Read Online Dead to the Max by Jasmine Haynes - Free Book Online Page B

transparent. No pun intended. Her killer could have stolen her keys from her purse. Remy let on she had a set.”
    “We won’t know for sure who until we figure out why the book was tampered with.”
    She shook her head lightly. “You know, something about that book bothers me. Maybe it was the fact that she used blue ballpoint for Nickie’s name. His name should have been written with something wild like cherry or fuchsia.”
    “Maybe she was in a hurry, and blue was all she could find. One thing’s for sure. Wendy knew the person who killed her.”
    “I never thought otherwise.” The hands around her throat had not been a stranger’s hands.
    “Ask the detective if her keys were missing from her purse.”
    “He’ll wonder why I’m so interested.”
    “He knows you’re up to something anyway.”
    Max snapped the milk carton closed and put it back in the fridge without answering.
    “Tell him the truth, Max.”
    “And what, exactly, is that?”
    “Tell him you’re psychic. You and your powers will be irresistible.”
    “Don’t play up to me. You’re still on my shit list. Oops.” She covered her mouth, muffling her next words. “Remy’s rule number whatever. I’ve gotta practice not swearing.”
    “Come on, Max.
    “What? My psychic abilities will bring the detective to his knees?”
    “Yeah, baby, oh yeah.”
    The impact of what she’d said suddenly hit her. The sexual impact. Dammit, that was not an image she should be having of the detective. She turned it back on Cameron. “Have you noticed how you always make what I say into something sexual?”
    “Oh no, Max, you’re the one who does that all on your own.”
     
    * * * * *
     
    Max spent the rest of the evening calling the numbers she’d copied from Wendy Gregory’s appointment book. Disappointed, she hung up as soon as she got voicemail at each of the four numbers. Manicurist, hair stylist, psychiatrist, psychic reader. Instead of the big clue Max was sure she’d uncover, she learned Wendy Gregory was a high-maintenance woman. Somehow the image didn’t fit. Yet, facts were facts. Wendy was incredibly self-absorbed. Or searching for God-only-knew-what in the strangest places.
    It was Max’s job to discover if that search somehow got Wendy killed.
    She called United Airlines next. They had not had a flight back to Boise yesterday around the time Nicholas Drake was at the airport. It only confirmed that remembered fragment of the Wendy vision. Her lover had taken his kids to Boise for a visit, that was all.
    So where had he been running to when she saw him at the airport? Or what had he been running from?
    Once her head hit the pillow for the night, Max’s scheming brain wouldn’t shut down. She couldn’t fall asleep. Instead, she’d planned her frontal assault on Detective Long.
    She used her lack of sleep as an excuse for why she was so ill-prepared to find Hal Gregory sitting in her chair when she entered her office the next morning.
    Of course, she shouldn’t have known it was him.
    She told herself the only reason she did was because he had the box of his wife’s personal effects on his lap. Yeah right. She got the same queer little quiver in her belly that she’d felt upon first meeting Remy. Wendy hadn’t been any more enamored of her husband than she was of her boss. No wonder she’d had an affair.
    He held a ceramic coffee cup in his hand, logo side facing him. The words ‘No Fear’ stared up at him. Wendy’s motto, one she’d striven for, but never reached. The cup had been a reminder, a positive reinforcement, but more often an accusation.
    This time, Max didn’t wonder how she knew.
    Hal Gregory didn’t notice her in the doorway. Max could barely breath. The air pulsated with Cameron’s peppermints, her own perspiration, and Hal Gregory’s misery.
    His legs were far too long for the height of her chair, the box bunched up against his chest. A skinny man with a hawkish nose and angular face. His hair, a light