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“I don’t know! I don’t know who would have done this to us.”
“Was William fucking around with someone else’s wife?” he presses. “Did he piss someone off?”
“No, I?—”
“Were you having an affair? Did your new boyfriend fall in love, and now he’s sick of seeing you bruised up?”
“No!”
“Then what?” I snap. “What, Adrianna? You’re begging us to dig you out of a metric ton of shit, but you’re giving us nothing to work with. Who has been in your lives lately? Who has been sneaking around the house? Who had access to the house? Because there was no forced entry.”
“Explain that.” Fletch folds his arms, his expression turning harder the tighter we squeeze her into a corner none of us wants her in. “How did the killer get in and out, when there’s no signs of forced entry?”
“I don’t know,” she moans. “I don’t?—”
“Who has keys?”
“Just us. I don’t…” She places her hands on the table and studies them. Dejected. Scared. “Me and William. I’ve never given one to someone else. But maybe he did.”
“Who did he hang out with?” I question. “When he’s not working and, assuming he’s not banging someone else’s wife, who is he spending time with?”
She shakes her head side-to-side. “I don’t know. Armando, I suppose. His boss. He was always at work, even when his workday was supposed to end at four.”
“And what about you?” I challenge. “If we start asking about you, what are we gonna find out?”
“I figured you would have already asked around about me.” She sits back in her seat and exhales. “You won’t hear much. Just that I stayed home except for when I went to class. I took the girls to the grocery store every second Tuesday. We went to the park most days. Or down to the bay. Or we played with the neighborhood kids. We went wherever it was free because everything else cost more than we had. I went nowhere alone,” she sighs. “Nowhere, except class, two nights a week.”
“I’d have killed him with the peanuts.” Minka hitches herself up to sit on our kitchen counter. Her black slacks, tossed in favor of booty-short underwear. Her sexy, sleeveless top, switched out for a shirt she took from my side of the closet.
Cato survived the day with Mia.
Fletch swept the girl up as soon as we clocked out, slipped my already-wealthy mobster brother a fifty for his time, and then they were gone. To deal with the Jada bullshit. To deal with their lives, even when it hurts.
Aubree’s at the bar.
Cato’s there with her and Tim.
Fifi isn’t the type to follow us home.
Which means now it’s just me and my wife.
It’s my favorite way to exist.
“She didn’t have to make such a mess if she wanted him out of the way, Archer. Stabbing him leaves so much room for error.”
“What room?” I head to the fridge since we still have to eat, and I know our time is limited. Grabbing ingredients for an omelet, I toss them on the counter by the stove and get started. “She slices his artery, he’s dead.”
“He’s twice her size,” she argues. “Maybe she hesitates. Cuts him, but not good enough. Now he’s awake and pissed.” She reaches across our counter and selects an apple from our sad, and often neglected, fruit bowl. She must be starving if she’s willingly eating something healthy. “Adrianna could have easily gotten herself gutted using this method of killing.”
“You mean, the same method the vigilante used to kill Laramie Fentone?” I select a knife from our drawer, the irony not lost on me that it’s eight-inches long, just like the Alves’. “That time a man, twice the size of…” I glance across and look her up and down, “you was killed by a blade. You mean like that?”
“Laramie Fentone was asleep in his bed.”
I grab a cutting board and set a fat red pepper on top. “As was Alves. Well,” I amend, “in his recliner, but still.”
“Fentone’s killer wasn’t his smaller, beaten wife. His death was colder than that. More professional.”
I choke out a laugh and slice through the top of the pepper. “Professional. Okay. The point remains: women sometimes choose the blade. And it works relatively quickly. Quietly, even, when done right.”
