Dead to the Max (6 page)

She plucked Wendy’s planner out of her purse. She’d barely managed to shove the book inside before Remy returned.

Nope, she wasn’t cut out for this detecting stuff.

Max flattened the book on her lap and flipped pages. A monthly calendar with small blocks for each day, the appointments were registered neatly in different colors. Aqua every other Monday at 4:30, a woman named Lilah, a phone number written beneath. Max rescued a bit of scratch paper from the bottom of her purse and jotted down the info. Lime green Tuesdays at five p.m., Dr. Shale, a phone number.

“Our little Wendy was methodical,” Cameron reflected.

Something ran the length of Max’s body. Not a chill, not a shiver. More like the feeling she got when she listened to a beautiful song or saw a gorgeous guy wearing black and red flannel.

“Wendy loved color. Colors soothed her, made her feel safe. Did you see the folders in her filing cabinet? Different shades of blue, pink, purple and more.” Brilliant splashes of color like a painter’s pallet. “And rollerball pens in every hue imaginable.”

Max decided the colors soothed her, too. Had they always? Or only since the nightmare vision?

Cameron went on listing Wendy’s appointments. “Purple, one Saturday a month at ten a.m., Divinity, another phone number.”

“Something religious?”

“You’re the psychic, my little Max, you tell me.”

Max pursed her lips without answering that question. “Orange, third Wednesday of each month at six p.m., BeeBee.”

Max leafed through to December. The appointments had been colored in until the end of the year. “How can anyone possibly plan out their life like this?” The monotonous routine of Wendy Gregory’s days was almost frightening.

“Look at the month of September,” Cameron urged.

Max read, sucked in a gasp. “Monday, the day she died. She scratched out her regular with Dr. Shale the next day.”

“She annihilated it. What does it mean, Max?”

Her scalp went icy despite the heat of the sun on her crown. “How should I know?”

“Close your eyes.” Cameron’s voice was hypnotic.

For a brief moment, she remembered last night’s command, and her body reacted with a thrill between her legs.
Take off your clothes. Lie on the bed
.

She shoved the memory aside and let her eyelashes flutter down. The sun in her eyes became a swirling golden mass that sucked her into its vortex. Her breathing deepened. Her arms prickled right down to her fingertips. Her toes curled in her high-heeled shoes.

As if her body anticipated a man’s touch.

Anger and exhilaration roiled in Max’s stomach. Terror. Desire. Emotions pooled low in her belly. She wanted, needed to stick her hand between her legs and palm herself, anything to relieve the awful, needy tension.

An image formed in the opalescent whirlpool behind her eyelids. Max strained to see it, grab it, force it closer. Her fingers reached, ached.

The beeper on her watch shattered the image into brilliant shards of color. She’d set the reminder for five minutes before her half hour—no more, no less—lunch break was over. For a moment, she sat dazed, the sun too bright, the steering wheel hot beneath her touch. She couldn’t remember clutching it.

“What did you see, my love?”

“Don’t you know?” They spoke in whispers.

“If I did, I wouldn’t ask.” A note of apprehension shimmered through Cameron’s voice.

“I saw...someone.” It was the best Max had to offer. Like Cameron, Wendy might not remember the last moments of her life, thus making it impossible for Max to identify her killer.

“It was him, wasn’t it?” Cameron intruded.

“Who?”

“The paperboy.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You’re...breathless. Like you were at the airport.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Max bent to pick up Wendy’s book where it had fallen to the floor of the car.

Cameron didn’t push further as she read aloud. “Monday. Blue ballpoint ink. 7:59. Nickie.” Beneath it, Wendy had written the numbers 452.

The flight number on the note in Max’s dream.

Something bothered her as she stared at the writing. Ballpoint. Blue. It wasn’t a Wendy pen or a Wendy color.

“Who’s Nickie?” With his question, she lost her train of thought, and for just a moment, Max desperately wanted Cameron out of her head.

The feeling disappeared as quickly as it had come, and she answered. “Nicholas Drake, former warehouse manager. I found his personnel file in the Terminations drawer.”

“Paperboy?” Cameron insisted.

“Yes, all right,” she snapped. “I think he’s Paperboy. But he didn’t kill Wendy.”

