Road Trip (16 page)

Finally she began idly looking at each person and thinking about what part of their clothing must be the “favorite thing” for the mixer. She saw several beautiful embroidered blouses and one embroidered jacket that looked like wool to her. Annie wondered if the woman was starting to broil yet; the woman’s face
was
looking a bit pink.

Then Annie spotted a crocheted jacket that she definitely recognized. With a smile, she moved into the crowd again to reach Cat Reed for a chat. She had to admit, she wanted to ask her again if Max had said anything to her about what he was involved in. She wondered if she should tell Cat why Max was in that room, and that it hadn’t been his idea to go back to his previous illegal activities.

As she moved between two stout women in matching sweaters, Annie realized one of the women was speaking to her. “Your top is lovely,” the woman said. “Was it designed by that attractive girl with the dark hair too?”“Oh no,” Annie said, smiling as she tried to move past them. “I just made this from a pattern.”

“Really?” the woman stepped fully into Annie’s path then. “I would love to make one. Do you remember which pattern book?”

Annie shook her head. “I’m sorry, I really don’t. I made it a few of years ago when I lived here in Texas.”

“Oh, you don’t live here anymore?” the woman said. “I see you still have your accent.”

“I live in Maine now,” Annie said. “But I’ll probably always keep my ‘y’all.’”

“Good for you,” the woman said.

Annie finally managed to slip past the women. She looked around the crowd but couldn’t catch a glimpse of Cat. Frustrated, she decided to head toward the edge of the crowd again. Maybe she’d see more from there.

Annie edged, inched, and wove her way to the more open space close to the doorway. She turned around and looked for Cat but again saw no one she knew. She wondered if any of the Stony Point group had found each other in the crush.

Then she turned back toward the doorway again. As hot as it was in the room, maybe Cat had gone out to the hall to cool off. The lovely jacket she wore from the fashion show had to be hot in the crowded room.

Annie walked out into the hallway. All up and down the hall, small groups of women stood and chatted in the cooler air. But though she checked each group, walking along slowly—Annie spotted neither Cat nor any of her Stony Point friends.

With a sigh, Annie considered just heading back up to her room. She could go over her speech for the morning a few times and turn in early. As much fun as it was seeing all the different knit, crochet, and embroidered clothes people wore at the mixer, it was also considerably more crowded than Annie enjoyed.

If she could only spot someone she knew. Then to her surprise, she did. Coming up the hall with a determined stride was Cat’s brother Jake. Annie smiled brightly. “Jake?” she said.

“Hi!” He hesitated a moment, looking uncertain. “I’m so sorry. I don’t remember your name.”

“Annie Dawson,” she said. “I met you the other night with your sister in the lobby.”

He nodded. “I remember that. How are you?”

“I’m good, just a little overwhelmed by this crowd,” Annie said. “I spotted your sister earlier, but then I lost her in the crowd. I thought she might have come out here to cool off. I wanted to tell her something I learned about Max Lessing.”

Jake’s face darkened. “It would be better for Cat if she didn’t think about that man anymore.”

“It’s hard to forget someone so quickly if you loved them,” Annie said.

Jake snorted. “Cat gets these crushes on rotten guys, but Max was the worst of the bunch. He didn’t love her. He treated her like dirt. Every time I saw them together it made me mad.”

“I can imagine so,” Annie said. “We hate seeing people we care about suffer.”

Jake nodded. “She just needs to forget him.”

“Well, what I have to tell her might actually help,” Annie said. “Sometimes it helps if you know the answers to the questions you have. I know why Max was slipping back into his old ways. It wasn’t totally his fault.”

“Right,” Jake said. “Look—Max did exactly what Max wanted.”

“I don’t know about that. Your sister broke up with him that night,” Annie said. “I don’t think he wanted that.”

He waved a hand. “It wouldn’t have lasted,” he said. “That guy would have just bought her something sparkly, and everything would have been forgiven. Even the bruises on her arm.” Then his face darkened again, and Annie could tell Jake wouldn’t be forgiving Max anytime soon.

“Well, I still would like to chat with Cat,” Annie said. “I do have some news for her. I assume you don’t know where she is either.” Annie turned back toward the doors to the crowded room. “I guess I should go back and see if I can find her.”

