Power to the Max (26 page)

“Have I struck you dumb, Baxter?” Max went for informality and a slightly irreverent tone. With her high heels, they were of a height, a fact that actually gave her the advantage.

“What do you want?” He didn’t invite her in, his hand on the door, legs spread and bent slightly at the knees in a defensive posture.

“Why is Bud Traynor setting you up?”

The line of his lips thinned. Pressure turned his thumb white at the joint. He turned the question back on her. “You don’t work for him, do you?”

“No.” She left it at that, waited for him to ask.

“Are you a policewoman?”

“No.”

“Then why are you bothering my daughter? And don’t give me any nonsense about helping out Traynor.”

“It’s you I’m bothering right now. And as I recall, your daughter invited me over because she wanted to talk murder victim spouse to murder victim spouse.”

“It wasn’t my idea to invite you. She shouldn’t have.”

“Probably not. But I would have come looking for you anyway. Did you know Bud told me that you believed Lance was stealing from you?” She saw his fingers clench. “I’d be willing to bet he told the police, too.”

He licked dry lips.

“He can retract your alibi any time he wants,” she pressed. “Motive and no alibi. Then what are you going to do?”

A trickle of sweat began at his hairline, slipped down his temple, but he asked his own question instead of answering hers. “What do you want?”

“Nothing. It’s Bud Traynor that wants something. That’s why he’s giving the two of you an alibi.” She let that sit for a moment as emotions flickered across Baxter Newton’s face. His eyes went wide, his nostrils flared, his lips worked, but he neither confirmed nor denied. Max went on. “What I can’t figure out is why he’s doing it, what he hopes to get from you.”

He shook his head, his eyes huge behind the lenses. “What’s your stake in all this? Why do you care about him? Or us, for that matter?” Us. Julia and him. They were in this together.

Max went for honesty despite an internal warning, perhaps of Cameron origin. “I’ve been trailing him a long time. I think he killed his daughter, his best friend, and his godchild. And I want to prove it.”

Baxter laughed, a choked bitter sound. “He’d never do the dirty work himself.”

“Precisely.” She cocked her head. “You’re one of the few who seems to see him for what he is.”

“And you.” The man stepped back, opening the door wide. “Won’t you come in?”

Ah, she’d passed his little test, whatever that might be, perhaps simply hating Bud Traynor. She’d turned from potential enemy to possible ally.

The slate entry hall opened onto a large living room with a stone fireplace as centerpiece fronted by two leather recliners and a matching sofa. She stepped down into the area, her feet sinking into plush carpet. A reading lamp had been lit by the side of one chair, a book open upside down on its arm. She read the title.
Epictetus
. A man sitting alone in his darkened home reading Greek philosophy. It surely said a lot. What, she hadn’t a flipping idea.

“Would you like tea?”

“No.” She dropped the
thank you
, as hard as that was.

“Coffee then?”

“No.” Again, no
thank you
. Politeness would put him too at ease.

“Have a seat.”

“I’ll stand.”

He drew a deep breath. She wondered if it calmed him. It certainly opened him up. “You’re right. He doesn’t want my daughter. He wants me.”

“Why?”

He picked the book up and sat on the arm of the chair. “For the same reason he’s interested in you.”

“And what is that?” she asked softly, almost reverently, the tone fitting the question’s importance.

“You see him for the monster he is.”

“And we can’t get anyone to believe us,” she finished for him. Of course, Witt and Cameron believed her. But his best friend’s wife, his clients, even his now-dead partner didn’t see the evil in Bud Traynor. Until it was too late.

“Why did he let you see his real face?” Baxter said in the same quiet voice, as if the man they spoke of were God’s fallen angel.

“He didn’t let me. I just see things sometimes,” she offered.

“You mean psychic things?”

Max nodded with a tilt of her chin. “I knew he was evil before I met him at his daughter’s funeral.”

His head came up. “You went to her funeral?”

She smiled without feeling. “One of the few to attend.”

“I liked the girl. So did Julia. We would have gone. He simply didn’t tell anyone when it was.”

Made sense. Bud had washed his hands of his daughter the moment she turned against him. Wendy was nothing more than a tool, useless to him once broken.

Baxter crossed his arms. “So why is he using you, Max Starr?”

“He knows I want to find Lance’s killer.” She raised a brow. “And I think he’s serving you up.”

His eyebrows came together, his head tipped. “Why do you care who killed Lance?”

She didn’t know. Except that some force would keep pushing her until she completed her assignment. “I have dreams.” Baxter didn’t balk, hadn’t the first time she mentioned
seeing
things. She suddenly decided to go the whole psychic route with him. “I’ve had visions of three murders, Lance’s is the fourth. The dreams don’t stop until I find the killer.” Not to mention the fact that the spirit didn’t de-possess her until that happened, either. “And every single murder victim has had a connection to him.” No need to say his name again. They both knew.

Baxter pondered. “Wendy, his daughter.
Bethany
Spring
, his goddaughter.”

“Tiffany Lloyd cut his hair. Your son-in-law managed his investments.”

“Haven’t the police begun to wonder why so many people around him are dying?”

“Their murderers have all been brought to justice. Except Lance’s, of course.”

