Power to the Max (41 page)

Julia looked at the disks, but didn’t ask for specifics. Another of Angela’s betrayals she’d have to deal with. Max knew Julia would keep on loving Angela despite it.

“Then he gave me binoculars to watch your office window,” Baxter finished.

“You saw me.”

“I saw them.” He dipped his head, perhaps ashamed that he’d stayed to watch. “And then I saw you. But before it was all over, Lance closed the blinds.”
Before he was killed
was left unsaid.

He’d wanted to turn out the lights right from the beginning so that they couldn’t be seen, but Angela wouldn’t let him. Max had thought it was for exhibitionist pleasure. Instead it was so that Bud could force Baxter to watch.

Julia turned to her father. “You thought I killed him, didn’t you? That’s why you made sure I had an alibi, why you got Bud to lie with you.”

Baxter thought his daughter had done a very bad thing, but he’d loved her and protected her anyway. The way Julia had sought to love and protect Angela.

“I shouldn’t have let you, Father.” Love and compassion dripped like tears from the title she bestowed. “Now we’re both in a lot of trouble.”

“Are the police going to charge you with something?” There was nothing Max could do about it if they did.

“They threatened,” Julia said.

“Obstruction of justice or perjury or something,” Baxter added. “They threw out several options for us to think about.”

Max tapped a disk. “What did you tell them about Bud Traynor’s part in all this?”

They exchanged a look. “Nothing,” Baxter said.

Bud Traynor wouldn’t get his due this time. Again. Max tried to fight them. “But they know he lied when he said he was with the two of you all evening.”

“He said he succumbed to the pleas of a good friend.” Baxter splayed his hand across his chest. “He’s friends with the Mayor. They’ll do no more than slap his wrist.”

“But this wasn’t the only video he blackmailed someone with. You have to tell the police so he can be stopped.” Wanting to pound her fists on the table, Max kept her hands relaxed in her lap.

Unsurprised by that revelation, Baxter reached out and slid the tapes his way. “I won’t put Julia through that.”

“Julia?” Max pushed.

Julia set her cup on the table, a little chink of china against glass. “I’ve only begun to deal with some things about myself.” She stopped, clasped and unclasped her hands. “In actuality, Bud did us a favor.”

“He set you up to murder your husband.”

“He wanted me to know what was going on.”

“He set you up with Angela.”

Julia’s eyes misted over. “I’ll always be grateful for his bringing Angela to me.”

That didn’t stop Max from hating Bud. She looked to Baxter for help. He tipped his head and shrugged.

Bud Traynor, master manipulator, had won again.

Max rose.

“Don’t hate us, Max,” Julia begged.

Julia didn’t understand Bud’s true nature. Baxter wanted only to protect his daughter. How could Max blame either of them? “I thought you capable of murder, Julia. I’m the one who should ask you not to hate me.”

With that, Max left.

Baxter Newton’s shoes tapped behind her. “Max?”

She didn’t want to stop and might not have if he hadn’t put his hand on her arm. Afraid of the condemning words that would fall from her lips, she kept her mouth closed.

“Max,” he said again, voice low, gaze over his shoulder to where Julia sat in the sun with her tea. “She doesn’t know about me and...” He couldn’t seem to finish.

Max said it for him. “About you and Angela.” She let him stew.

“Yes,” he finally answered. “I don’t want to hurt her any further with Angela’s duplicity.”

“What about your own?” She knew she wasn’t being fair. She didn’t care. Bud Traynor was going to get away again.

A flush rose to Baxter’s cheeks, and his eyes dropped to his tasseled shoes. “I am ashamed.” His gaze rose. “But I’m not ashamed that I cared for Angela. I’ll never be ashamed of that.”

There was really nothing more to say. He was a man who would do anything to protect the ones he loved, a good man.

“I won’t tell, Baxter.” Max didn’t bring up the fact that they would both allow Bud Traynor to go on unhindered. She’d already made her pitch and lost the game

There was, though, another chance.

Hammerhead.

Max waited the rest of Saturday and all of Sunday for Witt to call. It wasn’t fear or self-righteousness. It was a sense of the rightness of waiting, of giving him the chance to make the decision, the chance to come to terms with Angela, with being the instrument that ended her life. What a nice, diplomatic way of saying it.

By Sunday night, Max couldn’t wait any more.

She dressed in a jean skirt Angela suggested she buy, pairing it with a long-sleeved velour top. Her soul wanted to remember that shopping day rather than the rest, when everything fell horribly to pieces. Fingering the velour, she heard Angela’s laughter.

Followed by the blast of Witt’s gun. Max was the incendiary device in the middle, propelling them both toward their fate.

She drove to Ladybird’s for Sunday dinner, hoping Witt would be there, hoping that the actualization of Horace’s prediction hadn’t driven him away from even that refuge.

His truck wasn’t parked in the street out front. Max wanted to cry. She pulled to the curb anyway and climbed from her car.

In the dark, the plastic bushes lining Ladybird’s front walk looked real. The Astroturf appeared lush and green. Light glowed behind the curtains in the front window. A small shadow moved after she’d rung the doorbell.

“Max,” Ladybird chirped as she opened the door.

Max had the odd feeling of wanting to clamp her hand over Ladybird’s mouth. The name, however, was already out, the surprise blown. Just in case Witt was inside.

