Trust Me (13 page)

“Isn’t it good for them to be out in the fresh air?” Max could hardly believe that he was having this conversation.

“Well, maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. I’m just telling you that we’ve never done it that way before. And now, of course,
some of those dogs spend the entire time rolling around in the mud, and then they come inside and make a mess that takes me
hours to clean up.”

“I see,” Max said.

“Of course, Miss Martin is a professional, and she certainly knows more than I do. I’ve been taking care of this house for
twenty years, you know, but I’m sure that it would be better if I just did what she thinks is best.”

“I see,” Max said again, and took a swallow of his tea. Apparently he had been called in to mediate a power struggle over
who had control of Henry’s house, and he couldn’t think of anything he felt less like doing.

Casting his eyes around the kitchen, he noticed a cocker spaniel, so old that his white coat had turned a dingy yellow, sleeping
on the floor of the pantry. “He’s not outside.”

“He is
too old
to go outside,” Pauline said. “Samson never, ever goes outside, except to do his business in the morning and evening. I’m
sure that Miss Martin would send even him out for the day, if it wasn’t for his cracked rib. It hurts him to walk, poor dear.”

“What happened to his rib?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Pauline said. “Miss Martin noticed last week that he was limping. Those teenagers who come in to help,
you’d think that they would see something like that, but no, they’re just rushing in and out. I suppose one of the big dogs
was rough with him. Bones break so easily when you’re old.”

“What about hiring someone to help with the cleaning?” Max suggested. “Now that there’s all this extra mud.”

Pauline looked shocked. “Bring a stranger into Henry’s house?”

“Couldn’t one of the teenagers help?”

“Well,” Pauline said, “certainly not any of the boys, they’re too wild. I can’t imagine any of them working in the house,
because they would just make a bigger mess, but I suppose that one of the girls might be able to help. I’d have to pay her
extra, you know.”

“I think that would probably be all right,” Max said, fully intending to pay the extra salary himself if necessary. “But you’ll
have to talk to Carly about it. I’m not in charge of the house. She is.”

“Yes, I know. Poor Henry was very generous to her. You know, Mr. Max, I wouldn’t want to say anything bad about anyone…”

Wouldn’t you?
Max thought. It was obvious that Pauline didn’t want Carly meddling in the affairs of the house, but he guessed that her
feelings would mellow after she got used to the changes. But if they didn’t, he hoped that she would find someone else to
confide in.

Pauline took Max’s silence as license to continue. “Well, I’ve been thinking about poor Henry’s accident, and there’s something
that I just don’t understand.”

“What?”

“Well, Wednesday is the day that I do my errands, you know. I go to the grocery store last, because I have to come home right
away so that the milk won’t spoil. I always get back here between six-thirty and seven, then I put away the groceries.” She
paused, and her chin began to tremble. “Oh,” she said, and fished a tissue out of the pocket of her apron and blew her nose.
“Excuse me. I just can’t help thinking that if only I’d been quicker that day…”

She shook her head. “I came in through the back door, and I could hear the TV in the sunroom, so I thought he was watching
the news. He always sits in his chair and watches the news until seven. So why would he be off wandering around the house
when the news was on?”

Pauline was clearly upset over this deviation from routine, but it seemed like a minor issue to Max, who could think of several
hundred reasons why a man might go “wandering” around his own house.

“Maybe he had to go to the bathroom,” Max said shortly, hoping she wasn’t about to tell him that Henry’s bodily functions
were also on a strict schedule. He checked his watch, wondering how soon he could politely excuse himself.

Pauline looked mildly offended. “I’m sure that if he did, he would have used the powder room on this floor. His knees have
been troubling him, you know. And if he wanted to go upstairs… I don’t know why he would, but if he did, I don’t see why
he wouldn’t use the elevator like he always does.”

“Elevator?” Max said.

“Well, my goodness, you don’t think that I go up and down those steep stairs all day, do you? Henry doesn’t either. He hasn’t
used the stairs in years. We have a little elevator that runs from the butler’s pantry. It’s been there since the 1930s and
it is a bit slow, but very useful.”

Max set down his teacup. It did sound strange, he had to admit. If his grandfather had arthritic knees and hadn’t used the
main staircase in years, why would he have chosen to use it last Wednesday? And how ironic that the decision would have led
to an accident that had almost taken his life.

“He must have been feeling better that day,” Max said. It was a weak explanation, but how could anyone know what Henry had
been thinking? It occurred to Max that the minor details of his own life would probably look odd and inconsistent to a stranger
who was trying to analyze them for meaning.

“I just don’t understand it,” Pauline said again. “I wish I’d been here. You should talk to Miss Martin and see what she has
to say about all of this. Maybe she knows something.”

“Why would she know anything?”

“Well, she was here, you know.”

“No,” Max said. “I don’t know. What do you mean, she was here? When was she here?”

“The day of the accident. You didn’t know that she was here that afternoon? Hmm.” Pauline nodded as if he had confirmed something.

This was all news to Max, who was sure that Carly had never mentioned being at the house on the day of the accident. “What
time was she here?”

“Oh, I don’t know, exactly,” Pauline said. “I never saw her because I was out all afternoon doing my errands. But Henry was
expecting her at about five-thirty.”

“And you came home and found him when?”

“I came home just before seven, then I was in the kitchen for about twenty minutes. It takes a long time for me to put things
away without anyone to help me, you know, so I didn’t go looking for poor Henry until it was much too late. I didn’t hear
a thing, or I would have come right away.”

“It’s not your fault,” Max said. “It’s a big house. And for all we know, he could have fallen before you came home.”

