Cameron hated the place. And the men. He hated that Max sometimes needed to come here to— She cut off the thought. She had to concentrate here, not dwell on things that were best left alone.
Over the music and the laughter, Max couldn’t hear Hal and he couldn’t hear her. She moved in closer. “Sorry, guess a dance bar was a bad idea.”
She unbuttoned her jacket and hooked her heels over the rungs of her stool. She hadn’t bothered going home to change. She owned four black suits, six white shirts, five silk ties, all with a dash of red in them. She didn’t think Hal Gregory would appreciate the difference.
Besides, it wasn’t a date. It was a fishing expedition.
Hal shifted uncomfortably. “It’s a little difficult to talk in here.” He winced as Martina McBride hit a particularly high note. “Could I suggest somewhere else?”
He wasn’t at home in the down-and-dirty atmosphere. That was her point. He’d ordered a gin and tonic as cowboys tilted longnecks. His striped button-down and linen slacks flew in the face of the attire of choice: boots, jeans, and hat. He sat straight in his seat like he had a stick up his butt when slouching with elbows on the lacquered table tops was the regular mode.
Max stared at her Corona’s sizzling bubbles. “I don’t know you, and this place is a little less...threatening than somewhere quiet.” The objective was to get him off-balance, then swoop in with an apology and a comforting hand.
Hal Gregory fell for it, wrung his hands and sputtered an excuse. “I, uh, didn’t think of it from a woman’s point of view.”
She wondered if Hal had ever thought of anything from anyone else’s point of view, especially his wife’s. Her belly rumbled with...rage? No, nothing that strong. She couldn’t put her finger on it, as if Wendy had lived through her marriage with the mute button pressed.
Max brushed Hal’s thigh with her knee, then pulled back as if it had been an accident. “You sounded upset when you left that message.”
He stared at the dance floor a moment, then turned back. “I probably shouldn’t involve anyone in this. It’s my problem.”
“Involve me? In what?” She laid a hand on his arm, leaned closer so that the scent of her hastily donned perfume rose from her barely there cleavage. Sexual attraction was power. She’d use it on him without compunction. “I meant it when I said I was a good listener. There isn’t anything you’re going through right now that I didn’t feel at the time my husband died.”
His lips tensed and whitened. His nostrils flared. “Did they hold his body for days on end while they ran test after test?” Images of what the coroner would have done to Wendy Gregory’s body flashed across her mind before she could stop them. Then she thought of Cameron. Her stomach turned queasy. Autopsy. She hated thinking about that.
The bent of the conversation didn’t seem to affect Hal; he was on a roll. “Did they claim it was ‘evidence?’ No funeral, no end to it all. They won’t even let me have the car. It’s a crime scene.” He caught himself then, heard what his words sounded like, blanched. “Of course, I’d never drive it again. I’d sell it.”
Self-centered asshole or pissed as hell that his wife was having an affair? “Of course, you couldn’t bear to use it.”
“Exactly. You understand. I just want to get rid of it. The reminders, you know.” He touched her hand. Wendy’s skin shriveled. Max couldn’t define the emotions, but none of them felt like love.
“You’ll feel it’s over when they find her killer.”
“Is that when it was over for you, Max?”
Peppermints in the air. Cameron was near, his soft breath in her hair, the only thing that kept her sane while she answered Hal’s question with far less than the whole truth. “The police never found my husband’s killers.”
Most people would have offered sympathy. Not Hal Gregory. She wasn’t sure what she would have said if he had. “Killers?”
“Three men.”
“What happened?”
She saw it all, a mental Polaroid. Cameron amidst crushed bags of Doritos, broken jars of salsa, and a hole in his forehead. There hadn’t been all that much blood, but there should have been. That’s what she’d been thinking when the men had dragged her out of there. Such an odd thought at a time like that.
“A simple robbery.” Her hands were cold. Cameron blew warmth on them. Nothing had been simple since the evening they’d walked into that place to buy his last pack of cigarettes.
“I’m sorry.” Ah, finally the words, though she doubted Hal Gregory could even begin to understand.
She stuffed her memories back down and went on with her act. “I know it’s hard to believe, but with time...” Her words trailed off.
Not all things healed with time. And Cameron had never really left her.