Power to the Max (7 page)

The waitress came to their table. They didn’t rate personal bartender attention. Max, too busy observing to answer, let Ladybird order the next round. Another cocktail for Ladybird, nothing for Max, which she indicated with a quick shake of her head. Ladybird smiled sweetly and patted Max’s arm. “She’s our designated driver.”

Max watched on. The game of seduction continued for a little over fifteen minutes. Glance at the watch then the entrance, puff an exasperated sigh, then purse those bow-shaped, red-tinged lips. Who was Angela waiting for? Maybe no one at all. It was probably an act for Blondie’s benefit. Furtive glances, a quick flash of tongue across her already wet-look lips. Ladybird, still seemingly gazing at the dance floor, snorted softly. Angela brought out a compact to freshen the powder on her nose, a supposed sign of her increasing agitation with her no-show date. Ladybird murmured “hah” under her breath while Max stifled a laugh.

Finally, the stalemate broke. The waitress, wearing a flouncy skirt short enough to show the lower curve of her butt cheeks, brought the woman a drink. Another glass of the same, a good chardonnay perhaps. Blondie tipped his head, looking pathetically hopeful. She tipped hers, smiled, and sampled it. Again, the red lipstick stain on the rim. She licked at a drop of wine that ran down the side.

Oh my God, if that wasn’t a come-on, Max had never before seen one. Blondie’s eyes widened. He visibly sucked in a breath, then pushed back his chair and approached Angela.

“Mind if I join you?”

Max strained to make sure she didn’t miss a word of the exchange.

Angela indicated the chair opposite. “You bought the drink. Thank you. I suppose you noticed I’ve been stood up.” She didn’t tell him her name. Maybe that came later. After his first come. Pun intended.

“What kind of idiot would stand up a lady like you?”

“An idiot who doesn’t have another prayer.”

They laughed, they talked, then their heads bent together. Max could no longer hear. She could, however, read body language, and this was definitely a pick-up in progress. Angela listened with rapt attention to everything Blondie said. She laughed full-throated, a sound that turned heads. Touching his hand with the briefest of contact, she imbued him with importance. Her eyes never left his face, never strayed to greener pastures, giving him her absolute attention.

It could have been act. No, it probably was an act. But Blondie fell for it.

The woman leaned back in her chair, looking once more at her watch. “Half an hour’s more than long enough to wait, don’t you think?” Max heard her clearly this time, as clearly as she heard the invitation in that statement.

The man fingered his recently ringless left hand. Max couldn’t make out his answer. Angela smiled, leaned in to brush his hand lightly, lingering. Then she drew a long burgundy nail across his knuckles to his wrist.

He closed his eyes, then opened them again very slowly. Flames burned in their depths. The deal was done. He signed the tab quickly, rose, and reached into his pocket for a couple of bills to throw on the table, obviously striving for nonchalance. Watching him leave, Angela drained her glass. Once he was out the door, she pulled another bill from her purse to add to the pile.

She freshened her lipstick, rose, straightened her skirt and walked slowly along the edge of the dance floor. Every eye in the place was on her. She stopped ever so briefly at a table right by the front door. Two fingers down, then a tap of a slick nail on the tabletop, and she was gone.

Max observed the occupant of that table—a square man, no neck, ears sticking out like the dual head of a hammer. Witt’s mysterious blockheaded stranger? Without a doubt.

Ladybird tapped her hand lightly. “Do you think she’s going to meet the blond one outside?”

Max tipped her head. “Do pigs fly?”

Ladybird giggled and sipped her champagne. “How long shall we wait for them to come back?”

Max remembered the two fingers the woman held out. “Twenty minutes or two hours. You game?”

“Well, we have to find out if she comes back, don’t we?” Ladybird raised a brow reminiscent of Witt. “After all, she might start all over again.” She rubbed her hands together. “Oh what fun. Wait till I tell Horace we watched a hooker pick up a john!”

Max stifled a laugh. Ladybird was indeed no dummy. “I think they’re called tricks.”

“But what do we know about
him
?” Ladybird discreetly pointed one dainty finger in the direction of the girl’s blockheaded friend.

The man in question opened a matchbook and began picking his teeth. He had been outside Lance La Russa’s office building, Max was sure of it.

“We’ll watch him, too,” Max affirmed. “She’ll come back. And if she talks to him again, we’ll know there’s definitely a connection.”

Ladybird clasped her hands on the table in front of her, her gaze still on the man. “When Witt was about five, I took him to the zoo. He wanted to know the name of every animal. And not the normal name, you know, like lion or polar bear, no, he wanted to know their Latin names, too. We had to go home and look them all up in the encyclopedia. I couldn’t pronounce most of them. But Witt, he sounded every one out. Those we couldn’t find, he looked up in the library at school. He wouldn’t let it go until he had them all in his head, memorized. When Horace got home from work, Witt went through them all again for his father. Now, I was never very smart, and Horace really didn’t care much about schooling. I’ve always wondered where Witt got that from.”

Not wanting to disturb the discussion with asking why the hell Ladybird bothered to bring the tale up now, Max commented, “I thought you said Witt didn’t like learning.”

“No, he just didn’t like school. But that boy could read anything from a very young age. It was like he had a photographic memory. He’s the same way with things now. He can describe a crime scene right down to the carpet fibers.”

Max waited for Ladybird to make her point. One was coming, and Max was sure she wasn’t going to like it.

“If we tell my son one little bit about tonight, he’s going to want to hear the whole thing. Then he’s going to know what we’ve been up to. And he’s not going to like that I’m here with you.” She took Max’s hand in hers. “So I vote we don’t tell him anything at all and stay here until she comes back.”

