Power to the Max (29 page)

“Yes, my love, you will pay me back, I know. Now, about Julia.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Temper, temper,” he chided. “Julia was in this very building the night Lance was killed. That gives her opportunity. Let’s think about motive.”

How the hell could he switch on and off like that? Because he was a damn ghost. If she argued with him, it would only give what he’d done more credence, more power. Her body hot, aching, and wet, she chose to ignore the need raging through her. She’d show Cameron. She’d never beg Witt, no matter how her ghostly husband tried to play her.

Max answered him as if the effect of his ministrations had completely faded. “Julia asked me if I’d do anything,
anything
”—her tone italicized the word—“for someone I loved. I know Lance’s murder made her ask that. So who could her
someone
be?”

“Baxter Newton.”

“Exactly.” There were different kinds of love, many of them far from sexual but equally as powerful. Squirming in the tiny stall, Max managed to get the blousy bodysuit over her head and snapped at the crotch. God, she hated bodysuits, but Angela had picked out the ensemble, and once on, Max admitted the effect made her feel sexy.

It also made her hot thinking of Witt tugging open those little snaps. She had foregone panties, just as he’d demanded.

God, she was a wimp, doing everything a man told her.

“Don’t make me laugh. You’re doing it because you want to. Quit thinking with your hormones, and let’s talk about Julia.”

“You’re the one who just got me ready.” Men. Dead or alive, she didn’t understand how they switched moods so easily.

“What if,” Cameron mused, ignoring her, “Julia meant something someone would do for love of her?”

“You mean like Baxter killing Lance because he humiliated her?” Yeah. Max liked the idea better and better. It felt right, from a logical perspective. Although she still didn’t want Baxter or his daughter to be responsible for Lance’s death.

“What if Julia ran back to the party and told Baxter what she’d seen?”

“Then she’d have to know Baxter did it.” Max stopped with her hand on the back zip of the skirt.

“Her question works both ways. She could have meant would you lie to protect someone you love, someone you were pretty sure was a murderer.”

Max left out a sigh, punctuating it with the zip of her skirt. “But neither of them feel like murderers, even if the motive has a punch to it.”

“Maybe we’re looking for the obvious answer instead of the complicated.”

She stepped into the high-heeled pumps, then began to stow her other clothes in the bag. “You mean like Bud Traynor manipulating one of them to do it.”

“That’s too easy, Max. I mean like reviewing the other murder victims you’ve followed.”

She snorted. “You mean the ones who possessed me and gave me no choice but to solve their murders?”

“What did they all have in common?”

She zipped the bag. Easy answer. “Sex.”

“It wasn’t just sex. It was why they had sex. Tell me the why, Max. If you even know.”

His question peeved her. Her answering tone showed it. “They lived inside me. I knew exactly why.”

Exiting the stall, she hung the garment bag on the edge of the towel holder, pulled out her small bag to freshen her makeup, then began to tell him. “Wendy was weak. She gave men sex because she didn’t have enough power to say no. Not to herself and not to them.”

“Power,” Cameron breathed at her nape. But that was all he said.

“Tiffany tried to sexually conquer as many men as she could.”

“Why?”

She brushed blusher across her cheeks, blended the color with her fingers. Thank God there was only a slight residual tremble left over from Cameron’s exhibition. “Tiffany was a conqueror, a sexual Amazon.”

“Power.” Again, it was all he said.

“
Bethany
turned to fantasy”—and phone sex—“where she was the most beautiful woman a man had ever had, a woman wanted by thousands.”

“Power.”

“And Lance wanted to control his women, wanted his wife on his arm and Angela on her knees, wanted to feel like a virtual Tyrannosaurus Rex.”

“They were all weak, Max, all sought to gain power through sex. So you need to look for the one who would never be willing to give up that control. That’s your killer.”

“Bud Traynor.” This time it was all
she
said.

Cameron was silent a long moment. Max touched up her mascara, body tensed for his next words.

“Did you ever think, Max, that the need to control and the need for power comes from once having been a victim?”

She laughed outright, a harsh sound that almost bruised the tissues of her throat. “Traynor, a victim? He makes me believe in reincarnation. The guy was born evil.”

“If he had to face that he was a victim, he’d have to face there was a situation he couldn’t control. The mere idea that he can’t control everything must terrify him. The word
victim
would be anathema to him.”

Max had stopped, mascara wand in mid-air. “Total control above everything else,” she murmured.

“He might even have convinced himself he manipulated his own father into molesting him rather than admit he was a victim.”

Her breath stuck in the seemingly bruised membranes of her throat. She couldn’t quite move beyond opening her mouth and flexing her larynx. “That’s a lie. He’s evil. That’s all he’s ever been.”

“Is it? Abusers were usually once abused themselves. They learn how to control using the same methods. Their wives, their daughters, their goddaughters, their nieces. Maybe even friends like Lance. Didn’t he give Angela to Baxter for that kind of control?”

Yes. But so what? Max’s world started turning again. “This is an asinine discussion, Cameron. It’s getting us nowhere.” The tube of lipstick slipped, leaving a slash across her chin. “Damn.” She reached for a tissue.

