Читать книгу The Man For Maggie - Frances Housden - Страница 8

“I won’t tell him! You can’t make me.”

Maggie Kovacs heard the quaver in her voice above the soft rumble of conversation flowing around them. She heard feeble. She heard fear. And it annoyed the hell out of her, when what she really wanted was to bang the wineglass in her fist on the table. She would have too, if she hadn’t known every last person in the bar, ninety percent of them male, would turn around to see who was losing it.

Jo looked at her over the rim of her beer glass, took another swallow and put it down. “The choice is yours, Maggie. No one’s forcing your hand.”

Choice! She had none.

All she had were delaying tactics, as she hoped against hope the police would do their job and her problem would go away. No such luck. Life became intolerable when you regarded all your friends with a jaundiced eye, wondering who…? She’d never thought the day would come when she thanked God for having no family to call her own, but thank Him she did.

Maggie let her gaze drift past Jo between the crowded tables to where the fire crackled. The old fireplace was widemouthed and loaded with logs, someone’s attempt at cozying up the old pub. Anyone could see the bar was a relic from New Zealand’s early closing era. There weren’t many left in the inner city, and this pub, like most of the modernized ones, sported more paint than a K Road whore looking for business. But the bar owed its popularity to convenience. It was practically next door to Auckland Central, the city’s main police station.

Wood smoke sputtered from the logs every time the door opened, joining tainted air already tangy from damp wool steaming in the heat. With each breath the scents filled her mouth.

She tasted winter. The dead season.

Quickly, she gulped down some wine to rid herself of a taste turned bitter, and glanced at the clock over the fireplace. Hard to believe she’d been here less than half an hour. There was a clock ticking in the back of her mind, not unlike that one, and it had been getting louder and louder in the last week until she’d panicked this morning and rung Jo.

The evening hadn’t gone the way Maggie had planned, and her friend had caught the brunt of her failure. Hopes of Jo easing the stress jangling her nerves had died the moment her friend turned the tables and put the onus back on Maggie. And who could blame her? Not many people cared for spooky stuff. Not even Maggie, and she was its source.

It was her own fault for not realizing Jo might have changed. In three years, her dark eyes had grown wary and a tight, repressed line had replaced her smile. Her face and chin, once soft and youthful had grown finer, as if someone had drawn them with a harder pencil.

From across the bar Maggie had watched Jo arrive, taken in the forever irrepressible mass of dark brown curls hanging over the collar of Jo’s leather jacket, and been fooled. But cops had always been able to fool Maggie—she should have remembered. There were some who could cozen you into telling all your secrets, then laugh behind your back and blab them to the world.

Was Jo, too, calculating the changes and taking a guess at their meaning? How had they turned out such opposites, when as girls they’d been so alike? Had all their years in identical school uniforms hidden their true selves? Leaving time to solve the mystery.

Jo drained the last half-inch in her glass, then set it down with an exasperated click. “If you didn’t want my advice, why’d you bother to look me up?”

“Come off it, Jo. You know why. I’ve never been able to talk to anyone but you about it. Where else would I go?”

“You managed it once—”

“Yeah.” Maggie placed her arms on the table, her elbow accidentally hitting her wineglass. She heard it skitter across the laminated top, but if a crash came she blanked it out as unimportant. “And only just lived to tell the tale. Look what happened!” Look what they did to me! “I won’t let it happen again!” I can’t.

“Is this a private argument or can anyone join in?”

Maggie looked up, startled by the deep resonant voice. Immediately, she went into denial. “We weren’t arguing.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jo smile at the new arrival. Someone special?

“Max, I didn’t think you’d be here this evening.” Delight rang in Jo’s voice. “I thought you were pulling an all-nighter. Come and join us.”

So this was Max. Detective Sergeant Max Strachan, to be precise. Jo’s boss. The man she’d been pressing Maggie to speak to.

“Never spilled a drop. Neat trick. You’ll have to show me how to do it.” A large hand, slim fingered with blunt tips, set the glass it had caught back on the table. All she could see was his hand with its sprinkling of dark hair as the lights behind him captured all but his silhouette, making his features invisible.

“It’s not something you can learn overnight. I’ve had years of practice,” Maggie said, watching him hook the leg of a chair from the table next to theirs with a large, black-shod foot.

