Something New (30 page)

* * *

An hour later, Martha Bruno plunked her coffee cup down on her kitchen table with resounding force. “I don’t buy it, little missy,” she said, looking right at Abby. “Not one bit.”

Martha Bruno sat next to her husband at their kitchen table. Abby had taken the seat across from her. Braden was situated next to Abby, and upon entering the kitchen to a table with only four chairs, Rodrigo had assured the Brunos that he was fine leaning against the counter.

The sharp tone of Martha’s voice caught Abby off guard. “Why not?”

“I don’t know why. I just don’t. Call it my gut.” Martha’s dyed black hair moved in one big hair-sprayed wave. “Your mama was too devout a Christian to cheat on her husband. Even if she’d fallen out of love with your daddy, she was too close to Jesus to forget that adultery is a sin.”

Abby bit down the bitchy retort that wanted to spew out of her mouth. “What about the word
baby
I heard her say to the killer?”

“I do not know.” Martha waved her work-roughened hand in a dismissive flip. “You were eight years old, and you were probably already scared because you knew you were gonna get in trouble for running away from my house without telling anybody. On top of that, you hear someone attacking your mama and daddy. You probably did not hear what you think you did. I do not think Elaine would have used an endearment with someone about to kill her.”

“But I clearly remember your message on the answering machine, which you confirm was right.”

“A message is a lot more words strung together than one word slipping out during a terrifying moment,” Martha responded. “It’s a lot easier for your ears to mistake hearing one word than a whole message. I simply will not believe Elaine was unfaithful to her husband. It would be like being unfaithful to her child, and she would never do that to you.”

Abby clamped her teeth together so hard her jaw hurt. “People find ways to justify acting on something they desperately want all the time. My mom was human.” Spreading her hands on the table, Abby mentally told herself to focus rather than argue. “Let’s narrow it down to the last year of her life, and please think hard before you answer.” She held Martha’s stubborn gaze with an unblinking one of her own. “My mother never said
an-y-thing
or acted in a way that
ever
gave you pause and made you think something was going on? Even if you didn’t suspect an affair, was there anything in just her behavior in general that now might make you think something was off? Did you ever come over to the house and find a man there she had trouble explaining or that you simply didn’t recognize? Did she ever mention a man’s name more than once when you guys talked? A male friend or someone from the congregation spoken of one too many times? Anything like that?”

With her chin propped in her hand, Martha drummed her fingers against her plump cheek. “I don’t recall Elaine mentioning one person’s name more than another, although she did speak of male members of the church as friends. But she talked about just as many women, and often these people were spouses to each other. I suppose I can’t say anything one hundred percent, but the truth is”—her dark eyebrows went up—“I’d be more likely to think your daddy was having an affair than your mama.”

That jerked Abby upright, but Braden put his hand on her leg under the table before she could utter a word.

“Do you have some evidence of that, Mrs. Bruno?” Braden asked.

Martha looked at Braden in the same way she used to look at her sons when they would try to spin a tall tale for her. “No, Detective. I said
to think
not that I knew.”

Braden’s lips turned up just the slightest bit at the edge. “Fair enough.” He scribbled some kind of shorthand note in his pad without breaking eye contract from Martha. “Then what would make you
think
it enough to say what you just did?”

The woman shrugged her linebacker shoulders. “Nothing concrete. Except that Rich was less involved in the church than Elaine. Not that he didn’t want to go or that Elaine dragged him there every week. I just know Elaine volunteered for a lot more of the church-sponsored outreach programs than Rich did. Plus, Rich took a fair number of fishing and hunting weekends that men are like to do.” Martha’s voice rose in speculative tones with each sentence she spoke. “He could have just as easily been shacking up with some gal in a motel off the interstate for two days as to be at a camp in the woods or sitting in a boat on the river.” She reached across the table and petted Abby’s hand. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m not saying that it is so, just that I’d be more likely to believe it from him than your mother.”

A lump Abby had sworn she wouldn’t let herself build up to anymore once again sat in her throat, and she hated the weakness. “No, it’s all right. I came to hear your thoughts; that’s what you’re giving me. I can’t throw stones at you just because I might not like what you say.” She took a fortifying sip of her water to cover the strain in her voice. “About either one of them.”

