Desperate to the Max (27 page)

“I don’t need to get a job right now.” Virginia’s lips tensed. Max felt sorry for her. Living between Bud and Jada was far worse than a rock and a hard place. It was like making your home in the center of a volcano. Then again, Virginia didn’t seem to realize she was dictating to her twenty-nine-year-old daughter.

“Tell us, Max,” Virginia went on, changing the subject smoothly once again, “what do you do for a living?”

“I’m an accountant.” Max didn’t offer anything more. She didn’t want to be drawn into the center of attention. Besides, Bethany wanted to savor the beef without interruption.

“An accountant.” Virginia clasped her hands, clearly delighted. “Like Wendy. I hear many women are going into the finance area. You must be very good at it.”

Jada made a noise, a little chirrup. Everyone turned to her. “I bet there’s a lot of things you’re good at.” She moved her head slowly, looked at Bud, then took the meat platter he offered her. “Don’t you think so, Uncle?”

Bud smiled, parted his lips slightly as if about to blow her a kiss. “I know so, even in the short time that Max and I have been acquainted.”

Oh Jesus, what
was
going on? Max wondered if the price for finding the damn rolling pin might be way too high.

Virginia swam on, totally oblivious to this newest undertow. “Why don’t you try accounting, Jada?”

After returning three of the four pieces of meat, Jada slapped the plate down in the middle of the table, and the thread of the conversation turned yet again. “I’d throw up if I had to balance checkbooks all day.”

Max had the suspicion Jada would throw up anyway.

“I don’t even balance my own checkbook,” Max revealed. “Accounting’s more than debits and credits. It’s about understanding a business.” She wondered briefly why she’d suddenly gotten defensive. Maybe it was Jada’s tone. Maybe it got to Bethany.

“What’s a debit and who cares about business anyway?” Jada gibed, running a hand roughly through her hair. Her fingers were short, nails blunt and uneven. A biter’s nails.

“It doesn’t matter,” Virginia breezed right over the question. “You can learn it. Yes, I think accounting is perfect.” Her own dinner less than half gone, Virginia picked up the mashed potatoes. The spoon clinked against Jada’s china once more.

Jada never said she didn’t want the food, never told her mother to leave her alone. Instead she said, “I don’t want accounting, Mother. I don’t want to be a secretary or a computer programmer or a buyer for the shoe department at Nordstrom’s.”

They hadn’t even finished eating what was on their plates, yet the endless passing of serving dishes began all over again, as if agitation forced Virginia into activity. Just as Jada threw her food back, Max was compelled to take more. And more.

Bethany wasn’t full yet.

“Then what do you want, Jada?” Virginia asked, tone slightly exasperated, as she piled more food on Jada’s plate despite the fact that the girl had merely used her fork to smear what was already there. “I’ll help you with whatever it is. I want you to have lots of friends and lots of fun and start all over again.”

Jada snorted. “What
you
want—”

“Let’s not argue, Virginia,” Bud said.

It didn’t escape Max that Jada was the one arguing, yet Virginia was the object of Bud’s reprimand.

Virginia tried one more time. “I thought we’d decided—”

Bud held up a hand. “We’ll discuss it later. Let’s finish eating.”

Max looked at her plate and felt her eyes bulge. She’d eaten all of the more than average-sized first helping she’d dished herself and was plowing into the second. Yet she wasn’t full. Nowhere near full.

The meat platter was empty when she glanced at it, but two pieces still sat forlorn on Jada’s plate. Bethany wanted them. God, she wanted them. They were the perfect shade of pink, the—

“Jada, why don’t you cut more meat? The platter’s empty.” Unexpectedly, the order came from Bud. Was he taunting the girl with adding yet more food to the table?

Max almost jumped up and said she’d do it. Finally a chance to get into that kitchen.

There was that strange billowing of the tablecloth between them. Jada then pursed her lips, threw her napkin on the table, and rose. The kitchen door swung closed behind her, and a moment later, came the sound of an electric knife.

“Virginia, you’re pushing her.” Bud carefully cut into his last slice of beef.

The woman pulled her upper lip between her teeth and chewed. Her eyes glistened. “I’m trying, Bud. I really am. I don’t know how to say the right things to get her to do what’s best for her. She won’t listen to me. Bethany would never listen either.”

