Page 28 of Maverick Detective Dad
“Why?” Bobby repeated on a heavy sigh. “I heard you ask the deputy for background on me. Maybe if I tell you what I’ve been through you’ll understand why I’m looking for peace. I thought maybe I’d find it in the group.”
Noah didn’t waste any time jumping right on that. “What have you been through?”
No sigh this time, just a long breath. “I don’t know how much you remember about my mom, but I loved her. I was crushed when she died.”
Now, Bobby looked at her, and yes, the venom was still there. The seething kind of venom that didn’t go away. And that meant he could have used all that anger to kill in the name of justice.
“Helen was my stepmother,” Bobby went on, “but I lost my birth mom when I was five so Helen was my mother in every way that counted. I can’t say the same about my father,” he added, taking his voice down a notch.
Here was more pain, more venom, and Everly recalled someone mentioning that shortly before her death, Helen had filed a restraining order against her husband, Isaac Fleming.
“My father was abusive to my mother,” Bobby continued several moments later. “After her death, he didn’t shift the abuse to me, but he neglected me, and I was eventually sent to foster care.” His jaw tightened. “If my mother hadn’t been trying to get away from my father that night, she wouldn’t have been on the road. She wouldn’t have died. But she was in her car because he’d beaten her.”
Everly recalled that as well. Whispers about the woman’s previous injuries.
“Helen didn’t try to take you with her that night?” Noah asked.
Bobby’s eyes filled with fresh anger. “She couldn’t. She was running for her life, and when she tried to take me, my father kicked and punched her. He told her he was going to kill her so she ran. She wasn’t a coward,” he added in a snarl. “Once she got someplace safe, she would have gotten me out of there. But she never made it to someplace safe, did she?”
All of this had apparently lit a very hot fuse for Bobby. It had brought a slam of the horrible memories for Everly. But she forced herself to hold back anything she was feeling because after all, Bobby had a right to his anger.
“Why did you change your name?” Noah asked, obviously shifting the conversation to a different direction. Good thing, too, because it looked as if Bobby was on the verge of storming out.
Bobby seemed to settle, and he drew in a long breath through his mouth before he answered. “I didn’t want any connection to my father, and Marshall was my stepmother’s maiden name.”
Everly hadn’t known that. Then again, she hadn’t exactly been thinking clearly after the fatal car crash, and she definitely hadn’t sought out personal info on Helen.
“I changed my name,” Bobby went on, “and started calling myself Bobby because my father always called me Robert.” He stopped, sighed. “The past can eat away at you. The memories.”
Yes, Everly was well aware of that. “And that’s why you joined Peace Seekers?” she asked in a murmur.
Bobby nodded. “Even though I used the red card, I was getting a lot out of the meetings. Not a misery loves company thing. It was just helpful to hear that people had gone through bad things and survived.”
Everly tried to pick through that to determine if after hearing thosebad thingsthat Bobby had decided to do something to right the scales of justice. Maybe. But she’d gotten just as much of a guilty vibe from River as she was getting from Bobby.
There was a quick knock at the door, and when it opened, Deputy Lawson stuck her head in. She made eye contact with Noah before she handed him a piece of paper. “The report you requested,” she said and closed the door when she left.
Since this was the background check on Bobby, Everly had a look and saw something highlighted.No experience on record with explosives.
Of course, that didn’t mean he hadn’t hired someone who had that experience, but if that had happened, there could be a paper trail for the payment.
Everly glanced over the rest of the report and saw that Bobby had had an arrest for assault but the charges had been dropped.
“I’m guessing that’s about me,” Bobby said, drawing her attention back to them. If he was worried about anything that might be in the report, he wasn’t showing any signs of it. “You’re looking to see if I’m the person who could have killed Daisy and Megan’s mother. I’m not,” he tacked onto that.
Noah lifted his gaze from the report and looked at Bobby. “Then, who in the group has a warped sense of justice and could have killed?”
Bobby’s mouth tightened for just a second. No doubt because he objected to the way Noah had worded the question. Bobby probably wouldn’t see these killings as warped.
Bobby’s expression relaxed, and Everly thought she saw grief or something cross his eyes. “Daisy was a good person. I hate she got caught up in all of this.”
Noah made a sound of agreement, but he was likely mulling over the way Bobby had put that. “Then, who killed her?” Noah pressed.
“I don’t know the who, not for sure, but I’m guessing the reason she died was because she was suspicious of someone in the group, and that person might have thought she could expose what was happening.” Bobby shrugged. “Of course, she had other clients, those not in the group, so it could have been one of them.”
“Go back to the first part of that,” Noah insisted. “You said you didn’t know for sure who killed her. But you suspect someone?”
Bobby’s next pause was even longer, and with his jaw muscles working against each other, he seemed to be having a debate with himself about how much to say. Or how little.
