Max couldn’t help but ask. “How can you stand to be in the room where your husband died?”
Julia didn’t even seem to hear, as if her mind had numbed. She hadn’t been like this in her home. She’d shown control, a little mistiness, a bone-deep sadness, but not this almost vacant child-like misery.
Was it knowing Lance had been murdered right here?
Or was it remembering how she’d repeatedly jammed the letter opener into his heart herself?
No, Max didn’t believe that. Julia was genuine. She was regal. She had a smile like Mary Tyler Moore, an icon, for God’s sake. It wasn’t the smile of a murderer.
“Julia?” Max queried as she stepped to the edge of the massive desk, resting only the tips of her fingers on the surface, the missing section of carpet six inches from her shoes.
Julia visibly started. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
Her demeanor had already answered Max’s question. She couldn’t be a murderer. “Why don’t you go home, Julia? I can drive you if you’d like.”
Another deep breath, this one faster through slightly flared nostrils. “No. I have some phone calls to make.”
Max could now see the speakerphone on the carpet at Julia’s feet.
“You can make them from home.”
“I could.” Julia bit her lip. “But I want to be reminded.”
Max felt a familiar lump jump into her throat. “Of what?”
“Of what happened here, I suppose.” The tone indicated she hadn’t heard the incrimination in the word.
Julia La Russa was not quite present in her body today. Max pushed that advantage despite not wanting to hear, not if it meant getting Julia’s confession.
“What happened here, Julia?”
She turned the chair slightly, looked once more out the window. “Betrayal,” she said loud enough for Max to pick up.
Oh God, this was it. The Confession. Max didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to have to tell. She didn’t want to think of Julia in prison or worse.
Julia swung around, suddenly all there, putting her silk sleeves in the black grime without caring, eyes bright once again with tears. “Have you ever loved anyone so much that you’d do anything for them?”
“Yes.” Only sometimes there was absolutely nothing you could do but watch them die.
“How far would you go?” Earnest tears brimmed at Julia’s lids. She couldn’t be talking about Lance, could she? Max never got the impression Julia had cared that much about him.
“How far did you go?” Max whispered.
“I’d lie, I’d cheat, I’d steal,” Julia countered with absolute certainty.
“And would you murder your own husband?”
Chapter Nineteen
Julia had whispered the word no, then put her head on her arms and cried.
Max believed her. Believed the tears, believed the anguish, believed Julia La Russa wasn’t capable of killing anyone, not even her husband.
Cameron would have called Max a sucker.
When Max finally got her to sit up, the black fingerprint powder was smeared across Julia’s forehead. Julia hadn’t been capable of more than blubbering, and Max hadn’t learned anything about the video Bud Traynor alluded to. She shepherded the beleaguered woman to the ladies room and helped her wash off the sooty stuff as best she could. Fetching Julia’s purse from where it lay on the floor of the reception area, Max guided her down to the garage for her car and watched her drive through the security gate.
“I need to go back and lock up for you. Besides, I left my things in the suite,” Max had said when Julia offered her a lift to her parked car.
She’d left behind her purse and her garment bag at the scene of Lance La Russa’s murder.
Cameron’s voice had been hammering at her since she’d stepped inside the crime scene. Touch, Max, touch. See, feel, hear. It was a recently discovered gift of hers, touch. There was probably some technical parapsychological name for it that Max neither knew nor cared about. Sometimes a vision would burst upon her, but only if it had to do with the murder she was investigating. She’d ignored Cameron then, needing instead to concentrate on Julia’s emotions.
But now... “Let’s do it.” His voice echoed through the garage as if it were real.