Desperate to the Max (2 page)

Witt focused on her.

God, he was ridiculously cute. She’d never been partial to blond hair, blue eyes, and big, big hands. Until now. Not that this was a love thing. After all, she’d known him only a few weeks, and the first week of that she’d been his prime suspect in another murder case.

It was obvious they were having some sort of Mexican stand off, and she’d have to make the first move. Max fluffed her short, dark hair in the mirror and checked that her light make-up still accentuated her brown eyes. Climbing out of her red Miata, she slammed the car door, looked both ways, then crossed the street, high heels clicking against the concrete.

She didn’t realize Witt’s mouth was hanging open until she leaned into the window of his car.

“What?” She looked down at her suit. “Have I got mustard stains or something?” Damn, she knew that pretzel-on-the-run at the mall was a bad idea.

“A new suit.” His voice was rather choked.

“Well ... yeah.” She couldn’t very well meet his mother in one of the black pantsuits she wore for work every day. This one had a skirt.

“You went shopping.” Wonder tinged the words.

“Yeah. I’m a woman. I shop.” Except that she hadn’t been shopping in almost two years, not since she quit her job as a CPA at the age of thirty and took up temping. Not since the day her husband Cameron died.

“You’re wearing that to my mother’s?” Witt was practically bug-eyed.

She stepped back, spread her arms, looked down again. “What’s wrong with my outfit?”

“Nothing.” He swallowed. “Not a damn thing.”

It was the first suit she’d bought in those same two years. The first skirt she’d worn in the same amount of time except the one she donned when she went out for a night of dancing at Billy Joe’s Western Round Up. This skirt wasn’t anywhere near that short. Well, there was that slit from mid-calf to mid-thigh. That did seem to be where his gaze was fixed.

“Didn’t know you had legs, Max,” he whispered with a note of reverence.

A tingle shot across her belly. She ignored it. The man was a liar. He’d seen her at the Round Up. Then again, he’d been a tad pissed that night, and she’d been tangled in a flock of two-steppers on the dance floor. “Detective, we’ve got work to do.”

He sighed, and pushed his door open. “Yeah. Your vision.”

God, he was tall. Even with three-inch spike heels and the fact that at five-foot-six, she wasn’t exactly petite, he still towered over her. He wore her favorite charcoal suit, black shirt, and red tie. There was something about black and red on a hunky blond cop that did her in. He smelled good, too. What was that aftershave? The scent drove her crazy. Especially when she sat in the cab of his truck. In the dark. Alone with him.

“What happened this time?”

Damn, he always interrupted when the fantasy was getting good.

She told him all, start to finish, including the phone sex, though she stopped short of any explicit details. She especially pointed out that the woman’s favorite, and definitely most important, caller was someone who called himself Achilles. Witt took the psychic vision thing much more easily than he had the last two times. Like a duck to water. Like a bird to sky. Like a homicide detective to forensic evidence. Hmm, they really had come a long way.

“Then he conked her on the head,” she finished.

Witt leaned back against the car door, crossed his arms, and lasered her with his baby blues. “He?”

“I’m assuming the murderer was the guy on the phone. Her Achilles.”

“Call could have come from anywhere in the country. Anywhere in the world, for that matter. Odds are against her killer being a guy from the sex line.”

Max remembered the elusive sound of Kitty-Kat paws, a noise that could have been soft-soled shoes, and the man’s lie about the cell phone. A little voice—maybe Cameron’s—warned her not to get too cocky about her abilities. Last time it had led to disaster. “It’s a hunch.” She closed her eyes. Tested it. “It feels right. He knew where she lived. I think he was actually in the house.”

Witt gave her that point and moved on. “When’d the murder occur?”

“I don’t know. Maybe last night.”

“Where?”

“Over there.” She pointed to the neat, blue-trimmed house beyond her car. “And Witt?”

He waited expectantly.

“The address is 452.”

Silence. He straightened away from the car. His blond brows pulled together. Finally, after an interminable minute, “Don’t do this again.”

“Don’t you see—”

“Yeah, I do.” His features hardened. “Another murder. Another victim. And
that
number tying them all up in a nice, neat, little package.”

