Dead to the Max (Max Starr Series, Book 1, a paranormal romance/mystery)

by Jasmine Haynes

  “Except you added the time.”

  “She died at ten o’clock, okay? Do you have to question everything?” Yet that was normal, familiar, almost comforting.

  “You live in denial of your talents.”

  She was quite happy that way, too.

  Wendy’s plant drooped sadly on the lateral file. “Oh, would you look at that?” She lifted the limp fronds.

  “Why don’t you tell me about this alibi?”

  “I was trying to tell you”—before he got on her case—“I was at Billy Joe’s from approximately nine-thirty until a little before eleven. So despite what Nick thinks, that still gives him time to kill Wendy and get there to see me before I left.”

  “Jury’s still out on Nick then, huh? If logic prevails.”

  She ignored the dig. “Wendy might not believe he did it, but I require proof.”

  Cameron snorted. “So what do we have here? Remy wears a ring similar to one you saw in a dream—”

  “I’ve got to get a better look at that ring.”

  “And Nick implies you’re his alibi for the time Wendy died. Let’s face it, sweetheart, we haven’t got a shitload of useful evidence in all this. Even if the ring is exactly the same, what the hell does it prove?”

  “It proves Remy beat her at one time or another.”

  “It only says that someone wearing a ring exactly like his was in your dream. Because you never saw a face, did you, Max?”

  Dammit, no, she hadn’t seen a face. In addition, while she didn’t like Remy, she hadn’t picked up quite the same level of malevolence from him that she’d sensed in the bad man of her dream.

  Max headed to the tiny lunchroom, flipping light switches as she went. In minutes, the rich aroma of brewing coffee filled the area. Her stomach growled appreciatively. She filled another pot with water and returned to hydrate Wendy’s thirsty plant.

  With liquid and light, it perked up in minutes. Its death would have been a bad omen.

  “What am I doing wrong, Cameron? Why can’t I figure this all out?”

  “Are you talking to yourself, Max?”

  She jumped. Water from the half-full pot splashed all over her black suede shoes and the legs of her slacks. “Jesus Christ, you scared me, Mr. Hackett.”

  “Call me Remy. And please don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”

  She passed a hand across her brow. Jesus Christ was bad. Screw was okay. All right. Fine. She’d get the hang of it.

  “I’m sorry. I forgot myself for a moment.” Dickhead. She enjoyed the word, even if it was only in her mind. “Well, now that my heart rate is back to normal...” She fanned herself. “I was just thinking what a nice class ring you have. Rubies are one of my favorite stones. May I see it a little more closely?”

  Her approach certainly lacked finesse, but Max was past caring. Cameron laughed from somewhere in the breakroom. He’d undoubtedly gotten high on the scent of fresh coffee. Or he’d sneaked a cigarette.

  Remy held out his hand. Max refused to actually touch his fingers. “It’s not a ruby,” he said. “I preferred a garnet.”

  Max saw that now. Damn. The stone was not the bright, eye-catching red of the gem in her dream. Remy’s was rustier in color. She hadn’t seen the dream ring closely enough to notice other contrasts, but Remy wore his on the pinkie, whereas the monster in Wendy’s vision wore it on the fourth finger.

  “Quite diaphanous, don’t you think?”

  Diaphanous. She wasn’t sure he’d used the word correctly. Then again, she wasn’t sure he hadn’t.

  “It’s very nice.” She stepped back, catching Remy’s speculative look. All she could do was throw him her best ditsy, dumb-blonde smile. Even if she wasn’t blond.

  “You’re in early, Max.” He stood in the doorway of her office. Somehow, she felt trapped.

  She spread her hands. “An accountant’s work is never done.”

  “I’ve asked. No one admits making that call to your agency.”

  Max turned, fluffed the fronds of Wendy’s spider plant. “Oh well, must have been a ghost.”

  He made a sound halfway between a laugh and a snort. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  From the breakroom, there was a crash, then the sound of something heavy smashing on the linoleum tile floor, then more crashes, in rapid succession. Remy jerked, turned, then half-ran, half-skipped across the bullpen, with Max fast on his heels.

  Cameron was calling attention to himself again.

