Desperate to the Max

by JB Skully

And Max was lost.

  He kissed her as he did everything else, with concentration and tenacity. His tongue played with hers, then he backed out to lick her lower lips. Finally, he angled his head and took total control of her mouth. She slid down his chest, her nipples hard and aching with the contact, until her shoes hit the deck planking.

  He didn't let her go.

  She didn't want him to.

  She shoved her fingers through his short, spiky hair and kissed him back for all she was worth. She poured all her long lonely months without Cameron into that sweet, yet all-consuming kiss.

  He slid his hands down her back, slowly, to her butt and pulled her close. He was hard and delicious against her belly. His taste burst in her mouth. His tongue stroked, mimicking the ways he could use it elsewhere on her body. He retreated to nip her lip, then soothed the spot with a warm, wet caress.

  "Ask me,” he whispered.

  Their lips so close they brushed, she tingled, then murmured, “Ask you what?"

  "Invite me inside."

  Her lungs hurt as she dragged in a breath. She wanted to. She wanted to so bad.

  He rocked her slightly, his erection at her belly, her nipples hard and tight against his chest. Her fingers spasmed in his hair.

  "I can't,” she whispered, then threw her arms around his neck and crushed herself against him. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't smile. She couldn't beg. She didn't actually think she could cry. Her body ached with everything she wanted and couldn't have. She felt his arms go round her back and his big hands stroke her soothingly.

  "One day, you won't be so afraid, Max."

  "I'm not afraid,” she mumbled against his neck.

  She was. Terrified, even. Worse, she couldn't figure out why anymore.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was after two in the morning. Max lay in her twin bed, Buzzard the Cat snuggled in the crook between ear and chin. Her mind and body still buzzed like she was pumped full of electricity. Her thoughts jumped from one image or sound to another.

  Witt's big hand resting on the steering wheel. Those killer black leather boots. His musk aftershave. That incredible, devastating kiss. Her crippling fear at that last moment. His sweet goodnight. The crunch of the gravel on the drive as he walked away.

  And more, from earlier in the night. Bethany's darkened dining room. The script. The things she'd said to those men. The words they whispered to her, the begging voices. Bethany had so loved the neediness that sneaked through each harsh utterance. She'd thrived on it, blossomed beneath its overwhelming brilliance.

  Then Achilles had called her a bitch.

  Max sat straight up in bed. The cat slipped down the pillow, came to rest on the mattress beside her, curled close once more, and started to purr.

  "What's the matter, my love?” Cameron's voice filled the otherwise quiet room. She always imagined that she could hear him through her ears instead of her mind, as if that made talking to a ghost somehow more palatable. Not quite so ... crazy.

  She took a deep breath. “I know where I heard Achilles’ last words."

  "Where?” The sound smoothed out, lengthened, soothing her with its softness.

  "A dream I had during that first case.” It had been more a “vision” of a past event in a murder victim's life. A terrible event. A defining moment.

  "Wendy Gregory's case."

  She called it a case. She didn't know what else to call it. She'd been driven to find Wendy's killer herself, though, of course, Witt had accused her of hindering his investigation, even suspected her of having something to do with the murder. Witt was long past suspecting her.

  Witt now wanted something else. She shoved the thought aside.

  The words in that dream had stuck. So had the dream voice. So had the man himself.

  Bud Traynor. Wendy Gregory's horrific father. Through the dream, the vision, Max had seen the worst of the terrible things he'd done to his daughter, and she'd vowed to make him pay. She hadn't fulfilled that vow, but somehow she'd known she'd get another chance. Maybe this was it.

  Achilles’ words had echoed the ones Bud Traynor uttered in that vision.

  Max didn't believe in coincidence. Everything under the sun, moon, and stars was connected. Everything had a purpose and a reason. She just had to figure out that reason.

  "You're obsessed with the man, Max. He's the bogeyman hiding in your every vision."

  "He's been in the last two visions. Maybe he's the connection between all these murders."

  Cameron was silent longer than necessary. “His voice?"