She flinched as the chair scraped across the tiled floor and he pulled it up to their table. His gabardine-covered thigh, cold from the night air, brushed against her nylon-clad knees as he sat down between her and Jo. At the same time a searing heat from the hard-muscled flesh molding the soft cloth made her ache to pull away. But that would be too obvious.

Wide shoulders blocked the rest of the bar from view as he settled into his chair, giving Maggie the uneasy feeling of being trapped. He could easily be six-five. Built like a brick outhouse. A man who would make male offenders shake in their shoes and female ones want to get down and slobber over his size twelves. A man to avoid. And as soon as she could, Maggie aimed to do just that.

“This is my friend Maggie Kovacs. Maggie, Max Strachan.”

Max held out his hand. Automatically she placed hers in it and felt her own swallowed up by a mass of contained strength. Since he was impossible to ignore, she let her reluctant gaze travel over him. A scar ran from his left eyebrow to his hairline, and a streak of silver made his dark hair, as dark as hers, look jet-black. Was there irony in the way the silver striation turned his already handsome face, with its black winged brows and aesthetically high cheekbones, into a prototypical pirate? In the midst of all that perfection, the slight bend in the bridge of his nose should have been a reminder that the man was a cop who had more than likely done battle before. It wasn’t. Cops were supposed to be good guys, but Maggie usually took them as she found them; her last experience had colored most of them charcoal-gray. But in Max’s case she’d rather remain in ignorance.

His eyes paid Maggie the compliment she’d given him—a detailed inspection. She swallowed at his intense look as their gazes collided. His eyes were truly blue. The truest blue she’d ever seen, ringed by long sooty lashes any woman would envy. True blue eyes that searched and sought out her deep hidden secrets. Maggie blinked in self-defense. He was the last man she wanted to share secrets with. Especially the one she’d just added to the list—the mind-blowing attraction he stirred, like a sleeping volcano wakening. Max smiled, just a slight curve of his chiseled lips, but enough to make her insides quake.

“Margaret Kovacs.” Her name rolled off his tongue one syllable at a time, as though he savored each nuance with teeth and tongue before letting it go.

Someone had let loose a whole load of geese in the graveyard. How else could she account for the shivers running down her spine?

Maggie gauged his thoughts. Was he trying to place her name, flicking through the filing system in his brain for where he’d heard it before? “Maggie,” she corrected. “I prefer Maggie.” By repeating her name, she hoped to nudge him off the track his mind had started down.

“Maggie it is. And what brings you to this neck of the woods, Maggie? We don’t usually see ladies like you in here.”

“I wanted to catch up with Jo. It’s been a while,” she said and flashed him a scathing look. He’d had to state the obvious. It hadn’t taken a detective to recognize her as the most overdressed person in the bar. Or did she mean underdressed? The only person in a miniskirt in this place where jeans and casual gear were the uniform of the day.

Even her hairstyle set her apart, with its precision cut. She’d let her stylist crop it ruthlessly to the shape of her head, leaving a shiny black length of hair to swirl across the tops of her ears and eyebrows. “It’s a crime to hide that bone structure, my dear. Your cheekbones are to die for,” was Stefan’s cri de coeur.

Maggie took a deep breath. At twenty-eight she should be past the age of letting people like Max get to her. But at least she hadn’t let it show how much his comments had bothered her.

“Almost three years,” confirmed Jo. “I couldn’t even make it back to Maggie’s father’s funeral, and that must have been a year ago, when I was in Gisborne.”

“Fifteen months.”

“A year this past March. That would have been Frank Kovacs?”

Maggie caught the gleam of recognition in his eyes, the slight tensing of his hand around his glass, and knew the seed of speculation had been sown. This was exactly the situation she’d wanted to avoid. “Yes. Did you know him?”

“I’ve heard of him.”

I’ll just bet you have.

Suddenly she just wanted out of there, wanted to run away from eyes that saw too much. Too easily.

She’d come to talk to Jo on a wave of courage, and the longer she stayed the more it ebbed. She’d already had her fifteen minutes of fame, and taking a chance on thirty might just push her over the top.

Max drained his glass. “Can I buy you both a drink?” He looked at their glasses, Jo’s empty one and the half glass of red wine of Maggie’s that he’d caught and replaced. “Not your usual vintage, I imagine? Maybe I can do better?”

