With Every Breath

by Beverly Bird

  "Happily married hasn’t always stopped men before." "It stopped me."

  "So what was your relationship with her?"

  Tony’s eyes assessed him. "We were friends, Chief. It was as pure and as simple as that. I cared for her, and she needed ... someone. Someone to talk to, I think, as much as anything, although we rarely discussed anything too personal. For all her laughter, there was always something sad about her eyes. I imagine that somewhere, at some point in time, there was a man she did love, and over the years I’ve come to decide that it probably wasn’t Beacher Brogan." He flashed an apologetic look at Maddie. "But it wasn’t me, either. Whoever it was, his loss saddened her. But she had grit. She went on without stumbling."

  Maddie looked at Joe. "So maybe she was meeting

  someone on the mainland, she suggested a little breathlessly. "Maybe I knew it, and it made me unhappy, and that’s why I don’t remember."

  But both Joe and Tony shook their heads.

  "I would have noticed something," Tony said. "She always devoted her time to you during those weekends. At Minnamini Hall."

  "If she was meeting someone, she wouldn’t take her kid," Joe muttered, and something in his eyes shifted. Maddie knew he was thinking about the way they had spent the last two days dodging Josh’s awareness of what they were up to. Something quickened in her stomach.

  "But I could have been a ... a foil," she pushed on. "If she took me along with her, then my father wouldn’t be suspicious."

  "I don’t think so," Tony said again.

  "Then what did we do over there?" she cried.

  "You came to my store, and I gave you candy. We’d chat for a little while, then you’d go on down to the Hall. After that, I’d see you about town here or there, shopping and whatnot. Annabel would wave and smile." He was quiet for a moment, obviously lost in memory. "On Sunday morning you’d take the turnaround trip of the ten o’clock ferry to go home."

  "Where’d she get that kind of money?" Joe demanded suddenly. "Annabel wasn’t rich. She was just like all the other Wick folks, like just about everybody else on Candle. They get by because their needs aren’t great. Minnamini Hall doesn’t fall into that price range. The last I heard—"

  He broke off, remembering uncomfortably that he had taken the Jonesport almost-girlfriend there once at the very end, and it had turned into a fiasco.

  "It starts at something like one hundred and seventy-five

  a night," he went on awkwardly. "Even allowing for inflation, it would still have been dear back then." Maddie was too preoccupied to pick up on his discomfort. She nodded, scowling.

  "I paid for it," Tony said abruptly, and his voice hardened as though daring them to make something of it.

  "You did?" Maddie repeated, shocked. "Why? Why would you do such a thing if you weren’t..." She trailed off, oddly unwilling to say it. Having an affair with her.

  "Because she needed it. And because you needed it. The first couple of weekends she stayed at the motor inn. I changed that. I wanted to, and even then, I could afford it."

  "What did your wife say about it?" Joe asked bluntly. Tony gave a tight smile. "She didn’t know."

  Joe raised a brow.

  "My company paid for it. My wife wouldn’t have understood. As you clearly don’t." He looked between them again. "It’s not human nature to do something for purely altruistic reasons. It does happen, however. And I did love her. She touched something inside me. I wanted to see her comfortable and happy."

  "And you didn’t expect anything in return?" Joe asked caustically.

  "No. I did not."

  Maddie felt herself going breathless again. "What about me? Why did you do it because of me?"

  "You were often bruised. I suspected that Annabel was trying to get you away from a hostile situation, but I never asked, and she never said."

  "Bruised?" Maddie repeated, reeling.

  "On one occasion, I remember you had a black eye. Annabel did make mention of that. She said you’d had a tussle with one of your little friends. I’m not sure I believed it."

  Something inside her quaked. "You’re thinking it was my father, aren’t you?" she guessed. Angus had said something like this, too, she realized despairingly. Your pa hit me. Hit you. What kind of bastard had the man been? "Why can’t I remember?" she cried suddenly.

  Over by the deck, Josh jumped at her tone. Joe put a hand on her thigh, squeezing.

