Crossed Bones by Carolyn Haines Page A

hundred thousand." I was hoping to enter the conversation with a tidbit of fact that would serve as a white flag. Such was not to be the case.
    "Oh, big news! Like I haven't heard that thirty times already. Where are you going to get the money to get him out, that's what I want to know."
    "Maybe your folks would loan it to him." I pretended it was really a possibility.
    "They hate him," Nandy said with more than a little anger. "They blame him for the breakup of my marriage."
    "You were married?" I hadn't heard a word about it, but then I hadn't kept up with the upper-crust gals. In fact, I couldn't remember Nandy seriously dating anyone in college. "Do I know him?"
    "Yes and no. Yes I was married and no you never met him. Thank goodness." She rolled her eyes. "It was another brilliant maneuver by my father."
    "Did you marry a local boy?" How had Cece failed to fill me in on this important issue? Nandy had been married. That probably left me as the only spinster in my entire peer group. All of this time, in the back of my mind, I'd had Nandy as my safety net. Now the cheese stood alone.
    "Not local. From
Edinburgh
. Robert Pennington McBruce. Father almost died and went to heaven when he heard the name. Robert could have been a toad with warts. It wouldn't have mattered. It was arranged exactly like a royal couple. Letters, dowries, assurances of religious practices, and even a clause that the children would be raised Catholic." She pulled at the ring in her eyebrow, stretching the skin out until I wanted to slap her hands away. "He might have been a McBruce, but he wasn't anything like the
Highland
lord I imagined when we became betrothed."
    I felt my eyes widening. "You were engaged to him before you met him?"
    She gave me a withering glance. "Of course. Our parents arranged it. The agreement was airtight and perfect."
    I needed a crash helmet, but I was going to ask anyway. "So why did you leave him?"
    "He had a little dick and he whimpered in his sleep."
    "Nandy!"
    "Don't go all wide-eyed like a gigged frog, Sarah Booth." She gave me a contemptuous smile. "If Robert hadn't been such a little sniveling toad, it would have worked out fine."
    "You're divorced?" The question I wanted to ask was if Robert was still breathing. Nandy had always taken the most efficient route to getting what she wanted. Robert might well be planted somewhere.
    "Of course not! Divorce isn't acknowledged in the church. I simply walked out. Robert whines about it whenever he can track me down, but he doesn't have the balls to stop me."
    Now I had a much better understanding of the Nandy transformation. She was pissed as hell at her folks, and she was getting even.
    My Aunt LouLane had an old, wise saying: Don't step on a scorpion's tail if you don't want him to sting you. I took a baby step back from Nandy. I had a funny feeling she was just about to sting.
    "Have you got a plan for getting Scott out of jail?" she demanded.
    Her tone was high-handed and offensive. I didn't want to be stung, but I wasn't going to be bulldozed by a punked-out former debutante. "I have a better question.
    Why did you tell Coleman that you saw Scott leaving the club at two in the morning?"
    "It was the truth."
    "It's one of the main pieces of evidence that tie Scott to the murder."
    "So I've been told." She pulled at the ring again and the sapphire caught the sunlight, winking blue.
    I had a sudden insight into the twisted inner workings of Nandy Shanahan's mind. "You knew that when you told Coleman. You knew you were putting Scott right in the middle of a murder scene." I was astounded.
    "Look, if Scott will only talk to me, I can give him an alibi. I can say we were together, behind the club."
    She smiled, and tiny little chills slipped down my back.
    "I can save him, Sarah Booth. All I have to do is say he was with me, making love to me. I can save him, if he'll let me."
    Funny how cold can creep through a person's bones even with the mercury hovering at 102 degrees