Power to the Max (20 page)

“We had a fight. A big fight. I can’t remember what it was about.” She clamped her lips shut on the lie, started over. “It was about children. He wanted them. I wasn’t ready.” She never would have been ready. She was barren, and the thought of adopting was too much. The awesome responsibility of motherhood chilled the blood in her veins. “I threw his cigarettes down the garbage disposal and ground them up. He went down to the corner 7-11 for more.” With the short, clipped sentences, Max didn’t feel anything as she spoke, because she refused to see the pictures that went with it.

“And that’s where he was shot.” There, she’d told. What more did Cameron want? She hadn’t mentioned that she’d seen it all. She hadn’t said the three men went after her when they were done with Cameron. They dragged her from the mini-mart, raped her, beat her, and left her for dead. But no, Max hadn’t told Julia that. She couldn’t give the other woman that much of an opening for deeper questions.

It was Julia’s turn to reach out. The woman’s fingers were cold, as cold as the only solace Cameron could offer.

“I’m sorry I asked, Max. You obviously blame yourself.” Soothing tone, that of the mother Max had lost.

Max blinked. She wanted to laugh. Blame herself? She’d blamed herself for every bad thing that happened since the day her mother died when she was eight years old. She took responsibility for none of the good. Another of the things she and Cameron argued about incessantly. She rubbed at the bridge of her nose. “I’m getting maudlin. I hate that.”

“It’s only natural. You loved your husband very much.”

Max looked up. “Didn’t you?”

Julia drew in a deep breath. The mistiness returned to her eyes. “It’s a shock. It hurts that I won’t be able to discuss my day with him. But I won’t cry two years from now the way you do.”

Max immediately touched her cheek. Her fingers came away damp. “I’m not crying.” She had no explanation for what the moisture was.

Julia gave her a soft, knowing look. Max hated that spark of pity in the other woman’s eyes. Somewhere along the way, Julia had loved, loved and lost, and now she thought she knew everything there was to know about Max Starr.

“I’m not crying,” Max reiterated with an edge to her voice.

“You’re right, I’m sorry. Let me put it another way. I will have no emotion two years from today. At least about Lance.” She folded her cocktail napkin over and over in half-inch pleats. “It isn’t really fair either. You see, Lance wasn’t a bad man.”

“Wasn’t he?” Good men didn’t obsess about other women and wouldn’t flaunt their affairs as Lance had done in Julia’s office. Like rubbing salt in a wound, even if he didn’t think Julia had an injury, he’d let Angela Rocket take him to the stars in a way that would cause Julia the most humiliation.

Maybe he’d gotten his just desserts dying as he did.

Contemplating her napkin, Julia tried to explain. “He took such good care of me, did anything I wanted, anything I asked.” Who was this woman trying to convince, herself or Max? And if this was an act for Max, exactly what was Julia trying to hide?

“Didn’t you ask him to go to your gala on Saturday night?”

Julia’s head came up, a startled look in her eyes. Perhaps frightened. “Yes, but...”

“Instead he was betraying you with another woman.” She stopped, let that sink in, then lunged forward with—“In your office”—feeling only a bit of a bitch after the deed was done.

Julia swallowed, closed her eyes and took a deep breath in much the same way Max did to calm herself. Then she opened her eyes. A hint of pain remained. “One should never have inappropriate expectations,” she murmured.

“I don’t think expecting fidelity in your marriage is inappropriate.”

Julia smiled, softly, sadly. “Maybe. But then maybe acceptance is what happens when you settle for something before you know what you really want.”

Max tipped her head. “I don’t really get what you mean.”

A full-throated laugh this time, still sad. “I know. I’m being enigmatic. I’m sorry.”

They stared at each other for five seconds, perhaps more, then Max broke into the silence with the question she’d wanted to ask all along. She figured she’d earned the right by baring her soul. “Did you kill your husband?”

Julia ran a hand through her hair. “Baxter hasn’t asked me that. Even the police haven’t asked outright.”

“They’d ask you in Group. If you ever decided to attend.” The support group. Max had briefly attended a
group
in the course of exorcising the last murder victim.
Group
was brutal. Support had nothing to do with it. They’d grind Julia to dust if she didn’t toughen up.

Julia smoothed her dress over her thighs, the stiff material rustling in the few moments of silence before she spoke. “If I told you I’d killed him, then you’d also have to accuse Baxter of lying since he gave the police my alibi.”

“And I never lie, Max.”

Max jumped at the sound of Baxter’s voice as he stood inside the doorway. It had lost the soft quality she’d noticed yesterday.

Julia turned to the father she called by his first name. The door was to Julia’s left and behind Max. Neither of them had heard him enter. Max knew both of them wondered how much he’d heard. For Max, it mattered. She gathered together all her secrets and armored herself against the two of them.

Suddenly, she was the one alone in the crowd.

“Both Julia and I knew about this latest woman.” He shot a quick glance at his daughter before adding, “Though certainly not by name or we would have told the police.”

“We both knew he got an apartment for her,” Julia finished.

“How did you know?” If they’d had him followed, it pointed towards murder, despite their apparent need for Max to think they had no motive.

