Cold Hearted by Beverly Barton Page B

How many times do I have to tell you? And as for the other, about her killing somebody — I don’t want to hear you spouting off such nonsense ever again. You hear me?”
    “It’s not nonsense and you know it. Don’t tell me that it hasn’t crossed your mind that Tammy might have killed Dan.”
    “Shut your mouth! Nobody’s proved that Dan didn’t kill himself.”
    “Ryan Price thinks Dan was murdered. And so does that Powell agent who’s snooping around.”
    “Everybody’s got a right to their opinion. Just because Ryan can’t accept the fact that Dan committed suicide doesn’t mean he didn’t do it. And Rick Carson is being paid to be suspicious, to snoop around and find out what’s what.”
    J.C. laughed. “I’d like to be a fly on the wall when he unearths the truth about Dan and Jordan’s marriage.”
    “Whatever he finds out, he’ll keep to himself. It’s a rule of some kind that private eyes have.”
    “Aren’t you the least bit curious about the baby?” J.C. asked. “It’s kind of difficult for a woman to get pregnant if her husband isn’t screwing her.”
    “I don’t want to hear anymore talk like that either. The baby Jordan is carrying is Dan Price’s kid, Dan’s heir. You got that?”
    J.C. winked at his mother. “Yeah, I got it. And if she gets more of Dan’s money for that kid, then it’ll mean more for all of us, right?”
    “You’re a greedy, ungrateful—”
    “I just tell it like I see it.” He narrowed his gaze and studied his mother for a couple of seconds. “You didn’t by any chance know, before Dan killed himself, that he had Alzheimer’s, did you, Ma?”
     
     
    J.C. was creating problems they didn’t need. She’d probably have to deal with him sooner rather than later. The very thought of disposing of him was abhorrent to her since he was part of the family. She had put up with his bad behavior, excused his misdeeds, and refrained from killing him because he had not posed a real threat to them. Not until now. He had become a liability. Even before she’d killed Dan, she had known it was only a matter of time before J.C. would have to be eliminated. His actions were hurting them more and more all the time. She couldn’t allow him to continue upsetting them, not with a baby on the way. Nothing and no one was more important than their child.
    She would simply have to wait for the right moment and then strike. And it had to look like an accident. If only she could have found a way to have made Dan’s death look accidental instead of like suicide, as she had some of the other deaths.
    Killing J.C. immediately was out of the question. First of all, she never eliminated someone without reason and that required her to consider all sides of a situation. Once she had made her decision, as she had with J.C., she formulated a plan. That took time, days, even weeks. She couldn’t do anything to bring suspicion on herself, especially this soon after Dan’s death. And she certainly couldn’t take any undue chances with a private detective living here at Price Manor.
    But when the time was right, she would remove J.C. from their lives, just as she had removed all the others who had betrayed them, either intentionally or simply by an act of fate.
     
     
    Jordan waved goodbye to Kendra and Wes as they drove away. As much as she would have loved having them here until Sunday, sending them off today had been the right decision. She couldn’t risk what might happen if they stayed and Kendra disobeyed her and encouraged J.C.’s attention. Her stepbrother couldn’t be trusted around any woman who appealed to him, and young, inexperienced girls like Kendra appealed to him greatly. She remembered all too well how he’d come on to her more than once when she’d been in her teens. For years, she was able to fend him off without any real harm done, but eventually, she’d had to go to Roselynne. She never knew what her stepmother had said or done, but whatever it had been,