Chapter 33
“Coconut County!” I shouted as I banged on the stern of the Second Wind.
Footsteps shuffled below deck, and Greg poked his head through the hatch a moment later. Dread filled his face. He knew what was coming.
“I’m afraid I’ve got bad news,” I said.
“I heard. It’s all over the news.”
He didn’t look too upset about it.
“We just have a few standard questions for you.”
Greg was mid-40s with a square, puffy face and blue eyes with bags. Stubble lined his jaw, which had grown soft over the years. He was a little thick, and his slight beer belly stretched his T-shirt.
The boat belonged to Rex. He told us where we could find Greg. I don’t think Rex wanted any part of this trouble.
“Can you tell me where you were last night between 9 and 11:00 PM?”
He shifted uncomfortably, and his eyes darted between JD and me. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter now. Yeah, I was with my girlfriend, Sarah Dalton.”
“I’ll need contact information for her. What did you two do?”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” he said with a scowl.
He probably wasn’t going to like the next question either. “What went wrong with your marriage?”
He laughed. “Where do I start?”
“Wherever you’d like.”
He stared at us for a moment as he thought. “Well, my wife loved sex. Just not with me. She was banging everybody. Okay, fine. Two can play that game.” He shook his head. “Then there was the money issue.”
“What money issue?”
“She was terrible with it. We were going bankrupt. Our credit is fucked. She’s printing money over there, drilling out every tooth she can find, and we’re going broke.
She couldn’t control her spending—cars, clothes, jewelry.
Don’t get me started on her investments.
She thought she was going to be the next Buffett.
She blew it all on shit stocks and meme coins.
” Greg shook his head again. “Doesn’t make sense to me.
I’ve got my attorney looking into the books to see where all the money went.
I think she’d been planning the divorce for a long time and was stashing cash somewhere. ”
“So, it was her idea?”
“I didn’t want to get divorced. There was a time when I loved my wife and she loved me. Maybe I hoped we could get that back.” A frown tugged his mouth, and he hung his head.
“You ever get in arguments with your wife?” I asked, leading him down a path.
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Yeah. Of course.”
“Did those arguments ever get physical?”
Greg’s face tightened, and he hesitated for a moment.
"Laura had a temper. It's like she became another person.”
I lifted a curious brow.
“She would get physically and verbally abusive. I tried to avoid her at times like that. De-escalate the situation. But sometimes that was impossible. Sometimes I had to defend myself.”
I'm not sure I believed his story, but Laura wasn't around to refute it.
"Can you think of anybody who may have wanted to harm her?"
Greg's face tightened. "I know she had a few upset clients." He shook his head. "To tell you the truth, she was a terrible dentist. I sure as hell wouldn't let her work on me."
Jack frowned.
"There was a gentleman who came to her office not long ago and made some threats," I said. "You wouldn't happen to know his name, would you?”
Greg thought about it for a moment. "Tucker something." His face tightened as he tried to grasp it. "Tucker Conroy. That's it. She told me he was pissed. I don't blame him. You think he killed her?”
I shrugged. "It's likely that whoever did it had a high degree of animosity toward your wife."
"That doesn’t really narrow it down, does it?”
"What about Hannah?”
He made a lustful face that wasn't all that different from Dr. Stockton's reaction. "She's a hot little number. I sure would have liked to have gotten a piece of that. You wouldn't happen to know where she's working now, would you?" Greg smiled. "I am a free man."
"What about Sarah?"
Greg shrugged. “We’re not married.”
Not like it made much difference to him.
“Is there anyone else you can think of that was upset with your wife?" I asked.