Martha’s ample bosom lifted and fell as she sighed. “Heck, Abby, sweetheart. I don’t know if what I’m saying is right or not.” A mothering softness filled her hazel eyes, and she offered a gentle smile as she ran two fingers down Abby’s cheek. “Everything happened such a long time ago. Maybe it’s just that you look so much like your mama but I can’t look at your face without thinking of Elaine and then feeling like I’d be a sinner if I ever thought she could cheat on her marriage vows. I don’t believe she did. But I suppose more importantly to you, I definitely do not have any evidence that she did. If there were troubles, she never confided in me about them.” Martha squeezed Abby’s hand one more time and then withdrew to her side of the table. “Nor did your daddy, for that matter. I was just speculating, as I often tend to do.”

“It’s okay,” Abby answered, smiling tightly. “Sometimes speculations turn out to be correct.”

Braden soothed Abby’s thigh under the table with the steady weight of his hand. “And you, sir?” He shifted to Anthony. “I’ve read your official statement of that night, but I have to ask again if you remember anything else from when you entered the house to find Abby. The smallest detail might prove very useful.”

His lips pursed, Anthony shook his head. “Not more than what I told those detectives all those years ago. The den and the bedroom were ransacked. I passed the den and peeked in; I was looking for somebody when nobody answered my knock. Everything that had been on the desk was on the floor, like it had been swiped, which made me think there might have been a fight that started in there and ended in the bedroom.” Anthony’s focus slid to Abby, and obvious pity filled his gaze. “Once I saw that bedroom and Abby folded up next to her mother, I couldn’t think or remember much more than that. A scene like that fills up your mind and takes over everything else.”

“Yes, it does,” Braden said. “You’re right.” He reached across the table and engulfed Anthony’s hand in a fast shake. “Thank you for your help. Both of you.”

“Yes, thank you.” Abby stood as Braden did. “We won’t take up any more of your time.”

Martha quickly rounded the table and gave Abby a fast, suffocating hug. “It was good to see you again, sweetheart.” She took Abby’s shoulders in hand and held her at arms length. “I know it probably won’t do you any good to hear it now, but I’d have taken you in if we didn’t already have the six boys of our own. We were barely holding our heads above water. That’s why we ended up having to sell the orchard about two years after your parents passed away.”

“It’s all right, Mrs. Bruno. I did okay.” The stupid choking sensation made Abby’s chest burn again. “I promise.”

“You’re all grown up.” The woman touched her fingertips to Abby’s face, tilting it up into the light. “I guess you can call me Martha now.”

This formidable woman looked exactly as she had eighteen years ago. “That might feel weird. I’ll always think of you as Mrs. Bruno.”

“Whatever gets you picking up the phone, I’ll answer,” Martha said. “Don’t be a stranger.”

“I won’t.” Abby felt Rodrigo move in to protect her back, and with Braden at her side, it allowed the strangling in her throat to ease some. “Thank you again. I appreciate your thoughts.”

Martha linked her arm in Abby’s and led her to the door. “I hope you find out who did it but don’t let it hold up your life anymore if you don’t.”

Inviting heat from the two men closing ranks around her made Abby’s answer an easy one. “No, I won’t, Mrs. Bruno.” As she followed Braden and Rodrigo into the hallway, she offered her old neighbor a little wave. “You have a good day.”

Martha lifted her hand in return. “Bye.”

In silence, Abby walked between Braden and Rodrigo to the elevator, her mind a jumble of more confusing half pieces of speculative information than ever. She didn’t know what the heck to believe or where to turn anymore to find the truth.

Once inside the elevator, as soon as the door dinged closed, Rodrigo faced Abby and Braden, his shoulder braced against the wall. “I’m just the observer here. What did you guys think?”

What do I think
? As the elevator started its descent, Abby sifted through the handful of people she’d spoken to in person thus far and tried to sort the wheat from the chaff. “I think the edge in insight still has to go to Lorene,” she finally answered. “Lorene knew my mother a lot better than Martha did, even though Martha might have been at my house more, due to being closer by.”

