Power to the Max (10 page)

The mantra almost worked. Max was at least able to push her so-called waking nightmare to the back of her mind. By the time she woke the following morning, it was nothing more than a slight ache around her heart.

Getting dressed, Max remembered she’d kept some pertinent information from Witt. Not that she’d intentionally hidden the tidbits. He’d made her mad. Okay, he’d brought out the fear in her. Getting mad was the only way to expunge it, but the little tiff also made her forget to tell him the other stuff she was supposed to, about the blockheaded man, the location of the hotel, and even Angela Rocket’s name.

She pulled on her black slacks and knotted her striped tie. In the bathroom, she added a touch of blush to her cheeks and color to her lids. Getting ready for work, her mind conjured attire of another kind. Did she have the right clothes for hooking? Maybe not, but Max didn’t question her decision to pose as a hooker.

“You made that decision out of pique,” Cameron insisted. “A stupid reason.”

“It’s still a good idea. And Witt thought of it first.” The slight ache she’d felt upon waking became a huge twinge. Speaking Witt’s name would open the door to last night.

Thank God Cameron didn’t step through it and start in on her again. Instead, he kept to topic. “You won’t be able to get yourself out of this one. Angela’s going to start wondering why you never go up to anyone’s room.”

“Maybe I will go up to a room.”

Silence. A tomb-like silence. As if the air had been sucked from the room. A second later it blasted back at her with a bellow that shook the walls and made the cabinet mirror tremble. Her reflection wobbled in front of her. She wondered if the neighbors heard the sound and saw the walls move, or if it was some sort of ghostly illusion only she could see. Like Cameron himself. All she ever really saw of him was a luminescence in a dark room.

“Who are you testing, Max? Me? Witt? Yourself? When are you going to stop?”

“When dead people leave me alone,” she huffed, refusing to let him scare her or give her a guilt trip.

She packed her makeup in a tiny bag, left the bathroom to stuff it in her purse. Bending down in front of the small refrigerator, she pulled out yogurt, an apple, and yesterday’s muffin. Shaking a paper bag open, she shoved the lot inside, then added a banana for good measure.

“Rabbit food. You’re going to starve.”

“Don’t nagging ghosts eventually go to hell?”

She didn’t wait for an answer, simply slipped into her shoes, grabbed her purse, and pounded down the stairs. Before he could badger her about last night.

Her pumps crunched across the gravel, the heels sticking as if it were quicksand. Her car was parked on the street at the end of the drive, the back end a little too far from the curb. Just went to show how pissed she’d been last night.

She tucked her lunch beneath her arm, then dug in her purse for her keys. Somehow they always managed to be way down at the bottom.

“Max.”

At first she thought it was Cameron so she ignored the voice.

“Max.” Stronger. Deeper. The voice was definitely not in her head.

Purse strap in her mouth, hand dug deep into the bowels of her bag, she turned. And everything started to slip, the purse, the keys in her fingers, even her mind. Lunch landed with a splat on the concrete.

“Do I make you nervous, Max?”

Nervous, nah. Terrified. Bud Traynor made her blood run cold, like broken bits of ice freezing her brain and her limbs. She’d known him two months—as long as she’d known Witt—and it seemed like forever. Bud Traynor. The first murder victim’s father. Father, manipulator, master, molester, and tormentor.

He climbed from his sleek white Cadillac, and she still couldn’t say a word.

She’d vowed to avenge his daughter’s death. Though Traynor hadn’t wielded the weapon, his machinations led directly to her murder. With his blessing, Max believed deep in her bones. She’d vowed to kill this man for his crimes. She’d failed miserably. He made her weak in the knees, weak in body and soul.

He bent to retrieve her damaged lunch, opening the brown bag to peer inside. “Oh, look at that, Max. Your fruit is bruised and your yogurt sprang a leak.” He raised his eyes to look at her. “Looks like I’ll have to buy you lunch instead.”

He was close. She could smell him, expensive cologne, starched shirt, and evil. Evil had its own unique scent, like rotting apples, like fine wine turning to vinegar, like cheese marbled with mold. Evil, the scent of good things gone bad.

The narrow, tree-lined street suddenly seemed empty, the breeze kicking up the fall leaves, crackling as they skidded across the road. Where were the cars, the children going to school, the mothers pushing baby carriages to the park? The place had never been so forlorn.

“Cat got your tongue, Max?”

She had to say something. Anything. “Why do I always feel like we’ve just played a game of chess and it ended in a stalemate?”

“I always win, Max. In everything I do.”

She took her brown bag lunch from his fingers, held her keys firmly in her hand, and snapped her purse closed. He didn’t step back, neither would she. “Depends on your definition of winning.”

He smiled. It reminded her of the turn of lips they’d stuck on her uncle when they laid him in his coffin. Empty. Soulless. Unreal.

“My definition? With you in particular, Max, it will be the day you say you love me. And mean it.”

She laughed, not with mirth, but with incredulity. “You have big dreams, Bud.”

“I do. You figure in them greatly, Max.”

“Then they’re delusional.” She tipped her head, looked him over from foot to head. “You’re old enough to be my father.”

That smile again, never touching the blackness of his eyes. “I know. I especially like it that way. It reminds me so much of my darling daughter Wendy. You remember Wendy, don’t you, Max?”