“He asked my permission,” Julia answered with a gracefulness of tone, as if she were pouring the tea or offering a plate of biscuits.

Max pounced. “You said you didn’t discuss his other women.”

Baxter strode further into the room, pushed aside the lapels of his tweed jacket, and slid his hands down into his pockets. He’d finished off the bow tie with red suspenders. With another sliding look at Julia, Baxter said, “Lance asked me what I thought of the apartment idea.”

“It was his way of letting me know,” Julia went on as if they were one voice.

“He always tested things out on me first, to see how I would react so that he’d know how Julia would react,” Baxter finished.

“And you let this man stay married to your daughter.” It wasn’t a question, it was an accusation.

Baxter glanced from Max to Julia.

“Maybe I finally figured out how wrong I was. Julia wouldn’t have killed him. But I would have.”

“But my father was with me that night. He didn’t do it,” Julia jumped into the fray.

“And you can tell Bud Traynor,” Baxter went on as if Julia hadn’t spoken. “I’ll kill him, too, if he ever tries to get close to my daughter.”

“Father, stop it.” Ah, finally, the title. Max could see Julia meant it with all sincerity brimming in her gaze.

Baxter turned to her, his eyes on fire behind his spectacles, his fists clenched. A small man, he suddenly seemed as powerful as Witt. “I should never have put up with that weird arrangement, Julia. I should never have let you settle for anything less than a real marriage. I should have—” He cut off his own words.

Julia rose. “Father, we’re talking about a murder here.”

murder. Not
my husband’s
murder. Something telling in that.

“A bastard’s murder.”

Julia’s tone softened to the brown of her eyes. “Please don’t try to make Max think you did it. You couldn’t hurt a fly.”

His fingers flexed. Open, closed. “Tell her to let Bud Traynor know I’ve never trusted him and I know he’s up to something. He ruined Walter, but I won’t be such an easy target. And I won’t let you be either, Julia.” His gaze stayed on Max as he spoke.

Julia stepped closer to her father. “We do have things to be thankful to Bud for, Father.” She gripped his arm. “He’s been a great help these last few days.”

Baxter looked about to spit.

Max stood, but with Julia looking at her father, Baxter Newton was the only one who saw Max’s face full on.

“I know exactly what he’s up to, Mr. Newton. He’s expanding his power base. And you have something he wants.” She paused for effect, watching Baxter’s eyes widen, then she shook her head imperceptibly. “I don’t think it’s your daughter.”

He looked away. Max knew she had him.

“Why don’t you tell us what he’s really got up his sleeve?” Max asked, her voice barely louder than a whisper.

A moment of silence, a requiem for Baxter’s guilt. They waited, Julia without taking a breath.

His eyes unfocussed, as if he looked deep inside, pain flashed across his face at the terrible sight, then he was back with them. “He wants to marry you for your money, Julia.”

If he wanted Julia, it wasn’t for her money. It certainly wasn’t for love. Baxter Newton held the key. And he was lying.

Max bent to retrieve her purse, tucking it beneath her arm as she regarded Baxter once more. “I think you’ve been playing with Bud Traynor. Bad boy.” She wagged a finger. “He’s the devil, you know, and he’ll come knocking on your door for his due. I don’t think you’re going to like his price.”

As she passed Baxter, he murmured, “I already know I don’t.”

For her ears only.

When Max turned back, Julia stood by the tea table, fingers resting on the top of her Queen Victoria Jubilee tea cozy.

She didn’t invite Max back.

But Max knew Baxter would seek her out again.

* * * * *

“So the sports car is his.” Max muttered aloud as she passed the white BMW Z4 Roadster now parked in Julia’s circular driveway. It hadn’t been there when she arrived.

The vehicle hadn’t seemed like Julia, and indeed it wasn’t. Baxter Newton seemed to be going through his second mid-life crisis a few years later than most men.

“What’s Baxter’s connection with Traynor? Besides the fact that they both knew Lance La Russa?”

Cameron. The words in her head hadn’t been echoes after all.

“Don’t you already know?” She started the engine and rolled past Baxter’s car. “You’re the one who told me he was important.”

“Their alibis suck, Max.”

“A father lying for a daughter, a daughter lying for a father?”

“Exactly. I guarantee the police are working on shooting holes through their stories as we speak.”

“Don’t you know what’s between him and Traynor?” she asked again.

Cameron ignored her. “And why did she bring you here, telling you all her secrets?”

In a flash, she knew exactly why, and it hadn’t taken supernatural powers to figure it out. “She wanted to get me on her side, in case it comes down to a fight between them and Bud.” She laughed without humor. “Without even meeting them, I would have been on their side.”

“So they’ve thrown you a good non-motive. They’ve tried to instill sympathy, empathy.”

“Which means they’re hiding something. They don’t even care what my connection is with Bud, whether I’m really his ‘personal’ assistant or some private investigator. Weird.”

Cameron made a humming sound in agreement.

“Did either Baxter or Lance come up on the radar screen when you were investigating
Walter
Spring
’s death?”
Walter
Spring
, Bud’s business partner, had been Cameron’s last case as an Assistant District Attorney.

“I don’t recall anything.” Not that it meant much as there were plenty of things Cameron seemed to have forgotten in his transition to the other side.