If Max could take on her family and win, she could take on Andy Talbot and anyone else who interfered with her pursuit of the truth.
“Yep, I’ve lived here since I was nine-and-a-half when my mom dropped me on my grandparents’ doorstep. I didn’t even know I was the great-granddaughter of one of the wealthiest women in California until then. But you didn’t come here to talk about me.”
“I didn’t?”
She didn’t quite know how to take his comment. “I’m an open book. Ask me what you want to know.”
“Was your ex-high school sweetheart Andy talking about my case?”
“No.”
Nick didn’t say anything, waiting for Max to continue. She didn’t. She didn’t know if he would change his mind about helping her with the Jason Hoffman investigation if he knew she was also pursuing a cold case one of his colleagues considered closed. Juggling the two was becoming increasingly difficult.
“You don’t ask for help, do you?”
“That’s a question out of left field.”
“Which you smoothly avoided.”
“I did?” She smiled. The waiter came over with two menus. She ordered a pinot grigio and Nick ordered a beer.
She gave him an olive branch. “Sometimes, asking for help comes with strings. That’s why I prefer a trade. Like this.”
“I didn’t agree to anything.”
“But you will.” She hoped. “Unless you have an arrest warrant in your pocket.”
“If Harry Beck had his way, you’d be in jail.”
Her stomach dropped. Nick Santini knew far more about her and why she’d returned to Atherton than she realized. Why was she surprised?
“Harry Beck is a prick.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
“He has nothing to do with the Jason Hoffman homicide.”
“But that’s not why you’re here.”
“You obviously know why I’m here; you talked to Beck.”
“I wanted to hear it from you. If I believed Beck, you’d be an accessory to murder or something. He was a bit irrational when he spoke of you.”
“I’ll bet.” She assessed Nick’s interest; it seemed genuine. “If you talked to Beck, you know I’m in town for a friend’s funeral. Kevin O’Neal was tried for the murder of my best friend, Lindy Ames. I never believed he did it. He committed suicide last week, I suspect because he never could shake his reputation. The jury was hung, and Kevin lived with everyone in town thinking he was a killer. Including Beck.”
“If not Kevin, who?”
“I wish I knew. But I didn’t originally return to investigate Lindy’s murder. I came to help his little sister come to terms with his suicide. I owed him that much.”
“Why?”
Nick’s probing questions irritated her. The complexities of her feelings about Kevin and Lindy were just now becoming clear to her, and she was still twisting them around, trying to understand. She wasn’t ready to discuss them with anyone, especially a virtual stranger. The waiter returned with their drinks and they ordered lunch. “I’d prefer to talk about what I know about Jason Hoffman’s murder.”
“Go.”
That was too easy. Max suspected that the conversation wasn’t over. “I told you his grandparents contacted me—”
“How?”
Max uncomfortably felt like she was the one being interviewed. Or interrogated. No one had ever made her feel this way—in fact, she had fallen into responding without even knowing it.
She smiled. “You’re good.”
“Generally.”
“I slipped right into the role you wanted me to.”
“Does that mean you don’t want to share your information?”
She leaned back and sipped her wine. “Henry and Penny Hoffman saw me at the airport Friday morning.”
“They recognized you?”
“They watch my show.”
His face clouded just a bit, but then it disappeared. She had a feeling he was hiding his true opinion about her and her career. She’d have to come back to that.
She continued. “They’d written me earlier, but one of my former assistants didn’t forward me their message. I told them Friday I would look into it, but with no promises because I was only going to be here for a few days.”
“And now?”
“And now I finagled a bit more time. Jason was killed at my alma mater. I would have been interested even if he wasn’t, but it makes the connection not easily avoidable. It helps when you don’t need the job to force your boss to be flexible.”
“But you like what you do.”
“Mostly. I miss the freedom of being an investigative reporter.”
“Isn’t that what you do for that show?”
“Yes, but people usually know why I’m asking questions. I used to do more undercover work. More like a private investigator who wrote exposés rather than broadcast them.”
“And books.”
“A few.”
“Working on anything new?”
“I haven’t had time.” She had a few ideas, but true crime books took a long time to research and work, to fact-collect and fact-check. “Ben, my producer, wants me to write a collection based on the stories I’ve covered for the show.”
“But you don’t want to.”
“I’ve already told the story. I’m not interested in writing about them as well.” She didn’t want to talk about her job or the show. “I met with the Hoffmans yesterday morning and was going to tell them I couldn’t help, except I have a feeling there’s something to the case—something is pulling me, not just the connection to Atherton Prep. They told me about what Jessica Hoffman said, you interviewing her about her mother, and after a little research into the crime rates on construction sites—”
“Which is high.”
“But not homicides.”