Dead to the Max (17 page)

“How?”

“Who knows. Broke the copy machine, told a lie, messed up on one of his rules.”

“Anal, huh?”

She shuddered at the word, as if he could know what it made her think of. “The man’s not just anal. He
is
an asshole.”

At her side, she felt the detective chuckle again. She liked it when he did that. She wondered how it would feel if he did that while he was holding her close.

“Being an asshole doesn’t stand up in court,” he said. “Most of the time. Who else?”

“Theresa’s a viper. She enjoyed tearing Wendy up.” But sweet little Theresa didn’t have scratches either. Max
did
have them, on her throat, though, thank God, they were almost healed. Could Theresa have immobilized Lilah?

“Not much motive there. Would have been more fun to keep Wendy around than to kill her.”

“All right. What about Wendy’s father?”

“Bud Traynor.”

He looked like a Bud or a Bubba. Ex-football hero. Macho man. Whose side would he have chosen if he thought his daughter was having an affair? “He’d turn on her in a second.”

The certain knowledge frightened her. The man himself did, as well. He looked up—at her—without raising his head, just his eyes. Black, soulless eyes. He reminded her of her uncle. Max shivered. She imagined he knew her, everything about her.

Inside her, Wendy cowered like a whipped puppy beneath that gaze.

“I must be crazy,” she whispered. Hal must have told him who she was.

“Go on,” Witt urged.

“He’d lie for Hal if he thought Wendy wasn’t a proper wife. In his world, men stick together no matter what.”

“Would he have done it himself?”

She narrowed her eyes and breathed deeply as she pondered that. “He’s certainly capable of it.”

They were both silent, absorbing the idea.

Max tilted her head to look at Hal’s beanhead brother. “Who’s he?”

Witt confirmed what she already suspected.

She bit down on the inside of her cheek, then let it go. “Nah. He didn’t know her well. Wendy and Hal didn’t socialize much.”

“You’re scaring me.” He wagged a finger at her. “You know too much again.”

“I take it I’m right.”

“Quite an isolated couple,” he agreed.

No wonder she’d bared her soul to Lilah Bloom. Wendy had no one else. A deep loneliness washed over Max, her vision blurred, her chest hurt, her throat clogged. Wendy flailed inside her.

“Where’s the Cajun Spice lover?”

The question popped Max out of whatever spell had fallen over her. “What?”

“Cajun Spice, the color she wore the night she died, instead of her usual. Points to a lover.”

“Cajun Spice and navy blue mascara,” she murmured. “If she had a lover, Hal wouldn’t have put him at the top of the guest list.” Should she tell him Wendy had allegedly left Hal before she died? She turned, almost fully facing Witt. Beyond his shoulder, at the edge of the baseball diamond in the park across the street, something glinted in the sunlight. A man, the sun on his watch as he put his hand to his jaw.

She knew who it was without seeing his face. Nickie. He’d come to say good-bye. He was the kind of man who would do so despite the danger to himself.

She averted her eyes before the detective could follow her gaze. “Hal did it,” she jumped in. “Give me time. I’ll use a little sweetness to get him to spill his guts.”

“Good cop, bad cop?”

The man had now risen from the bleachers and disappeared around the corner of the public restrooms. Max released her breath. “Yeah.” She met the detective’s gaze. “Partners?”

Witt countered with a slow side-to-side shake of his head. The preacher had fallen silent. Hal, then Wendy’s father, dropped clods of dirt on the mahogany-colored coffin. The remaining mourners, all pitiful four of them, filed past.

Hal approached her. Witt melted into the background. The good cop was on stage now.

“I can’t thank you enough for coming.” Hal grasped her hand in his, fingers cold and clammy, like the place in which he’d just buried his wife. Max returned his squeeze, despite the “yuk” that wanted desperately to burst from her lips.

Right. Seven mourners looked better than six. “I hope it helped.”

“I’d like you to meet Wendy’s father, Bud Traynor.”

The man had cold, assessing eyes and a strong grip. In his grasp, her wedding band dug against her middle finger. Wendy hid in terror, buried so deep, her emotions became no more than distant memories. Max looked down and ruthlessly cut off the scream in her throat.

Bud Traynor wore a ruby class ring on the fourth finger of his right hand.

