He didn’t disagree, simply asked another question along the same line. “But why would he want Lance dead?”
Here it came again. “I’m missing a big piece of the puzzle.” She turned quickly, facing him, hoping to catch him off guard and thereby force his answer to be a little more truthful. “What does he want from you?”
Deep breath, then the magic word, “Power.”
“Simply the need to bend you to his will?”
“In any way he can.”
“How did your relationship with him get to that point?” She knew how it had happened for her. Traynor had tried to lead her. She wouldn’t go. He’d tried to win her. She wouldn’t yield. She had become his obsession as much as he’d become hers.
“He...” Baxter sighed. “I had a heart attack a year ago. It was mild, but it scared me.”
He slid down the arm of the chair to sit on the cushion, the open book falling beside him. Steepling his fingers, he tapped his lips.
Max took the corner of the sofa, pulled her legs up, and leaned against the arm.
“I think it started a second mid-life crisis. Actually I never had the first one, so I suppose it was about time. I’d known Traynor through Lance.” He looked at Max suddenly over the tips of his fingers. “Lance wasn’t a bad guy.” His mouth quirked in the smallest of smiles. “I know, strange for me to say. But I’d long since accepted that Julia felt comfortable with their arrangement, and he’d always treated her well.” He paused in his tale, cleared his throat.
“You bought a shiny new sports car,” Max prompted.
He gave her a weak smile. “Yes.”
“And Bud took you to Angela Rocket.”
He shot up from the chair. “You really are psychic.”
She shook her head lightly. “Bud told me.”
He gave a soft snort. His eyes were sad, as if she should have known right from the beginning. “So you think he’s setting me up for Lance’s murder.” He shook his head, looked at her. “He really has got it in for me.”
“But why? Because you began to see through him?” she queried, knowing now why he’d lied in front of his daughter about knowing Lance’s woman.
“Because he knew it and that made him want to best me.”
Max smiled, mirthless, almost to herself. “He loves a challenge.” Turning back to Baxter, “How did it start?”
“He wanted to help me enjoy life, he said. He was the one who suggested that car.” He flicked a hand in the direction of the garage. “He took me places I’d never been. Men’s clubs, elite but offering all the amenities.” His narrowed eyes spoke of exactly what amenities he meant. “I have to admit I enjoyed some of it, but sometimes it made me sad that I had to force myself to keep up with him.” He sighed. “It would have stopped soon enough, but then,” he shrugged eloquently, “he introduced me to Angela. And I was charmed.” He dipped his head to avoid Max’s gaze. “You probably think I’m pathetic. Old enough to be the girl’s grandfather.”
Sad. Lonely. Afraid of dying. But not pathetic. She wasn’t one to judge. She’d certainly had her phase of running to sex to cover up her more basic problems. And of course, there was Angela. So pleased with herself, so full of life, so downright confident in who she was and what she did. “Angela charmed me, too.”
He didn’t mistake her meaning for sexual. “She makes you feel alive. She makes you think you could leap tall buildings in a single bound.”
“She makes you feel powerful.”
Baxter’s mouth twitched. “Yes. That’s it. She makes you believe you can overcome a bad heart.”
“Or that you can overcome a broken one.”
Her whisper passed over him. He’d remembered Bud’s role. “And then Traynor started to ask for ... disturbing things.”
She could ask for specifics, but she wouldn’t. She didn’t need to know. She had enough ideas on her own. Bud had wanted to watch, or participate; perhaps he even wanted to see Baxter and Lance together with her. It could have been any other number of kinky things. Bud was above nothing.
Baxter went on. “I finally concluded he wanted to see how far he could push me, how much Angela ... how much my time with her was worth. When I refused to be a part of the things he asked, he threatened to cut off the relationship.”
Max leaned forward. “How could he do that?”
“She told me if she had to make a choice, her allegiance was to Bud. She said he’d brought her a great deal of ... customers, and she couldn’t afford to make him angry.”
He had a hard time calling Angela a hooker. Why? Because of what it said about the woman? Or what it said about Baxter himself?
Baxter rose, began to pace in front of the hearth.
“What happened?”
His fingers flexed, he stared at the carpet he wore out beneath his moving feet. “I stopped seeing her.”
There was more. Max knew it. He couldn’t look her in the eye. “Why?”
He took in a long pull of air. “In the end, it had all become too degrading.”