Evil to the Max (20 page)

“I am not trying to get rid of you. I’m trying to go home. It’s been a long day. I don’t need a watch dog. I need a bath.”

“Could certainly help ya there.”

Help? She didn’t need it. Did she? She thought, for just a brief moment, of asking him to go with her. Not for protection or anything. Just because ... cops could be good to have around in a jam. No, no. She could get out of her own jams, thank you very much. She’d been doing it on her own for a very long time.

Max pointed at his truck. “Go.”

Witt laughed, completely unfazed by the order. “When you fall, Max, you’re gonna fall hard.”

“Fall for you? Hah. You’re dreaming.” Men, they were insufferable, conceited pigs.

“You’re right, I am dreaming. Damn near all the time. And you figure prominently in every one. Lemme know when you’re ready to join in.”

“Not in this lifetime.” But her knees weakened as she watched his red tail lights drive off only minutes later. Tiffany snickered deep inside her.

God, she was a goner for sure if she didn’t find Tiffany’s murderer before the damn woman gave in to Witt’s cute repartee.

Max drove like a maniac, which wasn’t saying much since she believed speed limits were a function of one’s driving ability. And she was a damn good driver. Ten minutes later, she climbed the stairs to her studio, changed into a dark sweatshirt, a pair of jeans, and sneakers. For some odd reason, her hands shook and she had trouble tying her laces.

Buzzard twined himself around her legs, begging for another can of cat food. She’d left out a bowl before leaving for work and had given him another handful of crispies when she walked in the door. He’d wolfed those down and wanted more. There was something about creatures that had been starved. They never got over it, could never get enough to satisfy them, and could never quite believe that starvation wasn’t lurking just around the corner.

Ten minutes after she’d arrived at her apartment, she was ready to leave again. The Mag-Lite was in her car, Witt’s cell phone in the glove compartment, and a pair of black gloves she used for cold morning drives lay on the seat beside her. She pulled onto the freeway heading north to Bud Traynor’s house. Though she had never been there, she knew the location well.

She’d done her third pass past his place when she finally admitted she was scared. Scared shitless.

What if he had an alarm system? What if she got caught? What if she found nothing of use? What if he came home early?

The last thought gave her the shakes.

“I’m with you, baby.”

She felt like crying, as if she hadn’t heard Cameron’s voice since the night he walked out of their apartment for his appointment with destiny. And the wrong end of a gun.

She parked the car half a block down, as far as she could get from the nearest street light, and watched for ten minutes. Only one car rolled by, and the driver ignored her. She tugged the gloves on over her suddenly numb fingers—the last thing she needed to leave were fingerprints—then shoved the Mag-Lite up her sleeve in case she encountered anyone taking a dog for an evening potty break. Gloves were one thing since the late September night had a chill to it, but a flashlight would look far too suspicious.

She opened the car door. “Let’s do it.”

She saw no one. The houses were large, set back from the road with big expanses of lawn and landscaping, the lots separated by high rows of hedges or wooden fences. Traynor’s house, a colonial style complete with columns, was dark except for a front porch lamp. The houses on either side had lights in the windows, as did the neighbors across the street. She walked quickly up his driveway to the fence at the side where she saw a gate. Reaching up, she found the latch on the inside, let herself into the backyard, and shut the gate behind her.

She stopped in the darkness to catch her breath, to let her heart slow to a normal beat. What the hell was she doing here? Why had this seemed like such a good idea when she’d been out in the light of day?

She crept along the side of the house, came to the corner, and peered around it. The dark, manicured yard was rimmed with bottle brush trees. A high deck hugged the house. French doors led to the interior.

Pulling the flashlight from her sleeve, Max tested the wooden steps. They creaked loudly. The noise couldn’t be helped. Sneaking in a half-crouch along the edge of the house to the doors, she tapped the end of the Mag-Lite against the pane nearest the door handle. Glass tinkled on the tile. Reaching inside, she unlocked and unlatched the door, pushing it open a foot. Not another sound broke the quiet.

She ran back down the stairs, around the house to the front, and watched the street through the sliver of gate she opened. If he had a perimeter alarm, she’d have been dead meat the minute she entered the yard. If there was an inside alarm, it was certainly a silent one, and therefore most likely connected to a service that would dispatch the police.

