"He was a jobber. Do you know what that is?" Kate asked.

Jamie shook her head.

"He was an independent buyer of clothing and jewelry from stores after they had finished their seasonal sales. He would give the store ten cents on the dollar for all that was left and then sell it for twice that to discount clothing stores. He exported stuff out of those stores and imported it into other stores," Kate said.

"He made it sound like a fancy job." Jamie melted into a chair. "God, I feel stupid."

Kate rocked up onto her knees and used the door handle to help her go from there to standing. "You mentioned doubts?"

"A wife knows when a man is having sex outside of his home. Surely you did."

"I didn't give a damn after the first year," Kate said.

"Then why didn't you divorce him?"

"That's none of your business." Kate's hands were shaking when she went to her room, closed the door, and kicked off her high heels. She sat down on the edge of the bed. What if one of those other two did kill him? If so, then she might be next in line. They both sure seemed to be in a hurry to lay claim to the cabin, and she was the only one standing in their way.

"Stop it!" she scolded herself. "They want this place, but they did not kill Conrad. Not even a Hollywood actor can put on an act like they did at the funeral."

Still, a shiver ran down her back as she opened her suitcases and filled the empty dresser drawers, hung up shorts and shirts, and neatly placed her sandals on the floor of the closet. She'd brought two sundresses in case she decided to go to church and two bathing suits for swimming. Other than that, it was strictly casual summer clothing.

She unzipped her straight business skirt and removed the matching short-sleeved jacket, hung them on a hanger together, and then pushed the straps down from a full-length slip, letting it slide off her slim body and puddle up around her feet. No panty hose, no slips, no enclosed shoes-not until she went back to Fort Worth.

Dressed in khaki shorts, a bright-orange knit shirt, and her favorite brown leather sandals, she picked up her Kindle and headed toward the deck. Halfway there she remembered that Gracie was playing out there, so she steered for the front porch instead.

She settled into the rocking chair again. It would be a good place to sit and read until supper time, when she intended to eat the sub sandwich she'd tucked away in the refrigerator. Those other two hussies better not touch it. They had shared a husband and they might be sharing a house, but by damn, that sandwich was hers, and they'd do well to keep their hands off it.

Tomorrow she would drive down to that grocery store in Seymour and buy what she wanted for a week. They could starve or fish for their food. Frankly, Kate didn't give a damn what they did, as long as they stayed out of her way.

She hadn't sat there more than ten minutes before she got thirsty and went back to the kitchen to make a pitcher of tea. But there was no tea, no sugar, and not even a jar of peanut butter in the pantry. The only edible thing in the house was her sandwich, and she'd have to drink tap water. Fourteen years ago the water had had a strange taste to it. It was fine for laundry and not bad for showers, but drinking was impossible. She filled a glass, took a sip, and spit it out. The years had not changed the water one bit.

She headed toward the tiny utility room and switched the sheets over to the dryer and then tossed the quilt in the washer. Right then, she would gladly pay triple for a Starbucks coffee or a McDonald's sweet tea. Neither was available in the tiny little town of Bootleg, Texas. It had a convenience store, a post office, a tiny bank branch set up in a portable building, two churches, and a liquor store. And that was at least half a mile down the dirt road in front of the cabin.

There had to be more than what a convenience store offered. She made a quick trip to her bedroom, exchanged the Kindle for her purse, and headed out of the house without telling anyone where she was going. These were her acquaintances, not her friends, and she didn't care if they needed or wanted anything in the way of groceries. When the dust settled and they realized that their marriage licenses weren't worth the paper they were printed on, they'd leave and she'd put the cabin up for sale. Until then, they were three strangers sharing a house.

Still, even with that little pep talk, Kate was very glad there was a lock on her bedroom door. Those women were about as stable as nitroglycerin in the middle of an F5 tornado, and she didn't trust either of them.

She turned on the radio and headed south. "And now for your Texas news and weather," the DJ said in a deep voice. "Weather through the week is more of the same heat we've been having. It looks like we'll have days in the triple digits through Wednesday as least."

