Читать книгу The Man For Maggie - Frances Housden - Страница 11

Maggie blinked. Max hadn’t disappeared, which surprised her as much as the words she’d uttered. I believe he was murdered. She’d hardly dared think it before, never mind give breath to such an outrageous idea. A few moments with Carla, a woman as irrepressible and gregarious as she was generous, and suddenly Maggie had deviated from her rules. Rules that kept her safe from people like Gorman.

Now Max really would think she was nuts.

And maybe he wouldn’t be far from wrong. She probably came from a whole line of nutcases. Look at her father. A rational man would have at least taken some heed or precautions after she’d warned him. The surprise, in what was rapidly becoming a day of them, was that he had listened, and saved Carla from certain death, if not himself. Dumb! Maggie would never understand men.

“There was no mention of murder in the notes, from either you or anyone else who was—”

“Notes!” She gasped at this revelation, “You checked up on me?”

“Did you expect anything less? I’m a cop, Maggie. I take no one at face value, even with a face as beautiful as yours.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? That you think I have a beautiful face? A shop window dummy is beautiful, but there’s nothing inside.” She quivered with anger and stared at the frothy latté in her cup. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to listen. Gorman had done it again.

Courage don’t fail me now!

She set her cup into the saucer with a clatter and searched blindly for her purse. “Sorry I wasted your time. But don’t worry, I’m out of here. Me and my beautiful face.” She lashed out at him in her disappointment. She’d expected the moon and been handed a false coin.

Hurt tears distorted an image of the woman from her dream. I tried. I really did try!

Max’s fingers circled her wrist as she pushed up from her seat. “Maggie, don’t go! Stay. Please.” His voice exerted the same light pressure as his hand. “Take it from me, nothing in Gorman’s notes made me think any less of you.”

“What does it matter?” She shook off his hand and slung her purse over her shoulder, determined to leave.

“What do you want from me? Blood?” Max blocked her way and the world shrank to the width of his massive chest and shoulders.

She fixed her gaze on his chin. Any higher and his blue eyes might be her undoing. True blue as they say, she couldn’t bear to see them lie. Teeth clenched, she muttered, “That would do for starters, then you might try relying on your own judgment instead of that mouth of Gorman’s!”

Blast! Forcing her eyes wide hadn’t held back the liquid frustration in them. Now a tear hit her cheek, and to cap it off, she probably had a drip at her nose. Typical—it never rained but it poured. Maggie dug in her pocket and drew out a tissue.

Drowning was too good for him, unless he could do it in that tear. That’s all it took: a little salt water and he felt like a jerk. The rest of the coffee bar patrons probably thought so, too. Max and Maggie had drawn a small audience, and the waitress seemed ready to get on the phone and call the cops. She’d scream police brutality if he showed her his badge.

Maggie’s tears gouged a scar inside him deeper than the bullet had done when it seared his forehead. “Hey. Why don’t you sit down, blow your nose and tell me about Frank?” He swiftly scanned the coffee bar. “People think we’re fighting.” The brusque heartiness of his words didn’t have the desired effect.

Discomfort was written all over Max, and a newer, more tender emotion crushed her resolve. This huge man handled the worst the criminal element threw at him, but a crying woman cut him off at the knees.

“They’d be right then, wouldn’t they?” Her question spilled out, wrapped in a mixture of sobs and pent-up laughter. Then Max’s arm came around her shoulders, and the feel of him, firm and strong, holding her, stole the rest of her resolution.

“C’mon, honey, let’s go outside where we can find some fresh air and privacy.” Quickly! Before he pulled her into his arms and kissed her senseless. Wouldn’t that give everyone something to stare at?

Wide steps flowed onto Aotea Square, and at their base he steered Maggie toward a convenient alcove. A curve designed for elegance would keep them private and would shelter them from the wind. He’d sweated it out back there, thought that Maggie would turn and run. But she’d capitulated, and he didn’t know who was happier—the cop or the man. His baser, more selfish, hormone-driven instincts howled at the thought of losing something they’d decided was theirs by right.

Maggie.

Base, because even while he offered comfort, dried her eyes and soothed her with gentling sweeps of his hands, those same hands wanted to rip open her coat and push her against the wall. He wanted her to feel his pain. Pain that wouldn’t subside until he’d had her, until he’d felt her hot wet flesh surround his needy hardness and welcome his seed—and still it wouldn’t be enough. He’d want her, again and again and again….

