"Not yet."

"Then why are you here?" she asked.

"I need a play-by-play of where you were all day Thursday," he said.

"Good Lord! I didn't kill him. I wouldn't. I couldn't. I love him." She threw a hand over her forehead in a dramatic gesture. "I would never"-her eyes welled up with tears that spilled down over her cheeks-"kill the father of my baby." She reached for a tissue and dabbed at her face. "And if you do your job, you'll find that he divorced those other two women."

"We've been looking into that since his death. It appears that there are records of him marrying all three of you, but no divorces on file. Could you please just tell me where you were on Thursday?"

She pointed down at her stomach. "Did either one of those masked people who shot my Conrad have a belly like this?"

"They did not," he answered.

"Okay, then, take me off the suspect list. How could I? And I have dozens of people who were in and out of this store all day Thursday who will testify that I never left the place. Opened at nine and didn't close until after five that day. We had a preIndependence Day sale going on," she said. "Besides, it's three hours to Dallas. There's no way I could have gone there and come back without being missed."

"Can you tell me who might want him dead?" Conrad pulled out his notebook.

"Probably one of those other two who have burned the divorce papers," she said.

There was enough venom in her voice that Waylon had to fight the urge to make the sign of a cross over his chest. "You think they might have conspired together to kill him when they found out he was a polygamist?"

"He is not." Her tone shot up so shrill that it could have cracked glass. "They did something with the papers. I'm his only wife. That rich bitch could have hired someone to kill him, but she wouldn't get her hands dirty with the job. The other one looked mean enough to me to have done it herself, just like she said. Your job is to find the divorce papers so my baby won't be a bastard." She shook her forefinger at him.

"My job, ma'am, is to find who killed him," Waylon said. "I'll have more questions later, so don't leave the state. I'll need a number where I can reach you."

She handed him a business card with her cell phone number on the bottom. "When you find out who did this, I want to be the first to know."

"Thank you for taking time to talk to me and for the cold drink." He straightened up and extended his hand.

"You will find these people, won't you?"

"I hope so. I'm retiring before long, and I don't want to leave an open case on my desk." He smiled.

"And you will let me know?"

He nodded. "You have my word."

He would tell them all when he closed the case, starting with Kate, the legal wife, and working his way down to Amanda. After the hysterics from her at the funeral, he'd expected to find her still weeping and whining. Maybe it was all for show and they were in it together after all. If so, he'd see them all behind bars before he left the precinct for good.

CHAPTER FOUR.

Fourteen years hadn't changed the old cabin much. Five mismatched rocking chairs awaited her in a line across the wide front porch. The one on the end with the wide arms sat a little higher than the others, and she'd claimed that as her chair on her honeymoon. Kate would wrap a big quilt around her body and bring her morning coffee out to the porch. There she would listen to the soft laps of the lake as it rolled up on the shore.

Her high-heeled shoes sank into the soft green grass as she pulled two suitcases up onto the porch. She parked them on the porch and sat down in the rocking chair. Nothing happened. No peace, no memories. Just a hot wind, like that on the day of the funeral, blowing across her face and making beads of sweat pop up under her nose. She pushed up out of the chair and found the spare key hidden under the flowerpot shoved up in the corner.

Twenty-nine steps off the deck out back led straight down to the boat shed where the pontoon used to be housed. Conrad had used it in one of his schemes a few years back and bragged about it to her, so now there was just an empty shed down there. She opened the front door and wheeled her suitcase and briefcase inside. She expected the musty scent of a house that had been closed for a long time. But the aroma of something sweet, like a scented candle or potpourri, lingered. Had someone been there recently? Kate parked her suitcases in the middle of the floor and went straight to the thermostat, turning it down from seventy-eight to seventy degrees. And then she eased down on the sofa and covered her eyes with the back of her hand.

Coming to the cabin might have been a bad idea. She could have gone anywhere in the world for a few weeks, and this was the very last place she should be. But after her mother suggested that she get away for a while, all she could think of was the quiet happiness that she'd known sitting in that rocking chair on the porch. And she did need to get all the legal matters settled before her mother retired.

With its log walls and Western decor, the interior of the house was as rustic as the outside. The front door opened right into a great roomliving room and country kitchen separated only by an archway. A panoramic view of the lake spread out before her from the sliding glass doors that opened up to the wide deck where Kate had watched beautiful Texas sunsets every evening for a whole week.

She was there and she didn't plan to leave, so all that was left was to unpack. She rolled her luggage down the hallway toward the master bedroom, but she couldn't make herself go into the room. She'd known he'd had other women, but did he bring them here? Did he have sex with them in her honeymoon bed? There was no way in hell she could sleep in that room. The therapist would call it love-hate, what she experienced as she stood there, her feet glued to the floor. She'd loved him. He'd tricked her. She hated him. All those feelings finally hit home and rolled up into a hard ball in the middle of her chest. They did not make for the happy, peaceful feeling she'd hoped for.