  "You also had a broken arm once," Tony said quietly. "A broken arm," she whispered hollowly.

  "Your right one, as I remember it."

  She looked down at it as though it belonged to someone else.

  "Annabel didn’t explain that one."

  She felt on the verge of tears. They burned just behind her eyes. She tried to imagine striking Josh that hard, that angrily, wanting to hurt him.

  It was beyond her comprehension.

  She stood up shakily, pushing Joe’s hand away. "I don’t want to hear any more."

  "All right," Joe answered, his voice tight. He stood up as well.

  "There’s little more I could tell you in any event," Tony said. "The only times I ever saw Annabel were on those weekends. I never even actually met Beacher. I just knew of him from what she told me about him. I rarely came over to Candle in those days."

  Joe was urging her toward the foyer. Josh was crowding close to her legs. Then Joe stopped abruptly, looking back at Tony.

  "So how did you manage to meet her in the first place?" "I met her in the candy store," Tony answered, "one of the first times she brought Madeline over. It was because of Annabel that I thought to build and invest over here. She loved Candle, went on and on about how beautiful it was."

  Beautiful, Maddie thought. With its rugged beaches and its untamed dunes and all its dark, nasty secrets. She shuddered involuntarily.

  "Well, I’m very glad your house was here the other night," she managed honestly.

  Tony smiled, but the expression faded when Joe asked shortly, "You bought Annabel’s house. Why?"

  "It was for sale."

  "There was no connection to your relationship with her?"

  "Actually, no. Sooner or later, I’d like to develop the entire Wick into something exclusive. That’s why I picked it up. That, and the fact that I could do so for scarcely more than the land was worth. And in the meantime, I rent it, so it’s been lucrative."

  Joe grimaced at the man’s silver-white hair. "You won’t live long enough. Half those people’ll never sell." Tony shrugged. "It’s a dream. Sometimes the wishing is better than the reality."

  Like with Annabel? Joe wondered. He realized that he believed the man. More or less.

  They were almost back outside before Maddie turned around one last time. Her voice was strained.

  "Did she love me?" she asked suddenly. "Do you know if she ... loved me, or if the mainland thing was all for effect?"

  Tony’s face softened again. "She loved you profoundly."

  Maddie was shaking when she got into the truck.

  "You okay?" Joe asked her as they crossed over the bridge again. The tide was coming in. The water was even higher.

  "It’s just... spooky," she murmured. "It’s bad enough to think that someone I don’t even know has been in my house with me in it. But in a lot of ways this is even

  worse. It was like he was talking about someone else, Joe, about a mother and daughter I don’t even know."

  He took a hand off the wheel to scrub his jaw, then he shifted gears as they turned onto the boulevard. She watched his hands, his strong and capable hands.

  "What Tony told us makes me appreciate that other cop’s theory a little more," she went on. "What did you say his name was?"

  "Dave Bramnick."

  "Mmm. And you said my father drank. If he was violent, then it makes all the sense in the world that he was probably abusive to my mother, too. Maybe one of those events ... got out of hand."

  "Yeah, and Beacher must have just loved the idea of Tony paying for M
innamini Hall."

  "If he knew," she whispered.

  "Even if he didn’t, he doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d be glad to see his wife taking off every weekend."

  "So he beat her for it," she choked.

  "And the last time it happened, you hid from him in the pantry closet?"

  She shivered, nodding. Joe turned up the Pathfinder’s heat.

  "And he was too drunk to realize that you’d hidden there," he went on, then he paused. "I don’t know, Maddie. How does it feel to you?"

  "Close," she whispered, looking bleakly out the window. "It feels close to the truth, but not quite there." She looked back at him. "Let's go see Mildred Diehl." His gaze moved to her sharply and his brows went up. "I thought you’d had enough for today."

  "I’m getting my second wind. I want to dig through this, Joe. I want to get it over with and put it behind me."

  Chapter 29

  They went to the diner. It was the most logical place to locate Mildred at that time on a weekday. Maddie imagined Josh was probably getting hungry by then in any event.

