Max winced as the sound of a zipper assaulted his battered brain, but Keely, investigating the bag’s contents, ignored his groan of protest.
Max’s stomach started hip-hopping to some internal rap music. This was the worst headache he’d had since Paris. As he recalled, he and Paul had talked about life that night. Life and food and love as black-garbed waitresses served up generous portions of salt pork with lentils and tangy Tarte au Citron. Surrounded by students, professors from the Sorbonne, artists, models, and young lovers, they ended up toasting with champagne the plans for the soon-to-be started Max’s Bistro and Max’s upcoming marriage to Lisa.
Closing his eyes, Max escaped the painful present by sinking into the cotton batting of memories until cool fingers touched his cheek. Dazed, he opened his eyes. The battered wainscoting and spiral staircase of the Polidor melted into the grayish walls of a shabby room, but one of the beautiful girls remained. Unlike the starved-looking models with their hungry eyes and pointed chins, this softly rounded woman was within touching distance.
Max lifted a shaking hand to finger the satin smooth hair framing the woman’s face and sighed in contentment. She was real, she was flesh and blood.
“You blanked out on me again,” Keely accused him.
“Just resting my eyes,” Max said thickly. He was filled with an overwhelming desire to drift back to the Polidor and its dreams of an enchanted future. But this time, instead of Paul, Keely would be at the table, her knees pressed against his, their fingers entwined—
“Doug lied about ditching the cleaver in a trash can.”
So much for romantic dreams. Max painstakingly gathered the scattered pieces of his fantasy and tucked them away for later re-assembly. He forced himself to straighten up.
Aware that Keely awaited a coherent response, he broke down her statement. Doug. Cleaver. Trash can. Was there a correlation between those unrelated words?
A sensible question occurred to him and he asked it. “How do you know?”
Keely waved at a scattered assortment of socks and tee-shirts. “Because it was in the gym bag. That’s what knocked you into La La Land.”
At least, Max reflected gratefully, he’d been spared the indignity of being cold-cocked by a pair of socks. “As soon as this room stops whirling, I’ll see what else that rat’s hiding.”
If anything, the bedroom was worse than the living room. Overflowing ash trays and beer cans littered the floor, shabby night stand and unmade bed. Faded posters of heavy metal rock bands and a nude pin-up provided the only color on the drab walls.
Poking gingerly through the contents of the bureau drawers, Keely grimaced. “I’d pay any price for a pair of gloves!”
Max leaned against the door post for support. The floor seemed to have developed a definite slope. “I don’t think we’ll find much. Doug’s no rocket scientist, but he’s too street smart to leave anything incriminating lying around.”
They finished searching the apartment, but found only evidence that the former inhabitant was a three pack a day man and lived primarily on a diet of beer and frozen pizza.
“Guy could have starved to death on what he ate.” With a scowl of distaste, Max dropped a cheese-smeared box back into the trash. “No wonder the scrawny weasel was always snitching food while he was supposed to be working.”
Using a plastic bag retrieved from the garbage, they sealed up the cleaver to preserve possible fingerprints and gave a final look around the disordered kitchen.
“I think we’ve pumped this particular well dry.” Max staggered, regained his balance. “I vote we give Gifford those notes you received and tell her about the phone call. If we put all our cards on the table, maybe we can talk her into putting an APB out for Doug and Jackson.”
“Or perhaps I’ll be crowned Miss America. Vegas would give me the same odds.”
Max grunted. “Don’t be such a pessimist. Look at it this way: things are bound to get better.”
“Meaning they can’t get much worse?” Keely studied her companion. The bruise on his forehead stuck out like a hydrant in the middle of a parking lot and his face was as gray as his shirt. Keely followed Max’s wavering progress out of the apartment, closing the door behind them. She didn’t worry about locking up, there was nothing inside worth stealing. Max lurched down the hallway with Keely’s support. In deference to his condition, they took the elevator down, arriving at the ground floor with a lurch that jarred a groan from Max.