That was all the confirmation Maggie needed. Max remembered her story and wasn’t too subtle about letting her know. “I doubt it.” She took another sip as if to prove him wrong.

Jo pushed her glass toward Max. “Thanks, I’ll have my usual,” she said, giving him another of the smiles she’d been rationing, as if the undercurrents in the conversation were passing her by. Maggie knew Jo wasn’t that dumb. Jo was sending a few signals of her own, and Maggie got the impression they were all for her benefit. Showing her the lay of the land. One minute Jo was practically pushing her to meet the guy, the next Maggie could see a sign in bold writing: Hands Off.

Maggie took another look at the clock with its small brass pendulum swinging back and forth. No chance of time slowing for her.

“Would you look at the time? I have to go.” She stood up and slid her arms into the camel-colored, cashmere coat she’d left hanging over the back of her chair. She turned her collar up till it framed her face, ready for the biting wind that had sprung up as the sun set. “Jo, give me a call when you’ve got the time. You’ve got my numbers. Nice to meet you, Sergeant Strachan.”

Max stood up and Jo followed his example. “Do you have to?” she asked.

Maggie slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder. “Yeah, I have to. Bye now.” She left them with an inane wiggle of her fingers, which showed the panic in her mind. Unable to get away quickly enough, she aimed for the door with the distinct feeling that Max’s eyes were boring into her back. With every step she took the door seemed farther and farther away.

A finely turned ankle.

Now, where the hell had that come from? It was one of those long-forgotten expressions lurking in the recesses of Max’s mind, but it fitted the pair of sheer, black-nylon covered ankles to a tee. The ones playing hide and seek with his libido through the long slit in the back of Maggie’s coat. Each glimpse made his breath catch softly, miniature versions of the drawn-out hitch in his breathing when he’d first spied her across the room beside Jo. He’d never been an ankle man, until now, but he’d always been a quick study.

Max watched her walk away, head high, shoulders straight, as if she didn’t give a damn. Each movement, from the tilt of her head and the slippery sheen of her black hair sliding over her upturned collar, to the firm click of her slender-heeled shoes on the tiles, were lies. A demonstration of body language lying through its teeth.

He knew it.

She knew it.

It wasn’t what had been said earlier. It was the denial that they’d had anything to say. The subtext had been deafening from the moment he’d seen her slender body surge across the table toward Jo. Passion and energy etched every line. Sparks bursting from that energy had lit a fuse inside him, and he’d known straight off it was too late to douse it. Max prayed the fuse was a long one, and a slow burner. He’d need all the time he could get to garner his defenses. From the moment he’d heard her name—maybe even before, when lust had driven him across the room, and Jo’s presence had eased the inevitability of their meeting—he’d known this was one situation that could blow up in his face.

The double glass doors, with their dull, fingerprint-yellow brass handles, swung on their hinges after her exit. But relief didn’t come as quickly as the doors shuddered to a halt. Max turned back to Jo and picked up her empty glass from the table. “Same again, you said?” He didn’t wait for her nod or the question shaping her eyebrows. He needed a moment to himself and his thoughts, and he’d get them at the bar while he ordered Jo a beer and himself a whiskey. A double.

Maggie Kovacs. Her father had been the one whose plane had crashed, but she’d been the one who’d hit the headlines.

He remembered the sergeant on the case, if you could call it a case—more like a retrieval job for the police divers, with a mop-up by the air-accident inspector.

Until Maggie had reached the scene.

To hear Sergeant Gorman tell it, she’d been out of her tree. Gorman was a bluff, red-faced character who looked as if he’d be more at home on top of a tractor than riding in a cop car. Still, it took all types. The man was retired now, and Max reasoned he’d only been handed the Kovacs case to get him out from behind his desk. The rest had been a bonus. The guy was probably still raising a few laughs at Maggie’s expense.

Maggie.

Sometimes prejudice got in the way of reality. Where were the hoop earrings and spangled head scarf? The “cross my palm with silver, mister?” Maggie didn’t look anything like the advertisements with their 0900 numbers littering the tabloids and women’s magazines. Madam Zelda and the likes, who’d read your fortune from cards, or your future from the vibes singing down the phone line, and charge you $3.95 a minute for the privilege. For a while there he’d almost let them get away with annihilating his future. They’d certainly robbed him of a fortune—and his marriage. It was something he’d never forgive or forget. Like the day he’d opened the final demand from the phone company, and felt the bottom drop out of his world.