“Actually, you don’t need to do that,” Jake said. “I know of a quiet room back down the hall. You can wait there, and I’ll bring my sister to you. It’s easier for me to get through the crowd I think.”

“That would be nice,” Annie said. “Are you sure you don’t mind? I certainly wasn’t looking forward to getting back into that crush.”

“No, I don’t mind,” Jake put a hand on Annie’s back and turned her around, away from the door. He began herding her down the hall. “The room is right down here.”

He opened a door and led her into one of the small storage rooms similar to one where she had broken the bad news about Max to Cat. Annie walked in, and then turned around. Jake closed the door and faced her.

“I thought you were going to take me to your sister,” she said.

“First, I want to know what you were going to tell Cat,” he said. “I don’t want you upsetting her. Talking to that police detective was upsetting enough for her.”

“I can see how it would have been upsetting,” Annie said, “but it’s important too. A terrible crime has been committed, and we all should do what we can to help.”

“We don’t even know that a crime was committed,” Jake said. “Maybe the guy fell. He drank. Maybe he got liquored up to give him the courage to break into the room. Then he stumbled in the dark and knocked his head in on the table.”

“Did the police detective mention Max’s drinking to you?” Annie said.

“Why?” Jake snarled. “Have you and the detective talked a lot? You can be kind of a busybody, can’t you? Always poking around, asking questions and upsetting people.”

“My goal isn’t to upset people,” Annie said. “Look, I think I’ll just go back to the mixer now.”

“Not until you tell me what you were going to tell my sister. What information do you have about Max?”

“I intend to discuss it with Cat,” Annie said. “I don’t intend to discuss it with you. I really must insist that you move away from the door and let me pass.”

Jake took a step toward her instead. “That detective you’re so fond of—who does he suspect of bashing Max?”

“I am not Detective Matthews’s confidante,” Annie said, stepping backward as the tall young man walked closer. “I could call him, and you could ask him.” Annie slipped her hand down her sweater, reaching for the pocket where she’d carried her phone all day. Then she remembered that she’d taken off that cardigan. And she’d left her cellphone lying on the end of her bed.

Jake took another step closer to Annie, looming over her. “Tell me what you know about this whole thing.”

Annie suddenly wondered if she had any speck of character judgment. She’d suspected Edgar Harvester, at least a little. She’d suspected Carlton Gold for a while too. She’d even wondered about Cat, though not for long. But she hadn’t really suspected Jake at all. The sibling squabbles had simply made her think of her own lack of brothers and sisters, but now … .

“I don’t know much,” Annie said, “but the way you’re behaving certainly makes me wonder.”

Jake frowned. “About me? Does the detective suspect me of something?”

“I don’t know,” Annie said. “But if he did, I imagine he would realize that you were just a loving brother trying to protect his sister.”

“Like anyone could protect Cat,” Jake said. “She’s been like that since we were little. She was always the one to run right at trouble wherever it was. I just wanted something better for her. I wanted her to come to work with my wife, meet a decent guy, have a family. None of that could happen with Max.”

“So you killed him,” Annie said.

“What? No, no, it wasn’t like that.” Jake turned and paced back toward the door, and then spun to face her. “I’m not someone who hurts people. You have to know that.”

“I’d like to,” Annie said.

“I was just so mad when I saw those bruises on Cat.” He ran a hand through his black hair, making it stand on end. “It was bad enough that he belittled her, bullied her really—but I wasn’t going to have him beating her.”

“I don’t think he did,” Annie said.

“Not yet,” Jake admitted. “But they say that once a guy crosses that line—”

“But Cat broke up with him.”

“I couldn’t be sure she was going to stick to that. You don’t know my sister. She’s impulsive, and she sees what she wants to see,” he said. “She broke up with him because of something
you
told her. How could I know she wouldn’t get back together with him if he said just the right thing?”

“That must have worried you.”

“I’d had enough,” he said. “I followed him that night, and he
was
drinking. Not drunk, not staggering—but not cold sober either. I saw him force the lock on that room. That’s when I knew he was still a thief. I followed him right into the room. I told him he had to stay away from Cat, or I was going to call the cops and turn him in for breaking and entering.”