Outside, the street was a sullen gray river of asphalt. Even the buildings flanking the pavement possessed a hostile air and Keely experienced an unexpected flash of empathy for Doug. If she were in his shoes, maybe she’d do whatever it took—including the odd spot of tire slashing—to get out of this hellhole.
After helping Max crawl into the passenger seat, Keely settled behind the wheel of the van. Glancing over the unfamiliar instrument panel in search of the switch for the headlights, she heard the ghost of a chuckle.
“I’d appreciate being let in on the joke,” she said, buckling her seat belt.
“I just happened to think—Doug’s vanished, his apartment looks like a tornado touched down inside, and our fingerprints are all over the place. All we need now is for his dear mother from Alabama to pop up and accuse us of kidnapping the little weasel.”
Keely shuddered. “Don’t forget about the smashed television screen.”
“Sign of a struggle.” Max hummed a few bars of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” “Doug practically wet his pants when you swung for the fences.”
Keely jammed the key into the ignition. She didn’t want to dwell on her loss of control. Sooner or later, she’d have to confront the truth. Okay, definitely later.
“You scared me, Keely. That wasn’t a picture tube you were smashing. Who was your real target?”
The empathy in Max’s voice sneaked under Keely’s guard. She said softly, “I think it was a drunken pervert named Harry. One of Mama’s one-night stands.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
Enough of sharing time. “I want to get out of this neighborhood.” Keely shifted gears and pulled away from the curb with a jerk that had Max grabbing for his head.
He huddled against the van’s door, his forehead resting on his right hand. “Are you sure you haven’t got something you want to get off your chest?”
Remembering their proximity in the apartment, Keely smiled wryly. “You mean like this blouse? I suspect you weren’t as dizzy as you pretended during your dramatic swoon.”
Max chuckled again. “You’ll never know, will you?”
But his voice caught on the last word and he slumped against the door.
Keely gave him a concerned glance. “I’m not convinced I shouldn’t drop you at the hospital and see Gifford alone.”
She could only guess at the effort it cost Max to straighten. “You’re not leaving me out of this. I’ve got a score to settle with Doug ‘the Weasel’ Welch.”
“From what I know of your family, I’m not surprised.” The van accelerated. “Wasn’t the main character in ‘The Godfather’ based on Anna Marie?”
“As a loyal nephew, I should resent that, but I don’t. My aunt could face down Don Corleone any day.”
They rode in silence, Keely planning what she was going to say to Gayla Gifford. She had the sinking feeling the detective wouldn’t be falling on their necks with cries of joy. “We didn’t get much out of Doug, did we?”
Max grunted. His posture had reverted to the hunch of a sick man. “Mystery voice on the phone, payment shoved under Doug’s door—Gifford’s going to love what we have to tell her.”
The score was lopsided in favor of the bad guys. Even more disheartening was the realization that she was no closer to clearing Max of suspicion than she had been this afternoon.
Unless Doug was an actor of Academy Award caliber, Max wasn’t the faceless man who had ordered the vandalism. Doug hadn’t linked his boss to an anonymous voice over the telephone.
<
br /> Are you being straight with me, Max? Keely wondered, keeping her companion under a covert watch. Apart from learning Doug was responsible for stealing the wallets, she was no farther ahead.
Instead, she found herself lumbered with more questions. Who was the reception guest who witnessed Doug’s foray into pickpocketing? What was on the missing videotape? Was Max Summers playing a deep double game?
She had the answer to the last question within arm’s reach. Keely gave the man beside her another probing glance, wishing she could see below the surface and into his soul.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. “Tell me about your restaurant, Max.”
“What?” He uncurled enough to raise his head. The glow from the dashboard painted his complexion with a ghastly pallor.
“Talk to me,” she said patiently. “I don’t want you slipping into a coma. You used to have a restaurant—what did you call it?”
“Max’s Bistro.”
“I’ve never been in a bistro,” Keely prodded.
Max shuddered. “Just don’t ask for a description of the meals served—my stomach’s in the spin cycle. A bistro’s not a restaurant in the usual sense of the word.”