“But—”

He held up one finger. She shut her mouth. Standing side by side, they both stared at the house.

She wouldn’t point out that he didn’t believe in coincidence. Witt would have been the first to say that was true. Cops simply didn’t accept coincidence as an answer. Then again, there was
this
coincidence. This wasn’t the first murder she’d witnessed in her visions—she was beginning to believe it wouldn’t be her last either—and this wasn’t the first time that number had popped up. First 452 was a flight number that tied in with a woman’s death. Then 452 was the number of a storage locker that led them to a witness in another killing. The number 452 was somehow cosmically important. God only knew why.

It was now the number of the house on Garden Street where murder had occurred.

She shrugged. Acceptance. No point in fighting the vision this time. “I guess there’s nothing left to do but find out why she was killed, and who did the deed.”

“Tall order for a skinny thing like you.”

She glanced at him sideways, but his focus was on the two-story house. She couldn’t read his expression. A definite cop expression, not giving a thing away. She should have told him 102 pounds wasn’t that skinny, but decided denial wasn’t worth the effort.

Witt raised his chin, nose forward, as if scenting a crime. “Did she live alone?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

He pointed. “Then aren’t you curious who that woman is crossing the lawn?”

Busy watching him, she’d forgotten to watch the house.

Woman? She looked more like a girl. A waif. She couldn’t have been more than five-foot-three and without a doubt weighing in on the underside of eighty pounds. Now
that
was skinny. She wore leggings, a loose-fitting sweater, and hi-top shoes. Her legs, encased in black Spandex, looked like twigs. She jangled a ring of keys, fingering for the right one, then climbed the two steps to the front porch. Despite the set of keys, she pushed the bell. Above her head, the porch light still shone.

“Where’d she come from?” Max whispered as if they’d be overheard.

“Next door. Duplex. Houses are attached”—he pointed—“at the garage.”

Like Siamese twins joined at the hip, the two houses were mirror images, identical right down to the white picket fence, clipped lawn, weeded flower bed, and clean windows. A brown Honda Civic sat on the shared drive. Oil stained the gravel where a second car would sit.

“Max, why’d you say you had to find out why she was killed and who did it?”

On the porch, the stick figure rang the bell a second time.

“Because that’s the only way I can get rid of the visions. Didn’t I tell you that the last time?” And the time before that, when he actually thought she might have committed the murder herself because she’d known way too much about it.

It wasn’t as if she understood much about the visions that had haunted her over the past few weeks. With this third occurrence, though, she simply had to accept that the phenomenon existed and it happened to her. She had a vision of foul play, then the spirit of the murdered woman—so far it had only been women—wouldn’t “go into the light,” or whatever it was they were supposed to do, until Max found the killer. Max didn’t know the why or how of it. She just knew it
was
.

“Why didn’t you say you had to find out who
she
was?” Witt said.

His voice snapped her out of her wandering thoughts. “Oh.”

For the first time he turned his head to look at her. Just a half turn and a shift of his eyes, but she felt his gaze like a knife.

Max glanced at the house, not that Witt made her nervous or anything. She knew that third ring would fail as well, but the stick woman seemed to have endless patience.

“Okay, okay. It sort of came to me who the murder victim was.” He opened his mouth. She held up a hand. “I’m not done. I was going to say that I don’t
know
her, but I’m pretty sure her name was Bethany.”

Man, that guy could skewer a girl with one look.

“Bethany Spring to be exact,” she finished.

Witt gave a dry and humorless smile. “Amazing how you reveal only what you want and keep the rest clenched in your fist.”

It wasn’t like she’d never given him a murder victim’s name before, so why the hell was he angry? She did not, however, ask him. Cameron, her late and ghostly husband, would say she was afraid of the answer. As usual, he’d be right. On the porch, having failed to get a response, Ms. Stick was finally unlocking the door. “Aren’t you going to stop her?”

“Exactly what should I say? That my girlfriend had a psychic vision about a dead woman lying in that house?”

Max didn’t know which part of the sentence to attack first. She certainly wasn’t his girlfriend, and as for that disparaging remark about her psychic abilities ... “She’s probably messing up fingerprints on the door and the knob and—”

“Someone’s gotta find the body. Better her than you.” He shook his head. “Don’t think I could keep you out of jail this time if that happened.”

