She let him lead her to the bed, but she didn’t sit as he wanted her to. “No, I’m just curious. I wanted another look at the brackets.”
“But why? That ex-husband of yours confirmed that it was only an accident. You saw the rusted brackets yourself. My poor darling, this has all been a bit much for you, hasn’t it?”
She nodded. “More than you can imagine.”
“Will it make you feel better knowing we won’t ever hang another flower box there again?”
“Oh, much.” She glanced at the window. Yeah, right. A chill settled in her bones, seizing her stomach. Someone, for some reason, had murdered Maxine-the-first. They would try again, because they thought they hadn’t succeeded.
“Come, let’s go down and get you a cup of coffee. Aida has a pot brewing now.”
When they reached the kitchen, Maxine looked around for James and Sally. “Are the, er, children gone already?”
Aida waved her hand toward the door. “They usually grab breakfast on the way in to work.”
“How long have they been gone?” Maxine asked, eyeing the greenhouse door which was closed now.
“Only a few minutes. Why?”
Aida was watching her with open curiosity now. She followed Maxine’s gaze to the door.
“I thought I saw someone out in the greenhouse just now.” She shrugged, trying not to make an issue of it. “I wondered who it was.”
She’d been so subtle about it that no one responded. It could have been anyone in the house. She looked at both Armand and Aida, but neither looked as though they were hiding something. Then again, Armand had known where she was.
Armand stood as Aida poured Maxine a cup of coffee. “I’m going to get dressed. You’ll be all right for a few minutes? Won’t climb out any windows while I’m gone, hmm?”
Maxine forced a smile at his patronizing expression. “I’ll try to hold myself back.”
Aida pretended not to pay any attention to them, but Maxine knew she was listening by the way her brows pinched together. Maybe it sounded strange; maybe Aida knew exactly what he was talking about.
As soon as Armand was gone, Maxine took her cup of coffee and walked out into the greenhouse again. She stood in the star-shaped spot of sunshine and looked up at the window in Sally’s room. Whoever had stood here could see anyone standing right inside that window rather well. It could have been Maxine-the-first’s killer. She closed her eyes against the feel of the sun on her face.
Maxine, did you see who murdered you? When you were lying here, did you see one of the people in this house looking down at you to make sure you were dead? You probably did see someone, and that’s why you went to Sam. Something stirred inside her. Maxine, I’m going to find out who murdered you. It’s the least I can do, seeing as you’ve done a whole lot for me. Which means I can’t cut ties here yet. Maybe she could find out if Aida had been out there this morning for a start.
“Aida, the tarp isn’t covering the hole in the roof anymore,” Maxine said when she walked back inside. If Aida already knew, she’d probably been out there.
“The repairman will be here in less than an hour,” was all she said.
“Oh. Good.”
A noncommittal answer if she ever heard one. Sam was better at these things than she was. Sam. She had to tell him what she’d found. That chill inside her thawed at the thought of him. Would he think she was crazy? Was she?
CHAPTER 4
IT TOOK a great deal of doing, but Maxine convinced Armand to leave her alone for a while and go into the city to practice his Mr. Wiggles routine. He and Maxine-the-first had planned to go car shopping; she’d talked him into buying her a Mercedes like his for her wedding present. Maxine rolled her eyes. Maybe the woman had been a gold digger. Nevertheless, Maxine-the-second had changed her mind and wanted to keep her Sunfire after all. She wasn’t going to let Armand spend a penny on her.
Once Armand had left, under her promise to stay put and take it easy, she called their office. Sam’s office, she amended. Her smile faded at the fourth ring, and finally she heard Sam’s voice. Not his real voice; the answering machine he’d tried to replace Jennie with.
“Hello. You’ve reached Sam’s Private Eye. We’re—I’m not in to answer your call. Please leave a message, and I’ll call you back as soon as possible. Thank you.”
The beep prompted her to hang up, but it didn’t do a thing to dislodge the lump in her throat. He still thought of the business as ‘we.’ Sam had always made her feel as though the business was a partnership. She’d begun to feel that way herself. There was nothing in the office she didn’t have access to, even his precious client files. Sometimes he asked her for advice and even took it. But there was something in his voice. Or rather, something missing from his voice. Maybe it was just the tape recording that stripped the life from his words.
Maxine wandered around the house for a while, trying Sam’s office every fifteen minutes. Aida dusted and vacuumed around her, offering to make her lunch at noon. Maxine passed on that, the thought of those frozen dinners not in the least bit stimulating. She did check the cabinets and pantry for something to make lunch with, but everything was processed. When she opened one of the lower cabinet doors, she saw several twelve packs of Coke. James drank Coke. A lot of it apparently.
Fear numbed her edges, making her ultra-aware of her surroundings and any noises that sounded out of the ordinary. Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer. Grabbing her car keys, she skirted the room Aida was in and headed out to her car. She had to get out of the white. It was everywhere, inside and out. Besides, she didn’t want to be around when Armand returned.
