Desperate to the Max (15 page)

A shiver coursed from Max’s scalp, through her torso, past her abdomen, and into her legs. She hadn’t a clue what the man wanted from her, but he’d thrown down the gauntlet. She damn well wasn’t going to let it lie forlorn at her feet. “Yes, Mr. Traynor, first your—” She glanced at Virginia, weighed her chances of alienation. “First your daughter, then your hairdresser, and now your ...?”

Her question rode the silence for the count of three. “Please, Max, you’ve shared the hospitality of my home.” He politely didn’t mention that she’d broken into it. “We know each other too well for me to be Mr. Traynor.” A corner of his mouth crooked. “Bethany was my goddaughter.”

Max stifled a gasp. Connections. Coincidences. The number 452. It should have been 666 and branded into forehead of the man seated across from her. What the hell did it all mean, for Bethany? For Wendy? For Max herself?

She’d come for information, but again, as always in their strange relationship, Traynor had the upper hand. The information she’d gathered only served up more questions. She had to evaluate her strategy, come up with a new game plan, and rethink her original conception of who killed Bethany Spring.

Max stood, pulling Ladybird, whose tiny hand was still tucked in hers, with her. “We have to be going.”

“But your tea—” Virginia stopped abruptly, as if she hadn’t meant the words to come out, her eyes a little wild, as if the thought of being alone with Bud and Jada and her grief was too much to handle. Then the look vanished beneath a veneer of civility. She extended her hand. Ladybird took it.

“Thank you for coming.” Virginia’s formal, stiff tone showed her true feelings were now completely buried.

“If you need anything, don’t hesitate,” Ladybird chattered. A sickly smile from Virginia was her reward.

Traynor’s eyes stabbed Max in the back as she walked to the front door. From the corner of her eye, she saw Jada bump the kitchen door with her hip, two cups in her hand. Her gaunt face registered nothing, and her eyes, deep in their sockets, were vacant.

Max didn’t question the situation she walked away from, didn’t lament the opportune moment she’d thrown in the trash, nor berate herself for folding her hand at the slightest provocation. Retreat to regroup. She wasn’t weak, she was sensible.

Wasn’t she?

The door closed behind her, and she could breathe again. She hadn’t even realized she’d been holding her breath. The afternoon sun was bright, a car with a bad muffler rattled down the road, and in someone’s backyard a child shrieked with laughter. Everything was normal outside the house.

Ladybird tugged on her hand and started down the front steps. Max let herself be led down the path, through the gate and along the sidewalk.

“Well,” Ladybird chirped, “I certainly didn’t see abundant amounts of grief in there. Did you?”

No, but on the face of it, that didn’t always mean the obvious. “I didn’t cry when my husband died.”

“Bet you didn’t serve tea and crumpets, either.”

Max stared straight ahead and remembered another day. “The afternoon we buried my mother, my aunt made a bean and hamburger casserole. She was terrified she’d given everyone gas.”

“Did you get gas?”

“I didn’t eat.”

Silence. Max turned into the sun, eyes closed, blessed heat bathing her face. She needed heat.

“What’s wrong, Max?”

She couldn’t have said. She was other worldly, out-of-body, astrally projecting. She wanted to stand like this forever in the glow of sunlight. She should have been drawing conclusions or assessing what she’d learned. Seeing Traynor so unexpectedly had drained her for the moment. So had memories of Cameron and her mother. She needed to regenerate.

“I need to call Witt.” There was something she wanted to ask him. The questions hovered at the edge of her consciousness. She’d know what it was when she heard his voice.

“You can use my phone,” Ladybird offered.

“I’ve got a phone in the car.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Ladybird insisted. “Was it thinking about your husband? Or was it that man who upset you?”

Max turned to look at the little woman beside her. They’d stopped at Ladybird’s row of plastic bushes, the leaves speckled with dust. She had, of course, been patently obvious. Her fingers were still in Ladybird’s dry, soft grip. Max squeezed. “I’m fine. Don’t worry. I just have to ask Witt something.”

“Did you two fight last night?”

Before or after he almost throttled her for sneaking into Bethany’s house?

Ladybird didn’t let her answer. “I’m sorry. That’s none of my business. I know I was a pushy old broad last night, but you can tell me to butt out any time.”