Chapter Fourteen

Remy drove them back to work in his cushy Cadillac. Theresa sat in the front seat and drove Max crazy with her incessant sixteen-year-old chatter. Remy shushed the girl every time she brought up Wendy’s death—one of his new rules, thou shalt not speak of murdered persons.

Listening to the two of them, Max barely had energy to think about the implications of Bud Traynor’s ring, beyond the obvious, of course. If Traynor was the man in her dream, then Wendy, as a child, had been physically and verbally abused by her father.

So what’s new,
Cameron whispered.

“You’re certainly unsympathetic,” Max scoffed aloud.

Theresa turned to glare at her. Remy eyed her in the mirror. Max contained the rest of her feelings until she’d climbed from Remy’s immaculate car and closed her office door on Theresa’s flaming description of Wendy’s final resting place.

Cameron started in on her immediately. “Wendy doesn’t need your sympathy. She needs your—”

“Help. I know, but she also needs someone to feel sorry for her. Nobody cared she was dead.”

“Lilah was there.”

“Give me a break. Lilah’s dead.”

“She was still there. At the funeral.”

“No more ghost stories, okay?” She was too angry to let the impact of his words sway her. “What about her father? He doesn’t even know how to spell the words love or grief, let alone feel them.” Max dropped her purse into the filing cabinet and slammed the drawer. “That man hit her, I felt it. That wasn’t the first time he’d done it, wasn’t the last either. And he liked it.” Her heartbeat accelerated, her blood pumped furiously.

“I only meant—”

“You have no idea what it’s like, to be shunned, to be treated like you’re less than nothing for something that isn’t even your fault.” She paced the small office, turning on her heel at the door and marching back to the desk.

“That wasn’t
your
dream, Max.”

“No, it was Wendy’s nightmare, and someone’s got to do something about what that man did to her.”

“You missed my point—”

“I’m not missing anything.”

“Listen to me.”

The sharpness of his tone was enough to stop her pacing. She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “I’m listening.”

“The dream wasn’t about what happened to her when she was a kid. It’s a clue as to why she was murdered.”

“
He
did it.” The words and all her venom burst out. She wanted to hurt Bud Traynor, wanted to hurl accusations as angrily and easily as he’d done, wanted to take the nearest two-by-four and smash his nose with it.

“That’s not what I’m saying—”

“Then what
are
you saying?”

He sighed, and a puff of air whispered across the shoots of Wendy’s now-thriving spider plant on top of the file cabinet. “You’re not ready to listen.”

“Oh, don’t give me that psychological crap, Cameron.”

A knock. The door opened before Max had time to answer.

“I’m supposed to say come in before you open the door, Theresa.” She felt like snapping someone’s head off, and Theresa was as good as anyone.

The girl’s lower lip jutted in a pout. “I thought you were on the phone and couldn’t hear me.”

“Right,” Max muttered and turned to flip on her computer, punching so hard her expensive manicure chipped. Dammit, she had to get that stuff off before it became an obsession.

“Carla Drake is here, and she wants to talk to the accountant. That’s you.”

“Who the hell is Carla Drake?” Oh jeez. Nicholas Drake’s wife. Max actually felt a guilty spurt of adrenaline, and her face heated.

“She’s the wife of one of the guys that used to work here.”

Ex-wife, Max almost added. Why on earth was she feeling guilty anyway? She’d danced with the man, nothing more. “What does she want?”

Theresa rolled her eyes. “How am I supposed to know?”

“Has anyone ever told you that mastering courtesy and diplomacy is how you get places in this world?” Not to mention keeping friends.

Theresa gave an exaggerated snap of her gum, left Max’s office door open, and wriggled her way back to the front counter. Like a snake.

“I knew there was a reason I never had children,” Max muttered. “They grow up to be teenagers.”

“You can go on back.” Theresa’s sugary voice floated through the open doorway.

Carla Drake filled the space Theresa had just vacated.

Max recognized her immediately. The woman had played a small almost-forgotten role in the first of Max’s “Wendy dreams.” The dream that had started it all.

Nicholas Drake’s wife was tall and blonde, and at one time, she might have been quite pretty. Now her complexion was a mottled red, her hair a mass of frizzy, disorganized curls, and her body had never recovered from the birth of her last child.

