Notorious (11 page)

Max breathed in and her mouth watered at the authentic Sicilian smells. “I’m so glad Regina is still here.”

Regina had been her grandmother’s housekeeper for fifteen years. She worked nine-to-five and often prepared meals, especially when James Revere was still alive and Eleanor was more involved with charity work.

Conflicting feelings of nostalgia, regret, and anger—anger Max thought she’d left behind—flitted to the surface. She’d never hated her family, but the expectations and fundamental disagreements had weighed on Max her entire life. Though her grandparents hadn’t made her feel inadequate for being born out of wedlock or abandoned by her mother (those subtle attacks were reserved for her uncle Brooks), Max sensed she was expected to be faultless, as if required to repent for her mother’s many transgressions.

“Don’t avoid me,” William growled.

“I hadn’t planned on it,” she said. She smiled at him, bemused. “Why do they think I was at Gerald’s house?”

“Maybe this dinner was a bad idea.”

Could William have left the message at the hotel? It wasn’t like him—not threats. He’d come to her personally, using his leverage as her closest friend in the family.

Except she was about to destroy their relationship.

“I have a question for you.”

“Can it wait?”

She glanced down the hall. “What are you so nervous about?”

“I’m not.”

William was most certainly nervous.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were at Lindy’s house the night she was murdered?” Max hadn’t meant to ask the question that way. She’d planned to ask if he’d told the police he’d been there. She’d been questioned, just like all of them—the police asked about the last time she’d seen Lindy, who she’d been with, her state of mind, if she was having an argument with anyone, who did Max think might have killed her. Though she wasn’t in the room when William was questioned, he would have been asked similar questions.

“I wasn’t,” he said without hesitation.

“Your car was ticketed down the street from Lindy’s house three hours before she was killed. That never came up in the trial, and it never came up in any of our conversations.”

“Shh! Dammit, Max!”

“Why did you hide that information?”

“I knew you didn’t come just for Kevin’s funeral.” He ran a hand over his gelled hair, a bit long, but not too long, like Max always imagined Jay Gatsby would look.

“I did.” She caught his eye. “But I changed my mind.”

He paled. “Max, please—”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Why does it sound like you’re interrogating me?”

“It’s a simple question.”

Caitlin walked down the hall, her heels clicking purposefully on the tile. “I can hear both of you all the way in the library.” She locked arms with William t to the pool house where Lindy about fhen looked up at Max. Even in her heels, she was several inches shorter. A petite, blond, blue-eyed Kewpie doll with the fangs of a viper. “Hello, Maxine. We’re so glad you’re not in jail, and that you could make time for your family. Perhaps you and William could save your arguments for later.”

If there was a picture next to the definition of “passive-aggressive” in the dictionary, Caitlin Talbot Revere would be it.

One well-placed question at the dinner table and Max would know the truth, but she hadn’t seen William with such a deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression in her life, even when they were fourteen and Aunt Joanne caught them sneaking back into the house at dawn after they’d gone to a concert at the Frost Amphitheater, after expressly being told they couldn’t go.

If he wasn’t hiding something, why hadn’t he shared the information with the police?

Maybe he had and they’d dismissed it. But if they had, Kevin’s attorney should have brought it up in court because it would have cast doubt on Kevin’s guilt as well as highlighted the errors in the initial police investigation. Max had never looked at the case files as a reporter because she’d washed her hands of Kevin twelve years ago. She hoped Kevin’s attorney could get her a copy of the files, because it would take much longer for her to pull all the information from the police department and courthouse.

William had locked down his emotions since Caitlin’s interruption. He gave Max a half smile. “Truce.”

She nodded curtly, but they both knew this conversation wasn’t over.

“After you,” William said.

Max walked down the hall, passed the elegant white living room with its dark antique furniture, the stately French dining room that was set for nine—who else was coming tonight?—the hall that led to her bedroom suite, the two rooms that had once been her mother’s. The library, where the family liked to gather before dinner, was in the far corner of the house, two walls of bookshelves and two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the infinity pool on the side and a hundred-year-old oak tree in the middle of the large lawn in the back.