His tone softened, became pleasurably reminiscent. “A perceptive Parisian lady once told me a bistro isn’t in business to make a lot of money, but to celebrate food and life. In Paris, a true bistro becomes a kind of surrogate home. A refuge, a haven from the stress of the outside world. One lingers over food and wine, talks for hours. Bistro means family.”
That word again. He spoke with such nostalgic relish that Keely felt ill. Or maybe it was the smells of the apartment which still permeated her clothing. With each breath, she was forced to inhale the stench of horrific memories. “I think your definition of family and mine are a little different.”
Max reached over and covered her right hand with his. “I’m sorry, Keely, that you had a terrible childhood.”
She wrenched the steering wheel until his hand slipped away, pretending to wrestle the van around a corner. The pans in the back clattered a protest at the abrupt maneuver.
“I heard your mother on the phone, remember?”
She remembered all right. Humiliation has a way of hanging around longer than a saved message on voice mail. “I can’t help resenting the way you talk about family. Maybe you grew up in a bed of roses, but those of us who didn’t would prefer not to hear raves about the gorgeous colors and the heavenly scents.”
Keely knew she sounded like a petulant child, but she no longer cared. Max had seen her in her worst moments: cowed by Flo Netherton, smashing a TV picture tube, and weeping like a baby. He’d heard her mother berate her, saw her chew her nails, knew she drove too fast when upset. She had no secrets left.
“Even in a bed of roses, there’s always thorns, Keely.” Max’s voice was hoarse with discomfort. “No matter what I say or do, I can’t change your past or influence your future. Only you can come to terms with whatever happened to you and move on.”
She was almost home, Keely realized with relief. With all her heart, she regretted starting this conversation.
Max gingerly shifted position. “Keely, I’m having trouble keeping our relationship on a business-only basis. You’re distractingly attractive, disturbingly sexy, and it takes all of my self-control just to refrain from kissing you senseless.”
She turned to stare at him in disbelief. “You are concussed! Next stop, the hospital.”
He chuckled. “Actually, I think the blow knocked some sense into me. I’ve been lost without a family. I want a wife and kids and the loving and sharing that are missing from my life.”
Keely couldn’t tell whether the hum in her ears came from the van’s engine or her rising blood pressure. She’d been tempted to kiss Max when they sat on the floor. He’d looked at her with a tenderness that was as alien as it was thrilling. Despite their wretched surroundings, she’d felt comforted and tantalized by a sense of closeness that was lacking in her life.
She guided the vehicle over to the curb in front of her house. “Max, please don’t.”
“Don’t what? Say what I feel?” He was mocking her, his eyes inscrutable below the welt marking his forehead. “Don’t worry, your heart’s tied up in knots a sailor couldn’t undo. Only a fool would try to free you.”
Keely directed her miserable gaze through the windshield, fumbling to switch off the ignition. She was conscious of Max leaning closer, his hand coming up to stroke her hair in the loving gesture he’d used in the apartment. “Guess I’m just a fool.”
Max wasn’t groggy now. There wasn’t a chance he’d confused her with some other dream woman. The trembling spread throughout Keely’s body until her feet jittered like frightened animals on the floor mat. She heard a click as he unfastened his seat belt and murmured his name in protest. “Max—”
“A fool in love.”
His fingers brushed the skin of her neck, his face only a breath away. She turned toward him, her unvoiced protest swallowed up by his lips as they closed over her mouth. The kiss deepened, became a quenching of an unbearable thirst as they drank of each other’s essence.
Max rubbed his palms across Keely’s shoulders. He was dizzy with unsated desire, his body and soul throbbed for contact with hers. He kissed her soft cheek, tasted the salty residue of her tears.
“Keely,” Max whispered. “Keely.”
Her lips sought his, her body arching toward him, responding like a flower to the sun. He must be delirious. She was nuzzling his throat, his name poetry on her lips.
The dream shattered as Keely stiffened. Her hands pushed against his chest. “Max, the lights are on in my studio!”
