Dead to the Max (18 page)

Remy’s teeth ground. “It’s an insurance company policy. Thirty-day-grace period starts at the beginning of the month, payment no later than August 31st.” He glanced down at his watch. “It’s now September 10th.”

Carla didn’t say a word, seemingly quite content for Max to fight her battle. She was sure it was the woman’s usual style. “Actually, that’s not quite the way Wendy’s notes read.” She was careful not to use the word lie. There was pushing, and then there was lighting a match next to a natural gas leak.

“Wendy’s notes?”

Max nodded, a curve to her lips. “She documented
everything
. Wendy was quite the little writer.”

Wendy had obviously learned the hard way to cover her butt. Her notes recorded the fact that Remy handled the COBRA all wrong, that some of his practices might even be illegal. Besides, he couldn’t cancel the COBRA himself. She’d told him, but he hadn’t believed her or cared enough to call the insurance carrier himself. Remy’s law was the only law.

Two steps from his elbow, Carla Drake beamed like a teenager pitting her parents against each other.

Remy did not have a naturally florid complexion, but he sure as hell looked apoplectic now. Max was afraid he’d pop a blood vessel. His lips worked. No sound came out.

She offered him a small out. “The COBRA conversation probably slipped your mind.”

Don’t back down, Maxi. Keep on him.
Cameron was so very good at egging her on.

But if she pushed too hard, Remy could always cancel
her
contract, and solving Wendy’s murder required proximity to the major players. Besides, she’d done enough. Remy now realized Wendy had diligently noted the things he told her to do. If there was another lie, Max would catch him in it.

And he knew it.

She held out her hand. “You want me to take her check, Remy?”

Finally, without turning around, he held out his hand, his acquiescence shocking Max. An explosion had seemed far more likely. Inevitable. “Give me the check, Mrs. Drake.”

Laying it on his palm, Carla smiled slyly at Max. As if they were conspirators.
Not in this life, lady.

“If you’re one second late next month, your policy is history.” Remy spoke to the woman behind him, but his eyes never left Max’s face. He’d recovered his composure and was attempting intimidation. Fat chance.

“Take care of it today.” He threw the check at her. Max let it fall to the carpet.

Someone should have murdered
him.

The check landed face up. Finally, once the paper had settled, Max bent to get it. “Mrs. Drake, this check is dated August 31.” Prior to Wendy’s death. When Nicholas Drake was in Boise with his kids.

“Nick backdated it. He always does things like that.”

The answer was too quick, as if she’d expected the question. Or was used to shifting blame. Nick had given her the check before he left, told her to mail it, and she hadn’t. Max was sure.

“Be careful, Mrs. Drake.” Remy’s hands fisted at his sides as he turned on the woman. “I don’t tolerate lies.”

“And what makes you think I’m lying?” Something cracked in Carla Drake. Max wasn’t sure if it was the accusation, Remy’s threatening tone, or something sparking in her wayward brain, but Carla was suddenly on a spiteful roll. “You think I’m lying because my dear husband is so ethical, so morally upstanding that you can’t imagine he’d ever backdate a check?”

“Mrs. Drake—”

“But then you’re a man. And men always side with each other when it comes to their little flings, don’t they?”

Remy sighed, a long-suffering sound. “Your cryptic remarks confound me.”

He sounded like that Victorian gentleman again with his suddenly unnatural speech pattern. An obvious attempt at regaining the upper hand.

Carla snarled. “I know you were all in on it.”

He rolled his eyes. “What?”

Remy’s indifference only made Carla angrier. “Covering up my husband’s affair with that whore bookkeeper of yours.”

“Really, Mrs. Drake, don’t you think if I thought something like that was going on, I would have stopped it?” Remy didn’t sound particularly shocked by the news or the accusation.

“You probably watched them.”

“I resent that.”

Despite his apparent affront, Max had the feeling Remy found the idea funny and enjoyed baiting the woman.

Carla ignored him, almost talking to herself. “What did he see in her anyway? She was a drab little mouse.”

Wendy had wondered the same thing about Nick’s wife. The woman’s words sounded suspiciously like something Theresa had said. Max jumped on it. “Did you know Wendy, Mrs. Drake?”