“You’re just a little too rock solid on that, Maxi sweetheart. I think he cut out yesterday morning for Boise.”

She didn’t even correct his use of her hated nickname. “You know he didn’t.” A dream fragment led her to believe he’d been returning from taking the kids to his parents in Boise for a visit when Wendy met him at the airport. Something like that. Maybe he had only gone to the airport yesterday to see Wendy’s car, as Cameron suggested.

“And I don’t think he’s a bad guy,” she added, then started the engine and pulled away from the curb.

“Your psychic powers at work? Or your libido working overtime?”

Wendy’s libido, certainly not Max’s own. “Simple deduction. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to return to the scene of his own criminal act. Besides, he had to read about it in the paper, which means he didn’t know exactly what happened to her.”

“Or he wanted to see if the police found anything that might incriminate him.”

“I
know
Remy Hackett killed her,” she snapped, instead of answering his accusation.

“You
want
him to be the killer. Why?”

“It’s a feeling.”

“It’s because you’re afraid for Nicholas Drake.”

“I don’t even know him.”

“Don’t you?”

It wasn’t a question that required an answer. They both knew just how strong Wendy’s feelings were. And how much they tugged on Max.

“Why was he fired, Maxi dear?”

“Don’t needle, Cameron. It stated in the file that his termination was voluntary.”

“Voluntary? That could mean any number of things. Like someone found out about his affair with the company bookkeeper, and he quit rather than be fired.”

“Wendy would have been fired, too.”

“Hmm.” His sound rumbled inside her chest. “Maybe he wanted to give it one more try with his little wife.”

“No.” The answer had a hard, angry bite to it. She couldn’t take back the sound once it was made. She couldn’t deny that she knew about the wife. The knowledge was there inside her, stabbing.

“Pricked a nerve, didn’t I? Is that what he told Wendy? That he was thinking of going back to his wife?”

The dead woman’s pain twisted inside her. Cameron was close to the truth—all he had to do was read her mind—yet Max couldn’t betray aloud Wendy’s fears of a reconciliation. “We haven’t proved they were lovers.”

“Don’t disappointment me, Max. You know exactly what they were to each other.”

But this time Cameron was wrong. She didn’t know. Mostly because she didn’t think Wendy even knew. Lovers, yes, but what else?

She felt a fresh thrust of despair that left her breathless.

Max didn’t say another word, but she was very much afraid Wendy’s emotions were getting stronger. And Wendy would do anything to prove Nicholas Drake wasn’t a killer.

Chapter Four

“Appreciate the call, Miss Starr.”

“Mrs.,” Max corrected lightly. After getting the detective’s number from Remy, she’d called right after clocking in from lunch. The cop had shown up in her office less than an hour later.

Detective DeWitt Quentin Long was nothing like she’d thought he’d be. The name conjured images of morticians, self-centered playboys, or toilet paper salesmen.

Somewhere in his mid-thirties, Detective Long was a man’s man. An inch or two over six feet. Big hands. Rambo-tough body without an ounce of fat. Thick blond hair and almost white eyebrows.

He was the antithesis of Cameron, or rather, of what Cameron had been; medium brown hair, medium build, medium height. She liked medium. This man was big, too big. So why the hell did he make her...breathless? Perhaps it was a lingering residual of Wendy Gregory’s erotic energy. Or maybe it was Detective Long’s dimple, an almost endearing Dudley Do-Right cleft in his chin.

Of course, the real Dudley had been rather insipid, and big men were sometimes slow and slumberous. The detective had yet to prove himself.

He wore a dark blue suit, white shirt, and an unimpressive, plain navy tie. When he sat, he had to unbutton the jacket disguising his imposing chest, and the suit pants stretched taut over his muscular thighs. She’d offered him the spare office chair, a rickety thing she was afraid he’d break like a twig.

Detective Long had too much brawn for Max’s taste. Most definitely. Even if her palms were just a tad sweaty, and she had a hard time tearing her gaze away from his over-sized hands. Masculine hands. Real hands. That was it. Her attraction was nothing more than a yearning for a taste of the real thing. As opposed to the ghostly thing.