Max smiled. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” Ladybird wouldn’t have done it anyway. Max was beginning to feel she could say almost anything she wanted where Ladybird was concerned, and no offense would be taken.

Max pulled her keys from her pocket, turned her back on Witt’s mother, walked back along the street to her car, and unlocked the door. When she looked up again, she was alone on the road.

Witt’s cell phone was still in the glovebox. Wondering how much longer she had on the battery before it died, she punched in his cell number.

When had she memorized the number?

The thought occurred, not for the first time, that she was in way over her head.

Chapter Eighteen

Witt answered with a crisp, “Long.”

Succinct. Nothing extra. Like the man himself.

Something warm washed over Max, something like comfort, something like the soothing blue of Witt’s eyes. “It’s me.”

“Me who?” Laughter laced his voice.

That, too, warmed her. The panic at seeing Bud Traynor up close and personal receded. She closed her eyes against the sight of his car at the curb. When she opened them again, the white Cadillac didn’t bother her as much. “It’s Max.”

“Calling because you missed me?”

Witt had lowered his voice. Either he wasn’t alone or he was ratcheting up the level of intimacy. She liked the sound of his voice in her ear; it turned her mushy inside. Almost as mushy as last night’s kiss. Of course, the sensation could have been the aftereffect of an adrenaline rush.

Question. She had a question. What was it? “No, I did not miss you. I called because ...” stretching, thinking, ah ...

“Suppose you wanna know if I set up the phone line yet,” he helped her out.

Something flickered at Ladybird’s front window, then was gone. “Phone line?”

“Prefer to call it your
sex
line?”

Her heart skipped a beat. “Oh, that.”

“Yeah, oh that.” There was something in his voice. Anger? Excitement? Jealousy?

“Sooo ...” she prompted. “How’s it going to work?”

“Simple. You talk dirty.” A brief silence to let his words sink in. “You’re good at that, aren’t you?”

She rolled her eyes despite the fact that he couldn’t see. Definitely a bright spot of anger there in his voice. “I know what I’m supposed to do. I meant what are the mechanics? Do I have to go to the police station to do this or what?”

“You’ll be at home. They”—presumably McKaverty and Schulz—“switched the service to your number. Bethany was on from midnight to two a.m. You got her shift. Starting tonight. Answer the phone. Talk. They’ll do the rest.”

“Are they going to tap the phone?”

“Worried they’re going to catch you making your own kinky phone calls?”

She huffed. “Are you baiting me, Long?”

“I’d say you’ve already baited yourself, sweetheart.” An endearment? Not.

She decided to placate him. She’d get all the answers she needed later. When he wasn’t quite so ... touchy.

“Okay. So I answer the phone. I keep the ... um ... clients talking. They”—again, the ubiquitous McKaverty and Schulz—“will take care of the rest. Do you want me to signal if I recognize the voice?”

“Signal?”

“Yeah, use a code word or something. Like—”

“Don’t play James Bond, Max. Ya don’t need a code word since I didn’t tell them you’d been eavesdropping on Bethany Spring’s last night on earth.”

Party pooper. She hated not being able to see his face. She couldn’t really judge his tone. She changed the subject to avoid an argument. “So, how did you lead them into the phone sex thing? Did you use the headset like I told you?”

He snorted. “They figured it out without you, Max. Case is almost twenty-four hours old. She had records, and she wasn’t trying to hide what she was doing in her spare time.”

Hmmm. “Did you tell them we wanted to help?”

“Told them you were possessed by the dead woman’s ghost, and you had to solve her murder to exorcise her.”

Holy shit.
She
hadn’t told him that. Had she? “Yeah, right.”

“Don’t like that one? Fine. Told ’em you’re sexually insatiable, I can’t satisfy you, and this is your way of getting even.”

For one terrible moment, she thought he really had told them that, though they hadn’t even had sex yet. Except in her dreams. Most probably in his dreams, too.

“You’re such a liar.”

“Also told ’em you were in for one damn big surprise because I ain’t even started playing the game yet.”

She could hear the wheels of his mind turning. Man, if he hadn’t even started, she was in trouble. Big trouble. She’d already been close to crumbling like a cookie way more than once. Last night, for instance, when he’d whispered in her ear. “Give it up, Long, and tell me the scoop.”