Kate passed a fireworks stand on the side of the road. It had closed up after the holiday the week before, but she could imagine the scent of firecrackers and that put a smile on her face. When she was a little girl, her father let her pick out her favorites every year. After the big display put on by the company after the all-day picnic at her childhood home, he would take her down to a grassy area near the pool and they'd have their own fireworks show. Her mother hated the noise and the smell of sparklers and bottle rockets, but Kate always associated them with her dad.

I wonder if there are certain things that Gracie remembers about Conrad. Did they come to the cabin on the Fourth of July and set off fireworks on the lakeshore?

"This is Denise Winters with your Texas news." The voice on the radio had changed. "In statewide news, there are still no solid leads in the shooting death of Conrad Steele, the victim of a robbery gone bad in downtown Dallas on Thursday, June 29."

Kate's whole body stiffened as she waited for the next sentence to be that it had been discovered that Conrad had three wives at the same time and that none of them were aware of the other two. That was sensational news-the kind of thing that those magazines beside the cash register at the grocery store checkout counter always had plastered on their covers. The headline, in big red lettering, would say, OIL COMPANY HEIRESS SUSPECTED IN POLYGAMIST HUSBAND'S DEATH!

The lady went on to other news, talking about the new political front since the election and how gasoline prices were on the rise, but she didn't mention Conrad again. Hopefully, pretty soon they'd stop even mentioning him, and it would just be another shooting that slipped into the cold-case file. At least she hoped that was the case. Maybe Waylon Kramer's supervisor would put him on more pressing cases.

Fifteen minutes later, she was inside the small grocery store in Seymour, Texas. She pulled a cart loose from a long string of others and stopped at a display with all kinds of cookies, cakes, breads, and pastries. She was trying to decide between iced sugar cookies or pretty little miniature cupcakes when she felt a presence behind her. She whipped around to find Detective Kramer so close that she could have slapped him without even stretching.

Seeing him in the grocery store, for God's sake, was like throwing gasoline on a bonfire. Was he going to show up in her shower stall next? That put a picture in her mind that shot the temperature of the store up twenty degrees.

"What are you doing here?" She looked up into his eyes and visualized taking the top off the cupcake package and smashing the whole dozen into his face to get the picture of him naked in the shower out of her mind. Would that be considered assault?

"I might ask you the same thing. You are a long way from Fort Worth." Detective Kramer grinned.

"A woman has to eat. Are you stalking me?" she asked. "Don't answer that. I don't even want to know. Did you find out who Conrad was buying flowers for that day?"

"You know I can't tell you anything about an ongoing investigation. He had two more wives. Did you have an open relationship? How many men am I going to find in your little black book?"

She looked him right in the eyes. "First you have to find the black book."

"From what I can piece together, y'all didn't have much of a marriage. No kids. No joint property. Why didn't you divorce him?" Waylon asked.

"Keep piecing it together," she threw over her shoulder as she walked away from him.

It was a damn good thing that Kate did not have a weight problem, because when she was angry she had a voracious appetite. She ripped open the cookies and ate the whole dozen as she loaded her cart. Twice she passed Waylon on an aisle, but she didn't speak and neither did he. She did sneak a peek at his purchases and was surprised to see flour, sugar, and staples that most folks bought if they were planning on preparing meals from scratch.

Where was it he said that he lived? It was a woman's name, like Marysville. No, Mabelle. Didn't they have a market there? Maybe he really was following her. Did that constitute harassment?

Back behind the steering wheel with the AC running full blast, she checked the statistics on Mabelle, Texas. Population at last census was nine. That wasn't big enough to be considered a community, much less a town. It was about nine miles southwest from Seymour and maybe five miles from Bootleg, which sat on the edge of Lake Kemp.

"I guess this is the closest grocery store, so at least he's not stalking me," she said as she started the engine and pointed her car north toward Bootleg.

CHAPTER FIVE.

Kate let the engine run, keeping the vehicle cool, while she studied the lineup in the rocking chairs on the front porch. Jamie sat closest to the door, with a strange lady with short, curly hair a faint shade of purple beside her. Gracie was in the middle chair, bare feet dangling about halfway to the porch. Next to her, an old gentleman with thick glasses and a rim of gray hair around an otherwise bald head nodded as she chattered nonstop.

