Free A Widow's Guilty Secret by Marie Ferrarella Page A

about the room, nothing to set it apart or make it appear special. It was just another bedroom converted into a home office.
    The man did have a very large desk. Was that to convey his importance, or did he just favor large writing areas? It definitely dominated the room, but the surface of the alder wood desk was completely devoid of any papers despite the fact that there was a laser printer set up right next to a computer tower. Both were turned off.
    On the far side of the desk, standing next to it, was a professional-looking shredding machine. Its container, Nick noticed, was partially filled. He crossed to that first.
    Removing the much heavier top portion, he found that the paper inside the container was shredded to the point that it would take a team of dedicated experts, working nonstop for several days, before they could even hope to begin to attempt to re-create the pages that had been fed through the machine’s sharp teeth. And even after that, it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that there could be anything gleaned from that effort.
    Why would a sheriff of a county need that kind of a shredder? Just what was the man shredding and why?
    Leaving that puzzle for later, Nick turned to the computer next. He hit the power button and waited for the tower to reboot. When it finished going through its paces, a picture came together on the screen.
    “Interesting screen saver,” Nick commented as he studied it.
    Peter had never had the computer on around her. Curious, she took a look and saw that the screen saver was comprised of an army of dollar signs marching off into infinity.
    She wasn’t surprised. “Peter always had a weakness for money,” she told the detective. “He complained more than once that he didn’t feel he was getting paid what he deserved.” Already the marching dollar signs were getting on her nerves. “Can you get into it?”
    The computer was, as he expected, password protected. “This is a little trickier than unlocking a door,” he told her. “But then again, a lot of people elect to go with things they can easily remember. What’s the date that you got married?” he asked.
    She sincerely doubted that Peter would use that. That would indicate that he was sentimental about the date and she knew that he wasn’t.
    But she gave the date to Nick anyway and he typed it in.
    The second he hit Enter the words Wiping out hard drive appeared. Below it was a sixty second countdown.
    And they already had just forty-five seconds left.
    And then they had forty-four.

Chapter 6
    “I can’t stop it.” Nick was acutely aware that the seconds were ticking away.
    His fingers flew across the keyboard and he was using every trick he could think of, but nothing was working.
    The countdown continued. The seconds were slipping away.
    “Damn it,” he muttered in frustration.
    And then, with three seconds left to go, the screen suddenly went blank. There was no telltale sound, no indication that anything was being destroyed. He had no idea what had happened but it appeared that the crisis had been averted.
    How?
    Had this countdown been some kind of elaborate hoax? Nick knew that, with all his desperate typing, he still hadn’t come up with the right combination of keys needed to save the information.
    So why had the screen gone blank?
    “I did it?” It was more of a question than a triumphant boast, directed at the universe in general.
    As he turned toward the sheriff’s widow to vocalize his confusion, it suddenly became clear.
    “You did it,” Nick amended, almost amused at how simple the solution had been.
    Suzy stood there with a smile on her face—and the computer power plug in her hand. She had pulled it out of the wall socket, causing the computer to stop its destructive activity and just shut off.
    Why hadn’t he thought of that?
    “Quick thinking,” he complimented her.
    “Basic thinking,” she corrected. She looked at the plug before placing it on the table beside the tower.