw suspicion on you?”

“Maybe. Or maybe the killer staged things that way in case the police didn’t buy the interrupted burglary scenario. Maybe I was just the fall gal.”

“If you’re right, it means that both Brad McAllister and his killer knew your flight schedule that Friday,” he said.

“I’m sure it was no secret around Elizabeth’s office that I was coming into town to see her.”

“It also implies that someone knew Brad was planning to kill you.

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