“What’s wrong?” Sam asked as they descended two floors.
“The stairs gave her the creeps,” Armand said, taking her hands in his again.
“Didn’t you take them up to my office before?” Sam asked.
“Yes, but everything was different then.”
Sam looked as if he was about to ask something, but the doors slid open and they walked out. Snow had piled up everywhere, filling Maxine with dread until she realized it didn’t mean anything anymore. She wasn’t housebound when more than a few inches of snow fell; she no longer had to call Sam and feel terrible about not being able to come in. It was beautiful, just the way it was when she was a kid. She had the sudden urge to start a snowball fight, to hear her feet crunching in the snow as she ran to hide in a good launching site.
“Okay, where’s your car?” Sam asked, scouting the area.
Maxine’s expression went blank. She had a van, specially equipped for her wheelchair, but that wouldn’t be there anymore. Her will stipulated that it be donated to a non-profit handicapped transportation service.
“Right over there,” Armand said, saving her from looking like a complete dunce.
He walked over to a bright aqua Sunfire convertible. A sports car. She’d never been able to own one of those before, because most of them didn’t easily fit her wheelchair inside. She peered in the window. Even though she suspected it wouldn’t be there, she smiled at the absence of the stick that allowed her to control the gas and brake pedals with her hand.
“How are we going to get your car home?” Armand asked. “I don’t want you driving, darling. And I’m afraid to leave either of our cars here for long.” He looked worriedly around, as if expecting goons to slink from every crevice.
“Ah, this area’s not all that bad,” Sam said. “It’s in the middle of one of those neighborhood revival projects. But just so you and your…huggy buggy will feel better, I can drive Maxine’s car out to your place if you’ll get me back here.”
Maxine didn’t miss that twitch of Sam’s lip at her nickname. She narrowed her eyes at him, but he was looking at Armand, whose tightened expression relaxed at Sam’s offer.
“Perfect. I’ll pay for a cab to bring you back.” He obviously hadn’t noticed the snide little twitch.
“Fine with me. No one will bother my car.” He nodded toward the green Chevelle parked a few cars away.
Maxine gave him the set of keys from her bag, hoping he’d be able to figure out which one went with her car. Of course, he would—he was a detective, after all. Her feet crunched on the icy sidewalk as she stepped around to the passenger side of the car. The pumps she wore looked expensive and elegant, even with the damp spots the snow created. Oh, to wear pumps.
“Uh, huggy buggy,” Armand’s tentative voice asked. She paused by her car door. “Why are you riding with him?”
She looked across the roof at Sam. Because she loved him, she thought. Because she didn’t know Armand. “Oops. Wasn’t thinking.” She walked carefully across the road to the black Mercedes where Armand held the door open for her.
Despite the overcast skies, Maxine felt sunshine surround her. Maybe Sam would determine that Armand’s place was unsafe and make her go with him.
Armand’s hand slipped around hers. It felt clammy, and she grimaced but didn’t pull away. She wanted to break off this engagement nice and easily, so she didn’t hurt Armand too much. Not that she had much experience with such things, but she’d figure a way out.
“You were going to ride with him,” Armand said a few minutes later, giving her a solemn look. His lower lip pushed out.
“I wasn’t thinking.” She pointed to the bandage. “You know, the head thing. I still feel woozy.”
His fingers tightened more around her own. “Of course, darling.” He glanced in the rear view mirror, making Maxine turn around to see Sam following right behind them. “I thought you didn’t like him.”
She turned back to Armand. “I’m sure I never said that. I mean, I was married to him once.”
“Well, maybe you didn’t say that outright. You said he was slovenly. You said he should have been a lawyer like his father and brother, but he insisted on throwing his life away on some private detective ego trip.”
“I said all that?”
“Yes.” He lifted his chin, though he didn’t let go of her hand. “So if you felt that way about him, why did you go to his office today?”
“I trust him. I must have thought there was something to talk to him about.” Why, why did she go to Sam’s office?