Tears. Max started to sweat.

Virginia turned to her. “I’m sorry, Max. I can’t imagine how this all started.” Her hands waved forlornly in the air. “We wanted a friendly meal. A little respite. Before tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. Bethany’s funeral. At two o’clock in the afternoon. Virginia wanted to pretend that nothing had happened, that they were a happy family having a nice meal together.

With Bud Traynor at the table, they were anything but.

“Maybe you try
too
hard, Virginia,” he offered. Sympathy? Or manipulation?

Bethany’s mother patted her cheeks, sniffled, took a deep breath, and straightened her shoulders. “All right. I won’t push on the school thing. At least not yet. She can always start back in the winter quarter. Of course. That’s best anyway.” She brightened visibly as she made her plans. “Why yes, it’s silly for her to start in the middle of the quarter.”

Bud smiled. “Now, Virginia, do we really need more meat?”

She laughed, almost a giggle, like a happy child. “Oh silly me, what was I thinking, of course we don’t.”

She seemed to have completely forgotten that Bud was the one to suggest it.

Chapter Thirty-Two

“Walk Max to her car, Bud. It’s dark out.”

She didn’t need Virginia’s help, and she didn’t need Bud Traynor to walk her to her car.
Gag me with a spoon.
Oh God. Goose bumps papered her arms beneath the sleeves of her blouse. The three helpings of mashed potatoes, umpteen slices of London Broil, and two pieces of carrot cake shifted uncomfortably in her stomach. She felt like she’d been weighted down with concrete blocks chained to her waist.

She was no closer to the goal than she’d been when she walked in the door. Yes, she’d made it into the kitchen. No, she hadn’t seen the rolling pin, only an empty holder on the wall where it should have. Telling to
her
, but not enough for Witt—or McKaverty and Schulz—to get a search warrant.

She closed her eyes and felt the slight jerk at the back of her neck where a tension headache reared its head. “Yes, please, Bud, do walk me to my car.”

They had things left to say. About last night. About the scene she’d witnessed in the kitchen as she pushed open the door: Bud standing next to Jada, the front of his gold polo shirt brushing her shoulder as he spoke into her ear, the glassy look in her eyes, the hypnotic nod of her head.

Max said her thank yous and her good-byes to Virginia. Jada had stayed in the kitchen to wash the dishes. Max wondered when she’d washed the blood off the rolling pin and disposed of it. What day was trash day on Garden Street? What had Virginia said when she’d seen it was missing?

Then Max was out on the front walk with Bud, the front porch light disappearing behind her as Bud led her down the street to her car. Outside Ladybird’s house. Max prayed Witt had not decided to visit his mother tonight. She didn’t think he’d understand. He’d call her obsessed. He’d be right. She was obsessed with bringing Bud down. Any way she could.

She was beginning to fear that goal was next to impossible.

Traynor stopped just outside of the circle of light of a nearby streetlamp. To her right, one light burned in Ladybird’s window, the curtains were closed, and Witt’s truck was nowhere in sight.
Thank you, God
.

“I’m so glad you came.” Traynor emphasized the last word.

He stood a hair’s breadth short of the way he’d stood next to Jada. Invading her space, making her hackles rise, causing her throat to close. She swallowed with difficulty, but refused to back off. “Don’t you even wonder why I’m here?”

He shook his head. “It only matters that you are.”

“Jada invited me.”

His eyes glowed. “She invited you for me.”

Max snorted softly. “She invited me because you and her mother make her feel like a servant. She needed a friend.”

“Jada has me. She doesn’t need friends.”

Jada needed a padded cell. Maybe Bud wasn’t so far off, though. Maybe Max had been had. She’d wondered about the strange invitation, wondered even further when Jada barely acknowledged her existence throughout the entire meal unless it was to use her to taunt her mother.

In light of what he’d admitted, it made bizarre sense.

“Was she trying to find you a replacement for Bethany?” The thought gave her a knee jerk reaction; she bit down painfully on her tongue.

“Jada has always wanted to please me.”

He wasn’t just evil; he truly was the devil himself. “Tell me about Jada’s suit against her father.”

