Dead to the Max (Max Starr Series, Book 1, a paranormal romance/mystery)

by Jasmine Haynes

  “Would you like a drink?” Hal asked, his shoulders slightly rounded. He seemed to shrink in significance when in the same room with Bud Traynor.

  “No,” then, after a slight but definite break, “thank you.” She added it merely for politeness, and the pause was for Bud, to let him know it meant nothing more. Not fear, not trepidation, simply choice.

  “But we can’t drink alone.” Bud held his glass up. Sunlight shone through the ice cubes and the colorless liquid. Gin and tonic in the summer. Rye and ginger in the winter. Even at the age of eight, Wendy’d always had his drink ready when he got home from work. God help her if she hadn’t.

  Bud Traynor was a functioning alcoholic. He got nasty on his third gin and tonic. Wrong word. Sadistic was better. His pleasure in causing pain, and, strangely, his control of himself, rose exponentially with the level of alcohol.

  “Just a glass of wine perhaps,” Hal coaxed.

  “Yes, wine would be fine,” she agreed, merely to move the conversation forward.

  Inside her, Wendy curled into a fetal ball. Max looked Bud Traynor over dispassionately. He was a good-looking man, mid-to-late fifties, thick, graying hair, eyebrows several shades darker. He obviously prided himself on his physique; a well-toned chest and muscled arms lay beneath a hunter-green polo shirt.

  For an old guy, he was sort of doable. As Wendy’s father, he made her want to puke. No finger down the throat necessary for that.

  As Hal’s footsteps receded, Max did what she’d come here to do: test reactions. “Detective Long told me about Lilah Bloom’s murder.”

  “Ah, the Bloom woman. Please, have a seat, Max.” Not an ounce of regret nor any other discernible emotion in Bud’s voice.

  He patted the sofa beside him. When he smiled at most women, he set out to charm. When he spoke, he gave a woman his full attention. When he looked at Max, she only saw the relentless predator in his almost black eyes.

  Max sat on the matching loveseat, out of his reach. Hal returned, approaching silently across the Berber carpet, set her glass on the coffee table, then moved to perch on the arm of the sofa opposite Bud. A pale shadow in her periphery.

  With them both now present and accounted for, Max plunged ahead. “The detective believes the motive for Lilah’s murder could have been blackmail.”

  “The detective has a lot of theories he’s discussed with both Hal and I. But what do you think, Max?”

  It was a smooth maneuver, turning the question back on her. It didn’t fail her notice that neither Bud nor Hal questioned her interest. She decided to tell him exactly what she’d seen in her dream and hoped it would cause a flicker of apprehension.

  “I think Lilah was supposed to meet a blackmailer at a restaurant, but he showed up at her shop and took her by surprise.”

  Hal said nothing. Bud answered with another question. “So you believe Lilah’s killer was a man?”

  “I could have said it.”

  He raised his hand; the ruby ring glinted. Taking a mouthful of gin, he rolled it round his tongue before swallowing. “I’m so glad you’re looking out for my daughter’s interest, Max. I can see how much you care.”

  The man was a master of deflection, and his emotions were too closely schooled to reveal a thing, especially guilt. Still, she tried more shock tactics. “Lilah had a gun. She missed using it by a fraction of a second.”

  “Blackmailers usually get what they deserve, don’t they?” This time he waited for her reaction.

  “Even if Lilah was a blackmailer, she didn’t deserve a death sentence.”

  “What could Wendy’s nail woman know to use as blackmail?” Hal spoke this time, his voice harsh with anger. Was his emotion prompted by fear? Or by the very idea that Lilah Bloom might well have known more about his wife’s life than he did?

  Max sipped her wine. “Wonderful bouquet,” she remarked, politeness all around. “The detective thinks Wendy might have told Lilah a lot of things about herself.”

  “Only her hairdresser knows for sure,” Bud quipped. An uncaring remark for a man who’d so recently buried his daughter. Asshole.

  “Something like that,” she agreed.

  Hal moved then, took a spot on the loveseat beside her. She felt surrounded. Trapped. A chill shivered along her backbone. “So you think my wife spilled her guts to a woman who painted her nails for fifteen bucks an hour?”

