Desperate to the Max (29 page)

In fact, she was warm with anticipation.

In the distance, at the edge of the clearing, a figure left the safety of the trees. A man. Dressed in a black and red plaid shirt. Jeans. Boots.

Witt.

He left a single set of boot tracks marring the virgin snow.

Her heart beat faster with each new step he took. Then he stood in front of her. Large and solid, comforting.

He looked down at her with sky blue eyes. Snow flakes sparkled in his hair. He smelled like peppermints. The flannel of his shirt looked warm and soft and invited her fingers. She waited for him. For his signal.

“Kiss me, Max.”

Oh God yes. She would. Gladly. She rose on tiptoes, but the snow seemed to suck her down. Sinking deeper, she could not even reach out to him. In the cold, her lips froze in place.

“Won’t do it?”

No, she wanted to cry out. Not won’t, but can’t. I can’t. I really can’t. Help me.

His eyes turned ice blue. “Won’t.”

He pivoted and began the trek back to the surrounding forest. He didn’t even look over his shoulder as he disappeared amongst the spruce and pine.

The once unsullied snow was now polluted with several pairs of tracks, not only his, and they all led away from her.

In the pre-dawn, she heard Cameron’s voice. “He opened his wound for you, and you let him bleed.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, pulled her knees to her chest. “I didn’t ask him to tell me.”

“You never do.”

“And I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

“Do you even see how hard and cruel you are when you’re terrified?”

She prayed the conversation would end if she didn’t answer. Cameron, though, couldn’t resist getting a last shot at her. “The dream’s a prophecy, Max. Either you deal with your
stuff
or everyone you ever loved will walk away from you.”

“Including you?”

He didn’t answer.

Max wondered if he would have left her if he hadn’t died first.

Chapter Thirty-Four

It was one o’clock the next afternoon, somewhere mid-Peninsula between her house and Garden Street, when Max realized Witt had never asked about what she’d found in the Spring home nor had she even tried to tell him.

She thought about the fact that not telling Witt she’d failed last night fell in precisely with her plans for today. Of course, thinking about that forced her to think about everything else that had happened last night.

She hadn’t freaked, not really. If she’d hurt him, she hadn’t meant to. It was just that he’d started talking about babies and his wife and she couldn’t have kids—

“He never talked about his wife.”

She stopped herself and Cameron right there, her tone laced with desperation. “Don’t start with me.”

He didn’t. “Where are we going?”

She rolled her lips between her teeth and bit down, then let them out. “Ladybird’s.”

“Ladybird’s?” He said it with such sarcasm, she knew the jig was up.

“Bethany’s.”

She felt his sigh of exasperation flash through the interior of the car.

“All right. Virginia’s. By way of Bethany’s. By way of Ladybird’s backyard. Isn’t that what your little message through Horace was all about?”

He made a noise of assent.

“Why didn’t you just tell me I was supposed to break into Virginia’s to look for the rolling pin while they were at the funeral? You could have saved me the whole humiliating affair last night.”

“Would you believe me if I said we needed to do it that way?”

“I’d say you’re sadistic.”

“I’d say you’re at your best when you have to do things the hard way, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart. She vaguely remembered Witt calling her that last night. She’d sort of waited for his call throughout the morning. It hadn’t come. Maybe she should have called him.

She took the exit without thinking, flew down the four lane road, made a right, and ended up at the corner of Garden Street. She didn’t take the turn, simply looked for Witt’s black Dodge. It wasn’t there. She turned at the next avenue, parked halfway down, the closest thing she could get to hiding out, and then she hoofed it back over to Ladybird’s.

The little woman answered on the first knock as if she’d been peeking through the curtains all afternoon simply waiting for Max to arrive.

“Oh my dear.” She punctuated with a delighted gasp. “Do come in.”

Max did, closing the door quickly behind her. “Has Witt been by to see you?”

Witt’s mother pursed her birdlike lips. “No. And he always stops by on Sundays.”

“Does he call first?”

She tipped her head, regarded Max quizzically. “Well, yes, he usually does.”

“Good. If he calls and says he’s coming over, you’re going to have to warn me.”

“Warn you?” Ladybird echoed, her eyes round.