  She wondered if he was humoring her or needling her. Still, she told him the truth. “I can't say for sure. In fact, until I remembered where I'd heard those words, I don't think I'd have associated him with this Achilles character at all.” Except for the crawling sensation at the nape of her neck. Then Bethany had taken over, and she'd lost the feeling.

  "Bethany took over. Such a convenient excuse, sweetheart."

  "You don't think I felt that way about her precious Achilles?"

  "I think you've been into denial of your own feelings since the day your mother died when you were eight years old and left you an orphan."

  The thought of her mother still caused an ache in her chest. “Low blow, Cameron. I'm not denying anything. I simply let Bethany out so he'd be convinced."

  "If Achilles killed her, he already knew you weren't her when you answered the phone."

  She hated it when he threw logic back in her face. “I haven't got that figured out yet. I'm still in the investigative mode. I don't know anything."

  She could have lied again and said she didn't feel anything, that only Bethany did. She could have avoided his question by saying she didn't remember what she felt. Instead she told him the truth. “He scared us."

  She realized what she'd said and switched immediately to first person point of view, hoping in vain that Cameron hadn't caught the little gaff. “I think he liked to scare Bethany a lot. I think he liked to get under her guard with how special she was to him, how much he needed her, wanted her, then he'd throw some little thing in there to undermine her. A master manipulator."

  Just like Bud Traynor.

  * * * *

  It was dark and cold, and her tummy rumbled painfully as if she hadn't eaten for days. Her cheeks were wet, her eyes, glued shut with goop, aching around the rims. She hid in the closet behind the plastic sweater hanger so Jada wouldn't find her.

  Max stretched her hand out and wiped the tears from her cheeks, smooth, unlined cheeks, plump with baby fat. If she could open her eyes, she knew it would not be her closet she sat in, nor her body she moved in.

  She was Bethany as an eight-year-old child.

  Max opened her eyes and rolled with the vision, became Bethany Spring, burrowed into Bethany's childhood suffering.

  She heard voices and laughter, a squeal as they looked for her. Jada would find her in the end. She always did. And she always brought her friends with her to laugh at the fat girl's tears.

  Today it was worse. Today Jada had Billy Johnson over, along with Susie and Patty and Tommy. Billy Johnson. He was tall and handsome and the most popular boy in school, and once he'd even held the door open for Bethany. He hadn't laughed. He'd smiled, and she could have sworn it was a real smile.

  Now he was Jada's friend and Jada's age, two years older than Bethany. Today, Jada had told them all how Bethany's dress had blown up in the wind on the way home from school and shown her underpants. Her gargantuan underpants. Fatty panties, Jada had said. They'd all laughed. Even Billy. That's when Bethany had hidden away in the closet.

  She didn't want to hate Jada. Jesus said it wasn't good to hate. Jesus said you might not get to heaven if you hated people. So she didn't hate Jada. She just couldn't say she loved her.

  Laughter, closer. She cowered against the wall. Her tummy rumbled again, and she wrapped her arms around it so the sound wouldn't give away her hiding place.

  Max reached up once more to w
ipe the tears and goop from the child's eyes. She wanted to see.

  Footsteps, rustling, muffled laughter, whispering. Then they were gone, just like that, the sounds hanging in the stale air of the closet to haunt her.

  "Bethany.” She almost started crying again. Mommy. The door handle rattled, then the door itself was thrown open. Bethany scrambled out on her hands and knees and breathed in the flowery scent of her mother's perfume.

  "What did they say, sweetie?” Pulling her to the bed, her mother cuddled her to her bosom, then sat, arms still tight around her. Bethany curled her legs and laid her head in Mommy's lap.

  "Jada said I wore size extra fat.” Tears welled. She squeezed her eyes shut to keep the telltale drops from sneaking out. “Why does she hate me so much?"

  "Oh, sweetie. She doesn't hate you. She's just trying to make friends. Every little girl wants to do that. Jada just does it the wrong way sometimes."

  Bethany didn't know the right way either. As hard as she tried to make people like her, she didn't have any friends to impress at all. But if she did, oh yes, if she did, she'd never say bad things about Jada just to make them like her. “I'd never do that to her,” she mumbled, her face pressed to her mother's flour-dusted apron.