She crossed the hall to a second bedroom and noticed a furry paw sticking out from under the bed. Startled, her first reaction was to run until she realized it wasn't a mouse but a stuffed animal. She crossed the room and raised the bed skirt to find a little toy bunny no bigger than the palm of her hand and a Barbie doll wearing a bathing suit. The doll's black hair was frayed, giving testimony that it had seen lots of time in the bathtub. No doubt about it, Conrad had brought his daughter and her mother here.

Kate made her way to the second guest room. Judging by the dust on the dresser, no one had been in this room in years. Evidently the wife with the little girl only dusted and took care of the part of the house that they used.

Which makes this room perfect.

She set her briefcase at the end of the dresser and parked her suitcases in the middle of the floor, went back to the car, and rolled in a case with her laptop and printer/fax machine. She took it straight to the room and parked it beside the dresser. A queen-size bed with a split railtype headboard, flanked on both sides with nightstands and lamps fashioned from horseshoes, a six-drawer dresser with a mirror above it, and a nice-size empty closet waited for her. A gold velvet rocking chair had been shoved into a corner. It looked comfortable and well worn, as if someone had used it a lot in the past.

"No bad auras here," she mumbled.

That room, with its rustic charm, felt right. She stripped down the bed, carried the sheets and the quilt to the utility room, and shoved as much as she could into the washer. She found a dust cloth and a can of spray cleaner in the cabinets over the washer and dryer and returned to the bedroom. While she was dusting, she thought she heard the squeaky hinges on the front door but attributed the noise to the washer and kept right on cleaning her new bedroom. She'd come to the cabin to get away from everyone, and no one even knew she was there.

"Hello?" a thin voice yelled.

Kate stepped out of the room to find a wide-eyed Amanda standing in the hallway not five feet from her.

Amanda tucked her chin and glared. "What are you doing here?"

"I own this place. What are you doing here?" Kate asked.

Before Amanda could answer, another voice called out, "Who's here? Show yourself."

Kate recognized wife number two-Jamie, was it? Amanda whipped around as fast as her big belly would allow and stomped into the living room with Kate right behind her.

"Get out! Both of you, get out! This is my cabin," Amanda shouted and waved her arms around. "Conrad told me when he brought me here for my honeymoon that he was leaving it to me in his will. So get off my property and don't ever set foot on it again."

Jamie took a step around the suitcases in the middle of the floor. "And he promised me and Gracie the same thing. You can leave. I'm staying right here the rest of the summer and there's not a damn thing either of you can do about it."

"Just for the record, I'm the first wife and this property is mine unless there is a will. So far there's nothing filed in Fort Worth or the surrounding counties," Kate said.

"He's only been dead"-Amanda winced at the word-"nine days. Give it time and it will turn up, just like his divorces from both of you, and when it does, you are both leaving my house."

Jamie crossed her arms over her chest. "And if it's my house, then you two can get out of it. How long will it take to figure this out?" She frowned at Kate.

"I have no idea," Kate answered. "Why would either of you even want to stay here?"

"It's where Conrad brought me last December on our honeymoon. We started off the new year right here on the deck and watched the fireworks display out on the lake," Amanda answered.

Jamie drew her eyebrows down in a frown. "And I suppose he said he'd bring you back here for a week out of every summer?"

Amanda nodded. "We were supposed to arrive tomorrow, and now"-she sniffled-"I'll have to just imagine that he is here with me."

Gracie tugged on her mother's shirttail. "Mommy, are they really going to live with us?"

"Looks like it, because we aren't leaving." Jamie grabbed the handles of two suitcases and rolled them down the hallway.

Kate wrapped her arms around her body in a hug, but it didn't help. Her blood still ran cold through her veins. Conrad had been a smart con. He kept his stories straight by keeping them the same, starting with her. Or did he? Was there another wife out there who was even older than Kate?

A week in the same house with those two was not the peaceful time she'd been looking forward to, but there was no way she was backing down from the challenge. Whether she wanted to be or not, she was the real wife at the time of his death. She'd paid for his funeral, and it would cost her a lot of money to get all this crap cleared up, so she was staying right here.

Amanda tilted her chin up a notch. "I'm having the master bedroom."

"I don't want it," Jamie said. "Gracie and I were planning to use her room anyway."

Kate shrugged and turned around, her high heels sounding like a BB gun on the hardwood floor. Jamie's cowboy boots echoed like shotgun blasts as she stomped down the hallway. Amanda's blinged-out flip-flops reminded Kate of a series of slaps as she stormed toward the master bedroom.