The elevator opened to the apartment lobby; Braden held his hand against the doors, letting Abby and Rodrigo out first. “And you can’t discount that Martha openly admits she’s just chucking curveballs based on her gut,” Braden said. He walked backward out of the building and through the parking lot, facing Abby and Rodrigo. “It was pure speculation in a different way from the careful suspicions Lorene presented when I talked to her.”

“I agree.” Abby’s mind wandered ahead to their next destination, and an excited tickle made her belly do a flip-flop. “But I wonder if I could throw Martha’s suspicions about my father in Father Jim’s face. Maybe I can get him to react and accidentally admit to something about my
mother
in his efforts to defend my
father
the way he tried to do with my mother the other day.”

Rodrigo barked a sharp laugh that filled the open air. “You have one hell of a twisted mind, Bit.” He curled his hand around her nape and pulled her to his side. “Not only did I somehow understand what you just said, but the element of surprise is probably a good idea. Not that I’m the expert or anything.” Rodrigo’s focus shifted to Braden. “Because I gotta say, I didn’t think Mr. Bruno’s idea about the fight starting in the den and ending in the bedroom made that much sense.”

They reached Braden’s car, but rather than get in, Rodrigo leaned against the rear door, his arms crossed. “I mean, I’ve been in some fights in my life, and while I’m not saying this with pride, one or two actually involved a knife. In all the fights I’ve been in, I’ve never moved around one room enough to make a mess, down a hallway, and then into another room where we tussled enough for me to make
another
mess, all
before
someone not only slashed at my neck, but then another person too.” His mouth twisted, and his dark brows pulled so tightly together they looked like one line. “A real fight doesn’t happen in the way they choreograph fights in the movies. You just don’t cover that much territory when you’re taking swings at each other. It’s a very focused act. At least it always was for me.”

“The precise nature of the fatal wounds, as well as the lack of significant bruising on any other parts of the victims, doesn’t suggest a drawn-out battle,” Braden responded. “The kind of fight you’re talking about is not what I think happened here. A surprise attack on the killer’s part could have feasibly started out in the den. He isn’t successful. Richard ends up running for the bedroom with the assailant in pursuit. Maybe it draws Elaine’s attention in a way it hadn’t before, and she comes into the room. I don’t know. That doesn’t seem entirely plausible to me either, based on Abby’s assessment that her mother was attacked first, but we have to keep putting scenarios together until we find one that makes sense with the evidence we have.”

Rodrigo nodded. “Got it.”

Now that Abby had started having these confusing dreams and flashbacks, she spent the better part of every day trying to find the right pieces to fit together and make a complete puzzle. “We do know my father was having that fight in the den, though,” she said, her focus on Braden as she tried to work a scenario out on her own. “So let’s assume for a moment it was with the man my mom was having an affair with. Maybe that shout I heard was from a short while earlier in the day or even the day before or week before, and the guy left but then came back? Maybe he figured if my father found out and my mother confessed, then he would be exposed? So maybe he decided to come back and eliminate the threat?”

“It’s definitely possible.” Braden unlocked the car doors from his keychain and moved around the front of the vehicle to the driver’s side. “It makes total sense that the person she was cheating with could have as much to lose as she did if everything came out in the open. He easily could have been married too. Would your mother have left the den in disarray for more than an evening?”

Abby shot Braden a little glare from over the hood of the car. “My mother was a traditional homemaker, so I’m not going to assume that was a broadly sexist question about women cleaning up after men but rather one specified to her life.”

Braden swung back around the vehicle and loomed over Abby, his hand planted on the hood of the car by her head. “Honey, I’ve had an apartment and have been cleaning up after myself for a dozen years.” A fingertip from his free hand slid down her sternum and belly to land at her belt buckle. “I’m not making any assumptions that you’re going to become my maid just because I’ve seen you naked.”

Rodrigo joined Braden and caged Abby in, his eyes as dark on her as Braden’s were light. “Me either, Bit. I’ve been taking care of myself for even longer than he has. Shit.” He licked his fuller lower lip. “I have a whole house that I keep clean on my own.”