Max wondered how the hell they could begin to hide their trip from Witt. Bringing Ladybird along had been a very bad idea.

* * * * *

They’d waited twenty minutes. Neither Angela nor Blondie returned. Blockhead didn’t leave either.

“Okay, so maybe twenty minutes was asking too much,” Max whispered to Ladybird as if someone might overhear them. She looked at her watch. Nine-thirty. They didn’t have much time before Ladybird turned into a pumpkin.

Another hour went by. Blockhead was on his third beer. Ladybird was into her fourth cocktail and getting tipsy. Max couldn’t for the life of her say why the little lady wasn’t already under the table. She herself had taken to drinking coffee to remain awake. If Angela didn’t show soon, she was going to have to carry Ladybird home.

Max gave up when Ladybird’s head started to droop towards the table. They had five blocks to walk to the car. It hadn’t seemed so far earlier in the evening. Max called for the bill, did a double take on the amount, then thanked God once more for giving her enough cash.

Getting Ladybird on her feet was another matter. Five blocks seemed like an awfully long way, but somehow Max managed. She strapped the little woman in, started the car, and left the underground parking garage. It wasn’t terribly late, but the streets were empty. She found the freeway easily and had Ladybird home in less than an hour. Putting the lady to bed was a more difficult process, embarrassing even since Max had to undress her, then get her in a nightgown. Thank God Witt had not checked on his mom. Hopefully, he was digging bodies out of the city dumps. That would keep him busy.

Back in her car, the engine on, the clock on her dash tripped to midnight. “Speaking of pumpkins.” It would take Max over half an hour to get home.

Max couldn’t have said when she first noticed the car following her. Sometime after she entered the freeway. Maybe it was the headlights that never wavered in her rearview mirror, or the way the car dogged hers, passing slower cars when she did, then returning to ride her ass. For a moment she thought cop, then rejected the idea. She was a habitual watcher. She had to be since she loved speed and
California
roll-stops, but didn’t like tickets. She’d scanned the road for black-and-whites. She was almost positive none had entered the freeway at any of the on ramps she’d passed. Easing off the accelerator, she waited for the car to pass.

It didn’t. It slowed and stayed behind her, leaving a few car lengths between them. A sedan perhaps, the lights far apart and slightly higher than her own sporty model, but not high enough to be a truck or an SUV. Just a sedan.

Her stomach churned. For a moment, thoughts of lone women stranded on the freeway rushed through her head, all the stories, all the warnings.

“You’re being ridiculous. You won’t be stranded on the roadside. You’ve got enough gas, and there’s nothing wrong with the car.” She said the words aloud, and in hearing them, believed them. Still, every few seconds her eyes flashed to the rearview mirror, watching, waiting for the car to get off at another exit.

It didn’t. She was fast approaching hers. Only two more. She could make the paranoid decision and get off at the next one. Max decided for something in between. She got off at her own exit. If he followed, she simply wouldn’t go home. Caution sat better on her shoulders than panic or stupidity.

The headlights followed her. Her lips tightened. Still could be coincidence. She turned right at the bottom of the ramp, but instead of taking her usual route, she turned left at the second light, El Camino Real, the closest thing to a main street in downtown Santa Clara. Bright lights, lots of all-night coffee shops and mini-marts.

The car was still on her tail.

Okay, okay. Better to be cautious again. She passed a 7-11 and figuratively passed it in her mind as well, thinking of men with guns and Cameron bleeding on the dirty linoleum after they shot him. Nope, 7-11 was no safe haven at midnight.

A red and yellow Denny’s sign popped out from behind a tree as she drove steadily along. Denny’s. Waitresses. Bus boys. Students having coffee to shore them up for late-night study sessions. Turning in as a precaution, she’d wait until the car passed, give it another five minutes, then head home. Chances were her shadow would keep on going as if she’d never existed.

It didn’t.

Only one option left, Max grabbed her purse, shoved the car door open and fled into the interior of the restaurant. Warm, quiet, and fragrant with the smell of bacon and grease, the place was half full—mostly students in booths, waitresses in pink uniforms, and several busboys. Max took a seat at the counter, in front of the grill where two night cooks flipped burgers and eggs. Two big guys who looked like they could double as bouncers. Max gave them each a direct smile, picked up a menu and refused to look over her shoulder. The front door hadn’t opened, no one had followed, but the sedan following her sat outside the window at her back, the reflected light from the restaurant obscuring any view through the windshield.

“You’re such a wuss,” she told the menu. “Go out there and tell him to get lost.”

A car door slammed. Her heart skipped a beat. For the first time, she thought of Mr. Blockhead in the bar. What if he’d noticed her watching the pick up? What if he’d followed to find out why?

What if he was Lance La Russa’s killer?

The pink-skirted, white-aproned waitress stood in front of her. Her blonde hair, teased and fluffed like a poodle’s, looked almost white in the harsh fluorescent lighting. Something red like ketchup had soaked into her pink front. Like a bloodstain at her breast.

“I’ll take coffee,” Max said before the college-aged girl could open her mouth. “And I like it really hot.” Hot enough to burn when thrown in someone’s face.

The front door opened. She ignored it with the idea that to look was to let the guy know she was aware of him. She preferred to keep the element of surprise on her side. A long stream of brown liquid filled the cup in front of her. The blonde waitress said, “You want me to come back to take your order?”

Her teeth were white and perfect. A pretty girl. Someone a stalker would definitely hit on. “No. I only want coffee, thanks.”

Max warmed her hands on the cup that was almost too hot to hold.