How long would it take them to get there? And how would she get out of the yard if they did?

Her wrist watch showed the time: a quarter after nine. She’d wait ten minutes, such a good round number. There was no noise beyond the occasional car and the distant bark of a dog.

She couldn’t hear Cameron’s voice inside her head, but his warmth was against her as she waited.

When ten minutes had passed, she glided back along the length of the house, climbed the deck steps, and entered through the French doors. Her shoes crunched on the glass.

Standing in the deep silence of Traynor’s house, she knew she should have told Witt what she’d planned to do.

“What are we looking for, Max?” Cameron murmured.

“I don’t know,” she croaked, then swallowed. “A torture chamber maybe, with sound proofing. Tiffany was in a weird room when she died.”

The fact was she didn’t have a clue what she was looking for.

She didn’t want to examine the man’s house, was afraid the way he lived might somehow taint her. But of course, that was ridiculous. After all, it was the reason she’d put her life on the line here.

The room she entered was a large dining area with white tile floor and a Persian carpet in the center. The furnishings didn’t suit him. Large paintings hung on each of three walls. The table and six chairs were massive. A breakfront stood on the far wall.

She wandered deeper into the house. The living room held a chintz sofa and loveseat, a dark wood coffee table. Plush carpet cushioned her feet. She hadn’t turned on her flashlight. Whatever she looked for wasn’t in these rooms.

This room didn’t feel like Bud Traynor, either. It was a facade he hid behind.

From the living room, she moved into the front hall. Through long windows on either side of the door, light filtered in from outside. Stairs led to the upper floor. Max looked up and swallowed. This was the house Wendy, her previous murder victim, had grown up in.

“Don’t go there, Max,” Cameron whispered.

She wasn’t sure whether he meant physically or psychologically.

She would, however, go where she had to.

In the streamers of light, she could see down a corridor, which presumably led to the back of the house. There were two doors off this hallway.

Max tiptoed across the tile floor, her tennies squeaking, and opened the first of the doors. A coat closet. The second revealed a water heater and furnace. Neither led to a secret room.

She wasn’t wrong. She knew she wasn’t wrong. Beneath the neat, homey exterior lurked the scent of evil. And there was no one but her to ferret it out.

An arched doorway sat across the entry way from the living room. Max rolled her head on her neck, fortifying herself, then crossed the hall until she stood on the threshold.

Something fell with a crash. Max jumped and dropped her flashlight on the tile. Her heart pounded like a jackhammer.

“Jesus Christ, is that you, Cameron?”

Oh God, please let it be you
.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. Truly sorry.” His voice came from the darkened interior.

She waited for the sound of sirens, heard nothing. “Dammit, don’t scare me like that.” She picked up the Mag-Lite, checked to make sure it had survived the fall, then moved into the room.

It was a den. The windows were covered by louvered shutters, so Max turned on her flashlight for the first time. The sofa, a rich coffee-brown leather, faced a big screen TV. On the sofa’s right-hand side, the leather seat had been worn down by Bud’s butt, the ottoman in front scarred with the imprint of his feet. On a side table, a brandy glass sat empty and forlorn atop a coaster, with the TV remote next to it. Beyond that, Max’s light flashed over the edges of a silver-framed photograph.

Like quicksand, the lush carpet seemed to suck at her shoes as she crossed to the picture. When she picked it up, Cameron’s heat still clung to the frame. She shined the light on the photo.

A much younger, dark-haired Bud Traynor stared up at her, his arm around a lovely woman whose eyes sparkled with laughter and love. She might have been a few years older than him, her hair a vibrant chestnut that seemed bottle-enhanced. Her features were thin, almost gaunt, her cheekbones prominent. But her smile was wide and adoring. As she looked at him, he posed for the camera. Bud had always posed for everything he did in life. It was another of those things Max just seemed to know.

She ran a finger along the crack in the glass. “Why’d you do that?”

“It was an accident.” She hadn’t heard that flat emotionless tone in his voice since his death. He hadn’t been a lawyer since his death. He hadn’t presided in that world of evil men. He hadn’t needed to. The tone chilled her heart.

