Dead to the Max (8 page)

“Tell him the truth, Max.”

“And what, exactly, is that?”

“Tell him you’re psychic. You and your powers will be irresistible.”

“Don’t play up to me. You’re still on my shit list. Oops.” She covered her mouth, muffling her next words. “Remy’s rule number whatever. I’ve gotta practice not swearing.”

“Come on, Max.

“What? My psychic abilities will bring the detective to his knees?”

“Yeah, baby, oh yeah.”

The impact of what she’d said suddenly hit her. The sexual impact. Dammit, that was not an image she should be having of the detective. She turned it back on Cameron. “Have you noticed how you always make what I say into something sexual?”

“Oh no, Max, you’re the one who does that all on your own.”

* * * * *

Max spent the rest of the evening calling the numbers she’d copied from Wendy Gregory’s appointment book. Disappointed, she hung up as soon as she got voicemail at each of the four numbers. Manicurist, hair stylist, psychiatrist, psychic reader. Instead of the big clue Max was sure she’d uncover, she learned Wendy Gregory was a high-maintenance woman. Somehow the image didn’t fit. Yet, facts were facts. Wendy was incredibly self-absorbed. Or searching for God-only-knew-what in the strangest places.

It was Max’s job to discover if that search somehow got Wendy killed.

She called United Airlines next. They had not had a flight back to Boise yesterday around the time Nicholas Drake was at the airport. It only confirmed that remembered fragment of the Wendy vision. Her lover had taken his kids to Boise for a visit, that was all.

So where had he been running to when she saw him at the airport? Or what had he been running from?

Once her head hit the pillow for the night, Max’s scheming brain wouldn’t shut down. She couldn’t fall asleep. Instead, she’d planned her frontal assault on Detective Long.

She used her lack of sleep as an excuse for why she was so ill-prepared to find Hal Gregory sitting in her chair when she entered her office the next morning.

Of course, she shouldn’t have known it was him.

She told herself the only reason she did was because he had the box of his wife’s personal effects on his lap. Yeah right. She got the same queer little quiver in her belly that she’d felt upon first meeting Remy. Wendy hadn’t been any more enamored of her husband than she was of her boss. No wonder she’d had an affair.

He held a ceramic coffee cup in his hand, logo side facing him. The words ‘No Fear’ stared up at him. Wendy’s motto, one she’d striven for, but never reached. The cup had been a reminder, a positive reinforcement, but more often an accusation.

This time, Max didn’t wonder how she knew.

Hal Gregory didn’t notice her in the doorway. Max could barely breath. The air pulsated with Cameron’s peppermints, her own perspiration, and Hal Gregory’s misery.

His legs were far too long for the height of her chair, the box bunched up against his chest. A skinny man with a hawkish nose and angular face. His hair, a light brown, was fine against his scalp. He looked to be in his early forties, a good fifteen or so years older than Wendy had been. Max couldn’t imagine Wendy, a woman of so many colors, with this pale shadow of a man.

In the next moment, Hal Gregory smashed his wife’s mug against the wood veneer of the desk, shattering the ceramic into a million irretrievable pieces.

Chapter Five

Max shrieked.

Hal Gregory’s gray eyes widened. The box slid slowly down his knees to the floor, somehow managed to land flat, its contents intact. Hal then rose to his full height.

Jeez, the guy was tall. A beanpole, with long, thin arms in a short-sleeved shirt. His bony hands ended in skeletal fingers, a gold wedding band on his left.

Max didn’t trust a man with long, skinny fingers. Unless he composed music or painted. She certainly couldn’t picture Hal Gregory making anything beautiful or colorful.

“I’m sorry I startled you.” Max smiled. Death made the need for polite, unnecessary introductions irrelevant. “I’ll get something to clean up that mug.”

Yesterday, she’d noted a brush and pan in the bathroom. She was back in two seconds flat, afraid he’d leave before she could ask him why he hadn’t reported his wife missing. She’d have to work up to it. Hitting him straight off with the question wasn’t an option if she didn’t want to blow her cover.

“I don’t know what came over me.” Voice grave and grating on her ears, Hal smoothed shards from the desk into his cupped hand.

“You’re upset. It’s understandable. Don’t cut yourself.”