  Joe parked the Pathfinder, but made no immediate move to get out. "You sure about this? Mildred’s never a pleasant experience."

  "I’m sure," Maddie answered. Her jaw hardened. "Yeah, well. I’m just thinking that while she makes it her business to know every damned thing that happens on the island, what she doesn’t know, she makes up. And what she makes up is always bad."

  "I know that," Maddie said softly. "You said."

  "All right," he said finally. "Let’s do it."

  They got out and went inside. Mildred was at the cash register. Even from the other side of the counter, Joe could see that her knees were badly swollen.

  He greeted her with forced good humor. "Cold out there." He gave a mock shiver, thrusting his hands deep into his jacket pockets. "Snow this year before October,

  even out here in the middle of the ocean. That’s my guess."

  Mildred said something that sounded to Maddie like "harrumph."

  "Come on, Mildred, be nice," Joe chided before she could open her mouth a second time. "We need to talk to you. Come have a cup of coffee with us while we grab something to eat."

  "I’m on the clock." Her eyes said she wouldn’t drink ambrosia with the likes of Maddie Brogan.

  "I’ll talk to Regina, make sure she pays you anyway." Mildred still didn’t stand up. She took the offensive instead. "Carrying on all over town now, are you, Joe? Right in daylight, too."

  "Best time to get things done," he answered, seemingly unperturbed. "Come on, Mildred, let’s go sit down."

  She harrumphed again, then finally stood to limp to a booth behind them.

  A waitress came almost immediately for their order. She was probably trying to overhear what was being said, Maddie realized. She ordered Josh a ham-and-cheese sandwich. Joe asked for a hamburger, then he looked at her. Maddie shook her head. "I’m not hungry."

  This was starting to wear on her, he realized. And why not? She’d been confronted with lies left and right—the very fabric of her life was turning out to be corduroy when she’d always thought it was plain, flat cotton. And her ex-husband had undoubtedly met his maker in her dining room.

  All in all, Joe thought she was holding up remarkably well.

  The waitress was barely gone before Mildred jumped in again. She’d pulled a chair from a nearby table and sat down heavily at the front of the booth.

  "How come you’re doing this to Gina?" she demanded

  with a scathing glance at Maddie. "It’s cruel, you ask me."

  Joe leaned his back into the comer of the booth made by the seat and the wall. He appeared slouched, lazy, but Maddie felt the tension coming off him in waves. "Do what, Mildred?" he asked mildly.

  "Keeping the poor girl in that place for three days." "She needs help."

  "She needs you. She needs you to stop running around and act like a husband, you ask me."

  "That’d be tough, since I’m not her husband." Maddie saw a nerve twitch at his jaw.

  Josh’s gaze was whipping back and forth between all of them. Maddie felt something sink inside her. There really was no telling what hurtful thing might come out of Mildred’s mouth next.

  "Go eat at the counter, Josh," she whispered. His eyes stopped roving and settled on her. "Right over there where I can see you. Look, you can watch the kitchen through that glass in the door. It would be better than listening to a bunch of grown-up talk, huh?" "You’re carrying on," Mildred said again, shooting a hard, accusing look at Maddie, barely waiting until Josh had gone. She couldn’t have looked more disgusted, Maddie thought, if her lip had actually curled.

  "Sure I am," Joe said suddenly, baldly, changing tactics. "Enjoying the hell out of it, too."

  Maddie’s eyes widened. Her heart thumped as she looked over at him. Mildred sputtered and reddened.

  "And you know what?" Joe went on. "I’m a free man, and I guess if I want to tumble Maddie right here on the table in front of everybody, I’ve got every right, depending on how she feels about it." He glanced at Maddie. "What do you say, babe?" And this time the endearment was as soft and intimate as a touch.

  Mildred’s face went crimson. Maddie felt her heart lurch even as she told herself it was ridiculous. Then she burst out laughing.

  Mildred came up out of her chair like a shot. "Both of you, trash."

  "Get back here, Mildred," Joe said more mildly.

  "I’m not watchin’ you carry on."

  "Then we’ll wait until you go off shift."

