“Nick backdated it. He always does things like that.”
The answer was too quick, as if she’d expected the question. Or was used to shifting blame. Nick had given her the check before he left, told her to mail it, and she hadn’t. Max was sure.
“Be careful, Mrs. Drake.” Remy’s hands fisted at his sides as he turned on the woman. “I don’t tolerate lies.”
“And what makes you think I’m lying?” Something cracked in Carla Drake. Max wasn’t sure if it was the accusation, Remy’s threatening tone, or something sparking in her wayward brain, but Carla was suddenly on a spiteful roll. “You think I’m lying because my dear husband is so ethical, so morally upstanding that you can’t imagine he’d ever backdate a check?”
“Mrs. Drake—”
“But then you’re a man. And men always side with each other when it comes to their little flings, don’t they?”
Remy sighed, a long-suffering sound. “Your cryptic remarks confound me.”
He sounded like that Victorian gentleman again with his suddenly unnatural speech pattern. An obvious attempt at regaining the upper hand.
Carla snarled. “I know you were all in on it.”
He rolled his eyes. “What?”
Remy’s indifference only made Carla angrier. “Covering up my husband’s affair with that whore bookkeeper of yours.”
“Really, Mrs. Drake, don’t you think if I thought something like that was going on, I would have stopped it?” Remy didn’t sound particularly shocked by the news or the accusation.
“You probably watched them.”
“I resent that.”
Despite his apparent affront, Max had the feeling Remy found the idea funny and enjoyed baiting the woman.
Carla ignored him, almost talking to herself. “What did he see in her anyway? She was a drab little mouse.”
Wendy had wondered the same thing about Nick’s wife. The woman’s words sounded suspiciously like something Theresa had said. Max jumped on it. “Did you know Wendy, Mrs. Drake?”
Carla faltered then, but only for a moment. “I saw her. A wife has a right to find out what’s going on behind her back. And she deserved what she got.”
“I wouldn’t let the police hear you say that.”
“I don’t care. I’ll say it to them. It’s how I feel. The tramp deserved to die.”
The woman’s sentiment shuddered through Max. As did the knowledge that Carla Drake had known the identity of her rival.
She’d known the night unsuspecting Wendy sat thirty feet away from her in the airport terminal waiting for Nick to relinquish his kids to his wife.
It gave her an excellent motive for murder.
Chapter Fifteen
With the door open, the hum of voices filled her small office. Max ignored them, writing down Carla Drake’s new address and phone on a piece of paper she then shoved into the front pocket of her purse.
“She’s a real bitch, isn’t she?”
Her head popped up. Theresa leaned against the doorjamb, her hip jutted out, her pleated skirt school-girl sexy. A soft whiff of her dimestore cologne drifted past Max’s nostrils.
“I have no opinion on Carla Drake,” Max said, knowing the statement would evoke a litany of opinions from Theresa.
“She’s a cow.”
“It’s unpleasant to refer so disparagingly to someone’s weight, you know.”
As Max well knew, weight was not what Theresa meant at all. “She used to call him at least ten times a day. It drove us nuts. Remy finally told us to say Nick wasn’t available until break time.”
“Don’t you have customers at the counter, Theresa?” Max commented sternly. A lack of interest was the best way to keep the teenager going, to up the number of juicy items revealed.
As if Max had just begged her to tell all, Theresa took three steps into the office and leaned against the copy machine. She loved to lean against things; the table, the counter, the back of a chair, knowing it set her long legs off to best advantage.
Jail-bait.
Max looked at her. “Are you sure you’re only sixteen, Theresa?”
No one would ever mistake her for innocent. She’d probably done more sexual things than Max could imagine.
Theresa looked over her shoulder, shook her hair out with a careless flip, then turned back, smiling. She knew exactly what Max was thinking and damn if the little...woman didn’t seem proud of it. “Almost seventeen. I’ll graduate at the end of winter semester with my job credits. Now, don’t you want to hear about Nick and Wendy and Carla?”
The lunch rush was long over, the girl was bored and more than willing to tell every spicy detail.
“I don’t like gossip.” It was all Max could do to pretend disinterest.
Another step. Theresa leaned against the filing cabinet, no longer fully visible through the doorway. Except probably one butt cheek, exposed due the angle of her body and the brevity of her skirt. “This isn’t gossip. It’s about a murder.”
“Then you should tell Detective Long.”
“Oh, but I did.”
Max’s heart did a double back-flip. “When?”