Anthony shook his head harder. He seemed to feel really sorry for Mattheus. “I mean Shelly had her own place, her own friends, her own ways, like every other single woman.”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” Mattheus snarled.
“If I’d known about you, man, it would have been different,” Anthony said. “After they found her body, the police told me that she’d gone missing from New Orleans. I was just as shocked as everyone else. Believe me, I had no idea.”
“You guys lived together and didn’t talk about her life?” Mattheus wasn’t buying it.
“Sure, we talked. She told me all kinds of things. I have no idea if I can believe any of them, now,” said Anthony, shaken.
“She never mentioned me?” Mattheus repeated insistently.
“She didn’t man, not once,” Anthony mumbled under his breath.
Mattheus wanted to lunge at him, but then pulled back. Something again in the tone of his voice – Mattheus had to listen.
“I didn’t hurt her, I swear it,” Anthony cried out, in deep, sudden pain.
“But she’s dead,” Mattheus proclaimed loudly.
Anthony’s eyes glazed over. “I know it, I know it.” His head fell into his hands. “You don’t think I want the killer found? I do. I loved her, man.”
“You loved my wife?” Mattheus was shaken, watching him.
“I loved Shelly,” Anthony repeated in a broken voice.
“Everyone saw the two 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?”