  Remy stopped two feet into the coffee room. Max almost slammed into his back. Sidestepping around him, she shook her head as she gazed at Cameron’s mélange of broken crockery. He’d knocked the entire rack of mugs off the wall. Of the twelve they’d started with, only four survived.

  “What a mess. I’ll clean it up. I already know where the broom is.” Max turned and stopped dead.

  Remy’s face flamed red. “I-I-I—” he stammered, never making it past the pronoun.

  Remy Hackett looked as if he’d seen a ghost.

  What had Cameron done to him while her back was turned?

  Not a damn thing, I swear. On a stack of Bibles.

  “Remy?” She thought about waving a hand in his face or snapping her fingers. “Mr. Hackett?”

  He took a deep, gulping breath, then continued with their conversation as if nothing had happened. “As I was saying before we were interrupted, because you see, I hadn’t actually finished my sentence, and what I meant to say was that I don’t believe in ghosts per se, but I’m sure in some metaphysical sense there’s always the possibility that they coexist with us on some alternate plane—” He stopped abruptly and stared at Max.

  She stared back at him with eyes that felt as round as saucers. “What are you talking about?”

  Remy laughed. A self-conscious, artificial sound that raised goose bumps on her arms. “Oh, nothing. Silly.”

  Whatever. He was a strange one. “I’ll clean up, then bring you a cup of coffee,” she offered.

  “Yes. Good idea.”

  He turned on his heel and left the room.

  She could only stare after him.

  “Catching flies?” Cameron blew in her ear.

  She snapped her mouth shut, then she shook her head back and forth. “That was undoubtedly the strangest thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life. And I’ve seen a helluva lot.”

  “He told a lie,” Cameron whispered.

  She blew a rude noise through her lips. “About not believing in ghosts? Yeah, right.”

  “He definitely believes.”

  “Well, I suppose seeing a ghost, especially one as scary as you, is enough to make anyone a little wonky.”

  “You don’t get it. He couldn’t see me. I didn’t make him wonky. It was the lie.”

  “Oh for God’s sake.”

  “It’s his Achilles Heel, Maxi. Milk it for all it’s worth.” With that, he left, in a swirl of peppermint, coffee, and sudden silence.

  Max tipped her head, considering. Cameron was right. They’d caught Remy in a lie. Even if it was a strange, incomprehensible lie, one not even worth telling in the first place.

  But just how did Cameron expect her to milk it for all it was worth?

  “Yeah right, make a mess and leave me to clean it up.” She forgot to yell at him for calling her Maxi.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lilah Bloom, nail technician extraordinaire, sat on a raised, red brick dais in the window of the Hair Hunters Salon on Main Street, three blocks down from Billy Joe’s Western Round Up. In her early thirties, Lilah was a throwback to an earlier time. Her red hair beehived to the amazing height of at least six inches, purple and black tortoise shell glasses framed her eyes with sixties-era cat’s-eye rims, and her hot pink plastic earrings curlicued to her shoulders. She looked like fallout from a nuclear bomb scare. Sitting across from her, Max was afraid she’d either get radiation poisoning or die from overexposure to polish remover.

  Lilah buffed Max’s thumbnail with stubby, plump fingers p
ainted a sparkly fluorescent pink as if Minnie Mouse had gone mad with a psychedelic nail job. “So you were a friend of Wendy’s?”

  “Yes,” Max answered. It was six o’clock on Monday evening, and the seven stylist chairs in the salon were filled. The small shop resonated with the sound of blow dryers, laughter, and ringing phones. Perm solution polluted the air. A harried, young woman sat on a chair in the waiting area, hissing “no” at the small child beside her.

  Seated next to the window and huddled over the manicurist’s table, with the cacophony around them acting almost as a cocoon, Max probed. “It’s just terrible what happened to her.”

  Other than a slight raising of one plucked eyebrow, Lilah ignored the statement and tugged on Max’s fingers. “Relax. Just let your hand go limp. That’s better. You’ve never had your nails done before, have you?”

  “No. But Wendy had beautiful nails. I know that doesn’t sound like a good reason for calling you, but—”

  Lilah cut Max off. “Wendy could never relax her hands. She’d start talking, and before you knew it, her fingers were all tensed up. I had to shake her.”