  Thirty-five. Wendy had lied to him about that, too. “Detective Long seems to think so.”

  There she went again. She felt like a puppet citing Witticisms. Her fingers tensed on the stem of her wineglass, and she wondered where her usual snappy comebacks had flown to.

  The answer stared at her from a pair of eyes black enough to give her heart palpitations. Maybe they were Wendy’s palpitations? Bud Traynor made her mouth go dry. His concentrated gaze, as palpable as a touch to her nipple, made her suspect he saw every secret inside her head. Wendy had never been able to hide a thing from him. How the hell had she hidden her affair with Nick?

  The answer: she hadn’t hidden it at all.

  Bud took control once more. He’d never let his son-in-law take over for too long. “Let’s assume our esteemed detective is correct. Lilah Bloom blackmailed Wendy’s killer.” Bud swirled the ice cubes in his glass. He tugged on the leg of his pants and crossed his ankle over his knee. “Perhaps Wendy told her the name of the man with whom she was conducting her adulterous affair.”

  Hal’s lips tensed, but he said nothing.

  Traynor said it so matter-of-factly, and yet she felt far more derogatory words hovered on his lips. She remembered the dream, knew exactly what it meant now. Wendy’s father had known she’d been with another man, had punished her for it and beaten her to extract the mans’ name.

  It hadn’t worked. For perhaps the only time in her life, Wendy’s will had been stronger than her father’s. Nickie’s name never crossed her lips.

  Neither would it cross Max’s. Not that it mattered. Max was pretty damn sure Bud knew everything Wendy did and with whom.

  “His name. Now there’s a motive for murder, Max. Her lover killed them both to keep his secret.” Hal’s nostrils flared. “To think I encouraged her to go in at five in the morning so she wouldn’t feel so overworked.”

  She wondered if Hal had figured that out before or after Wendy’s murder. Had someone at Hackett’s told him? The ever-willing-to-blab Theresa? Remy himself?

  God, she felt sorry for Wendy. Hal surely had more than enough money to allow his wife to stay home. Instead he’d sent her to work at the crack of dawn so she wouldn’t feel overworked? How ass backwards was that? “I’m sure she still made it home in time to have your dinner ready.”

  “There were some duties Wendy never forgot,” Hal said with an air of righteousness.

  Yeah. Was blowing the beanpole one of them? Gross.

  “I taught her well.” Bud Traynor smiled.

  Bile rose in Max’s throat. Jesus, oh Jesus. He was a man of double meanings, and the thought of all the things he’d taught his daughter turned her stomach.

  Worse yet, he was proud of it.

  The man leaned forward, touched Max’s knee, and squeezed, his fingers cold through the material of her pants. Her leg shriveled. She wanted to run screaming from the room.

  Buck up, Max. Don’t let him get the better of you.

  Cameron was right. She looked from Bud’s fingers to his face, recognized the challenge, and met him head on. “I don’t know you well enough to allow you to put your hand on my knee, Mr. Traynor.”

  He mimicked her actions, looked from his hand on her knee to her face. The pressure on her knee eased. He sat back, but his eyes gleamed. She could have sworn it was with admiration.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “Forgive us both. This is such an emotional subject for Hal and I. Wendy told him she was leaving him. That was very hard on him.”

  Harder than Wendy’s death? Of course. Death would have appeased Hal’s ego.

  Hal sat like a roc
k, watched, probably even missed Max’s victory in that subtle skirmish.

  “When did she do that, Bud?” With his name on her lips, she almost gave in to her gag reflex. Better to have stayed with Mr. Traynor.

  Neither man asked why she directed the question to Wendy’s father instead of her husband. Nor did Hal try to usurp his father-in-law’s position.

  Bud answered. “I believe, Max, that would have been sometime on Sunday.”

  “The day before Wendy died?” Sunday, not Monday.

  That was the reason why Hal had never reported his wife missing, the reason for the fury she’d witnessed that first day in Wendy’s office. Maybe even the reason Wendy was dead. Hal would have had plenty of time to plan a murder.

