Poisonous: A Novel (30 page)

“Are there? Because I was glad that I exposed him.” Max paused. “If I wasn’t sixteen, I might have done it quietly. Without the theatrics.”

“I can’t believe you don’t see it.”

“I do—really. Ivy humiliated Heather with the sole purpose of hurting Heather. It was mean and vindictive. And yet I exposed Brooks because he was a hypocrite who had hurt me, and I wanted to get back at him.”

“What did he do to you?”

Max realized what she’d said. She hadn’t thought about this in a long time, and she certainly didn’t mean to bring up the past with Nick tonight.

“It’s ancient history. He hated my mother, took it out on me. It’s not worth going into. The point is, I never saw myself as being mean and vindictive, but I was. And yet … I would do the same thing today. Even knowing all this, I would still expose him. It bothers me that it
doesn’t
bother me that I would do it.”

“I think you’re reading too much into this. You’re identifying with the victim.”

“I don’t see Ivy as a victim. I see her as a mean little bitch who took extreme joy in exposing everyone’s secrets and flaws for the world to see, all because it gave her a false sense of popularity.”

“And that’s the biggest difference between you two. When you exposed your uncle, you did it within the family. You didn’t take out a newspaper ad and announce it to the world.”

“I announced it at a family dinner between the first and second courses.”

Nick laughed and pressed his body against hers, leaning in for a kiss.

She wasn’t laughing.

Nick leaned up and frowned. He eyed her, as if just realizing something. “You still have that bastard messing around in your head, don’t you?”

Nick was right.

She pretended she didn’t know what he meant. “No,” she said. “I’m fine. That was nearly three months ago.”

Max hadn’t articulated it but Nick had nailed it. She’d been doing a lot of soul-searching ever since a psychopathic shrink had kidnapped her, drugged her, tortured her … the physical scars were nearly gone, but the emotional scars from him digging around inside her psyche had brought back memories and unwanted feelings that Max hadn’t been able to shed, even in the time since her brief captivity. She’d always prided herself on knowing who she was and what she did; now she felt raw from the experience and had begun to question her own motives.

“Max,” Nick said, lowering his body on top of hers, “you are hardly perfect, but you care about the truth. About justice. You can’t possibly know what you would do if you were a teenager today. They face a different world. For all your flaws, you’re not a mean person. You have far more compassion than you give yourself credit for.”

“That sure sounds like a backwards compliment,” she whispered.

“It is a compliment.” He kissed her. “You’re one of a kind, Maxine Revere. Never forget it.”

Chapter Twenty-four

FRIDAY

Max woke in Nick’s bed to her vibrating cell phone and the smell of coffee. When she moaned, Nick rolled over and put his arm around her, pulling her against his hard, naked body. “It’s six o’clock. You don’t have to get that.”

“It’s nine in New York,” she muttered, reaching for her phone on the nightstand.

He kissed her shoulder and traced the small memorial tattoo on her shoulder. The one she’d had designed after her friend Karen was killed.

She put the phone to her ear, but didn’t have to say a word. “Where are you?” her producer demanded.

“Good morning, Ben.”

“David said you left town.”

“I’m in bed with Nick.”

“Shit, Maxine.”

“It’s six in the morning.”

“I just spent the last fifteen minutes trying to soothe Paula Wallace. She saw the show last night, you ignored her calls, David ignored her calls, the police said there’s nothing they can do about the show, and she’s been fuming ever since. Her husband is a fucking
lawyer
, Max. A
corporate
lawyer.”

“I know.”

“You should have told me!”

“It’s in my report.”

“Like I have time to read all your notes?”

“I didn’t do anything illegal.”

“She said she didn’t give permission for Austin to be on the show.”

“I didn’t ask her. I didn’t put him on camera, except in B-roll and from behind. Can’t even tell it’s him.”

“I suppose I can thank David for that.”

She fumed. “And even if I had put him on, we’re clear.
Ethically
I should get parental permission, but it’s not mandatory.”

“You quoted him.”

“I have an unaired segment where I interviewed Austin. If it will help calm her down, I’ll show it to her.”

