Irish Stewed by Kylie Logan Page B

taxes? Or shoplifts in the grocery store? Or—”
    “Women.” Kim’s lips pinched. “A couple ex-wives, a couple girlfriends and, from what I heard, the wives and the girlfriends all happened at the same time. If you know what I mean.” She winked.
    “So you think one of them might have a motive to kill Jack?”
    “You mean, if this Owen guy didn’t do it.” She considered this for a moment before she scooted a little closer. “There were plenty of fights. And I’m not just saying that because I got some information from somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody. I heard a couple of them myself. You know, the phone would ring in Jack’s office and he’d pick it up and the fireworks would start.”
    “Who was he fighting with?”
    “From what I heard, it had to be one of the exes. It was always all about money. How Jack still owed and Jack didn’t pay and Jack had to abide by the decisions of the court. Only of course . . .” She looked away. “Of course, I didn’t hear that part of the fight because that’s the stuff the woman on the other end of the phone would be saying. I filled in the blanks. You know, the way you do when you’re in on only one side of the conversation. Over in my cubicle, I only heard the fights from Jack’s side of the phone. So I guess technically—I mean if I was reporting what I heard—I’d have to say it was more like Jack didn’t owe a dime, Jack always paid on time, and he followed the letter of the law, well . . . to the letter!”
    “You heard more than one fight like that?”
    “Absolutely. But then, like I said, there’s been more than one Mrs. Jack Lancer. I have no idea which of them he was fighting with.”
    “So at least one woman was angry with him.” I made a mental note of this and I couldn’t help myself, it brought back memories of all the high-powered, high-visibility, high-voltage Hollywood marriages I’d watched dissolve. Meghan’s friends were a lot like Meghan herself: self-centered to the max. When their relationships imploded there was fallout of epic proportions.
    I found myself thinking about the time an actor famous for playing superheroes (I’m not going to name names) showed up on our doorstep in Tuscany drunk as a skunk and crying like a baby.
    Or the woman with three Oscars to her name who was so screwed up after her husband dumped her for a younger, more beautiful woman that she disappeared for six months and was found wandering the streets of LA and sleeping under a bridge. No, that story didn’t make the tabloids. But then, the actress had a PR agent who was obviously worth his weight in golden statuettes.
    Love did crazy things to people’s brains.
    Love gone bad only made things worse.
    Suckers.
    If they’d learned like I had—early on and with constant reinforcement—that nothing lasted forever, maybe they wouldn’t have taken it all so personally.
    Maybe Jack’s ex-wives wouldn’t have had those screaming matches with him on the phone.
    “It really doesn’t make sense, though,” I said, more to myself than to Kim. “If one of those women was mad at Jack for not paying what he owed in alimony or child support . . . Well, he for sure couldn’t pay if he was dead.”
    Something told me Kim had already thought of this. “I’m looking into his will,” she told me. “You know, for my story. Jack, he didn’t strike me as that stupid, but you never know, do you? If he married one wife and never took the other wife off as the beneficiary in his will—or of his life insurance policy—well, that would be a pretty good motive for murder, wouldn’t it? I mean, if that Quilligan kid really didn’t do it.”
    It would.
    But not murder in a closed train station restaurant.
    “Well, it looks like you’re going to be plenty busy tracking down suspects.” I ushered Kim to the door. “I’m sure you’ll need to look into Owen’s background, and then there are all those wives and girlfriends of Jack’s. What