She set her purse and coat down on the chair next to the viewer she’d chosen, then turned to the drawers. Running her finger down the card files, she found the year she wanted two up from the bottom. She started with June, before graduation. Luckily, the editor believed in good indexing. She went right to the obituary section. Above, beside, and below barked advertisements for funeral homes and cemetery plots. Well, really, where else would they advertise? Max began reading.
“Alice Goodhew, aged eighty-five, died Friday, May thirtieth in Lines, Michigan. Mrs. Goodhew is survived by her loving sons, George and Elliot, and her four grandchildren, Lisa, Cindy, Peter, and Rusty.” Rusty sounded like a dog’s name. The bit went on to say a memorial service would be held the following Monday at two o’clock in St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church.
A busy weekend for the Angel of Death, three more announcements rounded out the number for that edition, an eighty-year-old man, a fifty-year-old woman, and a twelve-year-old boy.
Her heart twisted. Twelve years old. It didn’t say how Jimmy Howell had died, only that his grieving parents and two younger sisters survived him. No parent should outlive his or her children. Max yanked out the fiche and slid in another, the little boy’s death leaving a pall over the assignment.
He wasn’t the only child. Somehow, she hadn’t counted on that. She figured on the names being impersonal, until she got to the one she was looking for. How the hell could so many people die in a town as small as Lines, population ten thousand? Though the truth was the obits covered Lines and the four or five surrounding towns, and after wading through six months, it merely seemed like a lot.
By late afternoon, Max’s eyes ached from staring at the sometimes indistinguishable fiche type, and she’d managed to get herself sidetracked by stories like the one on Dr. G.W. Crouch, the dentist who’d been caught drilling for cavities that weren’t there, and Gunther Abercrombie, who’d walked down to his basement one evening after work and hung himself while his kids fought over eating brussels sprouts for dinner. It happened as readily in small towns as it did in big cities. Max had been sidetracked, but she’d still learned something important.
Even in a town like Lines, finding Cordelia Starr was like looking for a grave in a cemetery when you didn’t have a name.
“How ya doing?” Witt’s warm hand traced her spine, and she relished a lung full of his enticing aftershave. She wanted to chuck the whole project and beg him to take her back to his room. All that from a touch and a sniff. God, she had it bad. She’d do anything he wanted. She had done exactly what he wanted.
Couldn’t let him know that. “No success. How about you?”
“Got a few names still living in town. Enough to check out.”
“Are you done?”
“No.” He leaned over to read with her. Secluded in the rarely used fiche section, surrounded by book shelves and fiche viewers and cabinets, he trailed a hand along her side from her hip to her armpit, his fingers settling below her breast, just short of cupping it.
“What are you doing?” Besides driving her crazy.
“Helping you read.” A chuckle laced his voice.
Helping? She couldn’t concentrate on a word in front of her with his hand resting up there and his hips so close down there. She hated a man that teased. All right, she loved a tease, but she hated having so little control over the heat in her cheeks and the state of her nipples. She wondered if they showed through the layers of turtleneck and sweatshirt, but refused to look.
He read aloud, his breath against her ear. Bastard knew what he was doing to her pulse rate, too.
“Calvin Hastings, sixty-eight, died Christmas Day at his home in Lines. He is survived by his loving daughters—”
“The same guy must write them all. They’re exactly alike.”
Witt went on, his hand slipping around her until his thumb lay between her breasts and his body rested flush against her back. “—survived by his loving daughters, Evelyn Hastings and Madeline Starr, and grandson Cameron.”
They sucked in a breath at the same time.
“Ohmygod,” Max whispered on the exhale.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Witt snapped out, then, fast thinker that he was, added “Why doesn’t it mention the granddaughter, Cordelia?”
“I’m sure Evelyn Hastings can tell us.”
He pulled back. “I’ll look her up, see if she’s alive.”
“You don’t need to.”
“Think she’s dead?”
“No, she certainly isn’t. If fact, she’s right over there.”
Max turned and pointed to the woman with steel-wool hair, snub nose, and cat’s-eye glasses. Evelyn Hastings, as proclaimed by her shiny silver name tag, had shown Max to the fiche. Obvious now where that sense of familiarity had come from.
Was it coincidence, divine intervention, the devil at work. Or Cameron playing God?
Chapter Eight
“What’s the big deal? Walk up and ask where her niece is.”
“You think like a cop. This needs more finesse.”