Keeping his eyes on Max, Witt reached in his pocket to pull out a neatly folded piece of paper. “Here’s a list of names, a list of your husband’s friends who still live in Lines. We talk to these people. We see what we can find out. Then we go back to Evelyn.”
“Don’t cops go to the source?” Breathless, she hadn’t gotten over the shock of the photo and what it said about Evelyn’s state of mind.
His blue eyes hardened. “We go when we know the right questions to ask. I want background info before I confront her.”
“But she wants us to ask. That’s why she gave us the book.”
“And I want to be able to verify what she says.”
She sat back, rolled her bottom lip between her teeth. He was immovable. He got like that sometimes. She could push the guy so far before he slammed her down. It didn’t happen often, once or twice in their two-and-a-half month so-called relationship, but he did it now.
Max admitted defeat. She also admitted, if only to herself, that he was right. They had to know all the right questions before they tackled Evelyn. “Fine. Then let’s go talk to the names on that list.”
“That’s why we’re here.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “What do you mean?”
He unfolded the paper ceremoniously. “First name I wrote down was Izzie Monroe?”
“Izzie?”
He gave her a hard smile, lifted his hand enough to point.
Max’s gaze followed. “Izzie the Waitress?”
“Izzie Monroe. Your husband’s girlfriend in high school.”
Chapter Thirteen
Bastard. “You should have warned me.”
Witt watched Max a moment amid low voices, laughter, the crackle of newspaper to wash another window, the drip of brewing coffee, the hiss of another burger on the grill, and the spatter of fries set in the vat.
“Didn’t want you to have any preconceptions when you met her.” Witt drank from his water glass, eyes on Max.
“I never have preconceptions.” Except when she decided someone was a killer after only a few words.
He snorted. “Even I did when I met my ex-wife’s husband.”
“She’s remarried?” Max had never asked, afraid of making his business her business.
“Swell guy.”
Her turn to snort. “And I bet he sits when he takes a leak.” She didn’t mention that other thing Debbie Doodoo had done. Not again. She didn’t want to remind him.
With a ghost of a smile, Witt tipped his head. “Suspect he leaves a spic-n-span toilet when he’s done, sitting or not.”
Max grimaced. She had the immediate image of a thin wimpy guy who stooped. It was overridden by an image of Izzie, same curling hair but without the gray, same smile that would have tempted a teenager’s heart. She gasped. “The girl in the pictures.” She didn’t need to flip through it; the young girl had appeared several times. A younger, slimmer version of Izzie. “But how’d you know she was Cameron’s girlfriend?”
“Short but sweet note in his yearbook.”
Of course. Witt hadn’t had Evelyn’s photo album at the time he’d compiled his list.
“Didn’t sign with a last name,” he went on, “but there was only one Isabel. Helped they put Izzie in quotes under her picture.” Smugness wasn’t a Witt characteristic, but his tone and the slight smile curving his lips implied it.
“You’re enjoying having one up on me, aren’t you?”
The smile died as quickly as it had come. “I’m sorry that it still has the power to hurt you.”
He was right about the hurt. Maybe he’d been hoping it wouldn’t. But it did. Lightheaded and a little nauseous, she didn’t want to think about what Izzie Monroe wrote to Cameron. Right then and there, she promised herself she’d never look.
Witt closed the pages of the photo album and set it on the seat beside him. “How ya gonna approach her?”
The question caught her off guard, though she knew Witt meant Izzie Monroe. The idea of it wiped all other thoughts clean. “Me?” she croaked.
“Yeah, you.”
Well, of course, she would do it. Cameron was her husband, this woman his old girlfriend, and Max wasn’t afraid of a confrontation, which was what she was sure Witt thought. She shot him a venomous glare. “I’ll make up a really good story, I’ll—” She stopped. What good story?
“What lie you gonna tell her?”
She didn’t like his tone, one suggesting she’d lied to Evelyn Hastings. Which she hadn’t. Not at all. Had she? Damn Witt for getting on her case. “It’s my husband, and it’ll be my lie.”
“Why lie at all?”
Her breath came out in a huffy puff. “So what, you think I’m supposed to tell her I had a dream where my husband told me I had to find his sister and flew across the country so I could ask his old girlfriend what she knew?”
Witt didn’t move a muscle. “Yeah.”