“Then what if...?” He let the question hang in the air between them.

She put her hands behind her back, strolled across to the fireplace, then turned to face him. “What if he manipulates other people into doing his killing for him? You, yourself, said he’d never do his own dirty work.”

He didn’t disagree, simply asked another question along the same line. “But why would he want Lance dead?”

Here it came again. “I’m missing a big piece of the puzzle.” She turned quickly, facing him, hoping to catch him off guard and thereby force his answer to be a little more truthful. “What does he want from you?”

Deep breath, then the magic word, “Power.”

“Simply the need to bend you to his will?”

“In any way he can.”

“How did your relationship with him get to that point?” She knew how it had happened for her. Traynor had tried to lead her. She wouldn’t go. He’d tried to win her. She wouldn’t yield. She had become his obsession as much as he’d become hers.

“He...” Baxter sighed. “I had a heart attack a year ago. It was mild, but it scared me.”

He slid down the arm of the chair to sit on the cushion, the open book falling beside him. Steepling his fingers, he tapped his lips.

Max took the corner of the sofa, pulled her legs up, and leaned against the arm.

“I think it started a second mid-life crisis. Actually I never had the first one, so I suppose it was about time. I’d known Traynor through Lance.” He looked at Max suddenly over the tips of his fingers. “Lance wasn’t a bad guy.” His mouth quirked in the smallest of smiles. “I know, strange for me to say. But I’d long since accepted that Julia felt comfortable with their arrangement, and he’d always treated her well.” He paused in his tale, cleared his throat.

“You bought a shiny new sports car,” Max prompted.

He gave her a weak smile. “Yes.”

“And Bud took you to Angela Rocket.”

He shot up from the chair. “You really are psychic.”

She shook her head lightly. “Bud told me.”

He gave a soft snort. His eyes were sad, as if she should have known right from the beginning. “So you think he’s setting me up for Lance’s murder.” He shook his head, looked at her. “He really has got it in for me.”

“But why? Because you began to see through him?” she queried, knowing now why he’d lied in front of his daughter about knowing Lance’s woman.

“Because he knew it and that made him want to best me.”

Max smiled, mirthless, almost to herself. “He loves a challenge.” Turning back to Baxter, “How did it start?”

“He wanted to help me enjoy life, he said. He was the one who suggested that car.” He flicked a hand in the direction of the garage. “He took me places I’d never been. Men’s clubs, elite but offering all the amenities.” His narrowed eyes spoke of exactly what amenities he meant. “I have to admit I enjoyed some of it, but sometimes it made me sad that I had to force myself to keep up with him.” He sighed. “It would have stopped soon enough, but then,” he shrugged eloquently, “he introduced me to Angela. And I was charmed.” He dipped his head to avoid Max’s gaze. “You probably think I’m pathetic. Old enough to be the girl’s grandfather.”

Sad. Lonely. Afraid of dying. But not pathetic. She wasn’t one to judge. She’d certainly had her phase of running to sex to cover up her more basic problems. And of course, there was Angela. So pleased with herself, so full of life, so downright confident in who she was and what she did. “Angela charmed me, too.”

He didn’t mistake her meaning for sexual. “She makes you feel alive. She makes you think you could leap tall buildings in a single bound.”

“She makes you feel powerful.”

Baxter’s mouth twitched. “Yes. That’s it. She makes you believe you can overcome a bad heart.”

“Or that you can overcome a broken one.”

Her whisper passed over him. He’d remembered Bud’s role. “And then Traynor started to ask for ... disturbing things.”

She could ask for specifics, but she wouldn’t. She didn’t need to know. She had enough ideas on her own. Bud had wanted to watch, or participate; perhaps he even wanted to see Baxter and Lance together with her. It could have been any other number of kinky things. Bud was above nothing.

Baxter went on. “I finally concluded he wanted to see how far he could push me, how much Angela ... how much my time with her was worth. When I refused to be a part of the things he asked, he threatened to cut off the relationship.”

Max leaned forward. “How could he do that?”

“She told me if she had to make a choice, her allegiance was to Bud. She said he’d brought her a great deal of ... customers, and she couldn’t afford to make him angry.”

He had a hard time calling Angela a hooker. Why? Because of what it said about the woman? Or what it said about Baxter himself?

Baxter rose, began to pace in front of the hearth.

“What happened?”

His fingers flexed, he stared at the carpet he wore out beneath his moving feet. “I stopped seeing her.”

There was more. Max knew it. He couldn’t look her in the eye. “Why?”

He took in a long pull of air. “In the end, it had all become too degrading.”

All right, fine. She could buy that. The man had made a moral choice, drawn the proverbial line in the sand and hadn’t crossed it.

“Bud Traynor wouldn’t have let you go that easily.”

He laughed, the sound close to a sob, but he didn’t answer.

“He threatened you with something else. What was it?”

Turning, eyes bloodshot and raw, he asked, “What’s the worst thing he could do to you?”

Touch her and make her like it, make her crave it again and again.

“You should see your face,” Baxter said. “You look like a racehorse scenting smoke in the stable. I can even hear your breath coming faster.” He stepped closer. “He’s like the devil. He knows your biggest fear and he exploits it.”