The library was Max’s favorite room in the house because it was the most lived-in. Before his death when she was fifteen, her grandfather spent most of his waking hours in this room watching baseball—his one, true love—and reading military history books—his second love. Max had often hidden in here with her grandfather, he at his desk, she on the leather couch with her homework or a book.

Stepping inside brought back a rush of warm memories, reminding her that her childhood was marked with quiet joy she sometimes forgot.

She glanced at her grandfather’s favorite chair, half expecting him to be seated there, reading. Of course he wasn’t, he was sixteen years buried, but Eleanor hadn’t moved it from its original spot. Though Eleanor was a hard woman who was critical of everyone in the family, including her husband, she had truly loved James Revere.

William handed Max a glass of wine.

She sipped. It was a perfectly chilled private reserve chardonnay. “Where’s Brooks and Grandmother? Still on the phone with the police chief?” She smiled.

Caitlin tilted her chin up. “You should be more concerned. This is serious.”

Max rolled her eyes.

Two little boys, Tyler and Talbot, ran into the room a nine-thousand-square-foot .PM, each carrying a Maltese. “Auntie Max! Grams got two dogs!” the older of the two, four-year-old Tyler, exclaimed. He said “auntie” like “Annie.” She adored her nephews, and the worst thing about living so far away was that she rarely got to see them. William had brought them to visit her last September in New York, but she hadn’t seen them since.

Last year, her grandmother’s precious Pomeranian had died at the old age of sixteen. Before that had been a Maltese, which Max had adored. She’d never had a dog with her mother because they moved around so much, but she missed Eleanor’s pups.

“Boys,” Caitlin said, “I told you to stay in the playroom.”

“But Auntie Max is here—” Tyler said.

“Don’t argue with me.”

Max walked over and led the boys out of the library. “I want to see the dogs,” she said. “Let’s hang out in the playroom. Less stuffy.” She glanced over her shoulder and caught the glare from Caitlin. Max stuck her tongue out at her cousin-in-law, and caught a half grin on William’s face.

The playroom was filled with state-of-the-art toys and classic games. The boys put the dogs down—the pair were about nine months old. The puppies immediately began wrestling and the boys laughed. “What are their names?” Max said, though she already knew because her grandmother had sent her pictures. She knelt on the floor with the boys and the dogs sniffed her, then licked her hands.

“Winston and Queen Anne,” Tyler said. “They’re brother and sister.”

“I wish I could take them home with me.”

“Me, too,” Talbot said. His little three-year-old voice had a slight lisp, which Max found cute. She wasn’t much for babies, but she loved the innocent sweetness of young kids. She wished Tyler and Talbot could stay this young forever.

“Why don’t you get a dog, Auntie Max?”

“I travel a lot for work. It wouldn’t be fair to a dog to keep him locked up or in a kennel when I wasn’t home.”

“Yeah,” Tyler said as if he completely understood. And maybe he did.

Max looked up and saw Eleanor standing in the doorway. She had an odd expression on her face, almost wistful, until she saw Max looking at her.

“Maxine,” she said.

“Hello, Grandmother.” She said to the boys, “I can’t play tonight, guys, but I’ll come see you before I go back to New York, okay?”

Tyler gave her a spontaneous hug. “Daddy said we can visit you again. Right? Can we?”

“Of course you can.” She got up and left the boys to play with the dogs. “Handsome pups.” She kissed her grandmother on the cheek. She looked both regal and disapproving. “I hear you’ve been chatting with the police chief.”

“I don’t know where to begin,” she said, closing the door. “The police, Maxine!”

“Kimberly overreacted,” Max said.

“You know better than to talk to that woman,” she said. “After the scandal—you should never have been there. You’re lucky she didn’t insist on having you arrested.”

Max laug a nine-thousand-square-foot .PMhed. She couldn’t help it. “Scandal?” They weren’t talking about Lindy’s murder. They were talking about what had happened three years before that. “Really, Grandmother. Are affairs even scandalous anymore?”

Eleanor reddened. “What are you doing here?”

“William invited me to dinner.”

“You know what I mean.”