“Who is she?”

“His wife.”

“Wendy’s mother?”

Cameron said nothing.

“Is she dead?”

His heat pulsed in the air around her, seared her flesh. Silence pounded against her ears. A car whooshed by outside. She didn’t want to know the answer. It might just mean another murder to lay at Traynor’s doorstep.

“He’s going to notice that you broke it,” she whispered.

“Yes. He will.”

“Cameron, what aren’t you telling me?”

“There’s a DVD in the player,” he said instead of answering. “Get it.”

God, he scared her. His slight phosphorescent glow shimmered in the darkness and seemed a terrifying part of it. She swallowed, then turned to the 54-inch big screen TV. Bending down to the player on the shelf, she pushed the open button with a gloved fingertip. When the tray opened, she grabbed the disk, and hit the button again to close it.

“Stick it down your pants and cover it with your sweatshirt.”

“Why?” But she did as he ordered.

“Because he’s here.”

A key grated in the lock. The front door opened, and the hall light came on.

Covered by relative darkness, Max scampered back and slipped down on her haunches next to the side table. Her heart pounded. Her breathing was loud, so loud that she was sure Bud Traynor would hear.

Oh God. Oh God. Maybe if he went upstairs, she could sneak out the front. Please, please don’t go to the back. He’d see the broken glass on the floor.

He was humming. And then he came into the den.

Max held her breath. The edge of the DVD cut into her belly as she hunkered down. He stood there on the threshold with his head tilted to one side, his chin slightly up. His hand was on the light switch. He didn’t turn it on, instead he sniffed the air.

Oh God. She wasn’t wearing perfume. She never wore perfume.

But like a predator stalking her, he’d picked up her scent.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Bud Traynor sang into the dark.

Oh, Jesus.

Chapter Nineteen

I won’t leave you
.

She knew Cameron wouldn’t leave, but right now she wished to God she’d brought Witt with her. Someone big. Someone tough. Someone alive.

No fear. Show no fear. If she did, Traynor would be on her like a rabid dog.

She stood and held her hands in the air. “Busted,” she quipped, hoping that with the cover of darkness, he couldn’t see her white-knuckled grip on the Mag-Lite.

“My darling Max, what a pleasant surprise.”

She dropped her hands and moved out from the corner. And then she saw them, the tell-tale digital lights on the player she’d turned on. If he noticed, if he remembered he’d turned it off, if the disk in it held something truly important, if, if, if ... The plastic warmed against her belly—calling to him.

Standing less than three feet from him, the player blazing just to their right, she was paralyzed by fear. Fear of his discovering the DVD on her. Fear of
him
.

Pull yourself together. Buck up, kiddo. Be strong.

Cameron’s words or her own—it didn’t matter. They were the truth. Her only armor against Traynor was a facade of indifference.

He stepped fully into the room, pushed back the jacket of his black tux, and rested his hands on his hips. His tie hung loose around his neck, falling across the ruffled shirt. He’d had his white hair trimmed for the occasion—she wondered by whom, since Tiffany was dead. She’d guessed his age to be mid-to-late fifties, though she’d never asked and didn’t care.

With his sophisticated looks, money, and the Cadillac he drove, some women might find him irresistible.

Inside her, Tiffany started to preen. How the hell could she fight the evil outside as well as the evil within? The how of it didn’t matter, she simply would.

Traynor flipped on the overhead light, and the DVD display faded into the background. Thank God.

“Cat got your tongue?” he asked.

She cocked her head to the side. “I suppose your first question is why am I here.” She almost straightened her shoulders defiantly, but caught herself in time. He might very well see the top edge of the disk poke against her sweatshirt.

“I don’t need to ask.”

He was a master of the smug smile. He was a master of all sorts of smiles, ones that could manipulate, terrify, or flay the flesh from his daughter’s backside.

His eyes skimmed her body from head to breasts to hips to thighs. Something flickered in the depths of his black eyes, and she thought for a minute he might actually search her. “I presume you’re here to plant evidence or otherwise implicate me in the murder of Tiffany Lloyd.”