“I’ll try to be quick, but I do have a few more if you don’t mind.” She knew he wanted to say that he did mind, but he probably figured if he answered all her questions now, she wouldn’t have to come back.
“Fine, what additional questions do you have for me?”
“Ms. Timmons indicated that Sylvia used you, and you just basically said the same thing. Could you elaborate on that?”
“At the time, I owned one of the largest computer companies in the Silicon Valley, and she wanted to know everything about it.”
Jules lifted a brow. “Why?”
“She didn’t ever really say, but I found it interesting that she would take any opportunity to discuss my business.”
“Was there anything specific she was interested in?”
He shrugged. “Several things, but mainly my expectations regarding Y2K.”
“Y2K? I remember reading about that when I was in college.”
“Then you know it was the disaster that never was.”
Jules nodded in agreement then paused a minute and asked, “Ms. Timmons is certain Sheppard Granger killed his wife. Do you share her sentiments?”
“No, I do not.”
She angled her head and stared at him, somewhat surprised by his answer. “Would you care to share your opinion about who did?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Of course, no one asked me, because no one other than Sandra ever knew about my one-time affair with Sylvia, and no one knew that we had met several times prior to that so Sylvia could ‘learn’ more about computers. But, had I been asked, I would have told them the one person who had a motive for killing Sylvia was the Grangers’ housekeeper, Hannah.”
Jules kept the surprised look from her face. “And why do you think it was Hannah?”
“Because she and Sylvia didn’t get along. And I understand the two women had words earlier that day and that Hannah had threatened her.”
Jules’s brows bunched. “Hannah had threatened Sylvia?”
“So Sylvia claimed. Of course, I wasn’t there to hear it myself. Sylvia was upset and said she didn’t care that Hannah had been with the Grangers for years. She had to go. It was either her or Hannah.”
Jules didn’t say anything for a minute as she thought about what Vance Clayburn had just said.
“Makes sense, don’t you think?”
His question invaded her thoughts. “What makes sense?”
“That Hannah killed Sylvia.”
She leaned forward. “And why would that make sense, Mr. Clayburn?”
“It would explain how Sheppard Granger’s gun came to be in the boathouse. If he didn’t take it from the Granger estate, then who did?”
*
Jules’s mind was in a complete turmoil by the time she returned to her office. Vance Clayburn’s question was still burning her ears. If he didn’t take it from the Granger estate, then who did?
That was a good question, but the possibility that Hannah had been involved was hard to come to terms with—it was completely mind-boggling.
But what if everything Vance Clayburn had said was true? What if Hannah had threatened Sylvia, and Sylvia had tried to get Hannah fired? That would certainly give Hannah a motive. The woman had been with the Grangers for years and was considered part of the family. And if she believed Sylvia was unfaithful to Sheppard and had confronted her about it, then...
She grudgingly moved Hannah’s profile to the suspects’ column of her investigative wall, trying to push to the back of her mind what Dalton had just said days ago... Hannah helped my brothers and me retain our sanity through the craziness of my father’s trial. She means the world to us, and if you mess with Hannah, then you mess with all three of us.
She didn’t want to think about how the Grangers would feel when they discovered their beloved Hannah was now a suspect. She’d given Manning the task of verifying Clayburn’s and Sandra Timmons’s alibis. Had they really been in DC at a hotel together when Sylvia was murdered? If anyone could confirm that, it would be Manning.
When her buzzer went off, she moved to her desk. “Yes, Manning?”
“You have guests.”
She frowned. “Who is it? I’m not expecting anyone.”