Carla faltered then, but only for a moment. “I saw her. A wife has a right to find out what’s going on behind her back. And she deserved what she got.”

“I wouldn’t let the police hear you say that.”

“I don’t care. I’ll say it to them. It’s how I feel. The tramp deserved to die.”

The woman’s sentiment shuddered through Max. As did the knowledge that Carla Drake had known the identity of her rival.

She’d known the night unsuspecting Wendy sat thirty feet away from her in the airport terminal waiting for Nick to relinquish his kids to his wife.

It gave her an excellent motive for murder.

Chapter Fifteen

With the door open, the hum of voices filled her small office. Max ignored them, writing down Carla Drake’s new address and phone on a piece of paper she then shoved into the front pocket of her purse.

“She’s a real bitch, isn’t she?”

Her head popped up. Theresa leaned against the doorjamb, her hip jutted out, her pleated skirt school-girl sexy. A soft whiff of her dimestore cologne drifted past Max’s nostrils.

“I have no opinion on Carla Drake,” Max said, knowing the statement would evoke a litany of opinions from Theresa.

“She’s a cow.”

“It’s unpleasant to refer so disparagingly to someone’s weight, you know.”

As Max well knew, weight was not what Theresa meant at all. “She used to call him at least ten times a day. It drove us nuts. Remy finally told us to say Nick wasn’t available until break time.”

“Don’t you have customers at the counter, Theresa?” Max commented sternly. A lack of interest was the best way to keep the teenager going, to up the number of juicy items revealed.

As if Max had just begged her to tell all, Theresa took three steps into the office and leaned against the copy machine. She loved to lean against things; the table, the counter, the back of a chair, knowing it set her long legs off to best advantage.

Jail-bait.

Max looked at her. “Are you sure you’re only sixteen, Theresa?”

No one would ever mistake her for innocent. She’d probably done more sexual things than Max could imagine.

Theresa looked over her shoulder, shook her hair out with a careless flip, then turned back, smiling. She knew exactly what Max was thinking and damn if the little...woman didn’t seem proud of it. “Almost seventeen. I’ll graduate at the end of winter semester with my job credits. Now, don’t you want to hear about Nick and Wendy and Carla?”

The lunch rush was long over, the girl was bored and more than willing to tell every spicy detail.

“I don’t like gossip.” It was all Max could do to pretend disinterest.

Another step. Theresa leaned against the filing cabinet, no longer fully visible through the doorway. Except probably one butt cheek, exposed due the angle of her body and the brevity of her skirt. “This isn’t gossip. It’s about a murder.”

“Then you should tell Detective Long.”

“Oh, but I did.”

Max’s heart did a double back-flip. “When?”

“The first day he came here, the day after Wendy was found.”

Damn Witt. He’d known about Nick all along.

Well, of course, he has, Max. Isn’t that why Nickie’s been hiding out?
Cameron piped up out of nowhere.

“Oh, shut up.”

Theresa sniffed. “I was just being friendly.”

Oops, almost lost her. “Didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, kid.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“Sorry, my mistake.” Max opened the bottom drawer of her desk and put her feet on the rim. “All right, talk. I know you won’t leave until I listen.”

“You don’t fool me. You want to listen.”

Max looked heavenward. “Oh, the arrogance of youth.”

“I’m not the stupid one.”

“Just who are you referring to as stupid? You certainly couldn’t mean me.” Max put a hand to her chest with an incredulous rise to her eyebrows. “And I didn’t get the impression Carla Drake was stupid.” More like viciously jealous.

“I was talking about Wendy.”

“Wendy?” Ah, the interesting part.

“Yeah, Wendy. The paragon of virtue. She and Nick used to get here at five in the morning to screw their brains out before everyone else got to work.”

Max’s feet flopped to the floor, landing hard on the heels of her shoes. “Sure beats Wheaties for breakfast.” Her mind raced. Remy had commented on how dedicated Wendy had been, sometimes getting in as early as five in the morning. “So I suppose you want to tell me how you knew about it?”

“Some of the warehouse guys. Just because they don’t speak good English doesn’t mean they can’t see.”

“I find this pretty hard to believe, Theresa.” God, but she didn’t. A flash of Wendy’s desperation and despair washed over her, stole her breath.

