It was Max’s job to discover if that search somehow got Wendy killed.
She called United Airlines next. They had not had a flight back to Boise yesterday around the time Nicholas Drake was at the airport. It only confirmed that remembered fragment of the Wendy vision. Her lover had taken his kids to Boise for a visit, that was all.
So where had he been running to when she saw him at the airport? Or what had he been running from?
Once her head hit the pillow for the night, Max’s scheming brain wouldn’t shut down. She couldn’t fall asleep. Instead, she’d planned her frontal assault on Detective Long.
She used her lack of sleep as an excuse for why she was so ill-prepared to find Hal Gregory sitting in her chair when she entered her office the next morning.
Of course, she shouldn’t have known it was him.
She told herself the only reason she did was because he had the box of his wife’s personal effects on his lap. Yeah right. She got the same queer little quiver in her belly that she’d felt upon first meeting Remy. Wendy hadn’t been any more enamored of her husband than she was of her boss. No wonder she’d had an affair.
He held a ceramic coffee cup in his hand, logo side facing him. The words ‘No Fear’ stared up at him. Wendy’s motto, one she’d striven for, but never reached. The cup had been a reminder, a positive reinforcement, but more often an accusation.
This time, Max didn’t wonder how she knew.
Hal Gregory didn’t notice her in the doorway. Max could barely breath. The air pulsated with Cameron’s peppermints, her own perspiration, and Hal Gregory’s misery.
His legs were far too long for the height of her chair, the box bunched up against his chest. A skinny man with a hawkish nose and angular face. His hair, a light brown, was fine against his scalp. He looked to be in his early forties, a good fifteen or so years older than Wendy had been. Max couldn’t imagine Wendy, a woman of so many colors, with this pale shadow of a man.
In the next moment, Hal Gregory smashed his wife’s mug against the wood veneer of the desk, shattering the ceramic into a million irretrievable pieces.
Chapter Five
Max shrieked.
Hal Gregory’s gray eyes widened. The box slid slowly down his knees to the floor, somehow managed to land flat, its contents intact. Hal then rose to his full height.
Jeez, the guy was tall. A beanpole, with long, thin arms in a short-sleeved shirt. His bony hands ended in skeletal fingers, a gold wedding band on his left.
Max didn’t trust a man with long, skinny fingers. Unless he composed music or painted. She certainly couldn’t picture Hal Gregory making anything beautiful or colorful.
“I’m sorry I startled you.” Max smiled. Death made the need for polite, unnecessary introductions irrelevant. “I’ll get something to clean up that mug.”
Yesterday, she’d noted a brush and pan in the bathroom. She was back in two seconds flat, afraid he’d leave before she could ask him why he hadn’t reported his wife missing. She’d have to work up to it. Hitting him straight off with the question wasn’t an option if she didn’t want to blow her cover.
“I don’t know what came over me.” Voice grave and grating on her ears, Hal smoothed shards from the desk into his cupped hand.
“You’re upset. It’s understandable. Don’t cut yourself.”
She used the excuse to study his hands more closely. If Wendy had scratched him, it didn’t show.
“That’s generous, but you can’t begin to understand what I’m going through.” He dusted his hands over the waste basket and began scooping at the other end of Max’s desk.
Down on her haunches, brush and pan in hand, she stared up at him. “My husband was shot in a robbery. I know how you feel.”
She never told people about Cameron. Still, the circumstances were extraordinary. If she wanted something from Hal Gregory, she’d only get it if she put something on the line.
He drew back, his lips compressed. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
In a different situation, she’d have labeled him a dickhead. His wife, however, had just been murdered. If he wasn’t guilty of the crime himself, then he deserved to blow off a little steam.
“I’m not mouthing platitudes.” She spoke with her head down, pretending concentration on the mess he’d made. The harder she brushed, the deeper the shards ground into the carpet.
She heard him sigh, looked up to find he’d closed his eyes, leaned against the wall, and crossed his arms over his chest. The action wrinkled his blue-and-white striped shirt.
After a deep breath, he said, “Sorry, but I’m sick to death of all the pity.”
Max suspected the largest dose was self-inflicted.
As an apology, it sucked. But Max accepted it as a truce. Her knees creaked as she stood. “I’m sure it isn’t easy.”