"Why?"

"Those men you think murdered their wives…they did it to keep from splitting their assets and paying out a ton of alimony, right?"

"In most cases, yes. But not all the victims were women."

Chris momentarily lost his train of thought.

"In at least one case," said Morse, "and probably two, the murder was about custody of the children, not money."

"Again, you're miles off base. Thora and I have no children."

"Your wife has a child. A nine-year-old son."

He smiled. "Sure, but she had Ben even before she married Red Simmons. Thora would automatically get custody."

"You've legally adopted Ben. But that brings up another important point, Dr. Shepard."

"What?"

"How your wife got her money."

Chris sat back down and looked at Agent Morse. How much did she know about his wife? Did she know that Thora was the daughter of a renowned Vanderbilt surgeon who'd left his family when his daughter was eight years old? Did she know that Thora's mother was an alcoholic? That Thora had fought like a wildcat just to get through adolescence, and that making it through nursing school was a pretty amazing achievement given her background?

Probably not.

Morse probably knew only the local legend: how Thora Rayner had been working in St. Catherine's Hospital when Red Simmons, a local oilman nineteen years her senior, had been carried into the ER with a myocardial infarction; how she'd become close to Red during his hospital stay, then married him six months later. Chris knew this story well because he'd treated Red Simmons during the last three years of his life. Chris had known Thora as a nurse, of course, but he came to know her much better during Red's years in heart failure. And what he learned was that Red truly loved "his little Viking"-a reference to Thora's Danish ancestry-and that Thora had been a brave and loyal wife, a woman worthy of deep respect. When Red died two and a half years ago, he left Thora an estate valued at $6.5 million. That was big money in Natchez, but it meant little to Chris. He had some money of his own, and he was young enough to earn plenty more.