“Does Sutter have a legitimate reason to want revenge?” She waited, watched his face, his eyes.
One, two, three seconds elapsed. He downed another sip of bourbon. “Yes.”
“All right.” Bella appreciated that it hadn’t been necessary to drag that answer out of him. More than that, she was grateful he answered honestly. “Does he have some sort of information or evidence that could hurt you?” After all, the message left in Pierce’s office had been pretty clear: I know what you did.
“Professionally, no.”
“What about personally?” Bella waited, suddenly unable to breathe.
He finished off the bourbon before meeting her gaze. “He believes I killed my wife.”
There was an answer she hadn’t expected. “Does he have tangible evidence or probable cause to believe you wanted your wife dead?”
Bella was certain her heart didn’t beat while she waited for him to answer.
“Have you ever loved something so much you would do anything to possess it and, once it was yours, to keep it?”
His words were spoken so softly, she’d had to strain to hear. As for his question, if she was completely honest she would confess that she felt exactly that way about her work. Her career defined her. There was nothing else. Her sister and she rarely talked, never visited each other. Basically she had no family. No real love life. Her career—her professional reputation—was everything. She would do anything within the law to keep it.
“I suppose so,” she said at last.
“I loved my wife, Ms. Lytle.” His fingers tightened on the empty glass. “More than anything. I thought giving her everything her heart desired was enough, but it wasn’t. She wanted more and I didn’t see that until it was too late.”
“She turned to someone else,” Bella supplied. It happened to career-focused—obsessed—people all the time.
He placed his glass on the table next to the deserted coffee. “She did indeed.”
“What did you do about that?” The urge to feel sympathy for him hit her harder than it should have.
“Nothing. I ignored it. Hoped it would go away.”
An odd answer for a man who prided himself on keeping his life in perfect order. “Was Sutter the other party involved?”
He turned his palms up. “I have no idea. She took that secret with her to her grave.”
The idea that Sutter remained Pierce’s partner for a while after her death seemed to negate that possibility. “You never hired a private investigator to look into her extracurricular activities?”
“I did not.” He cleared his throat. “I had no desire to confirm my suspicions. I loved her. As I said, I hoped if the worst was true that it would pass.”
As heartfelt as his answer sounded, Pierce was the sort of man who generally kept tabs on all aspects of his world. Why would he ignore some part he believed to be out of sync, or worse, out of his control completely?
“How did you come to learn that Sutter suspected you killed your wife?” A good deal of time passed before the two ended their partnership. If Sutter truly believed such a thing, why wouldn’t he have brought it up sooner? Weeks or months after Cara Pierce died? Particularly if there was a possibility he had been in love with her.
“Perhaps he thought if he stayed close to me that I would eventually confess to him or that he would find some sort of evidence.” He stared at the glass as if weighing the prospect of having a second drink. “I really have no idea what he was thinking. Or why he thought it.”
“Did he know you were aware of your wife’s affair?”
“I assume he did. He would likely see that as a motive for me wanting her dead. Frankly, there is nothing else his message could have meant.”
“But your wife died in a hospital after a car crash. What’s his theory about how you murdered her under the circumstances?”
Bella had read the reports. The accident was caused by a horrendous snowstorm. As he said before, the nearest hospital was not adequately equipped. There was no one to do the surgery his wife needed. There was only Devon Pierce and he’d had a broken collarbone, a gash in his head requiring twenty stitches, a broken nose and a fractured jaw. He’d refused to allow them to see to his injuries until his wife was stabilized. When no one could help her, he’d tried. He’d just completed the repair to her ruptured spleen when the bleeding in her brain sent the situation spiraling out of control. According to their statements, the medical staff at the hospital had all agreed: there was nothing else Dr. Pierce or anyone on-site could have done.
Nothing to indicate foul play.
Pierce stood again. “I have no answer for that question. I can only presume Sutter has lost his mind. If you have no other questions, I have work to do.”
His sixteen-to twenty-hour-a-day work schedule was something else she’d read about the man. “I’ll meet you at your office first thing in the morning,” she said as she pushed to her feet.
“I’m usually there by seven.”
“I’ll be there as well,” she fired back without hesitation.
They didn’t speak as they walked side by side to the front door. Bella’s mind kept going back to the seemingly unfounded idea that anyone could think he murdered his wife. Nothing she had read suggested outbursts or trouble handling his temper. She’d investigated her share of domestic violence cases and he didn’t fit the profile. The wife, on the other hand, fit the profile of spoiled rich wife perfectly. Not that Bella had discovered anything overly negative about her, but she had a penchant for spending and self-indulgence.
At the door, she couldn’t leave without asking again. “This makes no sense. The person coordinating this threat to you, whether Sutter or someone else, is smart.” She waited until he met her gaze. “He must have some reason to believe there was foul play on your part.” And some reason to think resurrecting Devon Pierce’s dead wife would somehow drive him to drastic measures.
There had been an investigation into his conduct as a physician in the situation. Standard procedure. But the extenuating circumstances warranted the steps he had taken that night.
The eyes that had scrutinized her so intently before abruptly looked away. “We made the trip to see her family once a year, so I had been there numerous times. I was aware of the meager health-care services available in the area.” He shrugged. “Perhaps he believes I chose a sedan at the rental car agency rather than an SUV equipped with four-wheel drive and then took that particular road in the storm for the very purpose of ensuring an accident. It was the most treacherous, curvy and hilly. But it was also the shortest route. It felt like the right decision at the time.”
“Did you choose the sedan?”
He stared at her now. “There were no SUVs available. They’d all been taken. It was either the car or wait for an SUV to be returned. Which, given the weather, could have been hours or days. I’m not a patient man, Ms. Lytle.”
She sensed that he wanted
