Free Death by Marriage by Blair Bancroft Page B

for the jail, navy blue slacks, a light blue cotton shirt with tabbed sleeves. No jewelry except a modest single blue flower hanging from each ear. Yet Jeb made me feel like I was standing on a showroom runway, dressed in a thong bikini. Or maybe wrapped around a pole at a club called Naked & Naughty. My temper flared. The only exercise I get may be climbing the stairs to my third floor workroom or pushing a shopping cart around the grocery store, but I’m still pretty agile. With no more than the aid of a sturdy bollard at the edge of the seawall, I jumped down onto the stern deck and stood, arms akimbo, glaring at Jeb. “I need to talk to you,” I said.
    He removed his feet from the bait box, shoved it in my direction. “Have a seat, Laura darlin’, and tell me what I can do for you.” If he hadn’t hitched up his shorts while he said it, I might have mistaken his words for simply friendly.
    I sat. Not my best move as I was now well below Jeb’s eye level, looking up. “Have you heard the nasty rumors going around?”
    “Kinda busy day yesterday, what with Scott sleepin’ in after all that showboating Friday night. Guess rescue work’s gettin’ a bit much for him. Then I spent last night with my honey. No rumors there, just a heap of lovin.’” Once again, he gave me the eye. I shivered. Okay, he deserved to hear it cold turkey.
    “It’s all over town that you and Vanessa Kellerman are an item, that you deliberately turned Rainbow’s End at an angle across the wake so Martin would be thrown off the bow. Most say you and Vanessa planned it together. A few say you did it all by yourself.”
    Jeb blinked. I could almost swear his skin went pale beneath his year-round tan. Genuine surprise? Possibly. After all, this was a jock who couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag.
    He dropped his head down into his hands and rocked back and forth, shoulders heaving. I stared. “Jeb?”
    “My fault,” he gasped, “but I didn’t do it on purpose, I swear. I saw Martin crumple and I freaked. Me, steady-as-a-rock Brannigan. For a second there, I lost it. My instinct was to run out there and grab him—”
    I might have made a mistake about Jeb’s acting ability. Then again . . .
    “By the time reality set in—only a second or two—the boat slewed across the wake and over he went. So in a way everybody’s right. I killed him.” Jeb kept his head down, elbows propped on his knees.
    “And you and Mrs. Kellerman?”
    Jeb’s head popped up, body language radiating indignation. “She came on to me a coupla times,” he adm itted, “but I’m not into Botox B abes. Not that Nessa’s really old, but I like my women young. My current honey’s jailbait, but her folks don’t mind.”
    “What’s her name?”
    “Cary Knight.” Jeb frowned. “So what’s with the questions, Miz Halliday ?” My designer name came out with mocking venom. “You trying to help little brother take down a rival?”
    “I liked Martin Kellerman,” I told him quietly. “I’m just trying to figure out how he died. He definitely had an attack of some kind before he fell overboard. I’d just like to know what caused it.” Natural or induced? And why didn’t his wife move a muscle to help him?
    Inwardly, I sighed. As much as I didn’t want to, I was inclined to accept Jeb’s story. Even a Neanderthal like Jeb Brannigan could lose it when he saw Santa Claus toppling toward the Waterway.
    Two berths to the west, a sixty-foot cruiser rumbled to life. “You need to give the police a statement,” I said. “Just tell them what you told me. And it wouldn’t hurt to get your Cary to give a statement as well, saying she’s your steady and she keeps you too busy to have any time for playing around.”
    Jeb raked me with a look that said, You’ve got to be kidding . “What part of jailbait don’t you understand? I’m pushing thirty-three and she’s seventeen. Letting Cary make a statement is like saying, ‘Come and get me.’”
    I