He downed his first whiskey while they poured Jo’s beer, and was into his second before he reached the table. The heat entered his stomach and had spread to his veins by the time he sat down. He caught Jo’s glance and knew she’d be speculating about the second drink. Usually he nursed one glassful till the ice melted and the whiskey was as hot inside the glass as when it hit his tonsils.

“So…” he sighed. “Good-looking woman, Maggie. Catching up on old times, were you?” He tossed back another mouthful of the desperate man’s anesthetic and waited for Jo’s reply. The bombshell wasn’t unexpected; he just wasn’t ready for it to go off this soon.

“She came to see me about a murder. Three of them, to be precise.”

“Cut the crap, Jo. Next you’re going to tell me she dreamed them!”

“She’s psychic.”

“Then you’re going to tell me you believe in all this mumbo jumbo.” Max took another swallow. The effects of the anesthetic were wearing off quickly. He’d known Jo for five years now. Worked with her on and off for three of them. She was a good cop, with a quick, keen mind. She never flinched, even when things were at their hairiest. But believing in this psychic twaddle had to be a female thing.

“For heaven’s sake! This is a new age, Max. Sooner or later you’ll have to give in and open your mind to the possibilities. Hell, I like my job too much to put it on the block, but I’ve known Maggie all my life. You I’ve only known long enough to learn how hard you can dig in your heels.”

“I’m not interested in a rundown on her dreams. I’m not a shrink. Tell her to try the yellow pages.” He’d had enough on his plate with three unsolved murders in as many months. Not even a fool could deny they were connected, and he was no fool. Which was a good reason for staying away from anything that smacked of paranormal. Now if only he could convince his libido of the same thing where Maggie was concerned, he might be a damn sight nearer to suppressing the urge to get up and follow her out the door.

“Well, don’t get your Jockeys in a twist. It just so happens she doesn’t want to speak to you, either.” An edge of satisfaction colored Jo’s voice as she tossed the ball back at him.

“So what was this tonight? A social call, or is she after a little more publicity to keep the punters rolling in?” At the base of his skull a pain throbbed, and he wondered who he was really trying to hurt—Jo, Maggie or himself? “You thinking of flagging the police and taking up marketing, Jo?” The steel in his voice would have made a wiser woman back off. Not Jo.

“Okay, Max. Let it all hang out, spill your guts,” she retorted.

Jo’s breasts heaved under her blue chambray shirt and spread the zipper edging of her leather jacket farther apart. Boy, she was angry with him! Max had never seen her this mad before. How much would it take to make her blow her stack? There was a calm, calculating part of his brain that thought maybe this was a good thing. Cruel, but good. Good for him.

He’d been thinking for a while now that maybe Jo was getting too fond of him. And he wasn’t the only one to notice, judging by a few of the comments written on the men’s room walls. The only thing to cut that out would be to make the place unisex.

At one stage he’d toyed with the idea of getting her a sideways promotion out of Central. A word in the right ear was all it would take. But was it fair to nix a good cop’s career, just because she thought the sun shone on his sorry behind?

“I knew who she was the moment you said her name,” Max growled. “Maggie’s reputation precedes her. If you’d been here fifteen months ago you’d know to keep away from her, unless you actually want your credibility as a cop to go down the drain.” He swallowed the last mouthful in his glass. Who was he trying to remind, Jo or himself? His divorce was six months old, and the only relationships he’d had in the last two and a half years had been the types that pass in the night. A quick tumble in the sheets and a few more weeks relief were all he got out of them. One look at Maggie and he could tell that wouldn’t be enough.

“Just because I haven’t seen her in three years doesn’t mean we haven’t been in touch. I can read, and not just the rubbish Gorman let slip and the media blew all out of proportion. Maggie wrote me about it, about the crank calls and the lies. I was trying to persuade her to tell you about the dreams when you arrived.”

“Good one! You’d send her to me when you know my opinion of these fakers.”

“I thought if you saw her face-to-face—”

“It takes more than a pretty face to bowl me over.”