  “We all knew my daughter was having an affair, that she was probably leaving Hal for this other man.”

  “That would also be a motive for murder, wouldn’t it?” She looked at Bud as she said it. He ran the show, she was positive on that.

  Hal opened his mouth to speak, to rage, to God knows what, but Bud held up his hand. Hal subsided against the cushions of the loveseat and let Bud speak for him. Again.

  “We only want to know who killed her, Max. We want justice. Hal can’t move on without it. Do you understand that?”

  She understood the inability to move on. She also understood the origin of Hal’s words the other night at the bar. The anger was his, but the phrasing had been all Bud Traynor’s.

  Bud smiled, folded his arms. It was the same smile he used when he beat Wendy. “Of course, we know it could be a motive. For Hal. But he was with me when Wendy died.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “So I’ve heard.”

  He shot her an assessing look. “Are you suggesting a conspiracy in my daughter’s death?”

  Noting Hal’s immobile features as his father-in-law defended him, Max went on, “I suppose it could be coincidence. And the night Lilah Bloom died?”

  “Alas, we were again drowning our sorrows.”

  She looked from one to the other. “How convenient for you both.”

  Hal cleared his throat then. Bud Traynor ran a hand across the not-unattractive day’s growth of stubble on his chin. “She was my daughter, Max. I might not have agreed with everything she did, but I couldn’t possibly lie for a man if I thought he’d murdered her.”

  Couldn’t possibly. The chill never left his eyes, and she knew there was nothing Bud Traynor wouldn’t do if it suited his purpose, even manipulate Hal Gregory into murdering his wife. Even if she was Bud’s own daughter.

  “We need your help to find the man who killed Wendy,” Bud went on, his voice low, mesmerizing. “You know the people down at Hackett’s.”

  “I don’t know them at all.”

  “You have the chance to know them better. You have a chance to help us catch the man who did this to my daughter.”

  His taunting tone numbed her bones. She was, she realized, looking at the man responsible for Wendy’s death. He might not have strangled her with his own hands, but everything Wendy had done was because of this man. She had welcomed death in the back seat of her car, her legs spread, her thighs covered with a man’s come, because of what her father had driven her to.

  Max had seen the Devil the night Cameron died. She knew what he looked like. She recognized him in Bud Traynor’s bottomless black eyes.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The late evening sun beat down on her head. It went a long way to warming her insides, but it wasn’t enough. “I can’t do this anymore,” she whispered.

  “You can’t stop,” Cameron murmured in answer, his words whipped away by the wind as she headed out to the freeway.

  “I didn’t know myself in there.” She hadn’t been strong, hadn’t been in control. She’d been putty in the hands of evil. In the end, she’d damn near run out of there.

  “You weren’t that bad. You’re living in Wendy’s skin. It’s understandable that you reacted the way you did.”

  “I should have accused him, ripped him a new asshole.”

  “That wouldn’t get justice for Wendy.”

  “Who the hell cares about justice? She needs vengeance.”

  “Vengeance against whom?”

  “Against the guy with one hand squeezing my knee and the other reaching for my soul.” Against Bud Traynor.

  Exhaust fumes wafted across the open vehicle. She merged into the sluggish freeway traffic between a Mercedes and a black Ram, though she couldn’t seem to drum up an ounce of enthusiasm for the fantasy truck. Behind her, Mr. Mercedes wore sunglasses and a scowl, and leaned on his horn. Max raised her hand in the air, middle finger up, then curled her fingers into a fist, and shook it at him.

  Now that made her feel a world better. For a split second.

  “Maybe there was more than one man who drove Wendy to her death,” Cameron urged.

  She laughed mirthlessly. “Wendy was a magnet for scumbags.”

  Bud and Hal and Remy. Nick, too. He’d wanted to help her, but he’d ended up getting her killed.

  “Or killing her himself.”

  Weary, she shook her head. “Please stop eavesdropping on my thoughts.” She slammed on the brakes as a white Honda zipped out of the commute lane and cut across two lanes of nearly stalled traffic. “Goddamn it.”