Annie just nodded.

“You know what he did?” Jake asked. “He laughed. He said I was in the room too, touching things, leaving evidence. I didn’t even have gloves on. He said he’d tell them that he and I were in on the theft together.”

“The police probably wouldn’t have believed him,” Annie said gently.

Jake nodded. “I didn’t think they would. I’ve never even had a speeding ticket. Not one. I haven’t even had a parking ticket. No, I knew they wouldn’t take his word over mine, and I told him so.”

“Then what happened?” Annie asked gently.

“Then he asked me who
Cat
would believe,” Jake said. “And I really didn’t know. I couldn’t be sure my own little sister would believe me over someone like that. I couldn’t believe what he’d done to my family. He must have seen it in my face, because he grabbed me.
He
grabbed
me
. Like I’d be intimidated by someone like him. I shoved him then. He fell and cracked his head on the table.”

“Then what happened?”

“He got up,” Jake said. “I thought he was OK. He was staggering a little, but he’d been drinking. His breath stunk of it when he was in my face. I thought maybe it had just caught up with him. I mean, he could stand and talk and everything. I thought he was
fine
.” Jake’s gaze looked a little unfocused as his voice grew softer. Then he paused.

“So what did he do then?” Annie said.

“He said I assaulted him. He said he was going to call Cat and tell her I assaulted him. He said he was going to call the police. That’s when I realized how stupid I was acting. He’d gotten me to act just like him. I was so disgusted with myself that I just stormed out. I told him to call anyone he wanted, but that he better leave that room without taking a single thing, because otherwise I was going to be the one who called the police.”

“So he was alive when you left?” Annie asked.

Jake nodded. “I thought he’d be OK. Sure, I figured he’d have a headache. That was a nasty smack on the head, but I thought he’d be fine. I didn’t know any differently until I heard from Cat.”

“Then you knew he’d died from hitting his head when he fell,” Annie said.

Jake shook his head. “No, I didn’t. I figured someone else must have gone in after me. I figured he probably had a lot of enemies, a guy like that. I didn’t know how he died, you know? I never thought it was anything I did. I really didn’t.”

“But you didn’t tell the police detective about the accident,” Annie said.

Jake shook his head. “I assaulted Max, right? I wasn’t going to advertise that. And what difference did it make? I was sure I didn’t kill him. I was so sure.”

“But now you know,” Annie said. “He died from a blow to the head. You have to tell the police.”

He looked at her, panic in his eyes. “But I pushed him. Sure, he had a hold of me, but I pushed him hard enough to make him fall. They’ll arrest me. It’ll be in all the papers.” He began to shake his head. “Max was ruining my sister’s life, and I’m not going to let him ruin mine.”

“So you’ll let the police arrest the wrong man?” Annie asked. “They’re likely to think that the man who sent him into that room also killed him. You’ll let someone else suffer for what you did?”

“If someone sent Max in there, then that’s a
real
crime. What I did was an accident!” Jake’s voice began to climb, and he stepped closer to Annie.

“Then tell the police it was an accident,” Annie said.

Jake’s eyes narrowed. “You aren’t going to quit are you? If I don’t call, you’ll call. You’re that kind … poking your nose in where no one invited you. Nothing happened to your grandmother’s stuff. You could have just left this alone.”

“So what happens now?” Annie asked quietly, struggling to sound calm even though her knees felt weak. “Do I suffer an accident too?”

“I can’t just let you ruin my life,” Jake said quietly.

“So you’re going to kill me?” Annie said, her voice climbing. “This one won’t be an accident at all. Is that what you’re going to be … a killer?”

Jake shook his head hard. He took a step back, and Annie saw tears in his eyes. “No, no! I’m not a killer!” Jake’s voice became a shout. “I need time to think. You’re going to come with me. Just to give me time to think.”

Annie knew the worst possible thing she could do was to go with the young man. He hadn’t made a decision yet, but when he did—she didn’t want to be far from help. “That would be kidnapping,” she said. “You don’t want to dig yourself into that either.”

Annie could see the struggle going on inside him. Finally he wailed, “I don’t know what to do!”