Page 12 of The Nature of Secrets

Now there were only two.

One down, two to go.

She collapsed on the sofa—Derrick’s consignment store sofa—and placed the bottle on the floor next to her. She considered turning on the television but decided against it. The news was depressing, and apparently no one knew how to make good movies anymore.

For a moment she savored her wine and considered what the hell she was doing still living here. It was the burning question in everyone’s mind, right? She should move on, shouldn’t she? Why linger in this dump of a house, where her dead husband’s clothes still hung on one side of the tiny closet they’d shared in the unfinished bedroom. Outside, in the visibly leaning old garage, his vintage truck remained.

She could move back to the Woodmont condo. Another gulp of wine was required to swallow that thought. The tenant’s lease would be coming up for renewal soon.

But she wouldn’t go back.Could notgo back.

She couldn’t leave this house, because she had unfinished business here.

Derrick still existed in this place. He had touched every part of it just as he had touched every part of her. If his truck or his clothes and other stuff—or this house—could help her find the answers she needed, she had to stay close ... couldn’t let go. The fact was, all of it was evidence.

Evidence of his murder and of his lies ... his secrets.

Derrick Reed, the man she had fallen for in record time and subsequently married without even warning her parents, had not been working on this house for months as he’d told her. She remembered vividly how he’d gone on and on about falling in love with the original floors and personally rewiring the electrical and updating the plumbing. Et cetera. Lies. Every word. He’d bought the house just a couple of weeks before the two of them met.

He had lied about everything.

She hadn’t known this for more than a year after his murder.

In the beginning the physical pain of healing and the emotional pain of facing the fact that Derrick was dead and she wasn’t had been all-consuming. With nothing else to do and desperately needing to occupy her mind, she had returned to work at the DA’s office. Everyone had insisted that was the best thing to do. She needed to focus on something—anything—besides Derrick’s murder. Bravo to her for having the courage and the strength to move forward until—in the middle of her first big postrecovery case—she fell apart.

She laughed and refilled her glass. “Fell apart?”

The term was like calling a hurricane a breeze. The diagnosed psychotic episode was a complete breakdown that had required thirty days of a different kind of hospitalization and rehab. In the end she’d walked away from her position at the DA’s office and given up practicing law altogether.

Turned out it was the right decision.

Which reminded her—Finley dug her notepad from her bag and flipped to the page where she had jotted her thoughts regarding the firm’s new client.

Ellen Winthrop.Finley thought of the woman who had spoken so carefully with a believable amount of emotion infused in her voice and actions here and there. Her story was precisely crafted. So exact. She could explain everything. She hadn’t been in the house. Her security system proved as much. She had no idea what had happened.

This needled at Finley. It was too perfect, too detailed.

Except Winthrop couldn’t explain how someone else had entered the house undetected by said security system or how they had acquired access to that titanium hammer used as a murder weapon.

The detective had pointed this out more than once during the official questioning. Winthrop hadn’t wavered in her answers. Once her statement was completed and signed, she had been allowed to leave.

Finley and Jack had reached the same conclusions about their new client. They agreed that by the end of the week, Winthrop would likely be arrested for the murder unless another suspect came to light. That couldhappen over the coming days. It would take some time to process the scene and the evidence. There were friends and neighbors to interview. A forensic accounting of the missing money would be required. And numerous other details to confirm. The investigation had only just started.

But the bottom line was not optimal.

Jack had warned Winthrop that she should expect and prepare for an arrest.

Like Finley’s mother, the Judge, Winthrop was an intelligent, powerful woman. She had run an extensive background check on her husband before they married. The Judge had done exactly that with Derrick, as had Finley. Neither she nor Finley had found anything suspicious. Winthrop said the same about her husband. She’d found nothing negative about Jarrod Grady. Finley could empathize to some degree with the idea. The part she couldn’t see was Winthrop having no idea whatsoever of who might have wanted him dead. Maybe she was merely in shock and ideas would occur to her later.

Winthrop couldn’t possibly have reached her current career pinnacle without making a few enemies. No matter how nice she might be, there would be bodies in the wake of her climb to the top.

Finley had other questions as well. A woman like Winthrop wouldn’t leave important details like a choice of attorneys to the last minute. She had attorneys, yet she had chosen Jack for representation at possibly the most perilous time of her life. Why would a woman in her position call in an attorney she had never met or who had not been recommended by one of her trusted attorneys? Winthrop had insisted that she’d heard about Jack back in July during the Legard case. The claim was certainly possible. The high-profile murder case involving twin daughters and the death of their music-legend father had rocked the Nashville area when it happened and then half a decade later when the whole truth finally came out.

Jack and the firm had been in the news a lot back in the summer because of that case, but Winthrop’s answer still didn’t sit right with Finley.

It was true that Jack was an exceptional defense attorney. Finley would certainly want him on her team if she were ever charged with a crime. But this was not your average woman. This was a woman who had built a financial empire. A woman savvy in business and certainly in the law. Why wouldn’t she have her personal attorney present as well?

Why turn over her fate to a man she had never met?

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