Free Deadly Seduction by Wensley Clarkson

inviting Susan and her new boyfriend because Jim Grund was a pro-tem judge. And to make matters worse, some of the Sanders kids had been prosecuted by Jimmy in court over the previous couple of years.
    But Grund did not bat an eyelid and he even ended up having a giggle with Darlene when he and Susan walked into a room where her sister was changing dresses and caught her stark naked. Jimmy just grinned and moved out of the room. Susan was furious. She did not want this side of her family to be revealed to the rich and powerful man she intended to make her fourth husband.
    Darlene and her mother Nellie were most taken by Jim Grund. He was the kind of guy who was happy to sip a beer and sit on the porch and talk about life with whoever happened to be around. He was not a snob. He was not trying to be somebody else and he was always extremely good to Susan’s family.
    In 1985, he even helped Darlene purchase the house opposite her mother’s on East 3rd Street. It had been owned by Susan’s previous boyfriend Rick Cook, but then he fell behind on his payments and the property was virtually given away for a bargain $25,900. Darlene and her husband did not have the $5,000 deposit required but Jim went down and talked to the bank and got them the loan anyhow.
    Jim Grund first introduced his own family to Susan when he took her round to his parents’ detached house on Main Street and announced his girlfriend was pregnant.
    Connie and James went quiet for a few seconds, trying to digest what their son had just told them.
    “Er, congratulations, Jim,” said his mother hesitatingly.
    Then a big smile came to Jimmy’s face. “Don’t worry, Mom. It’s not mine.”
    It was a hell of a way to break the ice, but then that was typical of Jimmy Grund.
    *   *   *
    A few weeks after Thanksgiving 1984, Jim Grund played the role of doting father and rushed to the hospital in Logansport with Susan as she started labor. When baby Tanelle was born, Jim was as pleased as if she were his own daughter. He looked on Susan and her newborn baby as a golden opportunity for him to make amends for not always being the best father in the world to his two eldest children, Jama and David. This time around he was going to be there when they needed him, not always off chasing down the best cases.
    Susan went to great lengths to explain to Jim’s family that her other child, Jacob, was currently living with her previous husband Gary Campbell whom, she said, needed his son badly because he was a virtual invalid following a motorcycle crash. She never once hinted at the horrific injuries she had inflicted on her stepson, Tommy.
    When Susan’s baby Tanelle was just six weeks old, Jimmy announced to his parents that he and Susan and the baby were off to Florida for a vacation.
    A few days after departing on their Florida trip, Jimmy phoned his mother, Connie, back in Peru. She thought he was calling to see if his sister Jane had had the baby she was expecting. But Jim had something else on his mind.
    “Are you sitting down, Mom? I have something to tell you.”
    Connie mumbled a “yes.”
    “Susan and I got married.…”
    Connie grimaced on the other end of the line and then typically, played it all down.
    “I thought that was what you were going to say, Jim.”
    “You gotta be shitting me, Mom?”
    “Nope. I knew you’d go and do that.”
    Jim and his good friend Gary Nichols had made a wager that the first one of them to get remarried would owe the other $1,000. When Gary heard the news he promised himself he would get the money off Jim the moment he was back from Florida, before he had a chance to wriggle out of it.
    By all accounts, Jim and Susan’s wedding could not have been more romantic. They married on December 6, 1984, on a boat owned by Jim’s good friend Jack Vetter, as it bobbed about on the Atlantic Ocean just a few miles off Flagler Beach. Vetter even acted as witness. Susan looked radiant in a pastel-colored dress and huge,