  Someone laughed from the booth behind them. "Come on, Mildred," Joe said again. "Sit down." Mildred kept walking.

  "Goddamnit," Joe muttered, and stood up. "Mildred!" he roared. "Get over here now, or you’re under goddamned arrest, and I’ll take you down to the station to talk to you."

  Mildred froze. The crowded diner went silent.

  "You’re rough, Joe," somebody called out. "What’s gotten into you?"

  "Hell, Ernie, I’ve always been this way."

  Maddie looked around at the other slack, stunned faces and had to swallow hard to keep from laughing again.

  "You wouldn’t dare, boy," Mildred managed.

  "You gonna try me?"

  She didn’t. She came back and sat down, every muscle in her face rigid, her skin so red that Maddie feared for her health.

  Joe leaned back again. "So what did you notice going on around here Monday night?" he asked. "Anything?" "I didn’t see nothing, not a thing."

  "Oh, come on, Mildred. You live with your nose pressed to that living-room window of yours."

  "Cars go back and forth all the time."

  "Any of them go up to The Wick on Monday?"

  Her expression turned sly. "That Pathfinder did. But

  you know that. Looked to me like you had a whole car full of people, too."

  Joe blew out his breath. "All right, let’s try this. Who do you think killed Beacher and Annabel Brogan?"

  The switch of topics made Mildred’s mouth hang open for a moment. Her dentures were yellow. Maddie looked away.

  "You’re asking me?" she muttered, but she was intrigued. Maddie could feel it. She imagined there was very little that Mildred Diehl enjoyed more than voicing her opinions.

  Their food came. "Well?" Joe prompted, biting into his burger. "Never knew you to be at a loss for words before, Mildred. What do you think?"

  "Don’t get smart with me, boy."

  "Boy," he repeated. He was feeling too goddamned good for common sense, he realized suddenly. Just like yesterday. Even Mildred was having a hard time getting to him.

  His gaze slid back to Maddie. "I’m thirty-seven," he said quietly. "And I can barely remember puberty." But Christ, he thought, lately he’d sure felt like he was right back in it.

  "I figured that out," she answered with a bemused smile. "You said you were three years ahead of me in school."

  "And I don’t even remember you picking your nose."
<
br />   "What?" And then she laughed again.

  He’d been thinking that when he’d been looking for a wife, he’d realized that familiarity did breed contempt. He’d been remembering that he’d married Gina because she’d been so much younger, that she hadn’t ever been a part of his old scabby-knees crowd. He pulled back from that line of thought fast.

  "I think Annabel was carrying on behind Beacher’s

  back, that’s what I think," Mildred snapped, finally egged on by their lack of interest in her. "And Beacher got drunk and killed her for it. I always said that."

  Some of the pleasure went out of Maddie, though Joe held her hand under the table. She thought she felt his grip tense as he traced circles on her skin with his thumb.

  It was a popular theory, she thought helplessly. "Who?" Joe asked. "Who was Annabel involved with?" "Don’t guess I’d know." Mildred sniffed as though such shenanigans were very far beneath her. "She didn’t do it in broad daylight."

  Joe looked at Maddie. "We’re not going to get anything here, babe."

  Maddie gave a little shake of her head. The picture she was getting of her parents—not memory, just hearsay—was not one she liked anyway.

  She pulled her hand out of Joe’s to push her hair back. Then she looked at Mildred abruptly. "Did he hit me? Did my father hit me?"

  It was the first she’d spoken to her directly, and the woman seemed taken aback. "You was always banged up some," Mildred agreed grudgingly. "I never saw nothing, mind you, with you folks being all the way up on The Wick."

  The slur was clear. Maddie slid out of the booth without responding, suddenly tired.

  Josh was finished with his sandwich. Joe had barely touched his burger. Josh was still watching the kitchen avidly, his legs swinging back and forth as he perched on the counter stool, but he jumped down when he saw Maddie move.

  Joe caught up with them as Mildred limped back to the cash register. He was paying for the food when Mildred looked up at them again with that sly look.