He squeezed her hand even more. “Kissums, you don’t think there’s anything to be afraid of at our home, do you? Maybe you were overreacting a little.” He cringed. “You do that sometimes, you know. Just a tiny bit.” He seemed to relax some when she didn’t fly into a rage at his observation.
“Maybe I was. I mean, it was probably an accident, but I do feel better having Sam check it out. I just wish I could remember why I went to his office.”
“I would like to know that, too.” Armand glanced in the rear view mirror again. “He’s better looking than I pictured him. I was caught up in that slovenly thing. You used to tell me stories about his junk-food eating habits, so I imaged someone oozing with fat and flab. More like that guy in the Monty Python movie that ate so much, he exploded. You ex-husband looks…quite fit.”
“Yeah, he does, doesn’t he?” she said with a smile. “I mean, he obviously works out.” Her smile faded when she turned to Armand. “But didn’t he look too thin? Especially right here in the face.” She demonstrated on her own face, running her fingers along her chin. “And his eyes looked dull. They usually have a sparkle to them. I wonder if he’s ill.” The thought made her want to fix some homemade chicken soup like she did when he got the flu once.
Armand’s eyebrow arched. “I didn’t realize you cared so much.”
“Well, we parted on good terms. It’s hard not to care.”
Something had been happening with him lately, even before her…death. A restlessness had permeated his content features. During their Thursday night dinner, he’d changed his mind four times before settling on his usual. The day before her accident, he’d walked out of his office and said her name. She’d turned to see what he needed, and he’d simply stood there looking at her in the strangest way.
“What’s wrong?” she’d asked him.
He seemed to be in a spell, just standing there for a minute before finally asking, “Do you ever feel as though something is missing in your life, but you can’t quite pinpoint what it is? Something inside, I mean.”
“Sometimes,” she answered, though she knew what was missing, both internally and externally.
He’d nodded slowly, then added a paragraph to the report she was typing. Sometimes he’d ask her deep questions out of the blue, but he’d never looked quite so…lost before. At thirty-two, he was too young to be having a mid-life crisis.
Armand finally let go of her hand when he had to maneuver in traffic, jarring her out of her memory. Five o’clock traffic was creeping onto the main thoroughfares. She stretched her fingers, letting them dry. A minute later, he snapped up her hand again.
“Don’t be mad when I say this, kissums, but honestly, I’m tired of hearing about Sam. Let him look at the flower box and leave our lives, all right?”
“Well… “
“And please don’t tell me you’ve invited him to our wedding.” She stiffened, and he looked over at her. “You already have, haven’t you?”
“No, I was only thinking about inviting him, that’s all.” Wedding. She couldn’t marry this man. By the time it was supposed to happen, she’d be long gone from his life. When was it? “It’s not far from now, is it?”
He squeezed her hand again. “Only two months away.”
“Two months? “
“Yes, isn’t it exciting? And to think when we started planning this, it was a whole five months away. Felt like forever. Time is flying right along, is
n’t it? Soon you’ll be Mrs. Santini. What’s the matter, darling? You look pale.”
“It’s just my head.” She pointed at her head then winced in pain when she misjudged the distance and poked her bandage.
His eyebrow bobbed up and down, and he leaned closer. “Don’t you worry, darling. Mr. Wiggles will make you feel better when we get home.”
“Oh, joy,” she said with a forced smile, cringing inside. What was a Mr. Wiggles? Her face flushed when she remembered a friend telling her that her boyfriend had named his sexual organ. Oh, geez. If he thought that was going to make her feel better, he had another thing coming. Armand and Maxine were probably intimate since they were on a name basis with his anatomy. They did live together, after all.
She turned away so he wouldn’t see the expression that emerged on her face. Well, she was going to play the headache routine to the absolute hilt.
