Evil to the Max (27 page)

But beneath it all was another odor, a pall. A frightening shadow hung in the close air of the alley. It was like nothing she’d ever smelled before. The first whiff of it was deceptive, almost sweet, almost pleasant, until it hit you in the back of the throat with a vengeance. She knew the scent of rotting meat. This was worse. The scent of death, of screaming, of crying pain and loss of control, the body giving up the worst it has to offer. It clung to the hairs of her nostrils. When she opened her mouth to breathe, she tasted it, like rancid compost.

She said she’d never forget the things she saw in the visions. Perhaps that was true. But over time, the images had lost their bite.

But not this. It was no lie, no exaggeration, no flippancy, to say she could never wash away death’s perfume.

The bag of trash slid from her numb hand to land with a plop on the concrete. She could have sworn Cameron’s arms went around her, that he pushed her forward. She widened her stance and dug in. “I have limits, Cameron. There are some things even
I
can’t do.”

“I know. I understand.” A moment of silence. “Call Witt. Get him over here.”

She thought of the ways Witt had concocted to feed her information and protect her at the same time. She could do no less for him. “He’s been asking too many questions already. If he shows up at this murder scene, if his cop buddies even suspect a connection, his butt is dust. He could get fired.”

“Then open it yourself.”

She had no choice. Except to walk away and let someone else throw out the trash. How easy that would be. How weak. Still, she fought the moment. “Why are you doing this to me?” she whispered, as close to tears as she’d been in all of two years.

“
I’m
not doing it, my love. Don’t you realize that if I could, I’d open it for you? I’d do anything for you.” His whisper against her ear was like sweet nothings in the dark. Sweet nothings. In the end ...

One step, then two. She stopped. Her eyes watered with the stench. “What if there’s maggots?”

“I love you.”

“What if there’s worms?” She sang softly, “The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out.” She almost choked on the last word.

“I’ll always love you.”

She heard him, but couldn’t answer. Two more steps. One more, and she’d be close enough to touch it. She closed her eyes.

“Forgive me for making you do this, my love.”

Her eyes snapped open. The sun had fled behind a cloud. She shivered and put her hands up to her ears. Even her hair was cold. “I don’t think I can forgive myself if I just let her lie there. Even if I didn’t like her much.”

So tired. She could barely get her legs to cover that small, final distance. But she did, then opened the dumpster.

And started screaming.

Jules stared up at her. Eyes wide, glassy, and very dead.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The sun setting behind her, Max sat in her red Miata with her hands on the wheel. The day had been long, exhausting, and she barely had the energy to drive home. She’d half-hoped, illogical as it was, that Witt would ride in on his white charger to rescue her from Detectives Scagliomotti and Berkowsky.

But he hadn’t; he couldn’t, even if he knew what had happened. She really didn’t want him to. He was probably out looking for Nadine, had most likely already found her and was relieved to discover her alive. By now he’d be cursing Max’s supposed psychic powers. She was cursing them herself, cursing their sudden desertion.

One thought kept pounding against her temples. She should have been able to save Jules. If she’d had a clue. An inkling. Her intuition had failed them both.

Jules. Oh Jesus, Jules. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. She slammed the flat of her hand against the wheel. A gargantuan-sized fist closed around her heart.

Witt’s detective buddies had been merciless, taking down her every word on the spot, with Jules lying dead in the dumpster outside. Neighbors peered from just beyond the yellow crime scene tape, and cops crawled over the alley like the maggots that would soon be crawling over Jules. Flies. So many flies. Human and insect. She shivered now, remembering Jules’s ruined face. No, that sight would never leave her.

Even now at the end of the day, after hours at the police station, with her statement typed and signed, even now she could smell the rot of garbage, human waste, and poor, poor Jules.

The cops knew Tiffany’s murder was tied to the salon. Hell, it was obvious to anyone now. Her death had not been a random slaying inspired by the riot she’d incited. Her murderer was someone she knew. Someone Jules knew. Someone Jules, sweet, darling fool, could have pointed a finger at.