  "You have to be tougher, sweetheart. People will always say things like that. They'll call you fat, and they'll call you ugly. You can't listen to them. You have to remember that I love you anyway, no matter what you look like. You're a beautiful little girl inside."

  No matter what she looked like. Fat and ugly is what she looked like. No one else could ever love her. Only Mommy. Because mommies had to love their little girls. What if she got fatter? How fat could little girls get before their mommies stopped loving them, too? New tears burned behind her eyelids.

  With a rhythmic stroke of her fingers, Mommy pushed her hair behind her ear. Her hands were warm and smelled of baking chocolate.

  "Jada's mean,” she whispered to her mommy and hoped she would agree.

  Mommy bent down and nuzzled her ear. “People are mean when someone's different."

  "I wish I wasn't different.” Please, please God. She wished for that more than anything else in the world.

  Mommy was silent for a long time. The quiet scared her, and then, “Do you want to lose weight? Will that help?"

  Bethany thought about it. Sniffled. Maybe if Mommy helped her, maybe she could do it. “Yeah."

  "All right. I'll help you. But let's start tomorrow, okay? I'm making your favorite for dessert."

  "What?” She already knew, and her tummy jumped up and down thinking about it.

  "Chocolate truffles with raspberry sauce.

  "Mmmm."

  Oh my, oh my, truffles were her most favorite thing in all the world. Especially the way Mommy made them with raspberry sauce. Her most favorite except maybe for bubblegum ice cream. And carrot cake with the cream cheese frosting and chopped walnuts. And ... no, no, truffles were the best.

  "All right,” she whispered. Her stomach rumbled happily in anticipation. “I'll start losing weight tomorrow."

  Max awoke to find Buzzard laying on her pillow, curled around her head, his snout pressed against her ear, his purr like the growling of Bethany's stomach. The full moon reached through the branches of the elm outside to stretch across her bed like long, taloned fingers.

  She'd never tasted truffles except in the Bethany vision. She was terrified now to try. What if she became addicted?

  For Bethany had not started her diet the next day, nor the day after that. Later, when she was in her teens, she'd tried and failed at it so many times that she'd come to believe she was a failure. Max knew these things as clearly as she knew that the dream had been a fragment of Bethany's memories. Bethany had been the ugly duckling always waiting to reach swanhood. She'd never made it. Now she never would.

  Max thought of all the words she'd ascribed to the woman; neurotic, possessive, pathetic, envious, manic, pitiful, jealous. They were all an understatement, misnomers, symptoms of a larger concept. Bethany Spring had been desperate. Desperate to be accepted, to be wanted, to be needed. Desperate to be loved. The woman's desperation seeped into Max's bones, filling her organs, taking over her emotions.

  "I have to get her out.” She said it aloud, knowing Cameron wasn't far away. He was never far away, his ghost tethered to her like a dog on a leash or a fish on a hook.

  "Solve her mystery, Max. She won't be desperate anymore. She'll rest. She only wants to rest."

  She turned, dislodging the cat. He stretched, extending his claws, catching her at the corner of her eye with one sharp little razor. “Shit.” Like a tear, a warm trickle of blood slid down her temple into her hair. She wiped it away, licked her finger, the taste like tin in her mouth.

  "Do you realize what you did in the dream?"

  She sat, she listened, she observed. She even learned something.

  "You acted."

  She gingerly tested the small cut by her eye. It stung. “Huh?"

  "You changed the dream."

  "What are you talking about? I didn't do anything."

  "You made her wipe her eyes so that you could see."

  "Yeah. Big deal."

  "It is, Max. Don't you see what it means?"

  Maybe she was only half-awake, but no, she didn't get it. She was too tired to say the words aloud, letting him read her mind instead. Sometimes there were real advantages to living with a ghost.

  "Come on, Max. If you can get her to wipe her eyes, you can go back into your vision of the night she died and get her to turn her head and look at the person who killed her."

  Chapter Fourteen

  Max was drawn to Garden Street like a bee to honey, like a duck to water, like a fly to dead flesh. It was eleven o'clock the next morning. She'd cruised the quiet neighborhood street twice, noted two cars parked in front of the duplex—the same cinnamon Honda Civic and gray Camry station wagon that had been there last night—then parked her Miata beneath a shade tree three doors down, close enough to see the comings and goings at 452, but well out of sight of Ladybird Long's front window.

