Page 50 of Christmas in Whitehorn
“Did you marry her?” she asked without thinking. Had Mark been married before? She’d never considered that a possibility.
“No. I never even proposed, although I did buy a ring. I never gave it to her.”
“Why?” She spoke past the pain, which wasn’t very easy.
He shrugged. “I wanted to get to know her better. I wanted to be sure. Intellectually I knew I was running on hormones.” He took a drink of his hot chocolate. “About two months into the relationship, I got a frantic call from her. I was at work. It was late. I think I was doing paperwork, I don’t remember. She sounded hysterical as she begged me to come home. When I got there, I found a dead man in her kitchen.”
Darcy blinked. She’d braced herself for several different possibilities, but that wasn’t one of them. “Someone had tried to kill her?”
“No. It took me a while to get any information out of her. At first she said the guy was an intruder, but it turns out he was her husband.”
Darcy couldn’t believe it. “She was married?”
He nodded. “It took me by surprise, too. She said that she’d been separated for a long time and that she’d wanted to tell me but was afraid it would change things between us. I was too shocked to know what to think. She said they hadn’t spoken in weeks. She’d been out shopping and had returned to find him dead in her kitchen. She didn’t know what to do.”
“I can’t blame her.” Darcy knew a dead body in her house would leave her pretty hysterical, too.
“I should have known,” he continued quietly. “The fact that she hadn’t told me about being married was a big red flag, but I thought I loved her so I ignored it.”
Darcy tried not to mind that Mark had been so willing to believe the best of Sylvia but think the worst of her.
“I called the precinct,” he said. “I knew the guys working the murder. I couldn’t get involved because I knew Sylvia, but I was kept advised of what was going on. At first they weren’t sure, but then one day the detectives on the case brought me in for a private conversation. It seems that the evidence pointed to the fact that Sylvia had killed her husband herself.”
On the one hand, Darcy wasn’t surprised by the revelation. On the other hand, she couldn’t believe it. “Why?”
“I don’t know. She never said.”
“You talked to her about it?”
“Oh, yeah. I went to her place and confronted her with the facts. At first she tried to deny everything. She cried and said that she loved me. If I loved her, too, I would believe her.”
“But you didn’t?”
“I was starting to have my doubts. Finally she admitted she’d done it and she expected me to help her get away with it. When I refused, she threatened me. When I still wouldn’t go along with her plan, she pulled a gun and shot me. Twice.”
Darcy nearly fainted. She felt all the blood rush from her head to her feet and the room began to sway. She gasped for breath. Gradually the room stilled and she was able to see Mark. He sat across from her, watching her. Probably trying to judge her reaction.
“She’s the reason you were injured? I thought some criminal did it.”
“She was a murderer.”
She brushed aside his comment with a flick of her wrist. “You know what I mean. I thought it had happened during a chase or something.”
“I guess we all have our secrets.”
He was acting flip, but she doubted he felt as calm on the inside. Questions filled her mind, even as puzzle pieces clicked into place. No wonder he’d assumed the worst about her.
“What happened after she shot you?”
“She was arrested for the murder of her husband and for attempting to kill me. I spent a lot of time in the hospital and then in rehabilitation.”
She thought about the still-healing scars on his body. “You could have died.”
“That’s what the doctors said.”
“You must have been in shock for a long time,” she said more to herself than to him. “You’d been planning to marry this woman.”
“The irony of the situation doesn’t escape me,” he admitted. “While I was recovering, I had plenty of time to think. What I still can’t get over is how wrong I was about her. I was a cop—a detective. I’m supposed to know people, but she fooled me completely. So much for being a good judge of character.”
