As soon as she asked it, she realized it had been her original burning question when she’d called him. “And?”
“Interesting.” He was irritatingly brief on purpose, she was sure.
“What did it say?”
“Over dinner.”
“Huh?”
“Tell you over dinner,” he enunciated carefully.
No, no, no. She’d seen far too much of him lately. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
She chewed on her inner cheek and thought. “Because I want to know now, not later. It’s important.” Which really didn’t answer his question.
A moment, then, “Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me something, Max?”
He’d pitch a fit if he knew she and Ladybird had done a little reconnaissance on the house next door. Worse was what he’d do when he found out his mother had been introducing Max to the neighborhood as his fiancé. The worst was if he actually liked it.
She pulled at the collar of her white blouse. “I’m real busy tonight, Witt. How about a rain check?”
“Doesn’t fool me, Max.”
“Why on earth do you think I’m hiding something?” Couldn’t be because she was. “You were the one who wanted to know what was going on with the Spring thing. I don’t know why you’re hiding it from me.” Ah, very nice turning of the tables.
His sigh was audible. “Tell you now, but you’ll still have to pay later.” It sounded a bit like a threat. Would he want another kiss?
“What’s the price?”
“Tell you that later, too.”
She imagined the price. Imagined the slow seductive ways he could extract it. He’d up the ante and ask for more than a kiss this time. She tugged even harder on her collar. Then she shook herself. No real way he could make her pay up, no way at all. “Deal. Tell me.”
“Don’t kid yourself, you’ll pay, sweetheart,” he said as if he’d read her mind yet again. “You’ll be begging to pay.”
“Dream on, Long. There won’t even be a contest unless you tell me right this minute.”
Another sigh in her ear that tingled her nerve endings. “Shot himself in the head in his study.”
“Oh my God.” Mr. Spring in the study with the gun. It sounded like the game of Clue. It sounded eerily like Bethany’s phone call that Max had taken the other night. Mr. Mustard and Miss Scarlet. Coincidence? A psychic sign?
“Your husband was investigating the case as possible murder.”
“What do you think?”
Instead of speculating, he continued with the facts. “It was ruled suicide in the end. Odd case, really odd.”
She waited for him to go on, the sun through her window now overheating her arm.
“Spring was being sued.”
“Why? What did that have to do with his death?”
“Patience is a virtue, Max. I oughta know.” A brief pause tempting her to interrupt. She didn’t. “To continue, he was being sued. By his daughter.”
Holy Hell. “Bethany?”
“Jada.”
The suspense was killing her. He surely knew it since he was stretching it all out interminably. If he’d been standing right in front of her, she’d have shaken the whole story out of him.
“For what, you ask?” The slime was really enjoying being man on top. Bastard. “Well, I’ll tell you. Recovered memory crap. Jada accused her father of molesting her as a child. She was suing him for extreme mental distress.”
Her heart kicked into palpitation mode. “You’re kidding.”
His voice changed, subtly, nothing more than a slight deepening, a hardening. “Testimony in the civil suit the day he died was from an M.D. who’d examined Jada. Apparently she had severe rectal scarring that was consistent with repeated forced anal penetration.”
“Oh no, oh no.” A numbing cold settled in her belly. She sat forward and struggled to breathe normally.
Cop voice, cop persona. His dialogue had become the recitation of an automaton. “The mother then testified concerning an incident which occurred when the girl was three. The mother returned home from a hat-making class. The husband was in a panicked state, told her that the child had cut herself. He’d taken her to the emergency room, and the bleeding had been stopped. She was resting upstairs. The doctors said she’d be fine.”
“All that in the time it takes to make a hat?” Max whispered. Who the hell even wore hats anyway, then or now?
“The mother further testified that when she attempted to examine the girl’s injury, Walter Spring became agitated, then angry. She stopped at that point.”
“What about the next day when he went to work?”
“The child became upset and wouldn’t allow examination by the mother.”
“Jesus, Jesus.” She swore, knowing God hadn’t listened to Jada Spring that long ago day when she was three anymore than he’d ever listened to Max.
“The suit contended the molestation started that night and continued until the girl was thirteen years old. At that point, she aborted a fetus. Medical records introduced confirmed the abortion.”