  Max quit trying to explain why she was there. Lilah didn’t care. “What did she talk about that got her so upset?”

  “Work, home, you name it. She hated her marriage. She hated her job. I’m a real good listener. I think I was like her mother-confessor or something.” Lilah filed and shaped Max’s blunt nails, squaring them off. “I felt sorry for her, you know. She didn’t have any friends, like that husband kept a leash on her or something, always approving and disapproving whatever she did.”

  So that’s how Hal had “taken care” of her. Max felt Wendy’s tears in the back of her throat. Wendy’s best friend was a manicurist she saw for an hour every other week. It was damn sad. “Sounds like you didn’t like her husband.”

  “The men in her life treated her like dog crap, pardon my French. No man would get away with that kind of bull around me. A frying pan right between the eyes is what they’d get.” Lilah reached for a pair of clippers, then cut back Max’s cuticles. “I used to say, ‘Wendy, get a grip. You don’t have to take this. Tell ’em to go blow. Give ’em a taste of their own medicine.’”

  “And did she?”

  “What do you think?” Lilah rolled her eyes beneath heavily mascaraed lashes. “She’d say ‘you’re right, Lilah,’ and then she’d come back the next time with the same story. I encouraged her, I even coached her exactly how to say it, but she just didn’t have enough...” Searching for a word, she waved the nail implement in the air. “Moxy, I guess.”

  “Did she ever fight with her husband?” The questions went on. During the next half hour, Max learned everything she could possibly want to know about Wendy’s feelings, but not one thing that might lead to her killer.

  The buffing, filing, shaping, and clipping part was done, and the manicurist was silent a moment as she poured white acrylic powder into one small bowl and some foul-smelling astringent solution into another. “This might sting a little when it first goes on.” She moistened the powder and spread it onto Max’s nails. “I was the last person to see her alive, you know.”

  The damn stuff did sting. “Mmm.” Max’s answer was non-committal, designed to draw Lilah out. Not that the woman needed any help. This could prove promising.

  “The last person except for her killer, of course. The police are real interested in whatever I might know,” the manicurist continued.

  Ahh, so Detective DeWitt had already been here. Max would’ve been disappointed if he hadn’t traced every move of Wendy’s last day on earth. “I guess they must have asked you if Wendy seemed strange or preoccupied.”

  “Sure did. She was real keyed up. Worse than usual. I couldn’t get her to relax, even had to redo her polish on two fingers when she muffed ’em up.” The stroke of the brush against Max’s nails was almost soothing. Lilah went on. “Wendy always wore real placid colors, you know, pastels, like Hawaiian Sunset or Bali Blush or Peach Blossom. Not that they didn’t look good on her, but she never went for the wild stuff.”

  That didn’t jibe with the vibrant colors in Wendy’s date book.

  “I tried to get her to go for Down-n-Dirty Burgundy, but she freaked just at the name. It was that husband of hers.” Max’s blood pulsed a half beat faster as Lilah spoke. “He hated it when she wore anything bright. He was the one who insisted on a silver car. Wendy wanted red. She loved red. But I never could get her to wear Red Hot Lips.”

  Lilah didn’t miss a brushstroke as she talked, dipping the tip into both solution and powder. She finished one hand and waggled her fingers for the other.

  “And that’s what you told the police? That Hal wouldn’t let her wear red nail polish?”

  “Are you kidding?” she scoffed. “What the hell would they care what nail polish she wore or that her husband even had to approve the color of her car?”

  What those insightful goodies revealed about Hal and their relationship would definitely interest Witt.

  Lilah lifted Max’s hand, studying the thickness of the goop she’d just applied on each nail. “What I told the police was that after wearing pastel colors for the five years she’s been coming here, Wendy suddenly wanted Cajun Spice. And she bought some navy mascara when she was strictly black-brown.”

  Max gasped for emphasis. “Where do you think she went that night?”

  “Somewhere that husband of hers would have been pissed as hell about if he’d known.”

  An image of Nicholas Drake popped into Max’s head, followed by that of Hal Gregory admitting his wife had had an affair.

  The question was had Hal known Wendy planned to see her lover that night? And if so, what had he done about it?