Neighbors? Grandparents? Friends? Hopefully, they weren't there to spend the night, or they'd have to pull out the sofa bed. She'd decided to treat this whole thing like her freshman college-dorm days-a building full of rooms with a single kitchen and lobby/living room. She turned off the engine and hit the button to open the trunk. By the time she got around the car to unload her supplies, the old gentleman was lifting out two bags of groceries.

"I'm Victor Green, and I'm your neighbor to the left." He nodded over his shoulder. "That's Hattie Bell up there on the porch, and she's your neighbor to the right. We know Gracie and Jamie from their week in the summer, but we ain't seen you."

"I was here about fourteen years ago, but only for a week," Kate said.

"So you'd be the oldest wife?" Victor asked.

Ouch, that stung, even if he didn't put emphasis on the word or even act surprised that they were all there at the same time.

"I might be," she answered.

Hattie followed them inside and unloaded the bags, setting the food on the table while Victor went back to the porch. "Jamie told us what happened with Conrad. I'm not a bit surprised. I told Iris when she married him that he was a shyster and just out to get her money. A year later she was dead and he owned this house, plus he had all of her savings. Her poor daughter didn't get a thing, not even the wedding rings that her father had given Iris. Poor Iris was only fifty-five when she had that heart attack." Hattie lowered her voice to a whisper. "I always suspected that he had something to do with it. And"-she narrowed her eyes until they were mere slits in a bed of wrinkles-"I wouldn't be surprised if he hadn't done the same thing before Iris."

"Is the daughter still alive?" Kate asked.

"Oh, no, she died in a car wreck about six months after her mama."

"And Iris was fifty-five?" Kate opened the refrigerator to find her sandwich gone.

"That's right. Conrad said he was twenty-eight, but I always thought he was younger than that. He was a charmer, all right. Iris was a fool to think he was in love with her and not what he could con her out of," Hattie said.

"Why are you telling me this?" Kate put away milk, cheese, and lunch meat.

"So all three of you understand that you weren't the first, and if he'd lived, you wouldn't be the last," Hattie said. "And besides"-she giggled-"I'm nosy. I want to know what happens with the three of you living in this house together. You got to admit it could be a reality show. Maybe something like Hostile Sister Wives. Me and Victor have a ten-dollar bet going as to which one of y'all killed that son of a bitch. In memory of Iris, I'll take whoever did it to dinner."

A smile spread across Kate's face as she put on a pot of water to boil for tea. "Did you see him-I mean, Conrad, very often? Did he come here and stay a whole week with anyone else other than Jamie and Gracie?"

"Honey, he showed up here all the time, but I never paid much attention to them. I did see him last winter with the redhead, and they stayed a week. Most of the time he'd slink in here with a different woman over weekends. He knew we didn't like him, so we all ignored one another," Hattie said.

"He came near the end of each month?"

"Oh, yes. How'd you know that?"

"Just a lucky guess." She dropped four tea bags into the boiling water, covered the pot, and set it aside. While they steeped, she ran water into a plastic pitcher until it was half-full, added a cup and a half of sugar, and stirred it until it dissolved.

"Just the way I make tea. Your mama taught you well," Hattie said. "Would you look at the time? Thirty minutes until Sunday night church services. Y'all are all invited anytime you want to attend. It's the little white church on the north side of town. The one on the south side has been closed down for a couple of years now. We usually have a potluck after Sunday morning services, so bring along a covered dish if you want to join us for that."

"Thank you for your help, Hattie." Kate smiled.

"Anytime. Me and Victor will be popping in to check on you girls." She grinned. "Like I said, I'm nosy, and besides, I'm old. That means I get to ask rude questions and say what I want."

"Then I can't wait to get old," Kate said.

"'Bye, now." Hattie waved as she crossed the room to the door and disappeared.