CHAPTER 3
THIS WAS too weird, Sam thought as he drove Maxine’s car to Maxine’s and her fiancé’s house. He hadn’t seen her in years, and all of a sudden she shows up sprawled out on his landing. Well, it was a distraction anyway. Life had been so damned bleak and senseless lately. Most likely Maxine was overreacting, something she tended to do anyway. Still, she’d never run to him over anything else. He didn’t want his conscience nagging him later, so he’d get this over with now and satisfy himself that it was only an accident. He glanced over at Romeo, his pancake ears swaying with the car’s motion.
“Well, you sure liked her. You know, she doesn’t like dogs. In fact, I’m surprised she didn’t have a hissy fit when she saw you jump in her car. Don’t be such a sucker for a cheek rub on your head.” He didn’t let himself think of other cheeks rubbing that same head.
Romeo licked his chops and settled down onto the seat. That hound hadn’t looked so relaxed since—Sam cut the thought before it finished. He had thrashed himself about Jennie’s death, about not being able to save her. He had raised holy hell to find out who had left the oil spill outside his office door, but it didn’t matter.
Nothing would bring her back, not any amount of anger or guilt or blaming. He’d played the scene through his mind so many times, it invaded his dreams and his subconscious. So he’d stopped thinking about her, tried to pretend it never happened. He knew that it slighted Jennie’s memory, but it was the only way he could deal with it.
Once in a while, it all rushed back on him like it did earlier when he’d looked down those stairs, and they were filled with people trying to save Jennie. Mostly, he had it under control, but something else had happened when he’d finally succeeded at closing himself off. The joy of life had slipped away, too. The business he loved held no satisfaction for him. Even sitting at the Hound Dog Cafe listening to the blues didn’t fill his soul with the sweet melancholy it used to. He felt empty.
Now he was following his ex-wife to her fiancé’s house to check out the possibility of foul play. Somewhere inside he found a smile when he remembered seeing Armand for the first time.
He turned to Romeo. “Huggy buggy. Do you think a woman actually likes being called that? A woman like Maxine? Yeah, probably. Oh, man.” He scratched the dog’s head. “Maxine, I hope you’re happy. You’re long out of my orbit.”
They weren’t far from his parent’s and Ned’s homes when they turned down a driveway to a house that blended right in with the stark whiteness of the snow. It was a large, two-story structure with small windows and a greenhouse sprouting directly from the side. The front entrance was an alcove carved into the white stucco in a decorative oval. Scattered about what was normally the yard were several white statues that looked like cartoon figures in crazy poses. Boy, did Maxine know how to pick them.
She stood in front of the door, holding the coat tightly around her as she waited for him to approach. She looked lost, something he’d never seen Maxine look. She clutched at his arm when he reached the entrance.
“Thanks so much for coming,” she said softly.
“No problem.” Truthfully, he had nowhere else to go that evening, nothing else to do. Which was the way he liked it, nice and quiet.
She stayed there until Armand cleared his throat from just inside the doorway. She turned slowly and walked in with Sam and Romeo following.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Armand shouted when he turned around at the jingling noise Romeo made. “That thing can’t come in here.”
“Then take us the outside way. There is an outside entrance, isn’t there?”
Armand’s mouth twisted. “The white orchid collection I bought a few months ago is blocking the doorway. Through the house is the only way to get to it right now.” He stared down at the dog. “I will not have any hair-shedding, slobbery dogs in my home.”
“Then we’ll have to go, because I can’t leave him out in the car. He’ll freeze.”
“Do you realize how many…things live on a dog? Creatures, dander, bugs.” Armand shivered violently.
“He doesn’t have fleas,” Sam said, feeling defensive. “He had a bath two days ago.”
“Doesn’t matter. They still have bugs and things.”
“I hate to tell you this, but we all have things on us. Microorganisms that live in our hair, our eyebrows and eyelashes, and no matter how much we clean ourselves, they never go away.” Sam wiggled his fingers. “They look like something out of a sci-fi movie when they’re magnified.”
“He’s clean,” Maxine told Armand, who looked horrified at what Sam had said. “I petted him earlier. Look how his hair shines. It looks so silky and soft.”