  * * * * *

  Max’s fingers still tingled as she left the shop. Holding her nails up to the late afternoon sunlight, she admired the Cajun Spice polish. It was bright, not quite red, not quite orange. Sexy. It made her feel sexy.

  “Like a woman who enjoys letting a man fuck her up the ass,” Cameron murmured from somewhere off to her right.

  “Quit mentioning that,” she whispered in case anyone noticed she was talking to herself.

  “I’ll quit talking about it when you admit you liked it.”

  She had liked it.

  “Say it aloud, so everyone can hear you. So you can hear yourself.”

  Never. But she did wonder if Cajun Spice had made Wendy feel sexy and alive at six o’clock last Monday night. Five hours before she died.

  Max ran across the street, then turned at the corner by the bank.

  “Oof.” She smacked into a well-muscled chest. Her nose bumped the man’s chin, and her purse skidded down her arm. She had time only to register the fact that he smelled of some subtle aftershave before she remembered her manicure. “My nails!”

  He steadied her, his big hands on her shoulders—God, he smelled good—and asked, “All right now?”

  Damn, she knew that voice. Max stared at Detective Witt’s button-down shirt. “You’re wearing teal.”

  “Yeah, well, plain brown had me stuck in a rut.” He tugged her purse back up her arm to her shoulder. His hand remained there. Her flesh tingled even more than they had with the nail products.

  “Wendy loved teal,” she blurted.

  “How do you know?”

  She looked up into blue eyes way too penetrating. He hadn’t let go of her shoulder. “It was in her planner. She used that color a lot.”

  “You might try a little teal yourself.” He fingered the lapel of her black, utilitarian jacket, the back of his hand narrowly missing the upper swell of her breast, then took a step back. Detective DeWitt Quentin Long up close and smelling too good to be true was heady. A pace back, dressed in a black suit, teal shirt, and striped tie, the man was downright devastating.

  She had trouble catching her breath.

  “See you managed to find our witness.”

  “Witness?” Max wondered if her brains had suddenly dri
bbled out her ears. She should have had an explanation prepared for just this eventuality. On second thought, a good answer should have popped into her head. She was sure, if not for his disturbing proximity, one would have.

  Witt picked up her hand in his big paw. “Nice manicure. What’d you two talk about?”

  Her fingers were on fire where he held them captive. Truth seemed to be the only way out of a sticky situation. “I asked her if she knew who killed Wendy.”

  A ghost of a smile touched Witt’s lips. “And did Lilah have an opinion?”

  “I think she’d put her money on Wendy’s husband.”

  Witt picked up her other hand. His skin was warm. He made her whole body warm. With his palms up, laying hers over his, he examined her fingers. “Nice color. Cajun Spice.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Lilah was very particular about the difference between it and Bali Blush.” She suspected he was laughing. Then he looked straight in her eyes. “It looks good on you. I like it.”

  She gulped and ignored the shiver that threatened to course down her arms to the places he touched her. “Wendy never wore Cajun Spice until that last night.”

  “Didn’t wear navy mascara, either.”

  “I think Lilah believes Hal killed Wendy because she had an affair.”

  “Or Lilah wants you and me to believe that.”

  “Hmm. That’s one conclusion.” She pulled her lip between her teeth, considered it. While another small part of her brain asked why the hell she stood on the sidewalk outside the bank letting the detective hold her hands.

  And why did it make her sort of gushy inside?

  “Any other conclusions?” he prompted.

  “That Hal Gregory was a very controlling man, and when he found out he could no longer control his wife, he offed her.”

  He tugged on her hands to get her to look up. “Good cops are always suspicious,” he said. “If the husband is broken up, we ask if it’s an act. If he’s stoic, we ask what he’s hiding. If he wants her car back—which, incidentally, is considered the crime scene—we ask why he wants it so badly. If he never asks about it, we wanna know what’s wrong with him since it’s a new model. If the manicurist says the victim never wore Cajun Spice, we ask why she wants us to know that.” He paused. It was the longest speech with the most full sentences Max had ever heard him make. “And if someone keeps turning up to question the witnesses, we ask why she’s so interested in the death of a woman she supposedly never knew.”