“Your husband. Cameron Starr. Assistant District Attorney Starr. Is he here?”
“Oh, him.” She shifted from her right foot to her left. “Don’t you think we ought to get out of here before that dog starts barking? We might get caught.”
Witt didn’t seem to be in a hurry. He ignored the question. He spoke in a soft voice to match hers, but there was nothing tentative in what he said. “Did you know Bethany Spring’s father was your husband’s last case?”
Whammo, like a sharp shooter, he hit her right between the eyes with that one. “No way. Cameron would have told me.”
“Before or after he was dead?”
She took a deep breath, prayed to God for strength to understand and deal with snippy, pissed-off cops, and ignored his question. “What exactly was Bethany’s father’s case?”
“Don’t know.”
She waited ever so patiently. Witt added nothing. Crickets chirped in the bushes. A train whistled in the distance. The dog slept on. “Can’t you find out?” she was forced to prompt.
“It was only mentioned peripherally in your husband’s case file, a reference to what he’d been working on at the time. Ordered the Spring file from Records. Should have it in a day or two.” He paused, and his eyes looked almost black in the darkness. “Findings came down on that case after your husband was dead.”
“Dead.” God, she hated that word. So inevitable. So final. Yet life with Cameron had never ended. She wrapped her arms around her middle, suddenly feeling the night chill.
“Coincidence, Max, I don’t like it. The number 452, Bethany Spring living next door to my mother, your husband’s involvement in the father’s case. Ask him what the hell’s going on.”
Chapter Eleven
Max’s eyes damn near felt like they’d popped out of her head. “I thought you thought I was crazy.”
“Nutty as a fruitcake were my exact words. Ask him anyway.”
It was the strangest thing she’d ever done in her life. Cameron’s answer was in her head before she’d even finished thinking the question. “He says he can’t remember anything before he died.”
Witt wagged his finger and raised a blond brow. “Seems to remember you well enough.”
She pursed her lips. “He says I’m quite unforgettable.”
“Second that.”
A pleasant little quiver ran up her spine at Witt’s words. She didn’t add that Cameron had also said she was a pain in the corporeal ass. She was sure Witt would second that, too.
“So if he remembers you, why can’t he remember what happened before he died?”
“He remembers strong emotions, not events. He usually doesn’t remember any details unless I remind him first.” It was what Cameron claimed, though she wasn’t totally convinced of his ghostly amnesia. Sometimes Cameron came out with stuff she knew they’d never talked about since he died. Like his persistent questions about that argument they’d had the night he died. He remembered something she certainly didn’t.
His voice pounded relentlessly inside her head, drowning out her own thoughts. “He doesn’t remember the Spring case at all, but the name does feel familiar to him.”
“Did he mention anything to you about it before he was killed?”
She sensed Cameron’s excitement, started to speak. It was like translating a foreign language, with Cameron’s thoughts coming so fast, she could barely keep pace.
“Will you wait up,” she snapped. Her throat was dry, and her tongue felt odd, like the time she’d taken too many codeine after a dental visit.
“Okay, okay. There was something else, something that took his mind off the case, but he can’t pinpoint what it was.”
Witt, a quick study, abandoned the questions about memory and went straight to the heart. “How’d he feel about it?”
She didn’t like talking feelings with Witt. Even if they were Cameron’s. “Angry. A little worried. Puzzled.”
“Anything else?”
She listened, then shook her head.
Witt stared at her for a heartbeat, then grabbed her arm. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
What are you thinking, she wanted to scream at him. What does it mean? Cameron.
I love you. Let him help you. We’ll talk about this later.
So she let Witt pull her across the lawn, let him hoist her over the fence and detour around the sleeping dog to the opposite side of the yard. He went through the hedge first, giving her the all clear, then pulled her up and over to safety. Relative safety. Except that the touch of his hands stayed on her skin like phantom fingers, and that didn’t leave her feeling anywhere near safe. He’d done all of it, too, without saying a word.
She wanted to throw a tantrum.
She still felt the slime of Bethany’s Achilles.
The street was empty, though she could hear distant traffic down on the El Camino. She glanced at her watch. Just after one. She couldn’t believe she’d been in the house that long. Witt’s hand reached out, slipped along her flesh, past her elbow, over her forearm, and down to take hold of her hand.