“I do wonder about that. It seems to me that if I had been here, I would have heard some noise from such a terrible accident.
My hearing is very good.”

Max was not surprised by this. He would have bet that she knew everything that happened within the Tremayne walls.

“And another thing, Mr. Max. If I had been here, and there was something that he needed from upstairs, don’t you think that
he would have called me to get it for him? I can’t imagine what got into him to make him try to go rushing up or down those
stairs.”

Max shook his head. He had no answers.

“Maybe,” Pauline suggested slyly, “Miss Martin would know.”

“Maybe,” Max said. He made a mental note to ask Carly about her visit that day. Apparently, she had been the last person to
see Henry before he fell. Perhaps she knew something that could shed some light on his odd behavior.

A
fter almost four months of living in San Francisco, Max had learned that there was no way to predict the local traffic patterns,
other than to make one basic assumption: If it was daylight, then the Bay Bridge would be crowded. Today was no exception,
and Max braced himself as Carly floored the gas pedal and deftly scooted her VW into the far-left lane, right behind the thundering
wheels of a massive black semi truck.

“We’re making good time!” Carly exclaimed loudly, over the noise.

Max resisted the urge to close his eyes. It was a testament to German engineering, he thought, that the rickety hatchback
had not yet disintegrated into a jumbled heap of auto parts. Judging from the violence of the vibrations coming through the
passenger seat, it was only a matter of time. He just hoped that it wouldn’t happen while they were doing eighty in the fast
lane.

It was Sunday, a rare fogless afternoon in the city, and as they sped across the bridge, he could see as far as the Oakland
hills. He had no clear idea of how he had ended up in Carly’s car, headed north to Davis to have dinner with her family. He
didn’t think that he had ever actually agreed to go with her, but somehow it had happened, and now he was trapped. The invitation
had surprised and confounded him, and despite Carly’s efforts to explain that it was no big deal, that the Martins always
had guests for Sunday dinner, he felt uneasy. He didn’t understand why she had chosen him to be her guest. It wasn’t as if
he had been nice to her.

It was possible, he thought, that she was trying to put him under some kind of emotional obligation. They had not discussed
the Tremayne mansion since the previous week, but if she was afraid that he still intended to take her to court, she might
see this as a strategic move. If so, she could save herself the effort. He had intentionally put the topic on hold, and he
was biding his time until there was a clearer indication of whether or not Henry would recover. If he did regain consciousness,
there would be no need for a legal fight. And if he didn’t… Max narrowed his eyes. Whatever happened, he would never allow
his personal feelings about Carly Martin—whatever they might be—to keep him from doing what he had to do.

He shifted in the small seat, wishing for more leg room. Wishing, actually, for his own car. It didn’t feel right to sit in
anyone’s passenger seat, and he missed the sleek, intimidating weight of his Jaguar. He hadn’t been in a car like Carly’s
since he was sixteen, and that wasn’t a time in his life that he cared to recall.

He opened his window, wanting to feel the wind on his face.

“Max,” Carly said, “you aren’t worried about meeting my family, are you? This is just a casual thing. It’ll be fun.”

“I’m not worried,” he muttered.

“You’re being very quiet. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you so much about them. I guess they do sound kind of weird.”

“They sound fine,” he said shortly. He frowned out the window, wishing that he hadn’t come. He hated meeting new people, and
he was annoyed that he had allowed himself to be talked into this. He had the edgy feeling of being a kid again, buckled into
the front seat of yet another social worker’s cheap car, on his way to yet another foster home. The old emotions were still
tangible—hope and fear, clashing to form the dull alloy of resignation. The first night was always the worst, when he lay
in the new bed, huddled in blankets thick with the smell of an unfamiliar house, listening to the night noises of strangers.

Whenever he met a new set of foster siblings, Max would look each one straight in the eye, daring them to stare back, daring
them to say out loud what they already knew about him. But he wasn’t the only hardened kid around, and it didn’t always work.

We heard you got your mama’s name cause you don’t know who your daddy is. Your mama’s a drunk. We heard she passed out in
the store on her way to get another bottle.

Even now, as an adult, if he was caught in the wrong mood, meeting a roomful of new faces still brought on a cold sweat. But
the difference was that now he had the talisman of wealth surrounding him, the strongest magic available for creating instant
acceptance.

“My family is going to love you,” Carly said firmly. He glanced at her. Was it his imagination, or did her enthusiasm sound
a little forced? He shifted in his seat again. Actually, he thought, her family would not love him. Not a bit. And that was
fine with him. It was not a question of love, anyway. It was a question of respect. He definitely would have preferred to
arrive in his own car.

Carly’s parents lived about an hour’s drive northeast of San Francisco, near the Davis campus of the University of California,
where her father taught botany to undergraduates. They had an old ranch-style house on five acres of land that bordered a
creek called Putah, and Max, who had never considered living anywhere that wasn’t within walking distance of a Starbucks,
was favorably impressed. They had olive trees and grapevines growing behind the house, and beyond the mowed and watered lawn
area was a large meadow of knee-high grass speckled with native wildflowers.

“Nobody, and I mean nobody, touches my meadow,” Mr. Martin said, as he walked Max through the field, pointing out—with a professor’s
enthusiasm for Latin names—the various plants he had raised from wild-grown seed. “It was a tomato farm back in ’63 when we
bought the place. Tomatoes!” He snorted. “The soil was stripped, a wasteland. You should see what they do to the fields here
in the valley, son. Not that I have anything against agriculture. I like a store-bought vegetable as much as the next man,
but the spraying, the spraying! Nature is resilient, Max, but by God, she has her limits.”