Who was he kidding? He needed her. Needed her to make him feel alive.

Whatever it took!

But the cop had his own agenda. The kind that pricked up its ears at the mere mention of murder. However implausible.

Max felt her breasts swell and subside against his chest as a sigh travelled through her. He restrained himself from increasing the contact. From gluing them together from breast to thigh. “Feeling better now?” he asked, pushing his Maggie-moistened handkerchief back in his pocket.

With another sigh, she murmured, “You must…think…I’m nuts.”

“Not really. Slightly kooky maybe.” That was better; he’d raised a smile big enough to play havoc with his good intentions. Much as he lusted after the feel of Maggie in his arms, it was time to get back to business. “Listen, Gorman never wrote that you’d warned Frank not to fly, and there was no mention of dreams in his report. Nothing. He saved all that—” Max bit back the word garbage. “He saved it to humiliate you in the media. I’d never treat you that way.” His finger tilted her chin toward him. “Look at me, Maggie. Know this. Anything you say to me is completely off the record. I’m no more crazy about journos than you are.”

Maggie didn’t answer. Instead, she stared at him and through him, as if she could see forever. A worm of apprehension crawled up his spine. His hands dove for his pockets and his feet wouldn’t stop fidgeting. He had an urge to shut his eyes and hide his thoughts of Maggie, way back in his mind. It showed that his natural skepticism could only stand so much. What the situation wanted was lightening, before the tension between them snapped like cheap elastic and he was the one who got stung. With a couple of quick swipes of his finger across his chest, he said, “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Bad move!

What he hadn’t said—might never say—had screwed him up.

“That was pretty facile even for a cop.” Maggie shrugged inside her coat as if she might shed him like water. No such luck. She’d started this and her impulse might have washed out any credibility she had left.

Reluctantly, she laid her thoughts out in front of him. “Five months before my father died, another Creighton aircraft, the same model as his, crashed in the Pacific somewhere near Hawaii. The accident report on that plane said it had been caused by a fuel leak in the engine. The sensors malfunctioned, so the fire extinguishers didn’t come on.

“As soon as the report came out, Dad had his plane checked from nose to tail. Knowing my father, I’d bet that engine was clean enough to eat off.” Max frowned down at her, but she insisted, “Dad wasn’t stupid, just stubborn. He didn’t take risks.” Max had to believe her, even though all she had to go on was intuition. She had to convince him.

“I was wondering about what Carla said. How it was only six hours past a fifty-hour check. Is that the one she meant?”

“Yeah, it would have been more only we’d had a lot of building done at the vineyard and then Dad took a holiday in Australia.”

“From the account I read this morning, your father’s plane went up in flames. Am I right?”

“The scenarios were identical, though the air-accident inspectors tried to make out that the fuel line fractured near the intake. Yet the engineer swore the fuel line was new and the extinguishers should have controlled the fire, from the amount of leakage there was. I believed him. He wouldn’t have short-changed my father—not a valuable customer like him. If he’d been shoddy in his work, Frank Kovacs…” she tilted her chin at Max as she said her father’s name “…wouldn’t have kept going back. Dad expected the best and he usually got it. That’s why he laughed when I told him about the dream, the warning. He didn’t need it. All the angles had already been covered and he thought nothing could go wrong. Now I find he wasn’t as confident as he made out, otherwise he would have taken Carla with him.”

“Why didn’t you tell someone?” he asked, then shook his head. He already knew Maggie’s answer. He didn’t need to be a mind reader for that.

“Just who do you think would have listened, after the number Gorman did on me?” She hung her head, and her voice when she spoke again was gruff and teary. “Besides, I had no proof. Nothing to give anyone except that it was too much of a coincidence. Too easy. You can see it, can’t you? The ditching of the other plane made it the perfect setup for anyone who wanted to harm Dad.”

Max was no great believer in coincidence. More often than not some manipulation was involved. “What about enemies?”

Maggie lifted her head a little, looking at him from under her lashes. There was a softness in her eyes he’d never noticed before. They reflected hope and displayed a vulnerability he hadn’t expected, just because he’d taken a little interest in her theory.

“He had none, that I know of. But then, nobody gives away all their secrets. And Dad played his hand pretty close to his chest.” Unconsciously, she grabbed Max’s lapel, as if hanging on to the shred of hope he’d given her.

Max knew he was going to let her down.