She used the excuse to study his hands more closely. If Wendy had scratched him, it didn’t show.

“That’s generous, but you can’t begin to understand what I’m going through.” He dusted his hands over the waste basket and began scooping at the other end of Max’s desk.

Down on her haunches, brush and pan in hand, she stared up at him. “My husband was shot in a robbery. I know how you feel.”

She
never
told people about Cameron. Still, the circumstances were extraordinary. If she wanted something from Hal Gregory, she’d only get it if she put something on the line.

He drew back, his lips compressed. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

In a different situation, she’d have labeled him a dickhead. His wife, however, had just been murdered. If he wasn’t guilty of the crime himself, then he deserved to blow off a little steam.

“I’m not mouthing platitudes.” She spoke with her head down, pretending concentration on the mess he’d made. The harder she brushed, the deeper the shards ground into the carpet.

She heard him sigh, looked up to find he’d closed his eyes, leaned against the wall, and crossed his arms over his chest. The action wrinkled his blue-and-white striped shirt.

After a deep breath, he said, “Sorry, but I’m sick to death of all the pity.”

Max suspected the largest dose was self-inflicted.

As an apology, it sucked. But Max accepted it as a truce. Her knees creaked as she stood. “I’m sure it isn’t easy.”

Eyes open again, he pulled away from the wall, rested his hands on the back of her chair. “Hackett let me in.”

She hadn’t asked and didn’t know why Gregory needed to explain, but took it as a sign he’d eventually spill his guts.

“I’ve gone through all the drawers,” she said. “I think what’s in the box is everything.”

She dumped the contents of the dustpan in the trash and came within a foot of the man. He smelled, not badly, just a hint of sweat as if he’d spent a restless night, then skipped his morning shower.

He stepped back. “Sorry about the way I sounded. I’m preoccupied. I hope you’ll forgive me.” He nodded toward the ceramic dust still coating her desk.

“It wasn’t
my
mug, Mr. Gregory.”

He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. The shadow cast by the overhead light gave the contours of his esophagus a lizard-like quality. The man radiated bad vibes.

She touched his arm and reeled him back in. She wasn’t done with him yet. “You must have been terribly shocked the night she didn’t come home.”

He looked down at her plain, short nails. “There was nothing my wife could do that would shock me, Mrs. Starr.”

So, Hackett had imparted her name.

God, what she would have given to be a fly on the wall during the conversation between the two men. It might have been tug-of-war, stiff politeness, or down-and-dirty knuckle grinding. The suspense was killing her.

Max wanted to push, wanted to know if Wendy
had
finally done something that shocked her husband. Maybe there was a motive for murder there. The lack of scratch marks on his hands didn’t deter her, but she didn’t know which questions would bring him around, which ones would turn him against her.

Time slipped away. He stepped around her to pick up the box of his wife’s belongings.

“After my husband died, I couldn’t talk to friends. Sometimes it’s easier to talk to strangers.” She knew Cameron would forgive her that lie. The truth was she hadn’t talked to anyone except him. Sutter Cahill might have understood, but Max hadn’t called her. “I’d like to invite you out for a drink.”

In mid-bend, Hal stopped, then straightened. A hand to his mouth, his jaw working back and forth as if grinding his teeth, he regarded her with an unreadable expression.

Unreadable, that was, until he spoke. “So tell me, how does it feel stepping into my dead wife’s shoes?”

The words slapped her in the face as if the man had read her mind. Her cheeks flamed. Hal Gregory’s anger was there in the white line of his mouth, the tense muscles of his cheeks, the narrowing of his distant gray eyes.

Before she could answer, he gave another non-apology. “There I go again. I’m no good with other people’s sympathy.”

Despite the placating words, the guy was pissed as hell. Pissed enough to kill his wife?

“I wasn’t good with other people, either.” She still wasn’t. “The offer stands if you need it.” She prayed he would because this disastrous interview hadn’t answered her main question: why hadn’t he reported his wife missing?

“I’ll call you here if I do.”

Max accepted, then pointed to a bushy spider plant, a multitude of babies hanging from its long fronds. “The plant was your wife’s, too.”