“Do you have Virginia Spring’s phone number?”

“Yes, but—”

“That’s good, too. If Witt calls and says he’s coming over, I want you to call Virginia, let the phone ring twice, hang up, and repeat. Okay?”

“All right.” Her mouth gave way to a big O of surprise. “Why, you’re going to break into Virginia’s and look for that rolling pin while everyone’s at the funeral, aren’t you?”

The question didn’t even faze Max. She’d gotten used to Ladybird and her dead husband. “Isn’t that what Horace told you I was supposed to do?”

Ladybird grabbed her hand and pulled her through the maze of newspapers and magazines, some stacked waist high. Down the hall, into the kitchen, and out the back door. “You can climb the fence here. I won’t ask how you plan to do the rest because Witt might try to get the information out of me.”

“You’re right. Better you don’t know in case he tries torture.”

“I don’t want to jeopardize your mission.” She squeezed Max’s hand. “I’ll have a nice hot cup of tea and some sandwiches ready when you get back.”

* * * * *

Max squeezed through Bethany’s doggie door without the slightest tremor. The yellow tape was gone, but the house was still dark and fetid inside. She traced a killer’s steps through the quiet rooms.

She paused in the living room, listening, hearing Bethany’s last night alive on earth replaying in her head like an audio tape. Something in the kitchen, Kitty Kat, that’s what she’d thought at the time.

Max tuned in to the psychic emanations that lingered in the house. Bethany’s emotions lived on in the very walls of the place she hadn’t left in two years. Her pain, her anger, her joy, her obsession, her fear. And her death.

Suddenly Max knew. The killer could have come through the front door. Or she could have come through the garage.

She. Of course. Who else would have used a rolling pin? A woman. Who else would have come through the garage from the house next door? Jada. Or Virginia.

Neither Bethany nor her own intuition gave her a clue as to which one.

Logic, however, dictated that it was Jada. Led on by Bud Traynor. Perhaps he even knew as he alternately seduced and terrified Bethany that night on the phone. Perhaps he’d planned it with Jada ...

All the speculation in the world wouldn’t nail either of them if Max couldn’t find that damn rolling pin.

The door to the garage creaked as she opened it. The stair gave a little beneath her foot as she stepped down. The quiet was preternatural. The houses on either side of her waited, as if they were entities in themselves. A breeze sighed beneath the door at the back of the empty one-car garage. A washing machine and dryer stood against the house wall, a trash can and recycle bin near the rollup door. Cleaning solvents, mysterious boxes, and an assortment of household tools lined shelves along the far wall. Next to the stairs, a forlorn bag of cat litter tilted to one side.

Where the hell was Kitty Kat anyway? Next door, roaming the streets, or hiding, confused and frightened because she couldn’t find her mistress. She certainly wasn’t in the garage.

At the back end of the wall separating the two houses was a door. A way for a murderer to move seamlessly to safety without anyone knowing.

She didn’t have to try the knob to know it was unlocked. It was always unlocked. More proof that Jada was the one who’d brutally murdered her sister. Or Virginia had done it. No, Max still leaned towards the girl. That first day, Jada had used her keys on the house, entering through the front door. What other reason could there have been but to direct suspicion away from herself?

Virginia Spring’s garage was stacked floor to ceiling with furniture, boxes, bags, suitcases. As if the woman anticipated vacating for greener pastures at any moment. No wonder the cars were parked on the drive. Bethany, on the other hand, had never intended to leave.

Max inched through a small aisle between a sofa and a highboy. Definitely too tight for Bethany, perhaps a squeeze for Virginia, but a piece of cake for Jada to fit through.

The kitchen door, too, was unlocked. Max had expected no less. Again, the quiet inside unnerved her. Someone, or something, was waiting for her. Damn, as soon as she’d gotten in, she wanted out.

The sun streamed down through a skylight onto the white tile counters, the enamel range top sparkled, and the floor seemed unnaturally clean for white linoleum. The room smelled of pine. Appliances lined the countertop, a mixer, toaster, Crock-Pot, can opener, and microwave. Implements hung from racks on the wall. Everything had a place, and there was only one empty spot. The one where the rolling pin should have been.