  “Talk to me, Max.”

  “I’m trying to drive.” Trying to block out his voice.

  “Did you ever ask him why they didn’t go to her hotel room? She must have had one if she’d left Hal.”

  She couldn’t wait. Max didn’t say it aloud, but Cameron picked it up out of the air.

  “Afterward,” he whispered. “After Nick made love to her.”

  She felt his words inside her, between her thighs, and she squeezed her eyes shut a moment, remembered the feel of Cameron, his hands on her, his lips, his tongue. Jesus, she even remembered the fullness of Detective Witt’s balls in her hand.

  “They didn’t make love,” she whispered. They didn’t even have sex. “They fucked.”

  The shriek of a horn jerked her attention back to the road. She’d kill herself arguing with Cameron.

  “I’m tired.” Her voice cracked. God, she’d become weak. Snap out of it, girl.

  “Tell me why Nick didn’t go with her?” he insisted. “Why they didn’t leave that parking lot together?”

  Max ground her back teeth. “He didn’t kill her.”

  “But why didn’t he leave with her?” The tension in his voice rose a notch.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tell me.”

  She gunned the engine, slipped into the commute lane and flashed past the line of cars. Screw the ticket she might get, even if it broke the bank. Hey, maybe the cop would be able to see Cameron sitting there. She could always say she saw him. Then they’d haul her away, lock her up, throw away the key, and she wouldn’t have to answer any more of Cameron’s questions.

  “Why, Max?”

  Push, push, push. Cameron’s MO stretched her nerves to the breaking point. Even violating the law, she couldn’t drive away from his insistent voice.

  “Because they had a fight, okay?”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know.” She’d only felt Wendy’s anger, then her loneliness, and finally her despair.

  “Ask him.”

  “I’ll probably never see him again.”

  “You’ll see him, Max. He’ll find you. A dog can always find a bitch in heat.”

  “That’s a nasty thing to say.”

  “I’m only speaking the truth.”

  It was true. About her, God knew. And about Wendy.

  * * * * *

  Max felt better the next morning. Bud Traynor may have zapped her energy, but a good night’s sleep without a dream to mar her rest was like an upper.

  Then again, she might be bipolar.

  Or Wendy’s emotions had taken over her life—again.

  Which was worse, psychosis or possession?

  It didn’t
matter. At her desk, Wendy’s desk, she opened her notepad with the list of appointments from Wendy’s planner.

  “Divinity,” Cameron whispered in her head.

  “A psychic reader? Don’t make me laugh. The psychiatrist.”

  “The psychiatrist won’t tell you a thing.”

  Max twisted her mouth. He was right. “Fine. I’ll try her hairdresser.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  She pursed her lips. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

  “Then go see Divinity. Next to Lilah, she’s your best bet.”

  Her fingernails drummed on the desktop. A refusal would be tantamount to admitting she was scared. Which was a ridiculous notion. “You win. I’ll go.”

  Divinity. She traced the name with her finger. So other worldly, so out-of-character for an accountant like Wendy. Except that Wendy had committed desperate acts.

  On the phone, Divinity’s voice wasn’t other worldly. It was scratchy with too many cigarettes. Yet the welcoming sound of it made Wendy cry out inside her. Max set up a 5:30 appointment for a half-hour psychic reading. The address was in an industrial area on the opposite side of the freeway to Hackett’s, only a couple of miles from the shop.

  When she arrived at a quarter after, she found Divinity’s address wedged between a used office furniture store and a car repair shop. The sign above the window advertised plumbing supplies in faded blue lettering. Max looked down at the slip of paper in her hand and matched the number—it was the right place.

  She climbed out of the Miata, slammed the car door, and darted across the four-lane road. Once on the other side, she thought she saw Witt’s innocuous tan vehicle parked three doors down from her bright red convertible. The angle of the sun, however, obscured the occupant, if indeed, that blob was a person.

  “Still checking up on me, Detective?” She considered for a moment if she should run back and confront him. “Screw that.” He could rot inside the heat of his unmarked car. She jerked open the door of the plumbing supply house.