Bemused, still adrift in a turbulent sea of hormones, he reached for her again. “Maybe your associate’s working late.”
She bit her lip, fairly vibrating with apprehension. “Ida wouldn’t be here, unless something terrible’s happened—”
Keely’s lithe body twisted free. She was out of the van and running towards the studio entrance before Max could react. Muttering, he took his time, following at a slower pace. His forehead throbbed like a balloon about to pop and his ego was equally bruised.
Keely had responded—briefly—but his kisses hadn’t worked their magic if she was capable of noticing lights when she should be seeing stars…
Something glittered at the foot of the steps. Curious, Max bent to pick it up and almost toppled over. Regaining his equilibrium, he realized his discovery was a piece of glass. Curved like a half moon, smooth on both sides. Then he saw the other pieces, glittering like grounded stars in the grass. Max crouched with careful deliberation to pick them up, the lump on his forehead pulsating as he stooped.
His questing hand brushed something hard and hollow hidden in the shadows of the bushes flanking the steps. Straightening, he studied his find in the faint light spilling through the outer door which Keely had left ajar. The shell casing of a gutted camera. Nausea roiled in his gut. What had Keely walked into?
Max dashed up the steps two at a time. Bursting into the reception area, he saw Keely near the entrance to the studio, her posture unnaturally rigid. She was alive, apparently unhurt.
“Keely?” His blood thundering like a waterfall in his ears, he hurried towards her. “Everything okay?”
She didn’t respond but remained motionless, her head tilted as she stared at something beyond the doorway.
Holding his swimming head to keep it from falling off his neck, Max stumbled to her side. Keely gripped a tripod like a flag staff in her hands.
Following the direction of her unblinking gaze, Max saw Flo Netherton sprawled beside a wicker chair. Blood covered one side of her face, which seemed to float like a pale flower on the floor of the studio.
“She’s dead, Max.” Keely used the tripod as a dreadful pointer. “She’s dead.”
Chapter 17
Gayla Gifford rubbed the gnawing ache in her back. “Why don’t more crimes take place in daylight?”
/> “You’re not the only one looking like a newspaper left out in the rain.” Dawson jabbed his thumb in the direction of the reception area. “Our friends aren’t having what you’d call a good night.”
“This isn’t some hooker who got herself wasted, Robo, but a newspaper publisher. A woman with enough clout to make the mayor and the city council dance to the tune of her choosing.”
“You got pink spots on your neck.” Brian squinted critically at his partner. “A few flecks across your nose, too.”
“We’re redoing Samantha’s room. She chose paint the shade of flamingo feathers—I can guarantee she didn’t get her color sense from me.” Gayla watched two men wheel a gurney into the studio. “Tell the stretcher jockeys to leave her a few more minutes. I want our friends to watch them haul her out.”
Raising her voice, she addressed a man carrying a camera. “Vince! When I question O’Brien, I want to see a regular lightning storm of flashes in that studio.”
Vince gave her the thumbs up signal and Brian said in an admiring tone, “You’re good, Gayla. Real good. Even those pink freckles look cool on you.”
“Give me your take, Oliver Stone. What scene was shot here tonight? How many actors?”
“At least two and they were looking for something.” Brian nodded at the file strewn floor. “Flo and a companion. They quarreled, she got clocked by the handiest weapon, the tripod.”
Gayla snapped her fingers. “Let’s hear take two.”
Her partner scrubbed his cap of sandy blond hair with a ham-sized hand. “Flo walks in on the person tossing the studio. Tosser doesn’t like it and lowers the boom—er, tripod.”
“In both scenarios, Robo, you’re letting Miss Shutterbug off the hook. Stop visualizing her legs and concentrate on facts. What if Flo was doing the tossing and O’Brien catches her in the act? Maybe our sweet-faced photog lured Flo here on a pretense, crushed her skull, and then tossed her own place?”
“In every one of your versions, you’ve got a problem. What’s the MacGuffin they’re searching for?”
Wedding Chimes, Assorted Crimes Page 16