Wendy, his
murdered
daughter. Max resisted the shudder his tone elicited and didn’t take the bait. “Why are you here? Today, I mean. Why now?”

He crossed his arms over his green cardigan. Beneath it, he wore a white turtleneck, his slacks a gray check. Bud Traynor was a handsome man despite his sixty-odd years; white hair perfectly in place, gleaming smile, ruddy cheeks, muscular arms and chest. If his teeth were rotted, warts covered his nose, and hair sprouted from his back, everyone would have seen the evil in him. Beauty covers so many sins because most people never look below the surface.

“Why am I here, Max?” He opened his mouth to say more.

Max cut him off. “Spare me the dissertation. I don’t really care why. I’m late for work.”

“Lance La Russa.” His head turned a fraction to the left. He was pleased with himself.

“Who’s Lance La Russa?” Until she knew what he wanted, she’d admit nothing.

“So many of my friends and family are dying, Max.” She hated the way he did that, added her name to almost every sentence as if it somehow increased his hold on her. “And with every death in the past two months,” he paused, letting the words sink in, “you’ve been there.”

Father of Wendy Gregory, lover and client of Tiffany Lloyd, godfather of Bethany Spring. Like Witt, Max didn’t believe in coincidence. Though she’d been able to prove nothing, she knew Bud Traynor had somehow had a hand in their murders.

She raised a brow, feigning unconcern. “Are you a friend of this Lance La Russa?”

“Business associate. I was his lawyer.”

“Ah, you mean you stole his money.”

He belly-laughed for effect. “You do so amuse me. That’s why I want you, Max. No one else talks back the way you do.”

“That’s because you’ve beaten them into submission.”

“My mistake, Max. Playing the game is so much more interesting with a challenge such as you present. You’ve taught me that much, in your own way. Let me teach you some things, too.”

Hating the way he turned everything into the sexual, she steered him back. “So your client’s dead, why come to me?”

“I figured that sooner or later, you’d come to me, Max. I decided to make the first move.”

“You shouldn’t have bothered.” She turned, brushed past him, her ass moving across the front of his slacks. She shuddered, but it couldn’t be helped. Unlocking her car door, she gave up the pretense of not knowing who Lance was and said over her shoulder, “I’m not interested in what you can tell me about Lance La Russa.”

“Aren’t you going to ask if I killed him, Max?”

She opened the door. He did step back then, rather than get hit in the chest with the pointed edge. “You knew him, he’s dead, ergo you had something to do with it. But no one will be able to pin it on you. I know it. I’ve stopped beating my head against the wall where you’re concerned.”

She’d stopped trying to get him in overt ways. Instead, she was like a lion in the bushes waiting for the unsuspecting. That’s when she’d get him. The day he wasn’t expecting it.

“I have other things to offer, Max, besides my guilt.”

“I don’t need your money.” She gave him a smirk totally at odds with the way her insides trembled. “And the thought of touching your body makes me want to vomit. Nothing you’ve got interests me.”

He tipped his head. “What about Julia La Russa?”

“Julia La Russa?”

“Lance’s wife.”

Like the devil, the man knew every weakness, knew Max desperately wanted a crack at that woman.

“You suspect her, don’t you, Max?”

“She’s got an alibi no one can shake.” Max shrugged, as though indifferent.

Bud raised a brow. The wind pulled through his hair. It fell back into place like it had never been touched. “Ah yes, her little charity affair. But everyone has to go to the bathroom or sneak away for a cigarette.”

“She wouldn’t have had enough time to leave, kill him, and get back.”

“Maybe someone’s lying about where and when they saw her, Max. A friend? A close business associate?”

“You?”

He didn’t answer that. “I can introduce you to her, Max.”

She thought of the days, weeks, or months it would take to infiltrate the wife’s benefit organization, to find an in with Julia La Russa. Or she could have knocked on the woman’s door asking for employment, secretary, maid, toilet cleaner, anything. Most likely the door would have been slammed in her face.

“Why would you do that?” she asked.

He quirked a brow. “What if it’s my way of getting a hold over you, Max?”

“I may take something from you, but I’ll never owe you.”

He smiled, giving her the prickling sensation that she hadn’t thought things all the way through. “Think of it as a gift then.”

The decision took seconds, and she was proud of the fact that neither her revulsion for Bud Traynor nor her fear weighed in on the matter. “When?”

“Now, Max.”

It was a Godiva chocolate dangled before her face. If she didn’t take it now, he’d never offer again. That was part of his game. She reached inside her purse, pulled out Witt’s cell phone, called her temp job, and informed them she was sick.

Tucking the phone back in her bag, she said, “I’ll follow you.”

He wagged a finger, murmured a negative sound. “I don’t think so, Max. You’ll drive with me.”

She tilted her nose, looked down it scathingly. “No. I won’t.”

“Then you don’t go at all.” His eyes sparkled with malice.

She should have known there was a catch. She debated leaving word with Witt about where she was going. And who she was with. She rejected that thought as quickly as it had come. Witt was ready to skin her alive after her little jaunt with Ladybird. If he knew about this? Lord help her.

Slightly nauseous with the decision, Max climbed into the devil’s own chariot beside Bud Traynor.