Eleanor was seventy-nine, but looked and sounded a decade younger, owing her health to remaining active and eating properly. But suddenly she looked weary, and Max felt a pang of guilt for putting the age on her grandmother’s face.

“When I arrived yesterday morning, I had no intention of opening an investigation into Lindy’s death,” Max said as they stepped back into the library. “Circumstances have changed.”

Eleanor didn’t say anything. Brooks was there, but his wife was not. William glared at her, and the intake in Caitlin’s breath sounded rehearsed. Eleanor crossed to the bar and mixed herself a martini. Max waited for her to finish straining the chilled alcohol into her glass. But she didn’t sip.

“William,” Eleanor said, “take your wife to the dining room.”

“But—” Caitlin began. William grabbed her by the arm and half dragged her out. He closed the library doors behind him.

“Grandmother, I don’t think this is your business.” She looked at Brooks who stood like the Tin Man in the corner. “Nor yours, Uncle Brooks.”

“Anything that touches my family is my business.” Eleanor picked up her drink and took a long sip. She crossed to the windows and looked out into the lit backyard. “When I heard Mr. O’Neal committed suicide, I feared you’d do exactly what you’re doing.”

“Kevin didn’t kill Lindy.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“You were always overly confident,” Brooks said.

“Why don’t you join William and Caitlin in the dining room?” Max said, mimicking her grandmother.

“Watch your tongue, Maxine.”

“Don’t start with me, Brooks.” She wished her grandmother would send him packing, because his presence was making the entire situation worse that it would have been.

Instead, Eleanor ignored the exchange as if it were between two of her children. “Let’s assume that he didn’t kill poor Lindy,” she said. “What good could come from digging into the past? What do you hope to accomplish?”

Max was perplexed on how to answer her grandmother’s question. “Isn’t the truth a good enough reason?”

Eleanor turned to face her. With her chin up she said, “No.”

“I think it is.”

“I don’t think it’s the truth you’re after.”

“I’m always after the truth.”

Brooks stepped forward. “You simply want to embarrass me, embarrass the family.”

Max said to Brooks, “You? Yes.” She shouldn’t have. She should have bitten her tongue, but Brooks always brought out the worst in her. She said to her grandmother, disappeared during spring break, e3“My goal is not to embarrass anyone.”

“Being called by the chief of police is embarrassment enough! But you go beyond the pale. Dredging up the past, hurting people, digging around into other people’s business.”

Max laughed. “You’re one to talk.”

Her grandmother looked grossly offended. “I don’t gossip.”

“No, but you use information to your advantage.”

“To protect my family when necessary. That includes you, Maxine.”

“I don’t need your protection, Grandmother.”

“I wasn’t going to let you go to jail.” Her voice cracked, just a bit, but Max realized that Eleanor was worried about her fate. They had rough patches—many—but Max understood Eleanor. Too well.

“I appreciate that, really, and you know I love you.” Family was complicated. She could be so angry with them, with one or all of them, but she still loved them. Her grandparents had treated her the same as William and all her other cousins. She would never forget that. But that didn’t mean she was going to let her grandmother cover up a crime.

“Kimberly called the police out of spite,” Max said. “She doesn’t like me, and it has less to do with Kevin than it does with me exposing her infidelity—”

She looked pointedly at Brooks. Then she smiled.

He took a step toward her and raised his hand.

Hit me. Please hit me.

“Brooks!” Eleanor said.

He turned around and drained his Scotch before pouring a double.

“Hypocrite,” Max said to him. “You’re just mad that Aunt Joanne walked out and Kimberly’s husband forgave her. She probably told him it was just you—while you couldn’t very well tell Aunt Joanne that Kimberly was the only woman you screwed—”

“Maxine! Enough!” Eleanor crossed over to her, put a hand on her shoulder. “You need to stop.”

She took a deep breath. Brooks always did that to her. Brought out her cruel streak.

“I don’t know why Kimberly called the police,” Max said slowly. “There was no reason to, other to intentionally try to embarrass our family. Besides, I can take care of myself, I’ve been a reporter for a long time.”

Eleanor winced when Max said reporter.

“You’re going to damage our family,” Brooks said, his voice vibrating in anger.