Of course, Max had not been the only one they questioned. Scagliomotti, the dark one with the bad haircut, had taken the Three Stooges and Ariel. Berkowsky, the sandy one, had handled Pippa, Miles, and Max herself. Questioning each separately, they’d then switched interviewees, starting all over again with question after question until Max’s tongue felt numb and her throat hurt. She pictured the two detectives, heads burrowed together, now sitting in the bowels of the station comparing notes.

In a daze, Max had told them nothing useful.

She couldn’t tell them about the DVD; she’d boxed herself into a corner. She couldn’t reveal Traynor without revealing her own criminal act. Of course, what did she
really
know?

Had Jules played Wolfman in Tiffany’s final drama? Who were the two women? And had they killed him, throwing him up and over the dumpster wall just as they had Tiffany?

Who were they?

Nadine had hated Tiffany, felt threatened by her. And she wanted Tiffany’s husband. The ex didn’t apply to Jake, because Tiffany had never really let him go.

Ariel had lost her husband to Tiffany. Had she plotted her death for three years?

The Three Stooges? Max wasn’t sure they were capable of planning anything, let alone murder, either singly or collectively. And yet ... no one, absolutely no one could be ruled out. She’d underestimated the danger before, she wouldn’t do it again.

Pippa Louise Lamont? Max had no doubt the woman was capable of many things. The problem with her was motive. The only one Max could pinpoint was jealousy over her darling Miles. But Pippa oozed control. She didn’t strike Max as the type to let go long enough to kill for such a rampant emotion as jealousy.

Then again, maybe Witt was wrong in his assumption that the two masked figures were women. The costumes obscured their features, and the camera angle was low so that their height and breadth was distorted.

The killer could be Miles Lamont. A man who was possibly—quite likely—The Watcher.

And there was always Jake Lloyd. His masculine beauty didn’t fool her; his obsession for his wife made him an excellent suspect. Why had she ever considered wiping him off her list? No one was worthy of being expunged from her mental roll call.

Seeing sweet, innocent Jules had opened her eyes. No one was safe, and
everyone
was a suspect.

The last name on that list beat against her temples like a drum. Afraid even to voice it in her thoughts, Max bit her lip. Her eyes stung.

Bud Traynor was her prime suspect in Tiffany’s death. He was therefore also a suspect in Jules’s murder. The inevitable conclusion was that her visit to Traynor’s house last night had triggered the gentle man’s death. Oh God.

She needed Witt. She needed him to find out what time Jules had died. To tell her it was before Traynor had cornered her like a rat in his den. She needed to salve her conscience.

God, she was pathetic.

Home at last, she parked. After she unlocked her door, closed and bolted it behind her, then checked it twice, she climbed the stairs to her dark room. It was almost eight. The light on the answering machine was blinking. She ignored it. She needed a bath to wash away the smells. If she ever could wash them away.

“I’m sorry, baby.” Cameron. He’d been silent throughout the day, but she’d caught an occasional waft of his peppermint scent. It hadn’t soothed her.

“You were right, Cameron. I don’t forgive you.” Blaming him, though, was just a way of rubbing salve on her own wounds.

“I couldn’t do it for you. You had to do it yourself.”

She kicked her high heels off, threw her blazer over the chair, and sat down on the bed to rub her feet. She needed three minutes to collect herself, so that she wouldn’t scream at him across the quiet room. When she spoke, she was proud of her cool tone. “I was prepared for Nadine. I wasn’t prepared for Jules. You knew before I opened the lid. You should have warned me.”

“You should have known when you saw the trash wasn’t emptied.”

“I’ve worked there a matter of days. How the hell would I know he never forgets—” Pain surged in her chest. “Never
forgot
to empty the trash.” Her lip trembled, her composure slipping rapidly. She
had
known. In her gut.

He was silent a moment, then his phosphorescence caressed her. “Take your bath,” he said gently enough for tears to prick behind her lids. “You’ll feel better.”

“I won’t feel better.” Her voice rose with her anger. She couldn’t stop it, didn’t want to. “They bashed in his goddamn head. It was probably the same bat they used on Tiffany. And what am I supposed to do about it? I can’t tell the cops about the DVD. I can’t tell them anything because
you
had me steal it.”