He stepped toward the lateral file closest to the desk. “How did she grow it with no window?” he murmured, then shook his head, as if his wife, and not the plant, had been the mystery in his life.

“Florescent lighting,” Max offered. “Plants love it.”

He turned to her suddenly. “You keep it. I’d kill it.”

Then he walked out.

Max wondered what else he might have killed.

* * * * *

In less than a day and a half, Max knew everything there was to know about Hackett’s Appliance Parts from ten different points of view, thanks to the copy machine—the now
dead
copy machine. Not a person walked into her office for a copy who didn’t offer an opinion on who had killed Wendy Gregory. It was the husband, a lover, the boss, the janitor, even Marvin, the copy repairman. By ten o’clock, when the copy machine finally choked on a glob of toner, she hadn’t learned a thing that brought her closer to finding the murderer, but she did know Hackett’s grapevine inside and out.

Peggy from Payables confirmed the whole office knew Wendy was having an affair with “somebody,” but no one knew who.

Theresa from the front counter said Wendy carried her planner everywhere. Of course, that was after Max accidentally-on-purpose let it slip she’d found the appointment book in the desk.

Archie from the warehouse thought Wendy acted strangely that last day. When Max pushed for more details, he’d shrugged.

It was a start. Not perfect. But more than she knew when she’d walked in the door.

But she wasn’t getting info without that copier, or rather, from the people who used it.

Max resorted to asking the counter girl’s help.

“The copier’s in your office. It’s your job to get it fixed.”

Theresa was anything but sweet sixteen. She dressed like a harlot. Her butt cheeks hung out of her short red skirt, and her skimpy shirt bared half her midriff. A shocking shade of crimson that a hooker would die for resurfaced her full lips, and her stiletto heels topped Max’s by two inches. Being out-heeled by a leggy teenager was not something Max appreciated.

Max’s smile was saccharine sweet. “Then I vote we move the copy machine out here so it’s everyone’s job.”

The suggestion was a calculated risk. What she wanted was a repairman,
now
. What she had was teenage attitude that needed nipping in the bud.

“No way will Remy let you put that copier in the bullpen.”

The bullpen was the store’s main office. It housed Susie, the fifty-five-year-old Accounts Receivable clerk, Peggy, the Payables girl, four 800-line guys, and two part-time sales girls, of which Theresa was one. With phones ringing, and the warehouse guys slamming through the swing doors every five minutes, the noise level was deafening. Remy Hackett liked his customers to see activity. Max figured what they encountered was total chaos.

And Theresa’s size-D breasts at the front counter. They were enough to make any self-respecting male come back for more. The Four Musketeers manning the 800-lines drooled.

The calls went unanswered as Theresa wriggled her little butt for her audience and responded to Max with superior disdain. “Remy locked the copier up so none of these lame brains”—she hooked a thumb over her shoulder—“could use it for personal stuff without asking. Remy’s real generous, but he doesn’t like to be used.”

Max wondered just how generous Remy was with Theresa. The girl had invoked his name at least six times in the course of the five-minute conversation. And Remy’s word was law.

“Well, Theresa, since you don’t appear to be included in the same category as those other lame brains, I’ll put you in charge of getting it fixed.”

“Remy’ll blow a gasket. He’s real particular about how things are done around here. The copier was Wendy’s job. And he’d like go totally postal if anyone else did it for her.”

“Postal?”

Theresa rolled her eyes as if Max should be included with the other lame brains. “You know, like ballistic, pissed, whacked. In fact, they had this huge blow-out the day—” Theresa did have the grace to blush at that point. “On Monday.”

Max raised her eyebrows. The day Wendy Gregory died. “Bit of an over-reaction, wouldn’t you say?”

The sarcasm went right over Theresa’s highlighted airhead. “Wendy was bouncing off the walls, you know. I’d never seen her like that before. Sort of freaked us all out. Remy especially. She was usually the little brown mouse type. But wow, that day she was like a lioness.” Theresa seemed at last to have found something admirable in Wendy.

“The copy machine?” Max prompted.

“Remy found out she hadn’t called Marvin. So, he dragged her into his office, slammed the door, and yelled up the ying-yang.”

Max wondered about Theresa’s level of exaggeration. “And then?”