“Tell me about it. I know it never worked for me.”

“Don’t let’s get into that, Jo. You’re a friend. Friends last longer than lovers.” He hoped Jo would take the words as they were meant and not as a put-down. It was the first time either of them had openly acknowledged her infatuation.

Jo shrugged and laughed ruefully. “Can’t blame a girl for trying. But we’re getting off the subject. I’m worried about Maggie. She sounded desperate. Didn’t you notice how edgy she was? Once you arrived she couldn’t wait to get away.”

“I thought it was my lethal personality she couldn’t stand.”

“Well… She doesn’t like cops, but her manners are usually better than that.”

“You’re a cop.”

“Yeah, but we were at boarding school together and we both come from the same background. It makes a difference.”

“I didn’t know your family made wine.”

“I was talking about Dalmatia. Both our families came from there originally. In some ways Maggie’s father hadn’t changed much from the old folks who first settled there. He had a closed mind on some things.” Jo tilted her head to one side, her expression serious as she looked him up and down. “Remind you of anyone? Frank Kovacs forbade her to talk about her dreams. Not that he didn’t love her—he adored her. It was the only thing he was ever strict over. Said he only did it to protect her. Seems he had to die to prove himself right.”

Max watched Jo swallow, lick her lips, then swallow another mouthful of beer. He could tell she wasn’t finished, so he waited and said nothing.

“I know these dreams do come true. But I can’t help her this time. I haven’t enough clout, but you do. And I’m guessing from the way Maggie’s acting, she’s going to have to give in and pay you a visit.” Jo leaned across the table and gripped his sleeved arm just above the wrist. By the strength of her fingers, he guessed her desperation was as strong as Maggie’s. “I need you to believe she got nothing from me. Nothing, yet she knows everything, down to the red scarves.”

Max felt his stomach clench and acid rise. Heartburn.

Could he believe Jo? The possibility posed too many questions he didn’t want answered. He’d rather keep Maggie in a box marked This One Makes You Hard Just by Being in the Same Room. He’d rather plan strategies to get her into his bed. To start figuring out the way her mind worked would draw him in too deep, and no amount of paddling would keep him near the surface. Not unless it was the pale olive, satin skin covering Maggie’s surface from head to toe.

There had to be another explanation. Damned if he could think what it might be, though. To give credence to what he’d just heard meant admitting he’d been wrong about a whole lot of other things, including his wife and his marriage, and he wasn’t ready for that just yet…or ever.

“There must have been a leak. Check the newspapers—we might have missed something. If someone on the case has a loose mouth, your job is to find out who. And I need answers by this time tomorrow. Heaven help us if this gets out,” Max muttered, knowing that, so far, heaven was the only place they hadn’t gone for help. That sounded too much like the area he was trying to avoid.

“So, you believe there could be a leak? And you’re satisfied it’s not me?”

“No, I’m not. You’d better work your little butt off and find me someone, or there’s only one conclusion I can make.”

“Great! I give you a gift from the gods and now you’re going to make me pay for it.”

A blast of raucous laughter had them both turning toward the bar. Max recognized the bulk of their team, milling around the barman, singing out their orders. “C’mon, Jo. You might as well start right now.”

“Why do I have to be the spy?” she complained, getting to her feet.

“You won’t be alone. I’ll stick around for a while. Check first for anyone who might have worked with Gorman. Maybe you’re not the only cop Maggie knows. If it’ll help, I’ll shout the next round. The guys needed some downtime to relax and work some of the frustration out of their systems, so I gave them tonight off.”

Max stood up and, as he did so, caught sight of a scarf under his feet. He reached down and picked up the scrap of silk, patterned like a leopard in black, tan and gold. “This yours?” he asked.

“No, it’s Maggie’s.” Jo held out her hand. “I’ll take it.”

Max rolled the long strip of silk around his fingers and released Maggie’s scent. It filled his head like a haunting refrain he couldn’t shake. “Would she have gone back up north tonight?”

“No. She wouldn’t drink and drive, and I know she walked here from the apartment Frank had in the Viaduct Quay tower. She’ll probably stay the night there.”

“In that case I’ll hang on to it.” Max pushed the ball of silk into his pocket. “From what you told me, chances are I’ll see her before you do.”

In fact, he would bet on it.