Her heart was tight when she walked up those stairs to Sam’s Private Eye. The images of that horrible day were fading, but she could still taste the blood in her mouth, hear Sam’s voice calling her name. When she reached the top, she saw that the light was on inside the office. So she tried the doorknob. It turned, and she opened the door to find Sam putting a stack of books in one of several boxes on the floor.
He looked up, and she wasn’t sure if it was annoyance or just surprise that filled his expression. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m fine, thank you,” she said cheerfully. “Yourself?”
He ducked his head, though he didn’t smile. “Sorry. I guess that was kinda rude, wasn’t it?” He remained crouched, curling his fingers over the top edge of the box. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay.” Now that she was here with him, she could smile again. “My head doesn’t hurt much anymore.”
“Good, I’m glad. What are you doing here?”
A jingling sound coming from the pillow behind her desk preceded Romeo’s greeting, which was a lot friendlier than Sam’s had been. In fact, Sam just sat there with wonderment on his expression as he watched her rub her cheek against the dog’s head. She closed her eyes, relishing the feel, amazed at how something so simple could feel so good.
After a moment, she lifted her head to the other animal in her life that made her feel that way. “And I came because …” She paused, wondering why she hadn’t thought of this before. “I want to hire you. I think someone tried to kill me.”
Sam sat back on his haunches, arms resting on his thighs. “I thought we resolved that yesterday. You think it was a case of malicious rust, maybe?”
She walked closer and sat down on the floor in front of Sam, taking great pleasure in crossing her legs Indian-style. Ignoring his smart aleck reply. “I found something that makes me almost sure it wasn’t an accident. I think my life is still in danger.”
She told him what she’d discovered, wishing he could just hold her and make the fear go away. He smelled warm and familiar, with a touch of that citrus aftershave she loved.
He slowly rose to his full height, giving his legs a shake. She rose, too, finding herself facing him. “Maxine, I can’t take your case.”
“Why? You still think I’m delusional? Paranoid?”
He shook his head. “
I’m not sure what to think about you, but that’s nothing new. I can’t take your case for two reasons. One is I never take on anything I have any personal involvement with. That includes ex-wives.” His voice went lower. “And second, I’m not in the business anymore.”
She almost heard her heart drop to the floor. The first reason she could handle and dispense with. But the second? “Sam, you can’t be serious.” She looked down at the boxes, then to the half-empty shelves on the far wall. “No, Sam. You can’t.”
His jaw tightened. “Maxine, there are other private investigators in town, some of them very good. I can refer you to one of them.”
“I’m not talking about my case. I’m talking about your not doing this anymore.”
“I’ll still be doing this, only I’ll be working for someone else. Mostly paper chases, computer work. I’m going to sit back and let the other guys pound the pavement from now on.”
For a moment she wondered if someone else had come back in Sam’s body. “You hate working for other people. That’s why you started this business.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why are you so concerned about me closing up shop? You didn’t want me doing this anyway, when we were married. Why the passionate appeal now?”
She wrung her hands, ducking her head before meeting his gaze. Jennie could give it to him, up one side and down the other. Maxine was a different story. “Because I know how much you love this business. Your business.”
“Maybe I don’t love it anymore. Maybe I’m just tired of it.” He sounded tired, expelling the last sentence on a long breath.
“Not you, Sam. You never get tired of this.” She gestured to the office in general. “Tracking down the scumbags, proving them fraudulent. You live for this.”
He regarded her silently for a moment, but his expression was still shuttered. She wanted so badly to climb over the wall he’d constructed.
“Do you ever wonder if it’s all been worth it? You work toward something, and then one day it’s all gone. Or it doesn’t even mean what it used to mean anymore.”
“It’s what you make of your life that counts, Sam. I’ve never seen you like this before. What happened to you?”
He closed his eyes for a moment, and she saw pain when he opened them again. “I used to promise Jennie—she was my assistant—that I’d get a big case one day and buy a fancy copier for the office, along with some of the other things we needed. Now that she’s gone, it doesn’t seem that important anymore. It’s not the same without her. Every time I look at her desk, or see those stairs, I think about her. I think about those last moments of her life when I couldn’t save her.”
Maxine couldn’t speak for a minute, though Sam didn’t seem to notice or care. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his tan chinos and stared out the window over her desk. He missed her. She couldn’t swallow. There was something more important to consider. He blamed himself for her death. She reached out and touched his arm, which stiffened.
“You blame yourself, don’t you?”
He moved away from her, leaning against the corner of her desk with his back to her. “Of course I blame myself. I was right there.” Finally he turned to face her. “Do you know what it feels like to know you were a second too late? If I’d been a little faster, a little stronger—” He ran his hand through his hair, disrupting the smooth waves in back. “But I wasn’t.”
Those last words, spoken with such soft finality, pierced her heart. She closed the distance between them and slipped her arms around him. For a second she held her breath, waiting to see if he’d push her away.
“Sam, please don’t. Don’t blame yourself.”
His body was stiff and unyielding at first, but at last he put his arms around her and pulled her closer. She could feel the plane of his cheek and jaw pressed against her head.
“I can’t change the way I feel,” he said, his voice muffled in her hair.
“She wouldn’t want you to do this. There was nothing you could do to save her.”