The swing door into the dining room stood open, casting a swath of light across the table and one chair. The curtains were obviously closed in the front room, all else out there was dark. And silent? Max imagined she could hear breathing. As if the house itself were alive. She shivered with the same sense of dread she’d felt in Bethany’s small living room that first day.

Shaking off the sensation, she started opening the column of drawers next to the stove. Virginia kept an abundance of cooking tools. Max couldn’t even define the uses for many of them. A drawer overflowed with tea towels of all colors and varieties from serviceable cloth to daintily embroidered.

She stopped a moment, a horrible thought striking. Would a killer really be stupid enough to keep the murder weapon? Even if Jada was that dumb, would she put it back in the kitchen for Virginia to find?

No. It was probably hidden at the bottom of her closet in her bedroom upstairs.

Finding merely another bottomless pit of kitchen doodads, Max slammed the third drawer. She should be searching upstairs, in Jada’s room, Jada’s bathroom, Jada’s anything. Max didn’t make a move towards the door. Instead, she bent to open that last drawer.

And stared down at the gun Walter Spring had used to kill himself.

Chapter Thirty-Five

For a moment, Max’s heart stopped in her chest. Psychic imprints glowed on the handle and on the barrel. Pain, anger, sorrow, fear, the whole gamut assaulted her. She couldn’t separate them, as if they’d all been there at once, no linear progression driving Walter to his end.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to run. She wanted to touch it.

A thousand questions without answers tumbled through her brain.

“I kept it for protection.”

Max shrieked and jumped back. Stumbling, she almost went down, but caught herself at the critical moment.

Virginia stared at her from the open doorway, her expression bleak, her eyes a sad brown. “Bud told me I’d find you here, but I didn’t believe him.”

Max swallowed as if she’d betrayed her best friend. Her heart pounded, her throat dried up, her palms grew sweaty. “You’re missing your daughter’s funeral.”

Virginia’s expensive pumps left indentations in the linoleum as she crossed to the pantry. Pulling out Tupperware containers from an overhead shelf, she plopped them on the counter, her proximity to the row of drawers effectively cutting Max off from the gun before she’d gathered her wits.

“Do you like Snickerdoodles?”

“Snickerdoodles?” Max repeated idiotically.

“Sugar cookies rolled in cinnamon.” Virginia pulled out a breadboard, the bottom drawer still open beneath it.

“I’ve never tried them.”

She’d really stepped into Wonderland this time. Virginia actually planned to make cookies while her daughter went six feet under. Stretching her psychic feelers, she tried to read the other woman’s mood, thoughts, anything and came up with only a slate filled up by recipes and weights and measures. As if Virginia felt nothing, thought nothing, was nothing except an extension of the cookies she planned to bake.

“They were another of Bethany’s favorite. I made them whenever she felt bad.”

Max closed her eyes as Bethany once more tasted the sugar and cinnamon on her tongue. Suddenly everything was clear.

Just as Bethany had gained comfort from eating, Virginia gained it from cooking. They’d enabled each other. Whenever something went wrong, they’d chosen food as a way out.

Something
had
gone terribly wrong. Virginia, however, merely cooked her way through it.

“I couldn’t get into the car, just couldn’t do it, you see,” Virginia said as she pulled the mixer away from the wall and removed the cover. “Bud took Jada without me.”

Jesus, the woman had been here the whole time Max was banging around in her drawers. She remembering the breathing she thought she’d imagined. “I’m sorry I invaded your privacy. But I have to know what happened to Bethany.”

Virginia turned on the oven, preheating it. “Bud says that’s how you were with Wendy. Tenacious. Unstoppable. Why is it so important to you?”

“Don’t
you
want to know what happened to her?”

The woman concentrated on measuring her ingredients, but Max heard the deep sigh. “I wanted it to be over when Walter died. I want it to be over now.”

Max thought about the myriad emotions she’d had right after Cameron died. She’d wanted him back. She’d wanted to die. She’d wanted to sleep for a million years. But she’d never really thought much about making his killers pay. No, in fact, she hadn’t given them much thought at all. She was sure a psychiatrist could have told her why. She didn’t want to know that either.