“Everybody knew about it.”

Everybody
didn’t
know that Wendy had been slowly dying, and that Nick had seemed like her only way out. Max took a gulp of air, concentrated on Theresa’s avid features. “I doubt that. Remy would have fired them if
he
had.”

He’d said so, too. Or had he merely turned it into a question, thereby avoiding the lie?

“Oh, you’d be surprised. I think Remy sort of liked the fact that Nick put one over on Carla.”

“You’re making this up, Theresa.” Yet that was exactly the same accusation Carla had hurled at Remy not fifteen minutes ago.

Apparently the rule Remy missed was the one about the warehouse manager not screwing the office help.

He’d sure as hell have made Wendy pay for keeping the secret. The question was how high the price?

Why hadn’t Wendy left? Quit her job? Run away from her husband?

Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

A fist seemed to wrench her lungs. Cameron was right. Wendy had been paralyzed by the men in her life.

Maybe one of them had killed her the day she found the courage to paint her nails with Cajun Spice. The day she found the courage to leave Hal.

Then again, there was always the jealous wife.

* * * * *

Max left the grocery store with a flea collar, a pint of milk, six cans of cat food, and the smallest bag of dry mix she could find. Living with Buzzard was only temporary, just until the cat was fattened up and ready to catch mice for its dinner. In the meantime, she wasn’t about to be eaten alive by parasites.

Nicholas Drake lounged against the lightpost next to the driver’s side of her car, his boot resting on the front fender. A pair of aviator shades hid his eyes and the sleeves of his blue work shirt were rolled up to reveal a nice set of biceps. An extremely nice set.

God, he was delicious enough to drive a black Ram. Red lettering. Three-quarter ton. Max almost drooled. Damn Cameron for having given her that Ram fantasy in the first place.

She stepped off the sidewalk, pulled her keys from her purse, and held them in a defensive posture as if that would stop the frantic beat of her heart. The man made her downright squishy inside—Wendy’s emotions again—and she hated it. “Get your boot off my car, Mister.”

Her voice carried. Several yards away, three female teenage heads swiveled their way. A man walking by, drugstore bag in his left hand, missed a beat in his stride, looked, then moved on. A minivan stopped behind her, but when she made no move to get in her car, the engine gunned, then drifted off down the stretch of parking lot.

Nick straightened away from the pole, a slight curve to his lips which could have been amusement or derision.

The car top was down. Max leaned over, set the bag on the passenger seat, her black slacks stretched across her backside. “Your wife already brought the COBRA check in. Late. What more do you want?”

He ignored her question, didn’t even give her the satisfaction of a double entendre or a sexy look. Instead he laughed. “Remy threatened to cancel, didn’t he?”

“Of course.” The September afternoon was hot. She unbuttoned her jacket, slid it down her arms, then threw it across the bag of groceries. Nick watched. Despite the sunglasses he wore, she felt his eyes on her breasts beneath her thin cotton shirt. Though that might have been Wendy’s wishful thinking. It wasn’t the late afternoon heat, it was him. He melted her from the inside out. Just like he’d done to Wendy. It was happening
because
of Wendy. She had to find the woman’s killer soon, very soon.

“Remy threatens cancellation every month.”

Damn. For a moment she didn’t understand his comment, then she remembered what they’d been talking about. “I assume that means your wife’s late with the payment every month? Why don’t you just send the check yourself?”

He stepped off the curb, crossed his arms, pulling the blue material of his shirt snug against his chest. “I wouldn’t want to get in the way of their fun.”

Max tried not to think about watching him work shirtless in the hot afternoon sun. God, he would have made one helluva ditch digger. Oh yes, she’d bet the farm he drove a black Ram.

She tried to keep her head. “What if Remy did cancel, and your kids were left without insurance?” Facts were facts. Cancellation wasn’t an employer option. She tested Nick anyway.

He widened his stance, all trace of a smile wiped from his lean features. “I’ll see that my kids never want for anything.”

He would. No matter what. Max pushed a little harder. “And what about your wife?”

“Ex-wife.” His lips thinned, tensed. “At least, she soon will be, when the papers are signed.”

Hands on her hips, Max leaned in. “
She
doesn’t say ex, soon-to-be or otherwise.”