Kate removed the tea bags, squeezed all the water from them, and then poured the tea into the pitcher. When it was stirred well, she took a glass down from the cabinet, filled it with ice and tea, and carried it to her bedroom. She gulped down a third of the tea, set it on her dresser, and reached for her laptop. She opened a new folder and typed: Information about Conrad: Conrad came home at least one day toward the end of every third week. He would meet with his accountant to discuss his business and sign any tax papers or forms that she needed him to take care of. He'd draw out his monthly paycheck at that time, and he'd be at the house when I got home from the office. The conversation was always the same. He wanted me to divorce him. I refused. He'd have his evening meal in the dining room and I'd take mine to my bedroom. My house was simply a free hotel for the night.

She closed her laptop and drank the rest of the tea. When she went back for a refill, there was not one drop left in the pitcher. Her sandwich was gone and now her tea-it was the old proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. She marched out to the porch to find Jamie and Gracie sipping away at a glass each and Amanda on the other end of the porch chomping on the ice pellets left in hers.

"What's your problem?" Amanda asked.

"That was my tea and it was my sandwich in the refrigerator," Kate said.

"Well, pardon me," Amanda said with a head wiggle. "I was hungry, and it was the only thing in the house. Conrad never said I couldn't eat something that was left in the refrigerator. And I was thirsty, so I had a glass of tea. What do I owe you?"

"Being the first wife don't give you the right to get all bitchy over a glass of tea," Jamie said.

"Conrad is dead, so what he said in this house does not matter. And I'm not the first wife. I'm just likely the oldest one alive today. Didn't Hattie tell you about Iris?" Kate propped a hip on the porch railing.

"Who is Iris?" Amanda asked.

Kate told them the story, continuing, "I have started a file with things I can remember, like how Conrad only came home a day a month to talk to his accountant-or maybe I should say he came to my house. If you'll do the same, maybe it will help that detective to see that we aren't guilty of conspiracy to commit murder."

"I'm not doing one blasted thing," Jamie said.

"Then if he finds us guilty, you'd better get your affairs in order as far as Gracie is concerned, and you'd better have someone designated to raise that baby, Amanda."

"You are just trying to scare me." Amanda frowned.

"No, she's not. She might have money, but . . ." Jamie stopped.

Gracie picked up a couple of dolls. "I'm going to my room where it's cool. When is supper, Mama? I'm hungry." She slammed the screen door on the way inside.

Kate almost smiled as she remembered how she used to get into trouble from every single nanny she'd ever had for slamming the back door at her house in Fort Worth.

"But what?" Kate shook away the memory and glanced over at Jamie.

"Do you have children?" Jamie asked.

"No, I do not," she answered.

"Then she has less to lose than we do if that detective makes a case against us," Jamie said. "And she's not trying to scare you. I can prove the days that Conrad was with me and Gracie with my credit card accounts. I charge everything to get the points and then pay it off at the end of the month. Until the past eight or nine months, he came home on Sunday night and we always went to McDonald's for supper, and every evening after we had supper at home, we went to Culver's for an ice-cream cone. He said it was his way of spoiling Gracie since he didn't get to be with her all the time."

Kate set her mouth in a firm line. "He was spoiling her, but you paid for everything, right?"

Jamie shook her head. "He took care of the taxes and insurance on the house and paid the mortgage."

"No!" Amanda slapped the arm of her rocking chair. "I wanted to buy a house instead of living in an apartment, but he said we had to pay off this cabin first. I've been giving him five hundred dollars a month to make an extra payment on this place."

"He inherited this place and it's paid for," Kate said bluntly.

"Then where was my five hundred dollars going?" Amanda asked.

Kate shrugged. "Maybe to buy lots of flowers for other women."

"Mama"-Gracie poked her head out the door-"I'm really hungry."

"We'll have to go to the store. Maybe we'll get pizza," Jamie answered.

"There's sandwich stuff in the refrigerator," Kate offered.

There was no way she was going to let a child go hungry, not even for the length of time it took to drive into Bootleg and get a pizza from the deli part of the convenience store.

"Oh, so she can have some of your food, but I can't?" Amanda shot a dirty look toward Kate.

Kate ignored it and sat down in her favorite chair.

"Go on and play five more minutes," Jamie told Gracie. "And then we'll see about making sandwiches."

"Okay, Mama. Can I get a glass of milk until then?"

Jamie looked at Kate.