A little catty, Maxi?
Cameron whispered snidely in her ear.

Maybe so, but seeing Carla in her loose-fitting stretch pants, long T-shirt, and dirty, white tennies, Max wanted to dislike her.

Couldn’t be jealousy talking, could it?

Yes. Yes. Yes.
Max wasn’t ashamed to admit it. After all, it was Wendy’s emotion, not her own. That made everything okay.

Carla, however, looked a tad thinner than when she’d picked up the kids at the airport. Max had to wonder how much of the dream had simply been Wendy’s perceptions.

Could Max be a victim of the dead woman’s fantasies?

She shoved the thought and the emotions aside to invite Carla in.

The woman waved a small piece of paper in the air and came fully into Max’s office, followed by the stench of three gallons of Joy. The wedding ring she hadn’t bothered to remove looked tight enough to cut off her circulation.

Max took note of those unmarked fingers. Another suspect bites the dust.

What if she’d only imagined that Wendy scratched her killer? What if it had only
felt
like a tremendous fight while, in reality, Wendy had been too weak at that point to cause any damage?

Now you’re thinking, baby.

Everybody
became a suspect again.

“I have Nick’s COBRA insurance check.” Out of breath, Carla’s words came out shrill, like high-frequency waves pitched to burst eardrums. “I drove down here instead of mailing it. The kids are in the car, and it’s really hot out there. Do I need a receipt?” The woman’s sentences bounced around as if she had trouble keeping thoughts straight in her head.

“I’m afraid the check is late, Mrs. Drake.”

“I couldn’t help it.” Carla’s lip quivered like a child’s.

Max pulled a folder out of Wendy’s left drawer. Experiencing Wendy’s jealousy or not, Max herself wanted to irritate the blonde. If Carla got mad, she could reveal something that might prove helpful. “I’ve got a note here that we tried to give you a reminder call. Your phone was disconnected.”

Her face, passably appealing despite the blotchiness, suddenly turned ugly, her tone whiny. “I’m going through a divorce, and I had to move in with my parents.”

Get her address. We need it.

Cameron was right on the mark. “We’ll need your new address and phone number to continue the insurance policy.”

She handed Carla one of Wendy’s pink pens and a piece of paper.

She got back a childish, almost illegible scrawl. Max’s heart pumped harder when she finally made it out. “Foster City.”

Less than a handful of exits from the airport. Could the woman have enough strength to strangle someone? Maybe. If she was terrified someone was stealing her husband. Or pissed as hell. The whole thing about a woman scorned, ya know.

“Yeah,” Carla said as she shoved the pink pen in her purse.

Max wondered if she knew how apropos that “yeah” might really be. “We’ll be sure to call you when your check’s late again.” And it would be, Max was sure.

Carla flapped a hand. “It’s only a day late.”

“Try a month.” Remy appeared in the doorway, his voice harsh with just the right answer. He’d obviously taken stock of the conversation while standing outside the door.

Carla squeaked like a mouse at the sound of his voice, her lips a round O, her brown eyes wide as she turned to stare at him. A moment later, they took on a decidedly stormy look. “You must be Remy Hackett.”

Max took a seat for the confrontation.

Remy’s upper lip twitched. “Mrs. Drake, I presume.” He sounded like a Victorian gentleman. “I recognize your voice from your phone calls.” His tone suggested how unpleasant they’d been. “I see you tried to get around me by going to Max first. I told you we’d have to cancel your insurance if you were late again. Did you call in the cancellation yesterday, Max?”

He gave Max a look over Carla’s shoulder. Not just any look, a very meaningful one that said play along, follow his lead, don’t buck the system. It wasn’t exactly a lie, not the way Remy had phrased it.

Nudge him, Max. Test him. See what he does.

Cameron had plucked her thoughts out of the air. It was exactly what she intended to do. “Actually, Remy, I didn’t get a chance to call the insurance company. They’re back east, and it was after five their time when you told me to call.”

He came forward, pushing Carla aside to get to Max. “Why didn’t you do it this morning?”

He looked like a seething, growling Mr. Hyde taking over Dr. Jekyll. At any moment, she expected him to foam. She almost smiled. People gave away so much more when they were out of control.

“If you recall, we were at Wendy’s funeral.”