It was then the screaming started.

Chapter Two

Witt had cleared the white picket fence and reached the front porch, gun out and at the ready, before Max had even moved. His cop reflexes worked overtime.

Max didn’t waste any time either, though she was hampered by the damn high heels and slim, split skirt. She was through the low gate and halfway up the walk when the screeching stopped. Her ears rang in the aftermath, and her feet rooted to the path. Up and down the street, people came out of their houses, mostly elderly women and children since the workday hadn’t ended.

The atmosphere turned deathly still. Silence screamed from inside the house. Before her, the door stood wide like the gaping mouth of some huge beast.

Vapors drifted out, weaving their way across the sun-heated concrete, then rising to scorch the tissues of her nostrils. Sweet yet fetid, like meat left out too long. She’d smelled it just two weeks ago, far worse and far stronger, yes, but the same scent. She’d never forget. It seeped down her throat until she could taste it and prickled her arms with goose bumps. The scent of death.

The scent of murder.

The girl appeared first, Witt close behind her and to the left, one hand on her elbow. Tears streaked her cheeks, but she’d stopped crying. In the late afternoon sun, her features were angular, gaunt, even ugly. Witt helped her down the stairs, guided her across the lawn to the gate at the side by the drive, and there they stood. Still holding onto her, he punched numbers one-handed into his cell phone.

Not a gun, a cell phone, that’s what he’d pulled out. Max almost laughed, lost her balance, and nearly fell to her knees.

Then the house started calling to her.

Maaaxx
.

Sing-song. Hypnotic. Beckoning.

Maaaaxx
.

She quaked in her spike-heeled shoes. Her heart raced. Her head pounded.

Maaaaaaxx
.

She took two steps and stopped. The blue trim around the windows glowed. The glass panes pulsed. The door frame expanded. Contracted. As if the house lived and breathed. And it was calling her name.

Maaxx
.

Two more steps, and she’d reached the first porch stair.

Maaaxx
.

“One more move, Starr, and your ass is grass.” Witt’s voice boomed in her left ear. She jumped, skittered like a spider, back a full three feet.

She let out a long breath, as if she’d been holding it without realizing. She blinked, stared at Witt, and for the briefest moment, wasn’t sure how or why she even knew him.

“You okay, Max?” One hand on the girl’s arm, the other an extension of his cell phone, his blue eyes strained in Max’s direction.

“Fine.” Her voice cracked in the middle.

“Black-and-white’s on its way. Don’t go inside.”

She glanced at the white facade, wondering what the hell had happened. It was a house. No pulsing, no monster breathing, just a house. And that deadly smell. She hadn’t a single intention of going inside.

A crowd had formed at the edge of the property. Curious, almost excited whisperings teased her ears, but Max couldn’t make out the words.

A boy rode his skateboard back and forth along the road, the sound grating against her nerve endings.

The whoop-whoop of a siren filled the distant air.

A child laughed, a woman’s voice shushed.

“Keep back, give the boy some room,” an elderly lady’s words rang out. Her blue-gray hair glistened in the sunshine. She fanned her hands. “Go on, back, back,” the lady shooed, and the small gathering took a collective step away from the picket fence.

Witt turned back to his charge. A woman or a girl, Max couldn’t tell; she was ageless. Starvation wizened her face, hollowed her cheeks, pulled at the flesh beneath her eyes. The baggy shirt gaped at the neck, revealing sharp collarbones. The material hung on her slight body, making her chest appear concave. Sunlight shone through her thighs though she stood with her feet close together, knees resembling the knobs on a door.

With his big hand still on the girl, Witt leaned close, murmuring to her. Calming words, Max assumed. Why did he have to keep touching her? Max definitely did not like the idea of the man’s big hand—which she was extremely partial to—on that waif-like creature. Maybe he did that with all his witnesses. She tried to remember his reaction to
her
all those weeks ago, when that car had almost run her down. He’d yelled, that’s what he’d done. He’d called her an idiot, told her to keep her nose out of his investigation, told her ... so why the hell was he being so nice to that emaciated wretch?