Max had called him to determine if working with the cops was her best option. Of course, she would never withhold evidence, but if he was a bungler, she sure as hell wouldn’t let him botch any leads she came up with.

Like Columbo, his questions were dogged. That was a point in his favor. So was the fact that he pulled a notepad out of his pocket, flipped it open, his trusty Bic recording her every word. While he listened, his glance flickered over the bookcase, the desktop, the file cabinet, the box on the floor filled with Wendy’s personal items. He had an amazing ability to multi-task.

“Where’d you say you found the appointment book?”

“In here.” Max turned in her ergonomic chair to pull the pencil drawer open an inch.

They sat in her office, a small, windowless room the size of a walk-in closet. Pressboard bookcases stood floor-to-ceiling on the left wall. Two lateral files and a copy machine took up position on the right. Too much stuff crammed into the narrow space gave her claustrophobia. The desk stood at the opposite end from the door and was piled high with binders, most of which she’d already glanced through. For the detective’s visit, she’d closed the door since the noise from the bullpen outside would be distracting.

“The book was at the back of the middle drawer,” she explained.

Long arched one eyebrow, giving himself an enticingly devilish flair despite the light color. “Suppose that’s why I missed it the first time around.”

Yeah, right. Knowing the police had already searched the office bugged her and was the reason she suspected the detective might blow Wendy’s case. How on earth did a cop worth his brawn miss something as important—and potentially incriminating—as the murder victim’s date book?

“I’m sure you did a thorough search.”

She waited for his flash of irritation at her sarcasm. It didn’t come. His gaze again roamed over the contents of the office, and his words and tone, slightly testing, turned the interview back in his favor. “As thorough as yours, it seems.”

She met his suspicion head on. “I want to do everything possible to help.”

“Why?”

His immediate retort threw her for a moment. She recovered quickly. She’d actually prepared an answer, though she hadn’t really believed anyone would care enough to ask. Maybe Detective Long was no slouch despite his laidback, casual manner.

“I sit at her desk, work with her things. I feel for the poor woman. Wouldn’t anyone want to help under those circumstances, Detective?”

“Not everyone.”

“I’m not everyone.”

“Bet you’re not.”

He raised one of those brows. She couldn’t decipher the meaning behind his comment, but it stirred something inside her. Her nipples chafed against her bra. The physical reaction was not good, not good at all. Wendy’s libido again?

She thought she heard Cameron snicker.

“Miss Starr—”

“Mrs.”

“For a temp, you’re awfully interested in Wendy Gregory.”

“How did you know I’m a temp?”

“I’m a detective. My job is to flush out information.”

Hmm, that put her in her place. “I’m a bit of an amateur sleuth myself, Detective. Nothing wrong with that, is there?”

“Not if you don’t get yourself in trouble, ma’am.”

She had a million questions clamoring for answers, but one thing she’d learned from good old Columbo, cops got suspicious when you asked too many questions or supplied too many answers. She’d said too much already. It was obvious he hadn’t just “missed” Wendy’s date book, and the fact that Max had been the one to find the calendar was not a point in her favor.

“I’ll do whatever I can to help,” she volunteered, as neutral a statement as possible.

“Sure.” Detective Long nodded sagely, then tossed her another question. “Her desk drawers were a mess. Always thought accountants were extremely neat.”

Max thought of a few she’d encountered on audit and shuddered. “Accountants are pack rats. They never throw anything away.”

Though certainly neither the meticulous nature of Wendy’s appointment book nor the state of her paperwork supported that she suffered from that particular mania.

Long looked at the rows of binders in the bookcase. “Suppose you’ll go through the whole office to get up to speed on the job.”

“All two square feet of it, Detective.” Max smiled congenially.

He put his notepad in his shirt pocket. “Anything else we
missed
the first go round...” The sentence trailed off as he pulled out a business card and set it on the desk, tapping it with a thick finger.

“If I find some cryptic note written on the edge of a ledger page, you’ll be the first person to know.”

“Thank you for your sar—cooperation,” he said within the same beat. He didn’t smile.

Did anything besides an automaton lurk beneath his beefy exterior?

Then, as if he might have heard the acerbic thought, he said, “I see you’ve hurt yourself, Miss Starr.”