“We may be beyond that. Her husband is coming home from his business trip early and our lawyers are having a cow.”

“Relax, Ben.” Max sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, but she didn’t get up. She was exhausted. They didn’t get to sleep until two, but she’d had four solid hours of sleep. More than she had any other night this week. “This case has turned, I feel it.”

“Why did you leave town? We have calls coming in, clips you need to listen to, follow-up—”

“Because I have David and he’s worth three assistants. I’m interviewing someone important to the case this morning, and since I worked all weekend and didn’t get to have sex with Nick, I deserve a night off.”

“You’re impossible.”

“You’re high-strung. I’ll be back in Sausalito by noon. I’ll deal with Paula Wallace.”

“Let the lawyer handle her.”

“Normally I’d agree with you, but I know what I’m doing.”

“Don’t get arrested.”

She laughed. “Getting arrested is half the fun.”

“Dammit, Maxine!”

“Don’t worry, this time I have the police on my side.”

“A first for everything.”

Her good humor dried up. “Goodbye, Benji.” She pressed End and put her phone back on the nightstand. She turned to her naked lover. Nick was watching her with a combination of apprehension and lust.

Max said, “I don’t have a lot of time, but I need a shower.”

“We have a drought here in California. They ask that we limit showers to seven minutes.”

“Seven minutes for me, seven minutes for you … that’s fourteen minutes together.” She walked her fingers up his chest. Nick grabbed her wrist and pulled her in for a kiss.

*   *   *

Max had an early morning breakfast with her grandmother, Eleanor Revere. She hadn’t told her she would be in town until yesterday, and part of her wished that her grandmother had had plans. Yet, Max hadn’t seen her since April and while they had an understanding and mutual respect, Max still didn’t approve of what Eleanor had done. Specifically, getting a judge to send Lindy’s killer to a sanitarium instead of prison.

Max appreciated her wealth and the opportunities it afforded her—such as paying for NCFI to re-create the Ivy Lake crime scene, or being able to fly first-class cross-country to spend a weekend with Nick. But she didn’t approve of using money and connections to circumvent the justice system, and that’s exactly what had happened when Eleanor got involved.

But family was family. And while on the surface Eleanor’s motives might have seemed pure, the simple fact was her grandmother did not want to be associated with a felon. She wanted the problem to disappear. Image was everything. That Eleanor would rather have a mentally ill relative locked up in a hospital for the criminally insane rather than a felon locked up in maximum security boggled the mind.

Especially since Lindy’s killer wasn’t crazy. Narcissistic, twisted, a borderline sociopath—but not insane.

Maybe Eleanor was the reason Max understood Paula Wallace. Her grandmother was the same … with one crucial difference. Eleanor would never have allowed Max or any of her children or grandchildren to go as far as Ivy had with her blog and social media.

The morning was too cold to eat outside, so she and her grandmother sat in the glass-enclosed breakfast nook off her opulent, Tuscany-style kitchen.

Eleanor always drank tea, and Max joined her. Max didn’t particularly like tea, but she loved the ritual, and no one did it better than Eleanor. There had been days when Max was younger when she missed her mother for reasons she didn’t understand—it wasn’t like her mother had ever acted maternal—when Eleanor would brew a pot of tea and they would sit in the rose garden or here in the breakfast nook. Rarely talking, just being together. There was a peace Max longed for that she’d only attained in those quiet moments with her grandmother.

“You’re staying with Detective Santini, I assume.” Eleanor wasn’t a prude, but she thought Max should be dating CEOs and senators, not cops and FBI agents.

“Just last night,” Max said. “I’m at the Madrona in Sausalito.”

“You’ve been here all week?”

“In Sausalito. I’ve been working, otherwise I would have come down sooner.”

“Hmm.” That was Eleanor’s way of showing disapproval. “You haven’t been sleeping,” Eleanor said.

“When I get involved in a case, my mind doesn’t stop working.” Max had never told Eleanor or anyone in the family about what happened in New York three months ago. They knew she’d been attacked—that had been on the news—but she hadn’t given them more details than had been revealed publicly. She didn’t know exactly why she wanted to keep it from them—maybe she just didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

“No, it’s more than that,” Eleanor said, studying her.

