Practice to Deceive

skilled lawyer—could certainly raise doubts that she had only touched the manual casually as she stacked magazines or dusted her coffee table.
    According to Keith Ogden, the former cop who had turned in Jim’s gun, Peggy knew about the gun. She was present when Jim brought the Bersa over to Keith, seeking instructions. But she’d shown no interest in it. Learning how to shoot it was Jim’s thing.
    Had Jim had anything to gain from Russ Douglas’s death? No. Had Peggy had a potential motive? Yes. She and Jim had been living high on the hog, and despite her salary and tips from her limousine driving in Las Vegas, they were close to broke and had maxed out her credit cards.
    In 2003, Peggy wanted to sell her house to Brenna Douglas—but Brenna had no money to buy it. If Russ was dead, Brenna expected seven hundred thousand dollars in insurance payoffs.
    With part of that, she could buy Peggy’s house, and Peggy wouldn’t be constantly living over a financial abyss.
    If he could present only circumstantial evidence, albeit masses of it, Greg Banks realized that Peggy might possibly win in court. She was facing a murder charge that might not be easily provable, a case that was at some points as fragile and flyaway as dandelion fluff in the wind.
    Peggy Thomas was very attractive, most convincing when she wanted to be, charming enough to impress gullible jurors. And she could walk away free and clear, never to be tried again because double jeopardy would attach.
    And Banks had lost his most powerful witnesses. Brenda was dead, and Bill Hill was in critical condition in a Florida hospital. There was no way that he could survive a trip across the country and the stress of testifying once more against his best friend. Indeed, he might never be able to take the stand again.
    Jean Huden was on the state’s witness list, but it would be easy for Craig Platt to convince jurors that she was not a reliable and believable witness. Jean had a long, long criminal background—mostly having to do with illicit drugs. Platt could deconstruct her image with very few questions. As a backup to Bill Hill’s testimony, Jean would be valuable to the prosecution. Alone, any power she had as a truth teller would be decimated.
    Ironically, both Greg Banks and Craig Platt were eager to see Peggy Sue go on trial. Hers would be a landmark legal event, and it would be a challenge for both of them. Jousting in court at its best.
    And still. Banks was well aware of the hundreds, thousands, of hours his office and the Island County Sheriff’s crew had put into finding out who really spearheaded the plot to destroy Russel Douglas. He and Mark Plumberg both believed that Jim Huden was the shooter. But neither of them felt the cowardly murder had been Jim’s idea.
    They had long considered that Brenna Douglas had guilty knowledge in the case. And they both believed that the Peggy Sue Thomas they had come to know well was the most likely suspect to set the murder plan in motion.
    She had approached several people in sticky situations and offered Jim up as an assassin who would take care of their “problems.” It was almost as if she had her own “bucket list,” and setting up and getting away with murder was high on that list. That may have been one of her motivations; the other was money.
    Peggy had sought big-time money for as long as anyone could remember.
    If the state’s case against the lovely redhead should fall short, no one in the prosecutor’s or sheriff’s office could deal with watching her walk away with no punishment at all. Banks had discussed the plea bargain with Russ Douglas’s family, and they had agreed, somewhat grudgingly, to the only way they could be certain that Peggy Thomas served prison time.
    Craig Platt, on the other hand, had seen the massive coverage and speculation in the media and among the residents of Island County. Peggy Thomas had few supporters, other than her mother and father, her half sister Sue Mahoney, her two daughters, and her ex-husband, Kelvin. She wasn’t a famous beauty queen any longer; she was infamous and notorious as an accused murderer.
    Depending on how she impressed a jury—or not—she could be facing a very long prison term.
    And so, for their own reasons, Banks and Platt agreed to a plea bargain from Peggy. With her personality, she wouldn’t be getting off easy. A woman who had become bored married to a billionaire after only a few months would not be happy locked in a cell