Why was Maxine looking at him when she’d said those last two sentences?
Armand looked down at her hands. “With which hand did you pet him?”
She lifted the right one.
“You should have told me,” he said in a low, urgent voice. “I could have held that hand.”
“I also rubbed my cheek against him,” she said, making the little man cringe even more. “Armand, they’re only going to walk through to the greenhouse,” she pushed. “I’ll feel a lot better if Sam takes a look at things.”
“Oh, all right, but I’ll have to have the place fumigated tomorrow.” He turned and led the way through a house so white, Sam had to squint.
Even Romeo looked up at him, as if questioning his motives for being there. Sam could only shrug in response. White tile floors, no carpets at all; white leather furniture, white entertainment center. The only thing that broke up the vast whiteness were the marionettes and puppets, some in glass cases. Must be a hobby; some looked rather old with tiny cracks in their surface. Personally, they gave him the creeps, watching with their beady eyes as he went by.
They wended through a large kitchen where Maxine paused to look around in delight. No doubt planning many a cozy meal for her and her little hubby. Not making them, mind you. Just planning them.
Romeo paused to scratch at his floppy ear, and Sam nudged him gently with the toe of his shoe. Armand glanced down at the jingling sound, but missed the scratching. Romeo’s foot was still poised, though, as he gave Sam a puzzled look.
Armand made a quick call to summon a cab to the house for Sam before continuing on. A glass door led out to the greenhouse, the first bit of real color he’d seen since walking in the house. There, flowers bloomed left and right, easing the strain on his eyes with their pale shades of pink and yellow. Of course, the floor was a white decking. Cold air seeped down from a jagged hole above them.
“Is there some reason you don’t have any colors in your house?” Sam asked, stepping around the broken flower box on the ground in front of him.
“I’m allergic to colors, particularly bright colors. Pink is my worst. Instant headache.” He pinched the bridge of his nose to demonstrate.
Sam glanced at Maxine, who was giving Armand the same disbelieving look Sam probably had on his face. Well, shouldn’t she have known this if she was marrying the guy? He focused on the flower box instead, counting the minutes before he could put these
wacky people out of his life.
Shards of glass spread out everywhere, mixed with dirt and dead plant pieces. The white metallic container was bent. Sam looked up through the star-shaped hole the box had dropped down through. On the second floor, outside one of those small windows, was the faint outline where the box had hung. It had crashed through the glass roof and hit Maxine on the forehead. He looked up at her as she stared at the mess on the ground.
“How did you survive this?” he asked.
She jerked her head upright, as if caught doing something wrong. “I don’t know. It must have been a miracle.”
Something bitter burned through his stomach. Why couldn’t Jennie have been given a miracle, too? Heaven knew she deserved it. He pushed the thought away.
“There you are,” a woman’s booming voice said. “Mr. Santini, I tried to get you at the club, but you’d already left.” She was a tall, pale-skinned woman wearing a—what else—white dress and cap. “I heard a scary crashing noise earlier and found this mess out here. And the blood. I didn’t know what had happened, or whether I should call the police, so I waited until you returned.”
“That’s fine, Aida,” Armand said to what might be the maid. “This box fell on my kissums here.” He grasped Maxine’s hand and pulled her so close they appeared sealed together at their side. “Thank God she’s all right.”
Aida’s eyes widened. “My gosh, what happened?”
“She doesn’t remember,” Sam found himself answering for her. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Maxine was already gone when you came out here?”
“Yes. She must have gotten right up and left. It’s a miracle she wasn’t smooshed like a pancake,” Aida said, looking up through the broken glass.
Sam didn’t want to hear any more about miracles. “Let me take a look at that window.”
He headed back into the house and followed Armand up the white stairs. Armand kept glancing back, giving Romeo insolent looks, but Sam ignored him. So did Romeo. Sam was too busy watching the puppets in the alcoves watching him. Until he realized Maxine wasn’t following them. When he turned behind him, she was still standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking as if going up those stairs was going to be a challenge.
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