“The coroner released Wendy’s body. The service is Wednesday.”
“Oh Hal, I’m so glad. You can put her to rest. Things will get easier after this.” Yeah, right. Things never got easier, and the dead didn’t rest. Wendy certainly hadn’t. Max could feel her thrumming inside, anger, pain, despair, shame, all the bad emotions.
A peppermint-scented breeze blew across her body. Cameron. There, but blessedly silent, as she lied to the man on the phone.
“I’d like you to be there, Max. You’ve been a great help to me.”
Damn. It had been so easy. Too easy. “Of course, I will. Sitting at her desk, seeing her workpapers, I feel like I know Wendy.”
He gave her the details of the funeral service in a few brief words and hung up.
“Why the hell did he invite me?” The room was fully dark now, and she stared at the lighted windows of the house next door.
“It’s what you wanted him to do.”
“Of course, I wanted it. But why does he want it? And don’t tell me it’s sex.”
“Whatever it is, I’d bet my next corporeal life that Wendy’s killer will be there.”
Max would, too. “So, who is it?”
“How the hell should I know? You’re the psychic.”
“You’re hopeless.” She went to the closet and pulled out her jacket.
“Where are you going?”
“I have to get some nail polish remover.” She’d suddenly decided she didn’t like Detective Witt appreciating her nails. And she didn’t want to think about why, all of a sudden, right on the heels of Hal’s funeral invite, Witt’s admiration felt incredibly threatening.
Or maybe it was the fear that Cameron was too damn close to the truth. If she’d let him go down on her out on the deck, she just might have started imagining it was the detective.
Chapter Twelve
“Pull the shade down. This is a private transaction, and I don’t want any witnesses.” The voice, low, indistinct, genderless, leaked from the shadows behind her.
She did as she was told, a slight tremble in the hand adjusting the blind across the front window of the shop. Max stared at that hand—short, pudgy fingers, sparkly pink polish. Lilah’s hand.
Turn around and look. Show me the face, let me see who it is. In her head, Max shouted, but Lilah never turned.
Max knew it was a dream she was powerless to control. Lilah sucked her in, pulled her down, and mired her in another woman’s body, another woman’s life.
For Lilah Bloom, this was all too real.
Wearing Lilah’s skin, Max sat down again at the small manicurist table, then picked up an orangewood stick to push back her cuticles. She stared at her nails instead of her visitor as she spoke. “We were supposed to meet at the restaurant, tomorrow.”
“I wanted our business handled as quickly as possible. How much do you want?” The speaker was just a tad closer now.
Oh God, please, let me see who it is, Max cried.
Neither God nor Lilah heard her.
Fear tasted metallic in Lilah’s mouth, but she kept doing her nails. Appearance was everything. “I’m not asking for much, but I have a small son and he—”
“Spare me the sob story. How much?”
“Twenty-five thousand.” She put the stick back in the Quats solution, the pungent disinfectant stinging her nostrils. Next, she chose a thick coarse file to shape the nails.
A low chuckle slithered across the hairs at her nape. “Will you take a check?”
“It’s a cash transaction,” Lilah answered, just barely managing to keep the tremor out of her voice.
“And what guarantees do I have this will be the end of it?”
“None,” she agreed.
“Not even your word?” Again, that chuckle, closer still, neither male nor female. Evil had no gender.
Turn around. I have to know who it is. Max screamed, knowing what was about to come as clearly as Lilah did.
Lilah had a gun in the drawer, but blackmail was better tended to in a very public place. It was what she’d intended, but God, she’d been stupid. Underestimating her victim was the first rule she’d learned. And now broken. If she wasn’t goddamn careful, it might be her last. “A new car. That’s all I want. Then no one ever has to know the things Wendy told me.”
A strange snap. She suddenly recognized it as the sound of a latex glove, the kind hair stylists wore for perms and colors. Her heart pounded in earnest now. Hunching over, she slipped her hand down, quietly slid the drawer open, and put two fingers on the cold metal insurance.
“I thought it was your son you needed the money for?”