Max didn’t like how her grandmother analyzed her. It wasn’t like Eleanor was psychic, even though at times she had an uncanny ability to see through people.

“How’s William? The boys?” Max asked, changing the subject.

“I invited him over for tea. He declined.”

It had been nearly six months since Max had turned his life upside down with her investigation into Lindy’s murder. Max hadn’t apologized; she’d found the truth. It had to come out. There was nothing she’d done that she wouldn’t do again.

But she missed seeing her young cousins.

“Tell me about your work,” Eleanor said. She took a dainty bite out of her scone.

Instead of rehashing the investigation, Max said, “What do you think of social media?”

“That’s a broad question.”

“You don’t have a Facebook page, for example. But Uncle Arthur does.” Arthur Sterling was Eleanor’s brother—they were close in age, and Max knew enough retired people on Facebook that she didn’t think Eleanor’s age had as much to do with her disdain for the medium as her personality.

“I’ve heard of it, of course. I’m old, not ignorant.”

“That’s not what I meant. My investigation involves a teenager who revealed other people’s private business on social media. Embarrassing things.”

Eleanor raised her eyebrow and look pointedly at Max. “Familiar.”

Well, that took the knife and twisted it. Maybe this was a bad idea, coming here—and asking Eleanor for her opinion. Max knew what she would say—yet she came anyway. Eleanor loved her, Max didn’t doubt it, but the two women sometimes had very different perspectives.

“Ivy did it to be mean, to hurt people. Things that between two people aren’t embarrassing, but when exposed for the world are humiliating.”

“Sex,” Eleanor said bluntly.

Max almost blushed. Eleanor was not a person who had discussed sex with her when she was growing up.

“Basically.”

“I would imagine this girl did such things for attention.”

“Attention and popularity.”

“There are better ways to hurt people.”

“But the Internet is faster.”

“Hmm.” Eleanor sipped her tea. “And perhaps that’s why I don’t care for social media. I’ve found that in the heat of a conversation, people sometimes say things they may mean but would never utter if given another moment to think. Social media takes away that … hesitation, I suppose you might call it. That moment of contemplation. When I write a letter—any letter, for business or personal, I think about what I want to say. Then I reread the letter to make sure that my meaning is clear. If I’m upset about something, I’ll sit on the letter for a day to make sure I want my feeling on the matter known, and how I want it to come across. Civil society requires civility. It requires individuals to consider the repercussions of their words as well as their actions. Today I fear people—not just teenagers, who did not exhibit self-control even in my day—rarely consider the repercussions of anything they do or say.”

Max leaned back. Her grandmother had always been regal, judgmental, and wise. But she said something that put Ivy’s behavior in a completely different light.

Ivy didn’t post anything spontaneously. She did it with purpose and full knowledge of how it would be perceived by her peers. She planned and orchestrated the cyberattack on Heather over months. She had the photos of Heather and her boyfriend for weeks before she posted them—as if waiting for the most devastating time to reveal them to the public.

“Do you disagree?” Eleanor asked Max.

“No,” she said. “I was thinking about this girl Ivy’s image. How she wanted to be seen, but more than that, how she wanted
others
to be seen.”

“So she attempted to make herself look better by making others look worse.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking.”

“Crass,” Eleanor said.

“Her mother is concerned about image as well.”

“She must not have known what her daughter was doing.”

“She did.”

Eleanor looked surprised. “Oh? And she allowed it?”

Max almost smiled. “What would you have done to me, Eleanor? Some parents have no control over their teenagers.”

“You would never have been so pedestrian.”

“I did things to expose people’s lies. Ivy would likely say she was doing the same, calling people out for their hypocrisy.”

“Posting sexually explicit material is hardly calling someone a hypocrite, unless that person has put themselves out as some sort of saintly individual, like a minister or a married woman. It’s the public spectacle that this girl created, as well as the private information she shared. It’s one thing to have a secret; it’s quite another to reveal that secret.”