“I’m simply agreeing with what you’ve always said, Max. Bud Traynor manipulated every death for a variety of reasons which all ended up ultimately being about power and control. So why did he want Lance dead, and who could he have enough sexual power over to use in his quest?”

Without a word, she fixed her mishap and reapplied her lipstick, not knowing why the question frightened her so. Cameron was right. It was what she’d said every time the body count climbed. Bud Traynor was behind it. So why did it terrify her this time?

“Don’t you know, Max?”

She shook her head.

“Because you’re like all his other victims.”

“That’s a lie.” She might have screamed the words. The lipstick tube smacked the tile wall, clattered to the floor, then rolled two feet. She couldn’t remember throwing it.

“Isn’t that what you told Angela? That you wanted power.”

“Yes, but I—” She cut herself off abruptly and sucked her lower lip between her teeth, surely smearing the lipstick.

“Yes, but what, Max?” Compassion leaked through his words. He was always pushing her, wanting her to face ... something, his murder two years ago, being raped by his killers, her mother’s death when she was eight, her entire bloody past.

Finally, this time, her answer was slightly different, slightly more giving, opening a door she’d always kept securely locked. “Not now. I don’t want to talk about
me
now. Not when I have to think about tonight and how I’m going to handle Angela.”

“Stalling, my love?”

“Yes.” This time. “But maybe not forever anymore.”

“That’s more than you’ve ever given me.” Were there tears in that heavenly voice? “It’s more than you’ve ever given yourself.”

She hiccupped as if she’d been crying herself. “Talk to me about Lance’s killer now, Cameron. I promise the rest. Later.”

“Get your lipstick.” His voice filled her mind, begging her to imagine his arms around her and his lips against her cheek. Nothing sexual, just loving comfort. She did as he directed, pulling another tissue from the box on the Formica counter.

“Sex, power, and who Bud could control,” Cameron said as Max wiped off the damaged lip wear. “We haven’t talked about Angela.”

“She’s definitely all about sex.” The knot in her stomach started to ease as she began to think once more of potential suspects. “But in the other murders, the killers always had their own reasons for killing.”

“Traynor exploited them,” Cameron agreed, roundabout.

“But Angela had a reason not to kill Lance. The apartment, the easy life. She’d be giving up that opportunity.”

“But you don’t know he told her. In your dream, you only saw him fail to tell her.”

Lips repaired, Max stared at her reflection in the mirror. Short dark hair, a little uneven for lack of a recent cut, dark circles she couldn’t hide beneath her eyes, and too-small breasts. Not a pretty picture. But the black bodysuit, silk skirt, and crimson lips did something. Made her attractive, sexy, her appearance as well as her emotions. Angela had said they’d get to the haircut later, but Max thought the jagged look actually gave her pizzazz.

Her gaze flashed to the corner of the room where the tile wall seemed to undulate like heat rising off concrete on a hot day. It was the most she ever saw of Cameron, a pulsating phosphorescent glow. And red points of light that could have been his eyes.

“He told her, Cameron. Angela had the bracelet.”

“Just because he gave her that doesn’t mean he gave her the key.”

“He did. I know.”

“Psychic ability?”

She raised a brow. “You’ve always accused me of having it.”

“Then maybe we ought to think about who
wouldn’t
benefit from having her move into Lance’s ready-made love nest?”

“Julia,” she said, as much as it pained her to think.

“Baxter,” Cameron added.

“Hammerhead,” they said simultaneously.

The crowd of convention-goers had become larger and louder at the Embassy Hotel, the mood heating up as the weekend loomed.

Max arrived early after a quick bowl of delicious potato cheese soup at a corner cafe. She’d done that with forethought, arriving before the appointed time, wanting a glass of wine, the noise, and the anonymity to allow her time to ponder the day’s revelations. It also helped bleed off some of the sexual tension Cameron had forced on her. By the time Angela showed up, and Witt, Max would be completely in control of herself again.

She was aware the best tactic would have been to confront Julia ASAP about being in the office the night Lance died, about what Julia had witnessed, and regarding the supposed video that Bud had made. But Max wimped out. Right now, she couldn’t think past the games she’d have to play with Angela tonight. She only hoped she could carry it off.

Choosing a table in the center of the bar, she faced the dance floor, her left side to the entrance. She thought it ill-advised to look at Hammerhead when he took up his sentinel duty, especially when she started the thing with Witt. Hammerhead could probably read every thought on her face, every nuance of nervousness, every little fib.

What if Witt didn’t show? Oh my God. She pushed back the fear. He wouldn’t dare stand her up.

Max went back to her musings. She liked Hammerhead as the prime suspect. That would solve all her problems as well as the case. He was truly the one who stood to lose the most if Angela belonged exclusively to Lance. She would have no guilt over proving him a killer. She had little feeling about him. It was different with Baxter and Julia. It would hurt to turn either of them in. And then there was Angela, another matter altogether.

Ah, there it was, the thing that bothered her the most. Tonight, she’d have to tackle Angela with the hard questions concerning her affair with Baxter and what Julia had seen, said, and done the night of Lance’s murder. Max didn’t want to ask, and the reason was stupid, even pathetic, as pathetic as Baxter Newton lusting after a woman forty years his junior. Perhaps worse.