Two doors slammed before Kate eased hers shut. She fell back into the rocker and closed her eyes. Evidently, Amanda had kicked off her flip-flops, because Kate heard bare feet pacing from one side of the room to the other. Jamie had shut the door to her room, and although Kate couldn't understand a word of the rapid-fire Spanish, there was no doubt that she was ready to blow.

I'm going to stay until I get all this stuff settled, not only with the cabin but with the investigation. I'm not going back until everyone knows that I was not responsible for Conrad's death.

A hard rap jerked her into an upright position. She opened the door so she could discern between the noise of the washing machine and maybe someone knocking on the door. The second rat-a-tat-tat assured her that someone was at the door.

She headed that way, wondering the whole time if wife number four might be standing on the other side. If so, she was shit outta luck unless she wanted to sleep on the sofa or out on the deck, because the honeymoon cabin had no vacancies.

Kate found Waylon Kramer standing there, cowboy hat tilted back so she could see his blue eyes, a smile as big as a happy Cheshire cat on his face.

"Miz Steele," he said.

"How did you find me?" she asked.

"Easy. I called your office and your mother told me where you'd gone. She's as eager as I am to get this solved. Am I right in assuming that all three of the wives are going to spend time together in this house? Are you sure that you never met any of those women before the funeral?"

"I guess that's what's about to happen. And I'm very sure I never met them before then."

"Did y'all plan to be here at the same time?"

"Hell, no," she said.

He chuckled.

She crossed her arms over her chest. "What's so funny?"

"A cussword coming out of your prim and proper mouth."

"I don't think you can arrest me for cussing on my own property, can you?" she asked.

"No, ma'am. But I'm beginning to think maybe you all three did find out about the others and planned a perfect murder. You've all got alibis, but one of you had to come up with the money, and I'll bet that person was you. And honey, I will close this case," he answered.

"You drove all the way from Dallas just to tell me that?" she asked.

"No, I have a small ranch in Mabelle, so I was close by. But if you'd like to confess, I brought my recorder." He patted his shirt pocket.

"I have nothing to confess, and just so you know, I did not know those other two were coming up here. If there's nothing else, I've got unpacking to do," she said.

"When this all comes out in court, you'll wish that you'd come clean. We could probably make a deal to take the death penalty off the table if you didn't make us use up man-hours and resources. The jury might even have mercy on you when they hear what a scoundrel Conrad Steele was."

"Good-bye, Detective Kramer. You have a nice day, now. Do drive safe-I wouldn't want folks saying that you ran off the road and blaming me for your death." Kate shut the door in his face and slid down the back side. Her skirt hiked all the way up to her panty line when she drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. Tears stung her eyes, but she refused to let them flow. She would not cry, not one single tear, no matter how crazy things got.

She wasn't aware anyone was in the room with her until Jamie's daughter laid a hand on her arm.

"I'm Gracie. You are Kate, right? Daddy showed me a picture of you and said you was his sister. Does that make you my aunt?" Her big brown eyes bored into Kate's. "You have blue eyes. How can you be my aunt?"

"I'm not your aunt, Gracie. I was married to your father before he married your mama," Kate explained.

"And that other one, the fat one, was she married to Daddy, too?" Gracie asked.

Kate held the giggle inside. "Yes, she was."

"Like Sister Wives on television?"

"Your mama lets you watch that?" Kate asked.

"No, but my babysitter watches it and I know that there's one daddy and lots of wives, like now, huh?" Gracie asked. "Only y'all didn't even know you were sister wives, did you?"

"Gracie, where . . ." Jamie stopped both walking and talking.

"I'm right here talking to Kate." Gracie grinned.

"Who was at the door?" Jamie glared at Kate.

"That big man who was at Daddy's funeral," Gracie answered.

"What did he want?" Jamie frowned.

Amanda pushed her way past Jamie. "I heard a truck and looked out the window, hoping both of you were leaving. What did he want?"

"He thinks we have conspired together and paid someone to . . ." Kate looked down at Gracie. "You know."

"Is he insane? I told him I would never . . ." Amanda puckered up again. "I loved him too much . . ." She threw up her hands and hurried to her room.

"You better believe I told him I would have," Jamie said bluntly. "In a split second, if I'd known for sure."

"For sure?" Kate asked.

"Oh, yeah, I had my suspicions this last year when he started arriving late and leaving a day or two early. Import, export, my behind," Jamie said.

"Mama, can I take my toys out on the deck and play?" Gracie asked.

"Yes, but you can't go to the lake or even down the steps without me. Stay on the deck." Jamie nodded. She turned to Kate. "So exactly what is import, export? I never got a straight answer."