He pulled away. “How do you know what she would want? You didn’t even know Jennie.”
She took a deep breath, hoping to dispel the tightness in her chest. Yes, I did. I did, Sam. The words wouldn’t come. He would get over this feeling, if he’d let her help.
She let out the breath. “No, I didn’t, but I know you. If you could have saved her, you would have. I’m sure if she was any kind of friend, she wouldn’t want you suffering over her death. She has a better life now.”
“You’re right about Jennie. She was a friend, and she wouldn’t want this. But she’s gone. She can’t take this feeling of emptiness away, and neither can you.”
She was still standing in front of him, close enough to feel the heat his body gave off. She placed her hands on his shoulders, enjoying for a second the strength in them. “Let me try,” she said, her voice giving out to a whisper.
His blue eyes studied hers. “Why are you doing this?”
Because I love you. That was the answer of her heart, her very soul. “Because I care about you.” That was true, too. “Because you don’t deserve to go through this alone.”
He wrapped his fingers over her wrists, but he didn’t remove her hands. “Maxine, I appreciate what you’re doing, but I can’t help you. If you think someone is trying to hurt you, you should go to the police. Or I can refer you to a friend of mine,” he added when she shook her head. “I start my new job in three weeks, which leaves me enough time to finish up the cases I have.” He lifted her hands and let them drop as he walked away from her.
The phone rang. He walked to the shelf and continued putting books in the box.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?”
“I’ll let the machine get it. Some bozo’s been calling every fifteen minutes and not leaving a message.”
Bozo? Humph. She stared at the phone on her desk, her fingers tingling. After the third ring, she reached over and picked it up. “Sam’s Private Eye,” she said cheerfully. Sam looked as though he wanted to strangle her. “Who’s calling? Yes, one moment.” She put them on hold. “Sam, take it. It’s Paul from the insurance company.”
“You had no business answering that phone.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Who the hell appointed you as my guardian? What right do you have—”
“Paul’s waiting.”
After a moment he walked into his office and picked up the phone. She let out a breath. “Sam, I can’t let you do this,” she said very softly. “Especially not because of me.”
Maxine heard Sam talking on the phone, closing her eyes and relishing the sound again. All the years she’d heard that sound, cherished it, and did nothing about it. Dying hadn’t only given her a whole new chance in life; it had taught her that life was too short to sit around wishing.
She walked behind her desk, standing in the empty space where a chair should be. All those wasted years.
No, they weren’t wasted; she’d had Sam as a friend. She picked up her name plate: Jennie Carmichael. Her fingers traced the grooves of the letters in the purple plastic. How strange it would be to go to the sign shop and request one for a Maxine Lizbon. The plate suddenly lifted from her hands, as if it had wings. She sucked in a breath at the inexplicable movement and turned to find Sam standing beside her, a grim expression on his face. He held the plate for a moment, then replaced it on the desk without a word. He didn’t have to say anything; his eyes said it all: Don’t touch.
“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling strange to be chastised for touching her own nameplate. But it wasn’t hers anymore. Jennie was dead, and she couldn’t be resurrected now.
“Listen, I’m busy. Here’s the name of the guy I was telling you about.”
He held the piece of paper out to her, but she didn’t take it. She gave him a determined look. After a moment, he shrugged and let the paper drift to the floor. She had never seen Sam angry with her. She’d hardly seen him angry at all, but his anger was tinged with such a
sadness she wanted to cry. Mostly she wanted to slip into his arms again. Except for the annual Christmas hug (which she looked forward to all year), she’d never had any physical contact like that with him. Even then, he’d had to lean down and awkwardly hug her while she was in the chair.
“Goodbye, Maxine.”
“I’m not leaving, Sam.”
He ducked his head, shaking it. “You are so damned stubborn. That much hasn’t changed.”
“But a lot has.”
“Meaning?”
Ooh, he’d trapped her in a corner. “Meaning I need your help. Only your help. Please at least take a look at the house and tell me if you think someone made the brackets look corroded.”
He let out a long breath. “And if I don’t think that’s the case?”
“Then I won’t bother you anymore.” She was sure he’d agree once he saw the drips under the ledge.
He reached around and grabbed his leather bomber jacket. “Let’s go.” He turned to Romeo, sitting on his pillow by her desk. “Come on, boy. Back to the pristine palace.”
“Should you be driving?” he asked when they emerged outside.
“I’m fine.”
He gave her that skeptical look again. “That is a matter of opinion. I’ll follow you out there in my car.”
She wanted to ride with him, but that wasn’t practical. “All right. And Sam?”
“Yeah.”
She smiled. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” He always said that, even if it was.
When Maxine pulled into the mansion’s driveway, she was dismayed to see Armand’s black Mercedes parked out front, and a white truck parked off to the side. He wasn’t going to like this, but tough. Someone in his house, most likely, was trying to kill her. Had killed her. She wasn’t about to let it happen again.
Armand was waiting by the front door when she got out of the car. His expression was chagrinned when he saw Sam emerge, Romeo in tow. “Not again? Maxine, didn’t we talk about this?”
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