Julie Garwood - Mercy

to be with his whores, but Catherine only ate the soft candies. She never would have touched a caramel."

She made the sign of the cross and folded her hands as though in prayer. "You must find proof and arrest John Russell. It would be a sin to let such an evil man get away with murder. You must do this for Catherine and me."

Theo nodded. "I'm going to try," he promised. "Catherine found out about John's affairs, didn't she? That was the reason she left him only a hundred dollars in her will."

"Yes, she heard him on the phone. He called her terrible names when he was talking to his mistress. She cried for days," she added. "And then one night she heard him talking to a man about a deposit he had made in an account outside of the United States. She heard him tell the man not to worry, that no one would know because all the records were in his computer at home."

Theo began to make notes as Rosa fed him the information she'd been given by Catherine.

"How did she break into his files? How did she come up with the right password?"

"John gave it to her," Rosa said. "Of course, he didn't know it at the time. She listened to his phone conversations, and twice she heard him refer to the Sowing Club. The next day, after he had gone to work and I had sent the maid to the grocery store, I helped her go down to the library. She typed in the words but was denied access. The spelling, you see, was incorrect. Catherine was a very smart woman," she added. "The second time she typed in the correct spelling, and the files opened up to her."

"So it's sowing, as in sowing wild oats, instead of sewing, as in stitching clothes?"

"Yes," she said. "That's what Catherine told me."

"Did she tell you what was in those files?"

"She said her husband was doing illegal things with money."

He rubbed his jaw. "Why did she instruct her attorney to wait until after her death to send copies of the files? Why didn't she just have John arrested?"

"You don't understand."

"Help me understand," he urged.

"Catherine had many fine qualities, but she was also a very controlling woman. She wanted things done just so, and she wanted her husband to respect his marriage vows." She shook her head as she added, "She wouldn't let him go, but after she died, she wouldn't let any other woman have him. She was going to use the papers she'd given Mr. Benchley to make him… "

"Toe the line?" Theo asked.

"Yes."

"Did you meet any of John's friends?"

She shook her head. "He never invited anyone to the house. I think he was keeping Catherine isolated. He was ashamed of her, but even after she took to her bed and stayed in her room, he still didn't have friends to the house."

Theo closed his notepad. "May I ask you a personal question?"

"What is it?"

"Why are you so afraid of the police?"

She looked down at her hands. "My son got into trouble last year. The police… they came to the house in the middle of the

night and dragged him out of his bed. He was taken to jail, and I was very afraid for him. Catherine called her attorney, and he gave her the name of someone else who could help my boy."

"A criminal attorney?"

"I think so," she said. "My son is out on probation now, but every night when he doesn't come home, I think he's been taken away again. He runs with bad people, and I pray to God every night that He will look out for him. He's a good boy," she whispered.

"But he's a follower and does whatever those bad people tell him to do."

"What kind of trouble did he get into?"

"Drugs," she said, and then she crossed herself again. "He was taking money from people and giving them drugs. He's stopped that," she hastened to add. "He promised me and he stopped."

Theo nodded. "I understand," he said. "I don't want to make things more difficult for you, but there's something I need, Rosa… and you have it, don't you?"

God love Catherine Russell and her obsession with having two of everything. Theo had banked on her compulsion when he'd

gone to see Rosa. Catherine hadn't let him down. She had indeed made another copy of the files and given them to Rosa for safekeeping.

Theo hadn't expected to hear that Rosa believed John had killed his wife, but then he realized he shouldn't have been surprised

at all. The man was capable of anything.

The copies of all the papers Catherine had sent to Michelle were on the seat beside him. Theo knew he'd need a couple of hours to break the codes. He hadn't done more than glance through them when he was with Rosa, but he understood enough to know he could nail the son of a bitch for tax evasion, extortion, fraud, insider trading, and more. Detective Harris had told Michelle that the sheet she'd pulled from the envelope looked like a financial statement, and she had been right about that. The other papers were filled with the breakdown of each transaction. All of them, Theo was sure, were illegal, and as he drove toward Bowen, he added up all the charges he could file. There was enough to put Russell behind bars for the rest of his life. Theo was going to add the charge of attempted murder-he was certain John was one of the shooters the night before-but he couldn't prove it… yet. He also wanted justice for Catherine, and he needed time to figure out how to get the evidence he would need to prove the woman had been murdered.

Had John killed her, or had he hired it out? Was that why Detective Harris was in Bowen? She'd told Theo she had an inside tip that a hit man was in town. Had Monk killed Catherine, and was he now helping John get incriminating evidence back?

Where the hell was Cameron Lynch? Underwood had promised to call him the second they picked up Lynch. He was the key, Theo had decided. If he could turn him, he could get all of them.

He thought about the transactions listed in the papers again. There was a letter in brackets beside each entry, indicating the person responsible for that contribution. There was a C, most likely Cameron Lynch. J was for John Russell, but who were P and D? The Sowing Club. What a cute name for their crooked little group. Four men who had illegally accumulated millions of dollars.

"Two down and two to go," he said. Then he laughed. Catherine had also made a copy of the letter she'd written to John, and Theo pictured how her husband must have reacted when he read the letter and found out what she had done.

Oh, Catherine. You were such a devious woman.

The Swan was packed. The crowd, mostly fishermen ,was so dense and loud ,Michelle could feel the floor trembling under her feet. She and Noah worked behind the bar, filling drink orders. Noah made the job easy .No matter what alcoholic beverage anyone ordered, he served a draft of beer. The only other choice he allowed was a soft drink.

John Paul managed crowd control and bussed tables from the supper traffic, while Daddy sat at the end of the bar by the kitchen door with his Big Chief tablet and a ballpoint pen. He'd cleaned out an old metal tackle box and was using it as his safe for the tournament money so it wouldn't get mixed up with the cash taken in at the bar. All the latecomers who wanted to sign up for the tournament formed a line that reached to the parking lot. Each man paid his fee in cash-Daddy wouldn't take checks or credit cards- signed his name in the tablet, and was then given a ticket with a registration number on it. The fishermen would hand in the ticket at five o'clock tomorrow morning and receive a tag. Anyone who tried to sneak out earlier to get a head start would automatically be disqualified by not receiving a tag.