“I know you want to avenge his death, bring his killer to justice—”

She slashed her hand through the air. “I wanted to stop the killing in the first place. Why didn’t you at least let me know it might be him? I could have stayed with him, protected him.”

“I didn’t know. Not then. Not until it was too late.”

“What the hell good is it being a goddamned ghost if you can’t save people? What the hell good is it being psychic if I couldn’t help Jules?”

“You don’t make things happen, Max. You can only pick up the pieces when it’s over.”

“That’s so easy for you to say. You didn’t look in his eyes while he was alive. He was an innocent. He didn’t deserve that.”

“Then find his killer.”

“I don’t have any idea who it is.”

“Take the masks off in your dreams.”

“I can’t do that, damn it. I tried ...” She caught her breath and ratcheted down the tension. Rolling her bottom lip between her teeth, she bit down hard, then went on as if Cameron had never mentioned the masks the killers wore in Tiffany’s video, the masks Max had failed to wrench from their faces in her dream. “Seems like a really big coincidence that Jules died after Bud Traynor let me find that disk. Maybe he set it all in motion.”

Cameron said nothing.

Her heart pounded. “He did, didn’t he? After I was at his house. He had Jules killed because I got too close, and Jules knew something that pointed to Traynor. Am I right?”

The thought was untenable. It made her responsible.

The least her dead husband could do was tell her she was wrong. Quell her panic.

Still he didn’t answer.

She almost hated him then.

“I’m taking a bubble bath.” Maybe she’d drown herself, like the rat she was.

“Listen to the message first.”

Instead of fighting him, instead of screaming at him, she stabbed the button on the machine. Witt’s voice. “Call me on my cell number. I’ve got news.”

Call him. He had news. She did, too. Jules was dead, dead, dead, and it was her fault. It no longer mattered that Witt could find out the time of death. She knew it would be after midnight. She knew it would be too late to save her from culpability.

She erased the message, didn’t call him back, and ran the shower. Cameron did not ask her why she’d changed her mind and opted for a shower instead, but she smelled him as he waited outside the curtain. Lemon tea. He’d always made her lemon tea after they’d had a fight. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it only pissed her off more. Tonight, it almost brought her to her knees.

Tell me it isn’t my fault, Cameron
. For once she wanted, needed him to read her mind. If he had, he didn’t answer. She hated him a little more.

Once dry, she dressed in a short black skirt and white shirt, selected a red tie from the rack and laid it across the chair.

“Where are you going?”

“Where do you think?” He knew. It was where she always went dressed like this.

“Why?”

“Because I feel like it.” She pulled a mirror from her voluminous bag and dashed her lips with crimson. Her hand shook. She hadn’t worn lipstick in weeks. She never wore makeup except on her nights out.

“You’re not going to pick up a man.”

“Is that a question or an order?” She didn’t enjoy taunting him. Not this time. She simply didn’t know any other way. If she stayed home, she’d lay on that single bed, close her eyes and see Jules. His dead eyes staring up at her.

“Getting laid isn’t the answer. It’s like a drug for you, Max, like some sexual power fix.”

She rolled her lips, then tucked her lipstick away.

“I happen to like the drug. Tonight I’m going to get fucked by a no-name man I’ll never see again. A
real
man.” Somehow, it just might wash away the feel of Traynor’s eyes on her last night, the glitter in their black depths. The knowing. But she’d give anything if Cameron had another answer, another way out.

“Call Witt. Tell him what happened. He’ll find a way.”

Nope, not good enough. It was too late for Witt. Way, way too late. And too frightening. She went on the attack, having no idea where the words suddenly tumbling out of her mouth came from. “My, you certainly have a lot of faith in your rival.”

“My rival?”

She knotted her tie around her neck. “Of course. Wasn’t it him I turned to this morning when I had the bad dream? And I have been having so many erotic dreams about him.”

“Do you expect me to feel jealous?”

“Are you?”

“I’m dead. I don’t feel jealousy.”

Pulling on her black blazer, she twisted the verbal knife she’d stuck in his ethereal ribs. It was better than twisting it in her own gut. “So, you don’t care if I crawl into bed with him?”