“You ask too many questions. I got you what you wanted. What d’ya care how the hell I did it?”

For an instant, she felt a bit left out of his
other
life, his cop life, his work life. As if he turned all of that off when he turned her on. And vice versa. He had secrets. Just as Cameron had had secrets. Like the case involving Bethany’s father. Max hadn’t heard word one about that from the man she’d been married to, not then, not now. Cops and lawyers lived in their own world. They dealt with secrets on a minute-to-minute basis, either exposing them or keeping them. They were invariably good at keeping their own to themselves. Max wanted to break that barrier down. Just once.

“Humor me, Witt. Tell me what you told them anyway.”

“Promised them my firstborn.”

The words flowed down her like a bucket of ice. Babies again. Her throat was suddenly parched.

Witt went on as if he hadn’t expected an answer anyway. “You got your phone line. You got what you wanted. What the hell more do you want?”

Okay. This was the wrong time to flex her muscles. She couldn’t tell whether it was his mood flipping or simply her interpretation. The baby thing bugged her, too, as if it were a slap in
her
face. On this one, Witt definitely sounded pissed.

“What’s wrong?” Ooh, stupid question. She really didn’t want to know.

“Feeling sorry for myself, that’s all.”

Yeah, like she’d been feeling only seconds ago. She really, really, really didn’t want to know why
he
was. A gray seventies gas-guzzler cruised slowly past. “Why?”

“Because you’re using me—”

“I am not.”

“—and I think I like it.”

She had no idea what to say to that. So she ignored it and asked another question guaranteed to pop them both into another mood swing. “Are you going to listen to the tapes of what I say on the phone?”

The ensuing silence stretched her nerves. Finally, “Guess.”

Bastard. In that one word, she heard the last vestige of his anger slip away. Ire was replaced by a thread of sexual tension thrumming across the airwaves between them. She headed him off at the pass. “Did you look at Cameron’s Spring file?”

“Yep.”

As soon as she asked it, she realized it had been her original burning question when she’d called him. “And?”

“Interesting.” He was irritatingly brief on purpose, she was sure.

“What did it say?”

“Over dinner.”

“Huh?”

“Tell you over dinner,” he enunciated carefully.

No, no, no. She’d seen far too much of him lately. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

She chewed on her inner cheek and thought. “Because I want to know now, not later. It’s important.” Which really didn’t answer his question.

A moment, then, “Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me something, Max?”

He’d pitch a fit if he knew she and Ladybird had done a little reconnaissance on the house next door. Worse was what he’d do when he found out his mother had been introducing Max to the neighborhood as his fiancé. The worst was if he actually liked it.

She pulled at the collar of her white blouse. “I’m real busy tonight, Witt. How about a rain check?”

“Doesn’t fool me, Max.”

“Why on earth do you think I’m hiding something?” Couldn’t be because she was. “You were the one who wanted to know what was going on with the Spring thing. I don’t know why
you’re
hiding it from
me
.” Ah, very nice turning of the tables.

His sigh was audible. “Tell you now, but you’ll still have to pay later.” It sounded a bit like a threat. Would he want another kiss?

“What’s the price?”

“Tell you that later, too.”

She imagined the price. Imagined the slow seductive ways he could extract it. He’d up the ante and ask for more than a kiss this time. She tugged even harder on her collar. Then she shook herself. No real way he could make her pay up, no way at all. “Deal. Tell me.”

“Don’t kid yourself, you’ll pay, sweetheart,” he said as if he’d read her mind yet again. “You’ll be begging to pay.”

“Dream on, Long. There won’t even be a contest unless you tell me right this minute.”

Another sigh in her ear that tingled her nerve endings. “Shot himself in the head in his study.”

“Oh my God.” Mr. Spring in the study with the gun. It sounded like the game of Clue. It sounded eerily like Bethany’s phone call that Max had taken the other night. Mr. Mustard and Miss Scarlet. Coincidence? A psychic sign?

“Your husband was investigating the case as possible murder.”

“What do
you
think?”

Instead of speculating, he continued with the facts. “It was ruled suicide in the end. Odd case, really odd.”