Nope, she wasn’t cut out for this detecting stuff.
Max flattened the book on her lap and flipped pages. A monthly calendar with small blocks for each day, the appointments were registered neatly in different colors. Aqua every other Monday at 4:30, a woman named Lilah, a phone number written beneath. Max rescued a bit of scratch paper from the bottom of her purse and jotted down the info. Lime green Tuesdays at five p.m., Dr. Shale, a phone number.
“Our little Wendy was methodical,” Cameron reflected.
Something ran the length of Max’s body. Not a chill, not a shiver. More like the feeling she got when she listened to a beautiful song or saw a gorgeous guy wearing black and red flannel.
“Wendy loved color. Colors soothed her, made her feel safe. Did you see the folders in her filing cabinet? Different shades of blue, pink, purple and more.” Brilliant splashes of color like a painter’s pallet. “And rollerball pens in every hue imaginable.”
Max decided the colors soothed her, too. Had they always? Or only since the nightmare vision?
Cameron went on listing Wendy’s appointments. “Purple, one Saturday a month at ten a.m., Divinity, another phone number.”
“Something religious?”
“You’re the psychic, my little Max, you tell me.”
Max pursed her lips without answering that question. “Orange, third Wednesday of each month at six p.m., BeeBee.”
Max leafed through to December. The appointments had been colored in until the end of the year. “How can anyone possibly plan out their life like this?” The monotonous routine of Wendy Gregory’s days was almost frightening.
“Look at the month of September,” Cameron urged.
Max read, sucked in a gasp. “Monday, the day she died. She scratched out her regular with Dr. Shale the next day.”
“She annihilated it. What does it mean, Max?”
Her scalp went icy despite the heat of the sun on her crown. “How should I know?”
“Close your eyes.” Cameron’s voice was hypnotic.
For a brief moment, she remembered last night’s command, and her body reacted with a thrill between her legs. Take off your clothes. Lie on the bed.
She shoved the memory aside and let her eyelashes flutter down. The sun in her eyes became a swirling golden mass that sucked her into its vortex. Her breathing deepened. Her arms prickled right down to her fingertips. Her toes curled in her high-heeled shoes.
As if her body anticipated a man’s touch.
Anger and exhilaration roiled in Max’s stomach. Terror. Desire. Emotions pooled low in her belly. She wanted, needed to stick her hand between her legs and palm herself, anything to relieve the awful, needy tension.
An image formed in the opalescent whirlpool behind her eyelids. Max strained to see it, grab it, force it closer. Her fingers reached, ached.
The beeper on her watch shattered the image into brilliant shards of color. She’d set the reminder for five minutes before her half hour—no more, no less—lunch break was over. For a moment, she sat dazed, the sun too bright, the steering wheel hot beneath her touch. She couldn’t remember clutching it.
“What did you see, my love?”
“Don’t you know?” They spoke in whispers.
“If I did, I wouldn’t ask.” A note of apprehension shimmered through Cameron’s voice.
“I saw...someone.” It was the best Max had to offer. Like Cameron, Wendy might not remember the last moments of her life, thus making it impossible for Max to identify her killer.
“It was him, wasn’t it?” Cameron intruded.
“Who?”
“The paperboy.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You’re...breathless. Like you were at the airport.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Max bent to pick up Wendy’s book where it had fallen to the floor of the car.
Cameron didn’t push further as she read aloud. “Monday. Blue ballpoint ink. 7:59. Nickie.” Beneath it, Wendy had written the numbers 452.
The flight number on the note in Max’s dream.
Something bothered her as she stared at the writing. Ballpoint. Blue. It wasn’t a Wendy pen or a Wendy color.
“Who’s Nickie?” With his question, she lost her train of thought, and for just a moment, Max desperately wanted Cameron out of her head.
The feeling disappeared as quickly as it had come, and she answered. “Nicholas Drake, former warehouse manager. I found his personnel file in the Terminations drawer.”
“Paperboy?” Cameron insisted.
“Yes, all right,” she snapped. “I think he’s Paperboy. But he didn’t kill Wendy.”
“You’re just a little too rock solid on that, Maxi sweetheart. I think he cut out yesterday morning for Boise.”