Ladybird opened the screen door. “Come in, come in, my dear.”

Max hung back. “No, I don’t think so. Not now, Ladybird. Thanks, anyway. I was just wondering if Witt was here.”

Ladybird pursed her lips, then stage-whispered, “Is this about you know who and you know what?”

“Yes,” Max answered, thinking
you know who
could have been Angela, Horace, even Bud Traynor.
You know what
could have been any number of crimes Max had committed against Witt.

Ladybird smiled with a touch of sadness. “He already left.”

Max’s heart nose-dived. “Oh.” She looked at her shoes. “Did he go home?”

“He didn’t say where he was going.” Lines of concern furrowed Ladybird’s brow.

Max badly wanted to ask how he was, but if felt like checking if the coast was clear or if Ladybird thought he’d speak to Max.

“It wasn’t your fault, honeybunch.”

“Ladybird, I—”

The little lady held up a hand. “Horace said it was meant to be. We earthly beings can never know why bad things have to occur, but Horace says what happens must happen.”

“You make it sound like destiny.” Destiny didn’t absolve Max.

Ladybird touched a hand to Max’s cheek, her skin warm and smelling of flowers and talc. “I believe in destiny. And I think you are my sweetie-boy’s destiny.”

“Poor Witt.” If Max was his destiny, bad things had only just begun to happen to him.

“Horace told me you’ll find him.”

“Did Horace tell you anything else?” Like whether Witt could ever forgive her?

Ladybird’s blue Witt-like eyes sparkled. “Horace says some messages shouldn’t be passed on.”

That Horace was no dummy. If Max knew the outcome going in, then she wouldn’t say everything that had to be said. And a lot had to be said.

She kissed Ladybird’s soft motherly cheek, then drove off into the night, not to Witt’s place, but to her own studio apartment. Ladybird’s husband said she would find Witt, but somehow Max knew he’d be waiting for her. His truck sat on the gravel drive close to the old one-car garage. Her front door was open slightly. He’d broken in again. She didn’t care.

He’d turned the porch light off, and the vestibule lay in darkness, but she could make out his dark shadow on the inside stairs, waiting for her as he had the other night. Only this time he was seated a couple of telling steps higher.

“I’m sorry,” she said without hesitation.

“You’ve already said that.” Not an ounce of emotion leaked through his voice.

She took a deep breath and jumped in. “I ran out there thinking I was the big heroine come to save Angela. I was stupid.” She didn’t stop because she expected a response. She stopped to remember Angela’s face before she’d had a reason to take the gun out of her purse. “If I had gone to you first, Angela wouldn’t have pointed that gun at you. Or me. You wouldn’t have needed to shoot her.” She swallowed, flaring her nostrils to keep her eyes dry. “She wouldn’t be dead.”

Witt sat immobile in the darkness. She heard him breathe, saw his lips move, tense, then relax again. She closed her eyes to draw in the scent of him. Clean, stable, an absence of sweat, a profusion of male warmth, perhaps male doubt.

She thought he wasn’t going to say anything, then, low, some might have said tortured, he asked, “Do you know how it feels to have killed her?”

She blinked. “I know how it feels to have made the awful mistake that caused her to die.”

“You didn’t pull the trigger.”

“What I did was worse.”

“Shut the door and turn on the light. I want to look at you.”

Her chest tightened painfully. A knot like a fist lodged in her throat. Then she flipped the light switch, closed the door, and leaned against it. “I don’t want to look at myself.” She’d avoided the mirror in her bathroom for two days now.

Another deep sigh from him. “Don’t think I blame you for what happened. I always knew you were a catalyst.”

“I never meant to—”

He cut her off. “You never do.”

She moved to the bottom of the stairs. “You do blame me, Witt. And for more than a prophecy come true.”

, Cameron had said. First she had to prove she was worth forgiving. She reached into the pocket of her jacket, pulled out the box her toy truck had come in. From the other pocket, she pulled the five hundred dollars. She’d been carrying it with her the last couple of days.

“I wanted to give back your money.” She hurried on when he opened his mouth, not allowing him to say he didn’t want it before she even got a chance to tell him what she needed to. “But I realized I can’t ever give it back.”

She stopped, waiting to see if he’d let her say the rest. He said nothing. She accepted that as tacit permission.

“I’m going to keep it to remind me that where you’re concerned, there shouldn’t be any price tags attached.”

He let out a deep breath, but remained silent. She was glad, not believing she could finish if he had interrupted.

“I do have ulterior motives sometimes. Things I need, things I want.” She swallowed. “Things I’m afraid of.” She wanted so badly to read the look in his eyes, but it was important to do this without gauging his reaction to every word. “Maybe that night was the catalyst for what happened to Angela.” The whole truth, nothing but the truth. “I saw Julia go into the hotel, but I didn’t follow her. Maybe I should have. Maybe I should have talked to Angela. I don’t know. But I did call you before I went up there the next day. You didn’t answer. I thought you were ignoring me. I was pissed, but I still knew it was dumb.”

He broke his silence then. “I was in an interview. I wasn’t answering.”

“I misjudged you again.” She chanced a step up one riser. “And you didn’t need to confirm that for me. I already knew it.”