Free Death by Deceit (Book #5 in the Caribbean Murder Series) by Jaden Skye Page A

of you fighting,
yelling,” Mattheus said, “they saw you running through town late at night the
day before she was killed.”
    “It was no big deal – people fight, they make
up,” Anthony picked his head up out of his hands.
    Mattheus looked at him closely. His eyes were
red and bleary.
    “We had our rough spots, she wasn’t always
easy. In fact, she could be one wild broad. We laughed about it. “
    “No, not Shelly.”
    “Yes she was - a  handful. But that’s what I
loved about her.”
    Mattheus cringed to hear it.
    “We were together for a long time,” Anthony lamented.
    That stopped Mattheus cold. It was obvious
they’d had a powerful relationship. This guy was devastated. It was real.
    “Tell me more,” Mattheus demanded.
    “When I first met her Shelly she’d been down
here about six months or so,” Anthony seemed relieved that someone was actually
listening. “She loved it down here – that never changed.  Told me she loved it
from the first time she visited, when she was a teenager.”
    “She never visited this place when she was a
teenager,” Mattheus corrected him, his jaw clenched tight. “The first time she
visited was when she came down with me.”
    “I believe you - she lied,” said Anthony. “Who
the hell knew it then? Now I’m figuring it out, but I didn’t know then. When we
first started to date, we took it slow - she told me she needed time. She said
her life had been rough, she needed space.”
    Mattheus didn’t know exactly what that meant? Her
life had been rough? Her life growing up, or her life with him? Mattheus
thought her life had been perfect when they were together, that he gave her
everything she wanted.
    Anthony went on slowly, remembering. “I gave
her all the space she needed and little by little, she settled down. We got
closer and closer.”
    Mattheus swallowed hard.
    “I would never have killed her,” Anthony
suddenly cried out in such an anguished tone it drove chills through Mattheus.
“She was everything to me!”
    Waves of horror overcame Mattheus  as he
totally believed what Anthony said.
    “But she was rough!”  Anthony went on. “She was
jealous, she was picky, she ran out on me a bunch of times. I always forgave
her and took her back.”
    “Ran out on you?” Mattheus said in a thin
voice. “Ran away?”
    Anthony leaned towards Mattheus then, and spoke
softly, “No, ran around on me, with other guys. She needed it.”
    Mattheus gagged.  “Needed what? To sleep
around? “
    “Yeah, that’s what we were yelling about that
night I finally left her and ran through town.  We fought about it all the
time. I couldn’t take it anymore. But she said it wasn’t only the sex she
needed, it was the freedom. I had to give her that.”
    Mattheus could not believe what he was hearing.
“And did you give her that? Could you?”
    They looked at each other then, sudden, strange
comrades in a war that never could be won.
    “I tried,” said Anthony, “but it finally got to
be too much for me. A few weeks before I left, I knew she was with someone else
again, I knew it, I smelled it, but she wouldn’t admit it. Then, finally, I
heard about it from a friend.”
    “Who was it?” Mattheus had to know.
    “I have no idea. My friend who told me about it
probably knows.”
    “You didn’t ask him? You didn’t want to know?” Mattheus
was disbelieving.
    “Hell, it didn’t matter by then,” Anthony burst
out. “There’d been so many of them. All that mattered was that it was happening
again. I couldn’t take it one more time.”
    “You confronted her?”
    “And she lied again. Man, this dame loved to
lie. She made up stories, she couldn’t help it. It was the lies that did it,
finally.”
    Mattheus wracked his brain to remember if he could
remember Shelly lying to him? He couldn’t. He might have been taken in by her
though, he finally realized.
    “Listen, do me a favor,” Anthony leaned towards
Mattheus across the table, as if they were