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“Not that I blame you for killing your husband. I wanted him dead five minutes after I met him, but was there a particular reason you put a bullet through his forehead?”
“There were a thousand reasons, but I ignored them.” She deliberately paused. “Until tonight.”
“What made tonight different?”
“After years of turning a blind eye to his cheating and lying and neglect, the bastard was going to walk away and leave me to face the scandal he created on my own.” Jolene nodded her head toward a gaping hole in the floorboards near the kitchen cabinets. “I found that unacceptable.”
Kaden arched his brows in surprise. A trapdoor? Why the hell would that be there? It took a second for Kaden to realize Tate must have built it to hide his getaway suitcase.
Slowly, he turned back to meet Jolene’s hard gaze, trying to act confused. He had to keep her attention on him.
“What scandal was he leaving you to face?”
Jolene clicked her tongue. “Don’t play dumb. It doesn’t suit you.”
Kaden’s lips twitched. She obviously never met his dearly departed father. He claimed Kaden was dumb as a stump. Whatever that meant.
“Well, there’s just somanyscandals,” Kaden drawled. “You could be talking about Tate’s habit of paying off officials to protect his wealthy business friends even when it put the citizens of Pike in danger. Or covering up crimes, including murder.” He deliberately paused. “Or seducing innocent college students.”
“Vanna Zimmerman,” Jolene spat out the name as if it was poison. “There was nothing innocent about her. For God’s sake, I knew she was going to be trouble the second she arrived in town. It was obvious to anyone with a brain that she used her looks to manipulate people.” The woman’s gaze shifted toward the corpse that stared sightlessly at the ceiling, her lips pursing in disgust. “Not that men ever use their brains, do they? Not when it comes to a pretty brunette who’s willing to spread her legs.”
“You were jealous?” Kaden prodded.
“Me? Jealous of that gutter dweller?” Anger flared through her eyes, but it was a cold anger. As if her emotions were as frigid as the Wisconsin winter. “I knew when I married Tate he would never be faithful. All I asked for was a comfortable home and an allowance that would keep me in the luxury I deserved.” Her pale features tightened. “And discretion.”
“Ah, yes. Hard to be discreet when your lover announces she’s pregnant.”
Jolene flinched, as if Kaden hit a raw nerve. “When Tate came to me to confess, I considered . . .” She waved her gun toward the dead man. “This.”
It wasn’t an unreasonable reaction, Kaden silently acknowledged. Anyone would consider violence if they discovered their significant other was expecting a baby with their secret lover. Thankfully, most people managed to control their furious impulses.
“Obviously, you didn’t go to such extremes,” he murmured.
“No. After I had time to consider my various options, I realized I could use the revolting situation to my advantage.”
Kaden didn’t have to ask what she meant. The fact that Sunny was an only child suggested Jolene either didn’t want children or struggled to conceive. He was betting on the latter.
“You wanted a baby.”
“Yes. I’d tried to become pregnant.” She grimaced. “Not very hard, to be honest. Tate is as selfish and incompetent in the bedroom as he is in everything else.” She paused, her gaze once again flickering toward the corpse. “I suppose I should saywas.”
Kaden suppressed a shiver of disgust. Not only was the dead man creeping him out but Jolene’s cold indifference to murdering her husband was adding to the horror movie vibe. She acted as if she committed murder every day. And maybe she did, he realized, as memories of the past week seared through his mind. The citizens of Pike had been dropping like flies.
“It didn’t matter it was the child of your husband’s lover?” he forced himself to ask.
Jolene widened her eyes in outrage. “The baby might have come out of Vanna’s body, but she belonged to me,” she said in fierce tones. “From the moment I held Sunny in my arms, I knew she was mine. I was destined to be her mother. To love her unconditionally. And to have her love me.”
Kaden didn’t doubt for a second that Jolene loved her daughter, regardless of the fact she hadn’t given birth to her. But he suspected it was a sick, obsessed love. The sort of emotion that could destroy any sense of morality.
“And no one questioned how you managed to acquire a baby that looked suspiciously like your husband’s lover?” Kaden asked, casting a covert glance over his shoulder. Lia had managed to inch her way closer to the bed, but she was still too far to make a grab for the gun.
“No one ever suspected Sunny wasn’t mine.” Jolene laughed, the harsh sound echoing through the empty building. “People in this town are as blind as they are stupid. They share the most absurd gossip without ever seeing what’s happening beneath their noses. All I had to do was say I was pregnant and the doctors told me it was high risk. Obviously, I would need to live in an area with a large hospital. Just in case of an emergency.” She shrugged. “So I disappeared for a few months and returned with a baby. Simple.”
Had it really been that simple? Maybe. People did tend to see what they expected to see. Motivated perception, or something like that.
“So what went wrong?” he demanded.
Jolene looked confused. “Wrong? Nothing. Everything was perfect.”