  Before leaving her room, she'd fortified herself with a bowl of cereal, a cup of coffee, two pieces of toast, a banana, and some carrot sticks. She now felt like puking. Bethany's fault, Max was sure. The idea of her finger down her throat right now seemed quite appealing. Rolling her window down, she let the late morning breeze wash over her face and leaned against the door with her head on her hand, watching, waiting. For what, she wasn't quite sure. She'd know it when she saw it.

  Her boss, Sunny Wright of Wright Temporary Accounting Services, had woken her from a deep sleep at eight. Max couldn't remember sleeping that late in years.

  "I've got a great job for you, Max.” Sunny's voice had been as bright as her name. “Consolidations."

  Max had rolled over, yawned. “I hate consolidations, Sunny.” After a ten-year career, she realized she hated accounting entirely. In fact, she had a growing fondness for murder investigations. Mmmm. Lucky Witt. Wouldn't he be pleased to hear that?

  "But honey, this is setting up the whole system, rolling the structures, you even get to choose the structure.” Sunny said it as if she'd offered a box of Godiva chocolates or sex with Mel Gibson as the Road Warrior.

  Max had pushed her face into the pillow to shut out the sun streaming in the window, then came up for a breather. “No can do this time, Sunny. Sorry."

  "Are you still in bed, Max?” There was something close to amazement in Sunny's voice.

  "Yep."

  "Are you sick? Should I call for an ambulance?” Sunny was completely serious.

  No, she needed an exorcist; she'd been possessed by a night owl. She'd lain awake until sometime after three. The cat had woken her at five for a handful of crispies—he'd really become a little beggar—and as soon as she'd finally convinced Sunny she really did hate consolidations, she'd pulled the pillow over her head and gone back to sleep until nine. Unheard of.

  Now, sitt
ing in her car with the sun lulling her, the scent of freshly mowed grass tantalizing her nostrils, her lids unbearably heavy, she was almost asleep...

  Someone knocked on her passenger side window.

  Max jerked, bit down on her tongue, and banged her elbow on the car door. Her heart racing a mile a minute, she looked over to see Ladybird Long waving exuberantly at her. The woman was short enough to accomplish it without bending over.

  Busted.

  Ladybird's hair seemed to sparkle with blue diamonds. She wore another durable flowered dress, and the tops of her knee-high stockings had slipped to mid-calf. Beside her sat a wheeled metal basket overflowing with bulging paper and plastic grocery bags. Her navy purse hung on her arm, and she'd buttoned the top button of her lightweight cardigan.

  Max turned her key in the ignition and rolled down the passenger side window.

  "Were you waiting for me?” Ladybird chirped.

  It seemed rude to say anything besides, “Yes."

  "Oh my, Witt will be so pleased,” Ladybird murmured breathlessly. “Please come in for a cup of tea and a sandwich then. How long have you been waiting?"

  Oh God, not more food. Max glanced at her watch, wondering exactly why Witt was going to be so pleased. “Only a few minutes."

  The woman bounced on her sensible walking shoes. “Oh my, oh my,” she breathed, as if her life were bereft of visitors besides her son. “Do you like cheese and tomato sandwiches? I'm sure that's what Ladybird Johnson would have served if she had an English tea at the White House.” Max's stomach alternately rumbled and revolted at the thought. Ladybird went on to describe more delicacies. “I have a can of salmon. We can have salmon and cucumber. I even have some of that nice thin-sliced bread in the freezer. It'll only take a few minutes to thaw if we hold it between our hands. Oh my, oh my."

  Inside her, Bethany jumped up and down, mouth watering in anticipation. Max hoped her stomach didn't explode.

  No, you cannot have any truffles afterwards. She hoped Bethany heard.

  Max rolled up both windows, grabbed her purse, climbed out, then locked the door behind her.

  "Here, let me take that for you.” She took the handle of the grocery basket and, like a trapped rabbit, followed Ladybird down her front path and onto the porch.