He felt a sudden compulsion to kick ass. Gorman’s in particular. For the sake of a laugh Gorman had let a case go begging, left it incomplete. Max laid his own success as a cop on his instinct for sniffing out things that weren’t quite as they appeared. He’d caught a scent as Maggie spoke, a faint one. What good would it do to inform her there was a chance she could be right? Fifteen months down the track they were looking at a trail that was cold as ice and had been trampled so heavily it would be unrecognizable.

Much as he’d love to help Maggie out by digging into the particulars of her father’s death, he had more immediate problems. Like the woman in the drawing. Did she exist? If so, who was she? And was she alive?

It was Maggie who’d said, “Maybe it’s not too late.” Well, he’d have to see about that. An idea clicked into his mind as quickly as fingers snapping. Damned if he hadn’t come up with a way to knock off two birds with one stone!

“Any minute now,” said Jo, swiveling around to face Maggie. “It’s just coming up, next street on the right.”

She’d picked them up at Aotea Square in an unmarked police car. Speculation was rife in Jo’s eyes. They’d narrowed when Max and Maggie strolled up together, but she’d made no comment. She’d just handed over the driving to Max and taken the seat beside him.

“Where are we? I don’t recognize the area.” The inner city suburb they drove through boasted a plethora of older houses, mostly standing in large gardens untrammeled by the recent rush to subdivide and squeeze in another house. The area looked like old money and the professions.

“It’s just off Mountain Road. Haven’t you been this way before?” Max asked, in an offhand manner at variance with the glitter in his eyes through the driver’s mirror.

“I once went to a hospital there.”

Max signaled, took a right and slowed down at the second building on the left. “This one?” He nodded toward the large squat villa, glowing in a mixture of pastels that aped the latest trends.

To Maggie it looked like a blowsy old tart had stopped by to chat up the regimental lines of hedges and flower beds standing at attention in front of it.

“No, I meant the—” Maggie broke off the instant an overwhelming feeling of dread filled her. She touched her face as if that would ward off giddiness. It felt bloodless, as if it didn’t belong to her, but it wasn’t as cold as her hands. “The Mater Hospital. I went to visit a friend there years ago.” She looked at Jo. “What is this place?”

“It’s a maternity home,” answered Jo.

Max flashed Jo a sideways glance with “keep quiet” written all over it. What was his problem? Was this some kind of test? Maggie could tell him he was wasting his time. She couldn’t kick start her abilities on a whim. All she had were her dreams.

Only the dreams!

“So, you don’t recognize the place, huh?” he asked, sliding the car into a parking spot facing a flower bed in front of the building.

Her earlier relief at escaping the interrogation she’d expected before Jo picked them up died swiftly. This was a test! “This is one that arranges adoptions, right? No! I’ve never been here. I think I might have remembered.”

Jo gave Max a look that should have made his hair curl. “This is all his idea. I could have told him it wouldn’t pan out.”

“Quit arguing, you two! It won’t solve anything. Maggie, you remember what you said to me this morning? ‘Maybe it’s not too late.’ Well, this might be the place to find out just how late it is. So far, this hospital is the only link to all three murders. The victims each left a baby here for adoption at varying times. Four months ago this place had a break-in. The office was ransacked. One month later we had us a victim.

“So far we can’t tie anyone to it. We’re looking at people who’ve been refused a child or a father whose child might have been adopted without him knowing. Frankly, we’re floundering, and ideas aren’t coming thick or fast. Some sicko has these women in his sights and is sticking to his own twisted agenda. The trouble is the killings are too stylized and don’t follow any of the patterns we’ve been taught to look for in serial killers. There’s been no escalation in the violence, no mutilation.”

“Can’t you give the women who come here protection, or warn them?”

“There are too many, and not enough cops. Issuing a warning could start a panic, and because of the privacy act, the hospital isn’t keen on giving us any more names than we need. Some people wouldn’t be too happy about everyone knowing their business. What we’re gonna do now is show the picture you sketched around to the staff. See if anyone recognizes her.”

“But—”

“No worries, just sit tight. Jo and I will see to it all. C’mon, Jo. The sooner we’re in, the sooner we’re done.”

Maggie hadn’t expected an invitation. What could she do? She watched them exit the front seats and Jo walk around the car to join Max. They made a handsome couple, both tall, dark, attractive. Two sides of a triangle, with Maggie making up the third. Not the best shape for relationships to be in, no matter how Max made her feel. The confidence in his touch, as if he had no doubts; the way his mouth had covered hers; the taste of him… For once she really wished she could see into the future.