Bud beamed. “Damn, your intuition amazes me. How do you learn these things?”

“It was you Jada talked about in the trial, not her father.”

“I never did anything Jada didn’t want, didn’t ask for or even beg for.” He considered her. “A bit like you, Max. I’m waiting for the day you come to me.”

It was too horribly close to what Witt wanted from her. This man defiled even that. She didn’t acknowledge his words. “Did you put her up to the suit?”

He smiled.

“Did you do it to ruin your partner, to get rid of him?”

The smile grew.

“How did you get Virginia to testify?”

He crossed his arms; Max said another silent thank you as the space between them eased.

“Suppose I told you, Max, that Virginia believed her husband was having an affair and she wanted to get back at him?”

“I’d say you probably told her lies to make her believe that.”

“Suppose I further told you that
he
hated
her
.”

“I’d say you did something to foster that, too.”

“Thank you for assigning me all that power.” He stared dreamily into the distance. “You should have seen the two of them. So much anger, such rage. They each stayed in that grand house together to spite the other. Till the day he put a gun to his head.” He looked at her and punctuated his words with an arched brow.

“Why would he do that, Bud?” she asked pointedly.

“He thought he was going to lose?” Bud offered, still with that gleam in his eye.

“I think maybe he was murdered.” She slipped it in quickly, like a knife through a soft belly.

“You mean you think
I
killed him.” He wasn’t displeased. He enjoyed her questions, her accusations, actually invited them.

She stared him down.

“Really, Max, do you think I actually need to kill someone myself?”

No. He could manipulate anyone into doing anything, even killing themselves. All the while they’d think it was their own idea. It made her blood coagulate in her veins. Who had he manipulated into killing Bethany? Her sister, her mother, her courier boy? Or his own alter ego, Achilles?

She could ask. He would only smile again. She hated that smile.

“What happened to all his money from the law partnership?” Max looked distinctly at the small duplex in the less than gracious neighborhood Virginia had probably been used to. “Why didn’t his wife get it when he died?”

He rubbed his jaw, a ghost of a smile still on his lips. “I believe he might have had a gambling problem. The estate was a shambles.” He held his hand up, like a priest making an offering. “I had to loan her money for this modest home.”

“You mean you stole all Walter’s money.”

“I’m honored you ascribe me with such abilities. I steal a man’s money, his family, even his life. I get away with it.” He leaned down at her. “I even get his daughters in the bargain, don’t I, Max?”

She tried to hide the shudder that seemed to come from deep inside. “I never said it was something to be proud of.”

He regarded her through half closed lids, holding the tip of his chin in his fingers. “How’d you do it, Max?”

“How’d I do what, Bud?” She gave a slight nasty inflection to his name.

“How’d you get Bethany’s sex line number?”

Her eyes popped wide. She hadn’t believed he’d be so open about it. Nor had she been prepared for the sudden switch in conversation. He’d probably planned it that way to throw her off balance. She decided the truth could do no harm. “I asked the police to let me do it. How’d
you
do it?”

He gave her that special smile, using half his mouth, the smile that made her think of a hungry tiger ready to pounce on the oh-so-unaware gazelle. “How’d I do what, Max?”

If she could play the game long enough, she knew she could figure it out. “How’d you stop the trace?”

“A little device. Would you like to search my house for it, Max?”

He was saying something, she was sure. Either that he knew exactly why she’d wangled that dinner in Jada’s home, or that he believed he could tell her everything, and she still wouldn’t be able to touch him. Maybe both. “Once is enough.”

He sighed. “Oh, Max, don’t you know once is
never
enough? Some people have to keep coming back again and again. It’s an addiction. They never get enough.”

“Like you with Bethany, calling her every night, asking her to see you, teasing her, taunting her.”

“I was waiting for her to figure out who I was.”

“Maybe she did. Maybe she was still playing the same sick game you taught her as a child when you invaded her room at night.” She took a deep breath, either that or suffocate, but her lungs couldn’t seem to process enough oxygen.

“Do I make you nervous, Max?”

He terrified her. She hated the way he said her name almost every time he uttered a sentence. It was a violation, a manipulation. “You make me want to puke.”