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have to go back thirty years or so, before your time, I suspect.”
    “Barely,” Molly admitted with great reluctance. Her thirtieth birthday was less than two weeks away. She was not looking forward to it. Too much of her life was not the way she’d planned for it to be. “So what happened between you and Tessa thirty years ago?”
    Jason Jeffries knew how to draw out suspense. He ate the last bite of his sandwich, wiped his pudgy fingers delicately on a pristine white handkerchief he drew from an inner pocket, folded it neatly, and put it away. Then, with an air of nonchalance that had Molly gnashing her teeth, he took her arm and led her deep into the shadows on the terrace.
    Considering that Jason Jeffries might very well be a suspect in Tessa’s murder, Molly knew she should have been terrified at being lured farther away from the crowd. A distant rumble of thunder and the dimming of the outdoor lights emphasized the warning. Instead of being frightened, however, her anticipation soared the way it always did when she knew some major clue was about to be revealed.
    Only when they were alone and the bay was spread before them did he speak.
    With his unflinching gaze pinned directly on her, he said quietly, “It all started when I married the damned woman.”

CHAPTER
THREE
    Discovering that Tessa Lafferty and Jason Jeffries had been married was like discovering that a tiger and a bumble bee were distant cousins. Molly spent a full two minutes processing the image of the unlikely relationship before she managed a coherent word.
    “What?” Okay, it was weak, but it was the best she could do given the astonishing nature of his revelation.
    Jason Jeffries grinned. “Hadn’t heard that one, had you? Not many people have. Tessa liked to keep it a deep, dark secret. She hated failure, and believe me, our marriage was a doozy of a disaster from the first day.”
    “Do the police know?”
    “They do. Why would I try to hide a thing like that? Folks may not recall much about it, but there are records down at the courthouse.” He waggled a finger under her nose. “Let this be a lesson to you. There’s no use denying the truth. It’ll just backfire on you, when you least expect it.”
    “But revealing it might move your name to the top of the list of suspects and distract the police from the real killer.”
    He beamed at her. “Thank you for assuming that I’m innocent. You’re a good judge of character. I didn’t do it. If I was planning to murder Tessa, I would have done it years ago when I discovered she loved money, hated sex, and used men the way folks with a cold use tissues. Took me less than a month to catch on. We were divorced six miserable months later. Can’t for the life of me figure out how a man as smart as Roger Lafferty got himself married to her.”
    “You did.”
    “But I was young and naive at the time and I didn’t stay married to her the way Roger has.”
    “You must have been …”
    He scowled at her with feigned ferocity. “Don’t waste your energy trying to count backwards, young lady. I was forty-two. Should have known better, but Tessa was a decade or more younger and she was a beauty. That blond hair of hers was natural then, and just like silk. She had a figure that would stop men dead in their tracks. She had a way of making a man do things that were downright foolish.”
    “Then don’t you suppose that’s the same effect she had on Roger?”
    “By the time they met, she’d been around the block a few times. The word was out, especially in our crowd. He ignored it all. His wife had just died. He was lonely. And Tessa took advantage.”
    “But you said yourself, men in love do foolish things.”
    “They do indeed,” he agreed. “That’s why I avoided another folly like that one. After Tessa, I steered clear of women with marriage on their minds. Can’t trust ‘em to behave the same way, once they have their hooks in you.”
    “You never married