Thirty-Five and a Half Conspiracies by Denise Grover Swank Page A

to.”
    “So this is mostly personal. But even so, he’s the type who’d want some sort of financial gain out of it.”
    “I don’t know, Rose. All that’s here in Fenton County is moonshine, drugs, and a small amount of gun trafficking. Crocker was branching out with his stolen car parts ring. I can ask around, but everyone’s all riled up over the charges against Skeeter. A good number of them want Gentry to move in as the crime boss.”
    “But that makes no sense. Gentry’s facing charges of his own.”
    “Rumor has it that they’re about to be dropped.”
    I leaned forward in my seat. “What?”
    “Mason’s not in the courthouse to put a stop to all the bribes and other nonsense.”
    “And apparently, the sheriff’s department is part of it too.”
    “Yeah.”
    It made me sick. All the good Mason had done for our county had been wiped away in a matter of days. “So is Gentry still in hiding?”
    “For the moment.”
    But if the charges were dropped, we both knew he wouldn’t be in hiding for long. And all hell was gonna break loose when he resurfaced.
    A thought occurred to me, and I started pacing as I chewed on it. “Relatively speaking, my arrest was probably easy for him to arrange, and J.R. had the right people in power in the right places to steal Mason’s job out from under him. But that double homicide south of town … that was set up to look like Skeeter’s work. That had to take some major planning, especially if Humphrey and his guy were working with Mick Gentry. Why would he go to that much trouble?”
    Bruce Wayne gave me a blank look.
    Then it hit me. “Oh, my word. Maybe J.R. plans to make it look like Skeeter killed Mason. That’s why he planted Skeeter’s knife in his desk drawer in our house.”
    “And you? Where do you fit in?”
    “Me? I’m just a side dish for Joe.”
    The office door opened, and a blast of cold air rushed in as I heard a voice I recognized all too well. “Exactly. You are a side dish, Rose Gardner. You need to remember that and move on.”
    I spun around, preparing myself to face my third hostile woman of the day. I was really on a roll. “Hilary, what are you doin’ here?”
    Looking like he’d seen a ghost, Bruce Wayne took a step back. Smart guy.
    She stood in the still-open door, wearing a pair of cream pants that showed her growing baby bump and a pale pink blouse topped with a stylish cream leather jacket. Her auburn hair was long and curled, and the cold wind had given her a rosy glow. There was no denying that Hilary Wilder was a beautiful woman. Unfortunately, her inside didn’t match her outside. “I wanted to check on you. A sweet little girl like you in prison for two whole days and three whole nights. You were probably scarred for life.”
    “Well, sorry to disappoint, but I’m just fine, so don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.”
    She ignored me and shut the door, still on my side of it. Crinkling her nose as she looked around, she said, “A very quaint place you have here. You should let Violet decorate. She’s really very good, you know.”
    I watched her as she made her approach, wary of her real purpose for being here. “So you told me when you said you wanted to hire her to decorate your nursery.”
    She glanced up at me, plastering on the brightest fake smile I’d ever seen. “We met yesterday, and she was bursting with ideas of how to decorate for a boy. We just need confirmation that I’m carrying little Joseph the third before we can get started. Joe needs a little boy, don’t you think?”
    Violet wasn’t with Hilary this morning? Then where had she been? “What Joe does or doesn’t need is none of my business. Not anymore.”
    She gave me a condescending grin. “You’re not holding the fact that he had you arrested against him, are you?”
    “Hilary, between you and Kate, I’m exhausted of the games. Just tell me what you want and go away.”
    That made her pause. “You talked to Kate